What Is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe
What Is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe
What Is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe
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posthuman 'i~~ 8
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The poems "Metaphors of a Magnifico," "The Idea of Order at Key West," and "Esthetique du
Mal" are reprinted from KVallace Stevens, Tilsc Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York:
Random H o u se, 1982). "Esthetique du Mal" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" copyright
1936 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1964 by Ho ll y Stevens; "hfletaphors of a Magni fico"
c opyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and rersewed 19'82 bv Hully Stevens. Reprinted by perm i s
sian uf Alfred A. Knopf, a divisiun of Random H u use, lnc.
The. poem " T h e W u r l d and I" is repr i n ted fro m L a ur a Ri d i ng , Pocms of Lauro Riding (New
York: Persea Books, 1938). Copyright 1938, 1980; revised copyright 2001 by thc Board of
Litcrary Managcmcnt of thc latc Laura (Riding} )ackson. Reprinted by pcrrnission of Pcrsca
Books, Inc„ Ne~v York.
For more information about previously published material in this book, see pages 347 —48.
KVulfe, Cary.
KVhat is pusthurnanismP I Cary KVulf~..
p. cm. — (Posthum a n i t ics scrics; v. 8}
lncludes bibliographical references (p, ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-6614-0 (hc: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-6615-7 (pb: alk, paper)
1 . Humani sm . 2. A e sthetics — Philosophy . 3. D e construc ti on . I. T i tle.
B821.W65 2010
149 — dcZZ
2009037657
1 7 16 1 5 1 4 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRoDUcTIoN W h a t I s Poslhu m a n i s m? Kl
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8. Lose the Building zo3
Form and System in Contemporary Architecture
Notes 30I
Publication Idistory
Index 34g
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Acknowledgments
IT wotTt.D az euTtz.s to try to list all the friends, colleagues, and even
total strangers whose input and feedback helped inspire and shape this
book along the way. I would therefore like to provide what I hope is
a more reliable list — those who deserve thanks for inviting me to pre-
s ent this work i n a v ariety of settings, either live or i n p r i n t : Joseph
Tabbi, Eduardo Kac, Dana Medoro, Alison Calder, Bruce Clarke, Trace
Reddell, Manuela Rossini, Christian Hubert, Sid Dobrin, Sean Morey,
Anat. Pick, WendyWheeler, IvanKreilkamp, Cate Mortimer-Sandilands,
Joan Landes, Paula Lee, Robert Brown, Marianne DeKoven„ M ark
Hansen, Saul Ostrow, Totn Tyler, Neil Badmington,Jodey Castricano,
David Wood, Tim Campbell, Paola Cavalieri, Wendy Lochner, Salah
el Moncef bin Khalifa, Chris Danta, Patricia Yeager, Susan McHugh,
Jan Ritsema, Andrew McMur ry, Bojana Cvejic, Aaron Jaffe, Simon
Glendinn i ng , Al f Siewers, Susan Pearson, An drew Stauffer, Lauren
Corman, Wolfgang Natter, Carla Freccero, Donna Haraway, Citlalli
Reyes-Kipp, Maya Ratnam, Austin Sarat, Adarn Sitze, Ann W a l t n er,
Dan Philippon, Bruce Braun, Emily Clark, and Sara Guyer.
P ortions of t hi s w ork w ere presented in th e foll o w in g i n stit u-
tional settings, and I would like to acknowledge their support ofboth
the intellectual and monetary kind: the Warhaft Foundation and the
Centre for the Study of Applied Ethics at the University of M anitoba;
the English department at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the
M useurn of M o d er n A r t a n d t h e Van A l e n I n stit ut e i n N e w Y o r k ;
the Scientia program at Rice University; the Fifth Annual Surnmer
Academy at K u n stlerhaus Mousonturrn i n F r ank f u rt , Gerrnany; the
Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford; the Society
f or L it erature, Science, and th e A r t s (U.S. and European chapters);
t -.he Twentieth-Centur y L i t e r at ur e Co n f erence at th e U n i v ersity o f
Louisville; the Harry Ransom H um anities Research Center at the Uni-
versity of Texas; the Forum for European Philosophy at the London
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A C K N O Vf LE D G M E N T S
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I nt r o d u c t i o n What I S POSthLimanISm7
I T I S P E R H A P S A N A P P R O PR I A T E L Y P O ST H U M A N I S T G E ST UR E l a b e g l n
this book with the results of a Google search. As I write (in sumrner of
2008), if you Google "humanisrn," you'll be rewarded with 3,840,000
hits; "posthurnanisrn" yields a mere 60,200. (Apparently hurnanisrn is
alive and well, despite reports of its demise.) You will n otice at a cur-
sory glance that despite the discrepancy in numbers there appears to
be rnuch more unanirnity about humanism than posthumanism. Most
definitions of humanisrn look sornething like the following one frorn
Wikipedia:
Humanism i s a braad categary of ethical philasophies that affirm t h e
dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right
and wrong by appeal to u n iversal human qualities — particularly ra-
tionality. It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical
systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought.
Humanism entails a commitment ta the search for truth and morality
through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on
the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of
transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without
reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists
endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human
canditian, suggesting that solutions to human sacial and cultural prob-
lems cannot be parochial.
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C
post-humans,' defined as beings 'whose basic capacities so radicall
exceed those of present hurnans as to no longer be unambiguousl
urnan by our curr ent standards.' "'Transhuman,'" he concludes, "is
their descriptian of t hase wha are in t he process afb e cami ng post.-
human."' As one of the central figures associated with transhuman-
ism, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrorn, makes clear, this sense of
p osthurnanism derives directly frorn ideals of hurnan perfectibilit ,
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rationality, and agency inherited from Renaissance hurnanisrn and the
Enlightenment. (And in this, it has little in comrnon with Harawa 's
playful, ironic, and ambivalent sensibility in "A Cyborg Manifesto,"
which is suspicious t o p ur. it rnildl y of t h e capacity of reason to
steer, much less optim i ze, what it hath w r o ught.) As Bostrom puts it
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that responds either with lament or delight."" But what is needed here,
as Rutsky rightly points out, is the recognition that "any notion of the
posthuman that is to be more than rnerely an extension of the human,
t hat is to m ov e beyond th e dialectic of cont rol and lack of cont r o l ,
superhuman and inhuman, must be premised upon a mutation that is
ongoing and immanent," and this rneans that to become posthuman
means to participate in — and find a mode of thought adequare to-
"processes which can never be entirely reduced to patterns or stan-
dards, codes or inforrnation.""
In this light, it is worth recalling Clarke's suggestion that the dia-
lectical antithesis of rnatter and inform ation corresponds to the first-
order cybernetics of rnidcentury,'" while the rnutational, as Rutsky
rightly understands it, points toward the necessity of a different logic,
one consonant, as Clarke has pointed out by quoting Gregory Bateson's
suggestion three decades ago that "the whole of logic would have to
be reconstructed for recursiveness": a logic that is fundatnental to the
second-order systems theory that will be articulated in these pages.
From this perspective, I want to underscore what will be a rnajor point
of emphasis in this book: that systems theory in its second-order incar-
nation, far from eluding or narratologically tnastering the tnutational
processes just discussed, rather subjects itself to them t r a ces or tracks
them, as Derrida might say (for reasons that will becorne clear later)
in just the way Bateson calls for. As Dirk Baecker puts it, second-order
systems theory "may well be read as an attempt to do away wit h any
usual notion of system, the theory in a way being the deconstruction
ofits central terrn."" M o r eover, it is also worth remembering Derrida's
suggestion in his late essay "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More
to Follow)" that perhaps the deepest logic of his investigation of "the
question of the anirnal" is in fact "viral," in the specific sense of a muta-
tional logic of the trace structure of any notational form, any semiotic
system, that exceeds and encornpasses the boundary not just between
human and animal but also between the living or organic and the me-
chanical or technical — a contention I take up in some detail in chapters I
and 2." A n d i t i s p r ecisely at t h i s j u n c t ur e t hat t h i s b ook w e aves
together th e t w o d i f f erent senses of posthurnanism t hat r em ained
separate in my previous two bo oks, Criticul Environmcnts and Animal
Rites: posthurnanisrn as a mode of thought in the first book (explored
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the Kantian commi t m ent to the autonorny of reason seriously but then
subrnits that autonomy ta the unavoidable problern of paradoxical self-
reference a nd in that sense he takes reason rnore seriously than Kant
himself did, or at least takes it to require a rnore cornplex theoretical
apparatus because of the increased complexity associated with moder-
nity as functional differentiation." As Luhmann puts it in Observations
on Modcrnity, "The history af Eurapean rationality can be described
as the history of th e dissolution of a rationality continuurn that had
connected the observer in th e w o rld w i t h rh e w a rld."-'"- Ta call such
a shift historical is not, however, to fall back into the narrative histo-
riographic method I (and Foucault) have just criticized, since this new
lo~ic itself virally infects (or deconstructs, if you like) any possible his-
torical account a f a ct that (paradoxically, if you like) makes such an
account historically representative; that is to say (in Luhrnann's terrns),
it rnakes it modern."
Thus what D er r ida and L u h rnann in sist on rnare t han any o f
the thinkers just noted is a think ing that does not turn away frorn the
c omplexities and paradoxes of self r eferential autopoiesis; quite t h e
contrary, it finds there precisely the means to articulate what I will call
the principle of "openness frorn closure," which may itselfbe seen as
the successor to the "order frorn noise" principle associated with first-
order systerns theory and inherited by successors such as complexity
theory.'" I-lere the ernphasis falls, as it did not in these earlier theories,
on the paradoxical fact theorized by both Luhmann and Derrida t he
very thing that. separates us frarn the warld connccts us ta the world,
and self-referential, autopoietic closure, far from indicating a kind of
solipsistic neo-Kantian idealism, actually is generative of openness to
the environment. As Luhmann succinctlyputs it, self-referential closure
"does not contradict the systern's opcnncss to tbc cnvironmcnt In s tea.d,
in the self-referential rnode of operation, closure is a form ofbroaden-
ingpossible environrnental contacts; closure increases, by constituting
elernents rnore capable ofbeing determined, the cornplexity of the en-
vironm ent that is possible for the system."" I n D e r r i da's terms, "The
living present springs forth out. of its nonidentity with itself and frorn
the possibility of a retentional trace," which constitutes "the intim ate
relation of the living present to its outside, the opening to exteriority
in general."'-'
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xxlv
zatian, as Maturana and Varela put it); and taking seriously Maturana's
assertion that a dlescriptioxx in language and the genexative phenamena
ta be described take place in "independlent and nanintersecting phe-
nomenal damains,'" there can be na talk of the Ibody's plane of consis-
tency being a subset of the warld's plane of consistency. And tlhere can
be no talk of purity. Everything v/e know (scientifically, thearetically)
and say (linguistically or in other farms of semiatic natatian) abaut the
bady takes place witlhin same contingent, xadically nonnatural (that
is, constructed and technical) schema af knavrledge. Tlhe language (ar
meaning, more strictly speaking) that describes is of a different phe-
nomenal order from tlhat which is described. Paradaxically, that lan-
guage is fundamental ta our embodied enactian, aur bringing foxth a
warld, as humans. And yet it is dead. Rather, as Derrida puts it quite
precisely, it exceeds and encampasses the life/death xelation. That fact
daesn t prevent in the least its effectivity, since effectivity (as Latoux,
among athers, has show n) is nat a matter of philosophical or theoreti-
cal representationalism."
To return, then, to the question af posthuxnanism, the perspec-
tive I attempt ta farmulate here — far from surpassing or rejecting the
humaxx — actually enables us ta descxilbe the human and its chaxacter-
istic xnades af cammunicatian, interaction, meaxxing, sacial signifxca-
tions, and affective investments with greater specificity once we have
xemoved meaning from the ontalogically closed domain of conscious-
ness, reason, reflection, and sa on. lt forces us to rethxnk our taken-for-
gxanted mades afIhuxnan experience, including the narmal perceptual
xnodes and affective states of Homo sxxI/iefxsitself; by xecantextualizing
them in terms of the entire sensarium of othex living beings and their
own autopoietic vrays of "b r i n g ing forth a w o r ld" — ways that are,
since we ourselves are Ihuman animals, part of the evolutionaxy histary
and behavxoral and psycholagical xepertoixe of the human itself. But it
also insists that vre attend ta the specifxcity of the human — its ways af
being in the v/arld, its w ays of knaw ing, abserving, and describing — Iby
(paxadaxically, fox huxnanism) acknawledging that it is fundamentally
a pxosthetic creature that Ihas coevalved with various foxms af tech-
nicity and materiality, forms that aze radically "not =human" and yet
have nevertheless made the Ihuman what it is. (For Derrida, of couxse,
this includes the mast fundaxxmntal prostheticity af all: language in the
xxv
then the first thing we are bound to notice is this: hurnan and (at least
sorne) nonhuman animals may be, in a phenamenological or ontologi-
cal sense, more or less equally subjected to the exteriority and mate-
riality of the trace in a way that only "the living" can be; that is what
it rneans to be '"rnortal," to be "fellow creatures," to be subjected B.ut
what is not at all shared equally, even if this is the case, is the rnaterial
dispasition af that fact in practices and institutians whose effects bear
very differently on human and nonhuman animals — effects Derrida
himself is, of course, well aware of." ' T o put. it another way, humans
and anirnals may share a fundarnental "non-power at the heart of
power," may share a vulnerability and passivity wi t hout limit as fellaw
living beings, but what they do nor share equally is the power to ma-
terialize their mi srecognition of their situation and to reproduce that
materialization in institutions of exploitation and oppression whose
effects are far frorn symrnetrical in species terrns. From this vantage,
the issue is not only "w hat should we do? t h e question of justice that
Derrida would have us confront anew i n each iteration, w i t h out r e-
course to "'calculation" and ethical form ulae — but also "what wiII we
do'?" in the face of such challenges.
As David W ood puts it in hi s searching discussion of D er r ida's
interview "Eating Well," "there is a place for argument, proof, and dem-
onstration in philosophy," but "w hat this critical function opens onto
are rnore or less rnotivated possibihries of resJionse" and , with regard to
deconstruction specifically, the ability "to respond to what has not been
adequat.ely schernatized, forrnulated, etc."'"' In Waod's view, thase pos-
sibilities are evacuated — eviscerated, we might say — by Derrida in two
ways in "Eating Well," where he explicitly rejects vegetarianisrn as a
more ethically responsible answer to the question "I-Iow should one
eat'?" First, Derrida frames the question in such a way "as to incorpo-
rate and interiorize the actual eating of animals inside the syrnbolic
eating of anything by anyone" (30), so that the specific practice of eating
anirnals becornes sirnply one rnore version of the larger syrnbolic struc-
ture by which "Man" in the Wesrern philosophical tradition secures
its transcendence through rnastery of nature, repression of the body
everything that D errida associates with the terrn "carnophallagocen-
trism" (30). In so doing, Derrida evacuates the difference t h e material
alterity — between different sacrificial structures and practices. And the
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result of this "assimilation," as Wood puts it, is "to the extent that in this
culture sacrifice in the broad (symbolic) sense seems unavoidable, there
would seem to be little rnotivation for practical transformations of our
engagement in sacrificial behavior" (31).
Second, what he calls "Derrida's ambivalence toward vegetarian-
ism" seems to be consonant wit h deconstruction's idea of ethics as "a
practice of eternal vi gilance," one that cannot " b ecome some sort of
alternative ethical seal of approval" for vegetarianisrn or anything else.
But the problern here is that "the avoidance of that w i dening path of
resistance to violence that is vegetarianisrn could end up preserving-
against the temptations ofprogressive practical engagernent — the kind
of good conscience that too closely resembles a 'beautiful soul'" (32).
In other words, the "eternal vigilance" of deconstructive ethics, which
depends on always attendin , w i t hout the aid of predetermined judg-
ments and form u lae, to the specific iteration of event and r u le, here
t-.hreatens to flip-flop into the opposite of vigilance, one whose "good
conscience" resid.es in the security of its knowledge that there is no
such thing as a good conscience.
To put it slightly otherwise, Wood would force on Derrida the
same distinction drawn earlier by Diamond: "Is Derrida (merely) an ani-
mal welfarist'?" In the end, do we find in Derrida's work on ethics and
t he anirnal a reproductio n t o q u ote Diarnond once again of " a ki n d
of pitilessness at the heart of welfarisrn, a willingness to go ahead with
what we do to the vulnerable, a willi ngness to go on subjecting them
to our power because we can, because it suits us to do so," a willingness
that "is inseparable frorn the 'cornpassion' we express in welfarisrn."'"
What, such a vantage point discloses is an essential tension in Derrida's
work on ethics between his insistence that we pay vigilant attention
to the particular instance of decision, of justice, in all its thickness and
heterogeneity, without letting forrnulae and maxirns do the work for
us, and a general law or econorny of iterability that would render such
decisions nonuniversalizable, decisions whose foundations are local
only (while what is not local is the unavailability of such foundations
from which to universalize).
This is not to say that Derrida's position is without ethical force-
quite the contrary. Regarding iterns six and seven in Conrcmpomry Issucs
iu Bioethics with which I began this chapter (biornedical research and
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sorne undesigned wasteland in the middle of the city, but a park built
now and not a hundred years ago. As we will see later in the chaprer,
the concept of form is crucial here, and in it "t wo requirements must
be fulfilled and inscribed into perception: the form must have a bound-
ary, and there must be an 'unmarked space' excluded by this boundary"
(45). This is obvious enough in works enclosed with a beginning and
end (as in narrative fiction), a srage (as in drama), or a framing de-
vice. But "sculpture or architecture presents an entirely different case,"
Luhmann argues.
Here, the boundary does not draw the viewer's artention inward but
instead directs it outward. The work permits no view into its depths,
no penetration of its surface, (wharever the surface may betray of the
work's mass, volume, or material). The imaginary space is projected
outward in the form of distinctions suggestedby the work itself. Here,
too, space is work-specific space, visible so long as the focus is on the
work and disappearing from view when the focus shifts to surrounding
objects — to the weeds in the castle garden. (4$-46)
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The kinds of forrnal innovations we find in Tree City, what and how
t.hey signify, haw they mabilize an uncanny dematerialization af the
architectural rnediurn as part of a radical formal statement, how they
engage in an ingenious conceptual displacernent, of t.he problern af cam-
position: these forrn the fundarnental concerns as well, in my view, of
Ricardo Scofidio and Flizabeth Diller's audacious Blur project. The Blur
building a m anufactured cloud with an embedded viewing deck, hov-
ering over the Lake of N euchatel in Switzerland s e ems to have en-
joyed nearly universal acclaim from the rnoment it opened to the public
in October 2002 as part of Media Fxpo '02. The reasons for this are not
far to seek; t.hey range from what. a Swiss newspaper reviewer char-
acterized as the liberating effect of the zany cloud on "the crotchety
Swiss" — "What a crazy, idiosyncratic thing! How d eliciously w i t h out
purpose!" he exclairned — to Diller + Scofidio's knowing deployment of
the relat.ionship between public architecture, the history and function
of the exposition as a social forrn, and the manufacture and use of spec-
tacle in relarion to both "
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She adds in boldface type: "The media project must be liberated from
all imrnediate and obvious rnetaphoric associations such as clouds, god,
angels, ascension, drearns, Greek rnythology, or any other kitsch rela-
tionships. Rather, BLUR offers a blank interprerive surface" (325).
Not quite blank, as it turns out. In fact, on the conceptual side of
2I $
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I find the Critique of Pure Keason turned upon itself: notions oflim i tation
and of condition are as determining in the essay "Fate" as they are in
Kant, but it is as if these terms are themselves subjected to transcenden-
tal deduction, as if not just twelve categories but any and every word
in our language stands under the necessity of deduction, or say deriva-
tion. . . . F m erson is commonly felt to play fast and loose with some-
thing like contradiction in hi s w r i ti ng; but I am speaking of a sense
in which contradiction, the countering of diction, is the genesis of his
writing of philosophy. (113)
What this means is that when we corne upon such apparently full-
bore idealist statements in Emerson as the follow i ng, frorn the essay
"Fate" — "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a rnan thinks, he is free" — "this
apparently genteel thought," Cavell w r i t es, " now t u r n s ou t t o m e a n
that . . . our antagonism to fate, to which we are fated, and in which
our freedorn resides, is as a struggle with the language we emit, of our
character with itself."-"
One stri k i n g exarnple of t h i s new p h i l osophical practice that
C avell f i n d s in E m erso n t h i s t i m e i n r e l ation no t t o K a n t bu t t o
Descartes — occurs in "Self-Reliance," w hen F tnerson w r i t es, "Man
is timi d and apologetic; he is no l onger upright.; he dares not. say 'I
think ,' 'I arn,' but q u otes some saint or sage." If th e central feature
of the Cartesian subject is, as Cavell w r i tes, that the " discovery that
rny existence requires, hence permits, proof (you might say authen-
tication) . . . r e quires that if I arn to exist. I must. name my existence,
acknowledge it," then the real rigor of Ernerson's confrontation with
these "terms" is that it "goes the whole way w it h D escartes' insight."
It insists on the proof of selfhood i n c luding its proof in and through
the "terrns" of thinking — without providing a fixed, a priori subject on
which such a proof could rely and of which it could be, as it were, the
representation — "as if there were nothing t o r ely on," Cavell w r i tes,
"but reliance itself."" T h e b e auty" of Ernerson's answer to Descartes,
Cavell write s,
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siding with the next or future self, which means siding against my at-
rained perfection (or conformity), sidings which require the recogni-
t ion of an other t h e acknowledgement of a relationship in w h i ch
this sign is rnanifest." '
Emersonian perfectionisrn may thus be conceived as a kind of
ongoing act of radical negative capability that provides the foundation
(though that is eventually not. the word we would want, of course) for
democratic relations wit h o t hers, wit h t h ose other selves I have not
yet been but. who also — and this is the engine of Emerson's constant
polemical project — need to surpass themselves, in an ongoing process
of democracy conceived as otherness always yet to be achieved, or i f
already achieved, only achieved in the present by the other and not by
rne. As difficult as it is to see, Cavell is right that this idea ofperfection-
ism is "projected in contrast to the idea of 'one's own nature'";-" and
all of Frnerson's talk a n d a considerable arnount of talk it is o f "self-
recovery" both early and late in his work directs us to not-. an originary,
fixed self-substance but toward a power and a process: not toward the
past but toward the future, or rather toward fut u r it y itself, conceived
as a horizon, where, paradoxically, the only '"self" to "recover" is a
self that one has not yet been, for the self only exists in its becoming."
Indeed, frorn this vantage, we tnight read "recovery" very differently
as a "re-covering," as burying and covering over once rnore the past
self, that casualty of what Cavell calls Emerson's "onwardness."
It is in th e context and th e services of these fut ur e selves and
against what. Emerson calls "conform i ty " t h at. we are to u nderstand
the political involvement of the Emersonian self in the sense insisted
on al. the end of "Experience," where Ernerson writes that "the true ro-
mance which the world exists to realize will be the transforrnation of
genius into practical power" (213). As Cavell writes, when Ernerson's
critics read the line "self-reliance is the aversion of conformity," they
"take this to mean roughly that he is disgusted with society and wants
no more to do with it."" But if we understand the Emersonian self as
movement toward fut ur ity and not a being, then instead of conversion
to a truth we already know and to a being we already are, aversion
rneans "that his writing and his society incessantly recoil from, or tur n
away from one another; but since l.his is incessant, the picture is at. the
same tirne of each incessantly turning toward the other."" This process
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the mistake ofleaving it on and pointing at the sky for four days, which
completely fried the tube. But after that, he says, "it produced the most
magical results" and "responded to light and colour in a way no other
camera" did."
Similarly, the discovery of his signature video format came about
by serendipity. After he got the carnera, he didn't have a tripod, so he
laid it on it.s side on the wi ndow sill w it h the lens point.ed out. t.oward
t he Manhattan skyline, which meant he also had to turn the TV o nt o
its side to read the im age. The result, he recounts, was "an absolute
breakthrough," because suddenly the screen looked not like television
but like painting. And this was important for tw o reasons: first, "you
lose the reference to theatre and cinerna" associated with the television
surface and form at, and this is import ant because in the proscenium
format you expect narrative, which entails, among other things, an
entire formatting (indeed, "calculation," to use Derrida's term) of tim e
and event. And second, as Eno realized years later when he attempted
the same thing with digital TVs, the distortion on the television screen
?9z
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N OTE S T O CH A PT E R 3
in the context of the rise ofbiopower and the entire edifice of "health" under
modernity, as Foucault has. But, from Derrida's vantage, Foucault.'s histori-
cism, although it focuses on the production of the subjectby external agencies,
is not sufficiently aware of the production and nontransparency of his o?vn
discourse. To put it another way — and this has direct relevance for the prac-
tice of ethics — what is at stake is not only the entanglement of'the subject in
the means of her own sociohistorical production but the fact that the process
remains for Foucault "accountable" (to use Derrida's phrase), hence leading
Derrida to repeat in Liinited Inc a charge he makes elsewhere: that Foucault's
archaeology shares "the metaphysical premises ofthe Anglo-Saxon — and fun-
damentally moralistic — theory of the performative, of speech acts or discur-
sive events" (33). See also in this connection Derrida's engagement of Searle's
comment in a newspaper article that " M i chel Foucault once characterized
Derrida's prose style to me as obsc'uranti~me terroriste "' Lim.ited Inc, 158n12.
88. I discuss this problem in detail, and with regard to Rorty specifically,
?11Cr?t?cal Env?ron?nents: Postmodern TI?eory and ti?e Plagmat?cs of tl?e Outs?de
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 20 —22, 140 —41, 144 —45.
89.Jacques Derrida, "'Ea?.ing Well,' or The Calculation of?.he Subject: An
Interview with Jacques Derrida," in WI?o Comcs after the Subject 'ed. E.duardo
Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991),
116 —17.
90. Diamond, "lnjustice and Animals," 134 (italics mine).
91.Jacques Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context," in Limited Inc, 15. See also
in this connection pp. 128 —29.
92. Derrida, Lin?ited Inc, 70.
93. "Violence against Animals," in For Wkat Tomorro?v... : A Dialogue,by
Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2004), 63 (italics mine).
94. Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality," 10.
9 5. For a bril l i ant exploration of the technicity and mechanicity o f l a n -
guage in relation to prosthetics and the question of technology, see David
Wills's Dorsality: TI?inking Back through Technology and Politics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008), and his earlier volume Prosthesis (Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995).
96. Roland Barthes, Camera Luc?rla: Reflections on Pkotograpl?y, trans. Rich-
ard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 76, 81. Cited in Jacques Derrida
and Bernard Stiegler, Ecl?ograpl?ies of Television, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 2002), 113.
97. Derrida, Fchog>aph?es foTelevision, 115.
98. Quotedin Di amond, "The Difficulty of'Reality," 10.
3x8
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29. Peter Brunette and David Wi lls, " The Spatial Arts: An Interview w i t h
Jacques Derrida," in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, 24. All of which might
be said to find its therne song in the film's penultimate musical scene, "107
Steps," where the abyssal endlessness of space, here figured as the unnavigable
walk to the gallows (a journey of 107 steps), can be fathomed by Selma only
by counting her footsteps, an organization and regularization of space that is
immediately countcred by what can only be called an aria to sheer seriality,
as the only lyrics contained in the song are randomly selected numbers, her
voice rising to the crescendo of "seventy-nine!, eighty-two, eighty-sixI"
30. Oswald, "Cinema-Graphia," 261.
31. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf( N e w York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1991), 26$.
32. Slavoj Zizek, Enjoy Your Symytom! jacques Lacan in Ilollywood and Out
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 154. Zizek's most detailed and "scandalous" ex-
planation of this thesis takes place in the chapter "Otto Weininger, or Woman
Doesn't Exist," in The Aletastases foEnjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), 137-64.
33. And "gift" here should be taken precisely in the radically ethical sense
invoked by Derrida, as that which, like the act. as feminine and the f'eminine
as the truth of the phallus, is "unaccountable," which undermines any closed
symbolic economy. See Zizek's discussion of this moment in Derrida in The
A'letastases of Enjoyment,194 —9$.
34. David Wills, Prosthesis (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 199$),
43, 44.
35. Zizek, Thc Afctastascs o
f Enjoyment, 11$.
36. Ibid., 1$6.
37. Zizek, Enjoy Your Symp'tom, 1.
38. Ibid., 2. See also in this connection Zizek's discussion of "A Voice That
Skins the Body" in David Lynch's films (The Metastases o
f Enjoyment 116).
39. Cavell, A Pitch ofPhilosophy, 79.
40. Zizek, The Mctastases o fEnjoyment, 19$ —6.9
41. One might well turn aside here to explore the more strictly theoretical
question of whether this relationship is essentially dialectical (as in Zizek) or
not. Suf'fice it to say that the very idea of '"invagination" would constitute a
resounding "no," as would Deleuze's related cancept af the fald.
42. Here an interesting point of cantact between Zizek and Derrida with
regard to the prosthetic nature of the "ordinary'" emerges in their shared
antipathy t ow ard John Searle. Derrida's polemic against Searle in Lim ited
Inc is well-known, of course, but of similar interest are Zizek's remarks in
The Plague of Fantasies on Searle's polemics against artificial intelligence, in
which his famaus Chinese Raom experiment "praves" that machines cannat
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Publication Histor y
Chapter 6 was published as "From Dead t4'Ieat to Glow in the Dark Bunnies:
Seeing'The Animal g uestion' in Contemporary Art," in "Animal Beings," ed.
Tom Tyler, special issue, Parallax 38 (January — March 2006): 9$ —09;
1 reprinted
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P U B L I C A T I O N H I ST O R Y
in Fcosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature, ed. Sid Dobrin and Sean Morey, 129 — 51(Al-
bany: SUNY Press, 2009).
Chapter 11 was published as "The Digital, the Analogue, and the Spectral:
Echographies from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Ang"elaki: Iournal of the Theo
retical Hurnanities 13, no. 1 (2008): 8$-94.
348
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Adorno, Theodor, 110, 121, 266 influence on Nussbaum, xxvii, 62,
Agamben, Giorgio, 100, 243 64 — 68; on plot, 170
Althusser, Louis, 3, 107, 117, 207, 266 Austin, J. L., 13, 70, 197 —98
animal rights, 25, 45 —46, 57 —61, autism, xx ix , 128 — 30, 134 —36, 173;
73-79, 81-82, 124, 137, 164 embodiment and, xxix —xxx,
animals (nonhuman), xiv — xv; xvi; 133 -3$, 140-41; trans-species
bioethics and, 56 —61; commu- cmpathy and, 129 — 30, 135 —36
nication in, xxv ii, xxv i ii , 6, 24, autopoiesis. Sce Mat,urana, Hum-
25 —26, 31 —34, 37, 40 — 43, 46 — 47, berto; systems theory; Varela,
89 —
91, 118- 19, 123, 309n1, 310n11; Francisco
D erridaon, xviii,2$,39— 44,46—47,
62 —63, 80 — 84, 88 —98, 119, 126, 137, Badmington, Neil, xiii, 121
139 —40, 142, 14$, 147 —48, 157, 160, Baecker, Dirk, xviii, 6, 110
16$; embodiment and, xxiii — xxiv, Baker, Steve, 160
xxvii, xxix — xxx, 62, 66, 68 — 69, 72, Balibar, Etienne, xiv —xv
74-75, 77, 79- 80, 81 — 83, 84-86, Barthes, Roland, 92, 178, 297
94 —9$, 129 —30, 133 —34, 162 — 63; in Bateson, Gregory, x, xviii, 22, 35,
telligence in, xxvii, 31 —34, 36 —41, 207, 29Z
44 —
47, 309nl, 310nll ; m o ral stand- Bauman, Zygmunt, 141 —42
in g of, xxvii, 33 —34, 44 —47, 57 —61, Beardsworth, Richard, 83 —84, 298
62-69, 72-82, 84- 88, 94-98, 137, Bentham, Jeremy, xxviii, 46, 63, 81,
14$, 219; posthumanisrn and, xxii, 84, 140, 146
90 —
92, 94 —95, 99; subjectivity and, Bhabha, Homi, 104, 105
xvii, 33 — 34, 36 —
41, 44 —47, 309nl, bioethics, 49 —61; biopowcr and,
310nll, 315n41; transgenic, 1$8 —60, 53, 96 98; vs.—
$1 — et hics, $1, $3 — 61;
164 —6$; viral and, xviii, xxii law and, $4 —5$, 96 —98; policy
animal studies: cultural studies and, studies and, xxvii, 96 —98; species
xxix, 122 — 26, 127, disciplinarity difference and, 56-61
and, xxviii, 11$ — 26; humanist vs. Bjork, xx xi , 170, 184 —85, 196, 296
posth u m a n i st , x x i x , 99 — 100„ Bostrom, Nick, xiii — xiv
118 —26 Braudel, Fernand, 106, 320n12
Aristotle: on anim als, 42, 46, 63, Browvn, Lee Rust, 251 — $2
65-66, 68, 81, 314n34, 326n16; Brown and Storey, 20$, 207
349
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87 —
92, 118 —19, 123, 126, 139, 157; digital vs. analog, 203; Bateson on,
ethics and, xix, xx v i , 2$, 81 —8$, 292' d econs tr u c t i o n o n , x x x i v ,
88 —92, 93 —98, 141 —42, 147, 298 — 99; 9 —10, 284 —85, 286 —88, 291 293 — 96,
on geschlecht, 203 — 4316n55,
, 334n8; 299; Diller + Scofrdio on, 216, 220;
on invaglnatron, 191-92, 199-202, the hand and, 203 — 4, 20$; Stiegler
332n41; on iterability, xxvii, xxviii, on, 284, 286 — 88, 295 —96
6, 11 —13, 16 —17, 20, 22 — 23, 25 —26, Diller I- Scofidio, xxxii, 164, 210,
42 —43, 80 — 81, 88 —9$, 118 —19, 122, 213 —17, 219 —20, 224, 227 — 28, 231,
151, 155, 157, 201 —
2, 293 —94, 295; on 233 —37, 276
the life/death relation, xviii, xxii, disability, xvii; animal studies and,
xxv, xxv i i i , 6, 90- 95, 123, 293-95, xxix, 127-28; liberalism and, xxx,
297 —
99; on miming, 212, 334n13; 127, 136 — 42; and prostheticity,
on nonhuman animals, xviii, 25, 18$ —
87, 202. See also autism
39-44, 46-47, 62-63, 80-84, 88-98, Ducharnp, Marcel, 229 —30, 271
119, 126, 137, 139 — 40, 142, 145,
147 —
48, 157, 160, 16$; politics of, 12, Eakins, Thomas, 148, 1$1, 153-55
27 —
29, 51, 95 — 98, 285 —86, 343n 5; Fdelman, Gerald, 37, 310n11
prostheticity and, xxv —xxvi, 34 —36, Elliott, Carl, 54 —$7
119, 186-87, 191, 194, 199-202, embodirnent, 303n36; analog and,
293 2 9$; on spectrality, xxxiv, ll , 292 — 93; animal and, xxiii — xxiv,
91 —
95, 176 —77, 178, 284 — 86, 288, xxvii, xxix — xxx, 62, 66, 68 —69, 72„
293 —
95, 297 —99; systems theory 74 —
75, 77, 79- 80, 81- 83, 84- 86,
and, xviii — xxii, 6 —10, 12 —14, 16 —17, 94 —
9$, 133 —34, 162 —63; disability
22 —29, 118 —21, 232 — 33, 239, 308n42; and, xxix — xxx, 133 —3$, 140 —41;
on temporality, xxxiv, 7, 9 —10, human and, xv, xxv, 72, 83 — 84,
16 —17, 2$$, 29$, 298 —99; viral and, 88 —89, 95 120 — 21, 133 —4,3162 — 63;
xviii - x ix, xxi, xxii; on the voice, meaning and, xxi i „ 120 — 21,
196-99, 296-97, 298-99 162-63; posthumanism and, xv,
Dcleuze, Gilles, xx, xxiv, 126, 147„ xxv, 120 — 21; prostheticity and,
212 2$$, 29$ 294 —9$; Lranshumanism and, xv;
Dennett, D an i el, xx v ii , 31 —32, 33 —46, as virtual, xxiii — xxiv; voice and,
34 —
40, 42 —4$, 129. See also cogni- 180 —85
tive science Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 70; anti-
Derrida, Jacques. See dcconstruction representationalist philosophy
Descartes, Rene. Sce Cartesianism and, 244 —47; democratic per-
Diamond, Cora, 142; moral standing fectionism and, 247 —49, 261 —63;
of animals in, 62, 64, 72 —83; the- politics and, 242 —43, 247 —49,
ory of l u stice in, xxviii, 73-80, 93, 262 — 63, 337n13; skepticism and,
96; v iew ofp h i l osophy in, xxviii, xxxi i - x x x i i i , 71, 172, 187, 240-42,
69 —
71, 72 —76, 80 — 81, 91, 116 245 —
46, 249; and systems theory
35>
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and, xv i i i — xxii, 6 — 10, 121 —22, 210-11, 221, 227-29, 255'-$6, 280;
232— 33,239, 308n42; disciplinar- on w r i t i n g , 23 — 24, 236
ity and, 109 —19, 121 —22, 322n40;
empiricism and, 28; first-order vs. Talking Heads, 283, 290
second-order, xviii, xix, 13, 15-16, Teubner, Gunther, 8, 12, 26-28
109 —
13, 121 —22, 206 — 7; on form , transhumanism, xiii — xiv, xx; human-
xxxii — xxxiii, 161 — 62, 208 —13, ism and, XV
224 — 31, 234, 265 — 68, 272 —74, Trier, Lars vnn, xxi, 169
27$ —82; on the individual, xx, Tshcurni, Bernard, 203, 204, 20$,
115, 119, 261, 263; on language as 208, 211
medium, xxiii, 20-24, 2$, 29, 231,
267 —
68, 272 —74, 307n37; on mass Varela, Francisco, xii, 5, 110, 111,
media, 234 — 37; on meaning, xx, 1 26, 161, 20$; on em b o d i m e n t ,
xxii — xxiii, xxvi, xxxii, 13, 16 —23, xxiii — xxv; on language and
25, 29, 113 —14, 121 —22, 220 — 23, linguistic domains, xxii, xxv, 37,
255-59, 267- 68, 280- 82, 307n 33; 120 —21
on modernity as functional dif- Va t tiI 0 , G 18 n n1, 104
fercntiation, xx —
xxi, xxxii, xxxiii, Virilio, Paul, 294
109, 208-10, 220-21, 230-31, 253-$5, visuality: in animals, 129 — 30; autism
262 —
63; on observation, xix, xxiv, and, 129 — 30, 131 —32; deconstruc-
xxxii , 15 — 17, 28, 112 —13, 121 —22, tion on, xxxiv, 132, 142, 155, 166 —67,
131, 161 —62, 220 -24, 226 — 27, 188-89, 190- 91, 286- 87, 294-95,
236 —37, 250, 252 — 61„270, 274 — 76, 296, 298—99; form in art and,
280 — 82 303>29 339>37 162 —
67; Fried on, 148 — 54; human-
openness from closure, xxi, xxiv, is m and, xxx, 130, 132 —34, 145 —46,
15 —17, 19, lll — 15, 117 —18, 221 —22, 166 —
67; inattentional blindness
256—57;on poetry, xxxiii,266 — 68, and, 131, 325n10; mass media and,
270 —
74, 276 —78, 281 —82; on psy- 215-17, 23$-37; noise and, 195;
chic vs. social systcms, xx, xxiii, psychoanalysis and, 187 — 90, 202;
xxvi, xx x ii , 6, 8, 10, 19 —22, 25, 35, spectacle and, 164 —66, 215 231;
231 —34, 267, 270 — 71, 274, 280 — 82; voice and, 175, 177 —80, 202;
romant i cism and, xxxii — xxxiii, voice: Cavell on, 171 — 74, 177, 179,
110, 222 —23, 242, 252 — 54, 257--59, 179 —82, 195 —96, 196 —200; Cavell
2 62—63, 265,270, 272—75, 278;th e vs. Derrida on, 196-200; decon-
sublime and, 222 — 24, 2$7, 275 —76, struc t io n a n , 196 — 200, 296 — 97;
278; on system/env i r o nm ent the feminine and, 173 —7$, 180 —85,
relation, xxxi , 14 — 15, 112 —
13, 206, 195, 196, 202; vs. sound, 169,
211, 220 -22, 254-58, 306n24; on 177 —82, 195 —96; visuality and,
temporality in , 10, 18, 207 —8, 175, 177-80, 202
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