J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and ...
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Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and economically as surplus or expendable, human and otherwise. Reified Life theorizes the dangerous social implications of a posthuman future, whereby human agency is secondary to algorithmic processes, digital protocols, speculative financial instruments, and nonhuman market and technological forces. Narkunas contends that it is premature to speak of a posthuman or inhuman future, or employ an ‘ism, given how dynamic and contingent human practices and their material figurations can be. Over several chapters he diagnoses the rise of “market humans,” the instrumentalization of culture to decide the life worth living along utilitarian categories, and the varied ways human rights and humanitarianism actually throw members of the species like refugees outside the human order. Reified Life argues against posthumanist calls to abandon the human and humanism, and instead proposes the ahuman to think alongside the human. Reified Life elaborates speculative fictions as critical mechanisms for envisioning alternative futures and freedoms from the domineering forces of speculative capital, whose fictions have become our realities. Narkunas offers, to that end, a novel interpretation of the post-anthropocentric turn in the humanities by linking the diminished centrality of humanism to the waning dominion of nation-states over their populations and the intensification of financial capitalism, which reconfigures politics along economic categories of risk management.Less
Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and economically as surplus or expendable, human and otherwise. Reified Life theorizes the dangerous social implications of a posthuman future, whereby human agency is secondary to algorithmic processes, digital protocols, speculative financial instruments, and nonhuman market and technological forces. Narkunas contends that it is premature to speak of a posthuman or inhuman future, or employ an ‘ism, given how dynamic and contingent human practices and their material figurations can be. Over several chapters he diagnoses the rise of “market humans,” the instrumentalization of culture to decide the life worth living along utilitarian categories, and the varied ways human rights and humanitarianism actually throw members of the species like refugees outside the human order. Reified Life argues against posthumanist calls to abandon the human and humanism, and instead proposes the ahuman to think alongside the human. Reified Life elaborates speculative fictions as critical mechanisms for envisioning alternative futures and freedoms from the domineering forces of speculative capital, whose fictions have become our realities. Narkunas offers, to that end, a novel interpretation of the post-anthropocentric turn in the humanities by linking the diminished centrality of humanism to the waning dominion of nation-states over their populations and the intensification of financial capitalism, which reconfigures politics along economic categories of risk management.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter further outlines the concept of speculative fictions with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood depicts a post-apocalyptic and posthuman future, where the speculative promise of ...
More
This chapter further outlines the concept of speculative fictions with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood depicts a post-apocalyptic and posthuman future, where the speculative promise of financial capital and biotechnology has destroyed the world as we know it. Atwood diagnoses the human as a bioengineered product, the effect of the synergy of science, evangelical positivism, utilitarianism, and messianic faith in human innovation and market-based solutions in the creation of transgenic beings. The chapter describes Atwood as a writer of speculative fictions in her “ustopian” world modeling that challenges speculative capital’s instrumentalization of life as risk management. Atwood opposes life becoming rendered into an algorithmic game, a complex calculation that generates automated reasoning. Atwood demonstrates the importance of critiques of anthropocentrism and speciesism; however, she shows how they seemingly lack a concept of power except as anthropocentrism. If the concept of nonhistorical, fixed essences is challenged by what molecular biologists call morphogenesis and philosopher’s ontogenesis, recent advances in tissue engineering, stem cell research, and biotechnology rethink life as a non-anthropocentric process. Thinking humans ontologically as dynamically networked life and process—in short as ahuman—may frustrate life’s instrumentalization by the biotechs within free market capital.Less
This chapter further outlines the concept of speculative fictions with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood depicts a post-apocalyptic and posthuman future, where the speculative promise of financial capital and biotechnology has destroyed the world as we know it. Atwood diagnoses the human as a bioengineered product, the effect of the synergy of science, evangelical positivism, utilitarianism, and messianic faith in human innovation and market-based solutions in the creation of transgenic beings. The chapter describes Atwood as a writer of speculative fictions in her “ustopian” world modeling that challenges speculative capital’s instrumentalization of life as risk management. Atwood opposes life becoming rendered into an algorithmic game, a complex calculation that generates automated reasoning. Atwood demonstrates the importance of critiques of anthropocentrism and speciesism; however, she shows how they seemingly lack a concept of power except as anthropocentrism. If the concept of nonhistorical, fixed essences is challenged by what molecular biologists call morphogenesis and philosopher’s ontogenesis, recent advances in tissue engineering, stem cell research, and biotechnology rethink life as a non-anthropocentric process. Thinking humans ontologically as dynamically networked life and process—in short as ahuman—may frustrate life’s instrumentalization by the biotechs within free market capital.
