Review: Rosi Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Knowledge’
What is Posthuman Epistemology?
Review of Rosi Braidotti’s Posthuman Knowledge (Polity Press, 2019), 226 pages.
Abstract
Of the rapidly growing field of posthumanism Rosi Braidotti is undoubtedly one of its leading theorists. In her latest book, Posthuman Knowledge, she asks ‘Who or what counts as human today?’ Her answer, which is presented in 7 chapters spanning over 200 pages is divided into two main parts. The book is essentially a critique of traditional humanism, mainly from two main perspectives. The first is the centralisation and masculinisation of reason while the second is a critique of human exceptionalism. From these two main standpoints Braidotti attempts to trace what she sees as the damage that has resulted from the Western traditional humanism, in terms particularly of what it has chosen to include as well as exclude.
Reviewed by Gabriel O. Apata
Protagoras’s dictum that ‘Man is the measure of all things’ encapsulates the very idea that Braidotti finds problematic about Western humanism. It is an idea that centralises man in the scheme of things, where man is ‘defined as: male, white, heterosexual, owning wives and children, urbanised, able-bodied, speaking a standard language, i.e. ‘Man’ (86). Allied to this problematic of the centralisation of man is also the Cartesian elevation of reason as sovereign above all else, reaching its apotheosis in the hands of the Enlightenment philosophers. This reason made masculine is thought to have produced forms of knowledge that are linked to power and privilege, which in turn have excluded certain groups of people, particularly the racialised, gendered and sexualised others, or what Wynter (2003:262) describes as the ‘overrepresentation of man’ in Western intellectual tradition. Genevieve Lloyd in Man of Reason (1984) was one of the first theorists to have argued that ‘when the Man of Reason is extolled philosophers are not talking about idealizations of human beings. They are talking of manhood.’ Ferrando’s Philosophical Posthumanism (2019) also echoes these sentiments, a book to which Braidotti writes a preface.
But this is merely the opening gambit of Braidotti’s book. Her second criticism of traditional humanism is human exceptionalisation or the anthropocentric bias that installed human beings at the pinnacle of, or as the supreme masters of the universe and in doing so excluded or relegated other life forms as well as non-human objects from its worldview. Sovereign man is turned into what Horkheimer and Adorno (2002) describe as possessing the ‘power of control over non-human nature and over man’ that then relegates nature beneath man. Braidotti sees these forms of centralisations – man, reason and humans – not only as mistakes but also as cross-pollinating processes that have led to some of the crises of the present age, from ecology to technology. While technological advance has brought untold benefits to humans it has also created as many problems as it has solved. The overreaching discoveries that are meant to serve as well as make life easier for humans have somehow left humans exhausted, fatigued, and powerless.
Drawing from Deleuze and Guatarri’s (1987) capitalism as schizophrenia, Braidotti takes on the question of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and capitalism’s exigent necropolitical instrumentalisation as well as the Sixth extinction, namely its relentless ‘addictive’ consumerism that has laid to waste other life forms and non-life objects. This is the age that has produced a new kind of politics, a new kind of bigotry that is driven by populism and virulent strand of nationalism.
Some, indeed many of the concerns raised in this book have in some way or other been addressed in previous works such as in Transpositions (2006), Nomadic Theory (2011), The Posthuman (2013a), and “Posthuman Humanities” (2013b), so what is new here? What is new is that Braidotti moves up a step and frames posthuman knowledge in critical terms through her idea of ‘transversal convergence’, based largely upon the belief that the methodologies of traditional humanism are ill-equipped to deal with the crises of its own making. New methodologies or cartographic tools that are based on the inclusivity of ‘transversal convergence’ are needed to deal with these problems. Thus, ‘the posthuman is a navigational tool that enables us to survey the material and discursive manifestations of the mutations that are engendered by advance technological developments, climate change and capitalism’ (2). This is because ‘Posthuman knowledge is fuelled by transversality and heterogeneity: multiplicity and complexity shall be our guiding principles and sustainability our goal’ (18-19). Furthermore, ‘the humanities today, redefined by posthuman predicament, are about the creation of new ways of thinking, new concepts and social imaginaries that reflect the complexities of the times…’ (91). Essentially, posthuman knowledge is about finding new methods of knowing – knowing about, as well as embracing a world that comprises diversity and complex multiplicities, which transcend race, sex or sexuality and human subjectivity.
To this end, Braidotti looks first to Spinoza’s rationalism as the model for her kind of posthumanism, an idea she previously articulated in her paper “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities” (2018). There she writes that ‘the conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organising matter.’ Or, ‘the ethical implication is that reason is affective, embodied and relational. Understanding the passions is our way of experiencing them and making them work in our favour’ (2019:47). The attempt here is to collapse the old dualities – as she has done in Patterns of Dissonance (1996) – such as between man and woman, black and white, the human and the non-human or the zoe and the bio - which according to her have served as the basis of Western Enlightenment thinking. Invariably, ‘the human subject is no longer a singular entity but a more complex ensemble: of zoe/geo/techno-related factors, which include humans… This implies that thinking and knowing are not exclusively the prerogatives of humans, but take place in the world, which is defined by the co-existence of multiple organic species and technological artefacts alongside each other’ (101).
Braidotti’s biggest influence remains Deleuze and also his collaborations with Guattari (1972, 1987). From them she borrows the rejection of hierarchies, individualities and enduring ontologies in favour of assemblages, heterogeneity, multiplicities and unfolding ontologies. Learning ‘to think differently about ourselves’ entails shifting the centre of gravity from the traditional ideas about the human and the authoritarian power base that once defined as well as facilitated previous forms of knowledge. Braidottian Posthuman epistemology widens our thinking in ways that do not begin and end with the human but frees humans from the imprisonment of exclusivity and discriminatory practices. Again, this is situated theory of knowledge that unravels the centrality and universality of masculine reason and rejects transcendentalism in favour of Deleuzian immanent ideas. Transcendentalism is rejected because ‘transcendental consciousness is an illusion’ that must be done away with and replaced by empiricism, on the basis that ‘empiricism as a specific way of accessing knowledge through observable evidence drawn from the world at large is not dependent upon transcendental consciousness and its idealist mode of thought’ (137). Kant might have something to say about that.
So, ‘‘we–are-in-this-together’ is the ethical formula per excellence and all the more so in posthuman vital political economy of over-exposure and evanescence, exuberance and extinction’ (168). The ‘we’ in posthuman thought shifts the focus of conversation from individuality or subjectivity to all-inclusive, all-embracing, comprehensive and integrationist approaches to existence. Which is why an important task of the posthuman project, according to Braidotti, is to ‘displace the centrality of the human subject as the ‘homo universalis’, the anthropomorphic ‘Man of reason’’ (95). This displacement includes the West from the centre of the world’s gravity, the white race from its assumed superiority over other races and reason from its prime seat in the realm of epistemology.
For Braidotti, academic interdisciplinarity, which include both first and second generation or minority studies are paving the way for critical posthumanism: from Feminist theories and Xenofeminism, to Postcolonial, Critical race and Decolonial Studies, Queer Studies, Ecology – or ‘eco-philosophy’, as she calls it. Posthuman ethics is the ethics of affirmation that extends to non-human objects in a ‘transversal alliance involves non-human agents, technologically mediated elements, Earth-others (land, water, plants, animals) and non-human organic agents…’ (164), or ‘shareable workbench’ (146). Transversal convergence is then to be achieved in three ways: through critical studies of thematic, methodological and conceptual thinking. The thematic deals not only with the human but ranges over both human and non-human subjects, while the methodological revolves around existing ‘supra-disciplinarity’ and the conceptual deals with ‘understanding the multi-layered interdependence between ‘naturescultures’ (102). Braidotti may reject the label, but she is a system builder, if only because the themes of nomadism and transversality run through much of her work upon which she has consistently developed new layers of thought. This work consolidates her previous efforts as well as cements her reputation as a foremost posthumanist thinker.
There is a lot to take in from Braidotti’s theory of posthuman knowledge and this is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of the book. The author packs so much into this volume, with some dexterity, but the flipside is that this is theory that attempts to explain everything that has gone wrong with the present age – racism, sexism, populism, colonialism, xenophobia, migrant crisis, the fall-out from neo-liberal capitalism (excessive consumerism) and technological advance, as well as necropolitical and ecological damage – all of which appear traceable to one single causal source: Western reason-based humanism. This echoes Tony Davies’s submission, which Braidotti quotes, that ‘It is almost impossible to think of a crime that has not been committed in the name of humanity’ (Braidotti, 2013:2). But it is also impossible not to think of a great many good and positive things that have been done in the name of even Western ideas about humanity.
The question is not just how to displace the man of reason from his purported elevated position in the world systems but whether the iniquities of racism, colonialism, misogyny and sexual discrimination can be laid squarely at the door of reason-based humanism at the exclusion of other forms of attitudes and approaches. The focus on reason, which is understandable from the Enlightenment’s own focus on reason, ignores complex ideologies, including religious beliefs that also shape as well as create some of these problems.
Furthermore, Braidotti’s criticism of Eurocentric humanism from which it seeks a break, is itself Western or Eurocentric, since it is a legacy of, or an extension of Western ideas to which it remains indebted; just as the idea of ‘embeddedness’ or ‘posthuman transversality’ remains a theory from the West wrapped up in the language of universality. Talk of ‘we’, and democratic egalitarianism is offered as a kind of Noah’s ark into which everything and everyone must gather in order to be saved from the flood that humanism is supposed to have unleashed, but the attempt to round up everyone and everything still leaves others – mostly from the global South – outside this boat. How, for instance do Western feminist ideas address the challenges faced by women in the global south?
It turns out that what Braidotti is offering in her theory of posthuman epistemology relies on an amalgamation of existing methodological approaches (not the humanism kinds), particularly first and second generation critical studies – postcolonial, anti-racist, feminist, Queer, earth and others, which are brought under, not just interdisciplinary, but ‘postdisciplinary’ framework that are pressed into the service of the posthuman project. ‘Postdisciplinarity’, she writes, ‘refers to more transgressive ways of producing academic knowledge. They destabilize and disrupt the hegemonic power of distinct disciplines and the hierarchies of knowledge that structure the academic divides between the human, social and natural sciences’ (143). Although each at some point or another has challenged traditional Western humanism but each on its own cannot accomplish the task that is required, and must all be brought into conversation with other disciplines, then lined up in a collective phalanx to resolve contemporary problems. This is eminently noble but the difficulty is that salient differences within these studies or disciplines are glossed over in a procrustean effort to make them speak with a common posthumanist voice.
Braidotti’s ‘affirmative ethics’ that borrows from Spinoza’s ‘ethics of joy’ ‘aspires to an adequate understanding of the conditions of our relational dependency on the negative’ (168). So why couch all of this in the language of posthumanism? Braidotti herself, in an interview, confesses to her dislike of the term ‘posthumanism’ or as she puts it ‘Post-human is not a great concept. I personally don’t like it…’[1] but nevertheless it is a concept upon which she has constructed a philosophical theory. But despite the complexities of the themes with which she deals, her argument is perhaps best captured by this observation: ‘The harm you do to others - is immediately reflected in the harm you do to yourself’ (169). This is a restatement of the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would like them to do unto you – a profoundly humanist maxim, with variations on Kantian ethics, Utilitarianism, religious doctrine, or as Simon Blackburn (2001) has observed, is an ethics that is found in almost every culture. Only here this maxim has Spinozist and Deleuzian dimensions that include all ‘others’, including non-human objects. The attempt to move beyond the human always draws us back to the human as the basis of analysis of knowledge of the world, so that before we look beyond the human we must look first at how the human looks at the world in which he or she is a part. Braidotti’s posthumanism is not an attempt to relegate the human but to make it co-equal with other forms of existences or to bring excluded others into ‘transversal convergence’. Or, as she puts it, ‘in this respect, our posthuman times, with their large inhuman component, are all too human’ (19). In which case, posthuman knowledge is ultimately pro-human after all.
[1] Dossier Posthumanism(s) Dossier CCCB Interviews by Lu Andrés 2 April 2019. Lab.cccb.org
References
Braidotti, Rosi (1996) Patterns of Dissonance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, Rosi (2006) Transpositions. On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bradoitti, Rosi (2011) Nomadic Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Braidotti, Rosi (2013a) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, Rosi (2013b) “Posthuman Humanities.” European educational Research Journal. Vol. 12 (1) pp.1-19. DOI.10.2304/eerj.2013.12.1.1
Bradotti, Rosi (2018) “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities.” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 36, Issue 6, pp.31-61. DOI.org/10.1177/0263276418771486
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, (1972) Anti-Oedipus. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, Helen Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Félix (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ferrando, Franscesca (2019) Philosophical Posthumanism. London: Bloomsbury
Horkheimer, Max, Adorno, Theodor (2002) The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Lloyd, Genevieve (1984) The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy. London: Methuen.
Wynter, Sylvia (2003) “Unsettling the Coloniality of being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human after Man: Its Overrepresentation – An Argument.” The New Centenial Review, 3 (3), pp.257-337.
Related: Review of Francesca Ferrando’s Philosophical Posthumanism (2020)
Dr Gabriel O. Apata is an independent scholar and researcher whose works cuts across the humanities and social sciences. His research interests include Race and Ethnicity, Philosophy, Aesthetics, African philosophy, History, Aesthetics, Politics and Diaspora Studies.
