Abstract
What if any limitations should biohacking have in relation to sexualised bodies? Could posthumanism offer a liberating decoding of sexual identity? Will the socially constructed gender binary disappear? Will this allow us to rid ourselves of gender inequality? Is this the path we may envisage from transhumanist discourses and current biohacking practices? This certainly does not seem so. Most discourses and biohacking practices lock us into a hypersexualized world where bodies prevent us from exiting the binary coding of genders into masculine and feminine (currently hacked to appear as “super masculine” and “super feminine”). Donna Haraway was the first to conceive a post-human world that could break the inequality of the binary system in her theory of the cyborg. She proposed the cyborg as “a creature in a post-gender world.” However, this vision has not been fulfilled nor is it widespread. As Haraway herself warned, the cyborg may end up falling into the hands of patriarchal capitalism and militarism. In this chapter, I propose an understanding of posthumanism as a possibility for a new materialism that allows us to transcend gender inequalities. To this end, I follow up on the reflection of Haraway and Braidotti to explore a trans social model that may be transgender in a fashion in the way it completely challenges today’s binarism. This feminist posthumanism intends to and is able to transcend the binary sex difference as an element of social order. The current potential of biohacking techniques could make sex differences no longer the fundamental differential element in the technologies of power over bodies and lives. In this regard, I propose a critical reflection on ethical commitments, which democratic public institutions should begin to lead so that the posthuman reality may serve justice better than the human one.
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Notes
- 1.
I will generally use ‘sex/gender’ as two terms referring to a biosocial categorization. Therefore, they cannot be separated when mentioned, discussed or experienced. We can only separate them for abstract purposes.
- 2.
The definition of the terms “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” is in itself a matter of debate. We can find texts that clarify any differences and diversities as far as opinions on this question (Ferrando 2013). Both terms, trans- as well as posthumanism share the notion of technogenesis (meaning humans in coevolution with technologies). And both concepts question humanism and reconsider what it means to be human. The debate over the terms is on how to interpret the meaning of a “post” human state. This debate gets complicated if we notice that both terms are understood in a different way being North America or Europe, as Ranich and Sorgner (2014) discussed. Since these terminological questions are beyond the scope of this chapter I will follow the definition of both terms given in Ranich and Sorgner edited book (2014), where transhumanism intends to create a bioliberal future, or as Sorgner (2014) calls it “a carbon-based transhumanism” heading to bodily improvement. As Hughes explains in his chapter in that book (2014: 145) transhumanism wants “to free themselves from the constraints of nature and fulfill their own concepts of the good life”. The reflection on transcending the dichotomy of the sexes within feminist traditions has been addressed mainly not from a technological and biological perspective, but from a social criticism that challenges hierarchical social construct assumptions and deeply questions categories. I will use the term “posthumanism” since it connects better with this philosophical background I want to stress. Furthermore, it is related to an essential aspect of my reflection, the feminist critique to patriarchal humanism (Nayar 2014).
- 3.
Decades ago, Carbonell began to air his concern about the future of the human race. He used the concept of “critical species consciousness” in his extended work as a disseminator during talks, conferences and interviews. He explained this in writing in his (2018) book and a recent (2019) book (in co-authorship).
- 4.
Haraway no longer uses the term “posthumanism” today as she did in her first works. However, I interpret Haraway’s thought in a way that the ideas she has developed from her first essays up to the present day form a solid and coherent core for the proposal of the feminist and post-sexist posthuman that I am defending here.
- 5.
The concept of “critical biopolitics” has been introduced by Makarychev and Yatsyk (2020), in analogy with other critical streams of contemporary political thought. They define it in this way: “Critical biopolitics thus denotes a type of academic discourse that, first defies and debunks the binary type of thinking as simplistic and reductionist. Instead of binaries, it conceptualizes the social world as an endless series of complex chains of distinction, correlations, and correspondences. Critical biopolitics welcomes post-foundational and rhizomatic variability of forms of life and modes of politics, as well as intersections between them” (Makarychev and Yatsyk 2020: 24),
- 6.
This concept is similar in its aims to the concept of “social performativity” explained above.
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Reverter, S. (2022). Can Posthumanism Be Post-sexist?. In: Tumilty, E., Battle-Fisher, M. (eds) Transhumanism: Entering an Era of Bodyhacking and Radical Human Modification. The International Library of Bioethics, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14328-1_11
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