Cultural Politics

Special Section on Mediated Geologies

The CRITICAL
POSTHUMANITIES;
or, IS MEDIANATURES
to NATURECULTURES
as ZOE IS to BIOS?

Rosi Braidotti

Abstract  This article situates the geological turn in media theory

within the critical posthumanities, defining them in both quantitative
and qualitative terms. They can be assessed quantitatively by
reviewing the proliferation of interdisciplinary “studies” areas — such
as media and gender studies — that have transformed the modes
of knowledge production within the academic humanities and
beyond. They are framed qualitatively by the neomaterialist, vital
philosophy proposed by Gilles Deleuze’s Spinozism, based on the
concepts of monism, radical immanence, and relational ontology.
They not only support the idea of a nature-­culture continuum but also
provide the philosophical grounding for technological mediation to
be defined not as a form of representation but as the expression of
“medianaturecultural” ethical relations and forces.
Keywords  posthuman, critical posthumanities, monistic vital
materialism, affirmation

Introduction

W hat happens when technological mediation becomes

the founding principle for the critical practice of the
humanities, in alliance with a relational ontology that does not

380
Cultural Politics, Volume 12, Issue 3, © 2016 Duke University Press
DOI: 10.1215/17432197-3648930

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rest on anthropocentric premises? As the often unperceived boundaries between

articles gathered in this special section Man and the multiple others are exposed
clearly show, what happens is a shift of and challenged. Thus, if the multifaceted
paradigm in thinking about both the sub­ critiques and revisions of humanism
ject of the humanities as an academic field empowered the sexualized and racialized
and the human knowing subject. Where a human others to emancipate themselves
humanist, anthropocentric humanities used from the dialectics of oppositional hierar­
to be, a materialist and ecosophical — an chical master-­slave relations, the crisis of
embodied and embedded — critical post­ Anthropos relinquishes the forces of the
humanities is coming into being. naturalized others, instituting a zoonto­
logical turn (Fontenay 1998; Wolfe 2003).
The Humanities in the Anthropocene Animals, insects, plants, cells, bacteria — in
The academic humanities have been fact, the planet and the cosmos, as a
criticized because of two major flaws: whole — are called into play in a planetary
structural anthropomorphism on the one political arena.
hand and in-­built Eurocentrism on the The Anthropocene also happens to
other. Feminist and postcolonial theories coincide with an era of high technological
have argued, for instance, that human­ mediation, which challenges anthropo­
istic Man — as the universal measure of centrism from within. The decentering
all things — defined himself as much by of Anthropos challenges therefore the
what he excluded as by what he included separation of bios, life, as the prerogative
in his rational self-­representation. History of humans, from zoe, the life of animals
shows that this humanist vision of the and nonhuman entities. What has come
subject also justified violent and belligerent to the fore, instead, in the past decades
exclusions of the sexualized, racialized, and is a nature-­culture continuum that affects
naturalized “others” — women and LBGT+, not only the perception of scientific and
indigenous people, animals and earth cultural practice but also the vision of
others — that occupy the slot of devalued the embodied, embedded, relational,
difference in relation to the humanist nor­ and affective structure of the nonunitary,
mative standard. They embody difference nomadic, and extended self (Braidotti
as pejoration, and their differences get 2011a). This shift can be seen as a sort of
organized on a hierarchical scale of decreas­ anthropological exodus from the dominant
ing social and symbolic worth. These others configurations of the human as the king of
become socially marginalized at the best of creation — a colossal hybridization of the
times and reduced to the subhuman status species (Hardt and Negri 2000: 215).
of disposable bodies in worst-­case scenar­ The emergence of geology as a
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ios (Braidotti 2002, 2006). term of reference for media and cultural
In the Anthropocene, Man comes criticism is emblematic of this shift of
under further criticism from another angle, paradigm. It foregrounds not just any form
namely as Anthropos, that is to say as the of materiality, but rather — through the
allegedly rational member of an excep­ emphasis on plastic, metal, and heat — the
tional species that has granted himself the earthbound, terrestrial kind of materialism
right to access the bodies of all other living (Protevi 2013).
entities. Once the centrality and the excep­ As I have argued elsewhere (Braidotti
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tionalism of Anthropos are challenged, the 2016), over the last thirty years the core of

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Rosi Braidotti

theoretical innovation in the humanities has the critical posthumanities are emerging as
emerged around a cluster of new, often transdisciplinary discursive fronts not only
radical, and always interdisciplinary fields around the edges of the classical disci­
of inquiry that have called themselves plines but also across the established stud­
“studies.” Gender, feminist, queer, race, ies areas, as evidenced by environmental,
postcolonial, and subaltern studies, along­ digital, neural, bio­genetic, and medical
side cultural studies and film, television, humanities. They rest on postanthropocen­
and media studies, are the prototypes of tric premises and a technologically medi­
the radical epistemologies that have voiced ated emphasis on life as a zoe-­centered
the situated knowledges of the structural system of species egalitarianism (Braidotti
others of humanist Man and Anthropos. 2006). They embrace creatively the chal­
Situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) have lenge of our historicity without giving in to
resulted in the production of theoretical cognitive panic and without losing sight of
cartographies and discourse analysis as the perpetuation of patterns of oppression.
diagrams of power, combining philosophi­ These new ecosophical, posthumanist,
cal critiques with political reconstructions and postanthropocentric dimensions are
of both knowledge and social relations the building blocks for what I call the criti­
(Braidotti 2015). cal posthumanities.
These critical studies areas have These critical posthumanities are
provided a range of new methods and expressed by a second generation of
innovative concepts that have contributed studies areas. Within the environmental
to a rigorous revision of the often implicit humanities, for instance, the growth has
assumptions about humanism and Euro­ been remarkable, notably in animal studies
centrism, as well as to the implosion of and ecocriticism, and so well articulated
anthropocentrism. They caused both inter­ that it is impossible to summarize them.1
nal fractures and the dislocation of outer Cultural studies of science and society,
disciplinary boundaries in the humanities. religion and postsecular studies, disabil­
Institutionally, they are placed in between, ity studies, fat studies, success studies,
across, and beyond the traditional dis­ celebrity studies, and globalization studies
ciplines. They do not, however, merely are further significant examples of the
CULTURAL POLITICS   •  12:3 November 2016

oppose humanism but also create alterna­ exuberant state of the new humanities
tive visions of the self, the human, knowl­ in the twenty-­first century. New media
edge, and society. Their insights and the have proliferated into a whole series of
new concepts they created have lasting subsections and metafields: software
consequences for the academic practice studies, internet studies, game studies,
of the humanities. Although popular with algorithmic studies, and more. This vitality
students, these studies areas have usually justifies certain optimism about the future
been underfunded in terms of research. of the post­humanities, driven by ecosoph­
ical perspectives, on the one hand, and
The Critical Posthumanities digital media theories, on the other. These
The obvious question that arises is what perspectives provide the new ontological
the humanities can become in the post­ grounds for knowledge production, while
human era and after the decline of the the curriculum of the traditional human­
primacy of universalist Man and of suprem­ ities disciplines continues to resist inter­
382

acist Anthropos. My argument is that today disciplinary contamination. In other words,

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The CR ITIC A L POSTHUM A NITIES

the switch of emphasis toward “nature­ measure — have an inspirational role to

cultures” (Haraway 1997, 2003) has now play, both institutionally and theoretically,
evolved into millennial “medianatures” in relation to the posthuman context we
(Parikka 2015) or even into what I would inhabit. If the proper study of mankind
call “medianaturecultures,” displacing the used to be Man and the proper study of
centrality of human life (bios) in favor of the classical humanities was the human,
the nonhuman (zoe). it follows that the proper framework to
The critical posthumanities can there­ study the posthuman condition is the post­
fore be seen as the second generation of humanities, based on the complex human
studies areas, genealogically indebted to interaction with nonhuman agents. The
the first generation of the 1970s in terms field rests on the vision of the subject as
of methods and political affects while pur­ nomadic, embedded, embodied, and tech­
suing the work of critique into new spaces. nologically mediated (Braidotti 2011b). This
But they go further and shed both ideolog­ knowing subject is a complex assemblage
ical and tactical habits in order to develop of human and nonhuman, planetary and
more consistently transversal forms of cosmic, given and manufactured, which
inquiry. They differ from their predecessors requires major readjustments in our ways
in that they address directly and creatively of thinking. The critical posthumanities
the question of anthropocentrism, which need to embrace the multiple opportu­
had been left relatively underexamined, nities offered by this condition, while
and yet they remain committed to social keeping up the analyses of power forma­
justice and ethical accountability. tions and the social forms of exclusion and
For instance, a growing field of post­ dominations perpetuated by the current
human research concerns the inhuman(e) world ­order of biopiracy (Shiva 1997), nec­
aspects of our historical condition, namely ropolitics (Mbembe 2003), and world­wide
the recurrence of devastations, mass dispossession (Sassen 2014).
migration, wars on terror, violent evictions, I have proposed a monistic philosophy
and technologically mediated conflicts. adapted from contemporary Deleuzian
These questions have been taken up rereadings of Baruch Spinoza (Deleuze
within a wide range of fields: conflict 1988, 1990) as the most suitable
studies and peace research; human rights ontological grounding for this new vision
studies and humanitarian management; of the posthuman knowing subject and
human-­rights-­oriented medicine; trauma, for the practice of the critical posthuman­
memory, and reconciliation studies; ities. Contemporary monism rests on the
security studies and death studies; rejection of transcendentalism, which
suicide studies; queer inhuman studies; is replaced by the concepts of radical
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extinction studies — and the list is still immanence, relational ontology, and affir­
growing. They perpetuate and update the mative ethics. Monism refers to Spinoza’s
transformative impact of critical thought: central concept that matter, the world,
compassionate posthumanities for inhu­ and humans themselves are not dualistic
man times. entities structured according to principles
It follows, therefore, that the studies of internal or external opposition but rather
areas, which historically have been the materially embedded subjects-­in-­process
motor of both critique and creativity —  circulating nomadically within webs of rela­
383

innovative and challenging in equal tion with forces, entities, and encounters.

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Rosi Braidotti

The obvious target of criticism here is matter, as well as a nonhuman definition

René Descartes’s famous mind-­body dis­ of life as zoe, or dynamic and generative
tinction, but for Spinoza the concept goes force.
even further: matter is one, driven by the Monistic vital materialism bypasses
ontological desire for self-­expression of its the binary between the material, the tech­
innermost freedom (conatus). nological, and the cultural and focuses on
The rejection of dualistic schemes their interaction, the better to interrogate
in favor of a complex process of differing the boundaries between them. A techno-­
within a common matter is framed by both ecological (Hörl 2013), posthuman turn is
internal and external forces. It is based at work, which means that the vital self-­
on the centrality of the relation to multi­ organizing powers that were once reserved
ple others, both human and nonhuman. for organic entities have now become an
Monistic neomaterialism proposes a clas­ integral part of our technologically medi­
sification of all entities — things, objects, ated universe. A media-­ecological contin­
and human organisms included — in terms uum (Fuller 2005, 2008; Hansen 2006;
of their forces and impact on other entities Parikka 2010) also affects “humanimals”
in the world. An ethology of forces, in and their multiple activities, including the
other words, produces a displacement of production of knowledge. Posthumanists
anthropocentric value systems, promoting of many dispositions agree that there is no
a relational ethics of becoming, based on “originary humanicity” (Kirby 2011: 233)
the pursuit of affirmation (Braidotti 2006). but only “originary technicity” (MacKenzie
Furthermore, an updated version of 2002).
Spinozism as a democratic move toward Because the human and social
radically immanent forms of immanence sciences have historically been the
promotes micropolitical interventions of a main beneficiaries of the transcendental
very grounded and situated kind. One has anthropology that posits anthropocentrism,
to start from microinstances of embod­ rationality, and transcendence as the
ied and embedded self and the complex basic units of reference for the human,
web of social relations that compose the they stand to gain the most by being
self. Within a vital monistic frame, this recast today in the Spinozist mode of
CULTURAL POLITICS   •  12:3 November 2016

self is not an atomized entity but a non­ radical immanence and monistic material­
unitary relational subject, nomadic and ism, enhanced by the high-­technological
outward-­bound. mediation and technology (Deleuze and
This vision of the subject, which does Guattari 1987).
not rely on classical humanism and care­ The monistic, ecosophical, and geo­
fully avoids anthropocentrism, is moreover centered turn (Bonta and Protevi 2004)
marked by the structural presence of that sustains the critical posthumanities,
practices and apparati of mediation that therefore, does not only take the form of
inscribe technology as “second nature.” a quantitative proliferation of knowledge-­
The techno-­ecosophical “milieu” is our practices but also entails qualitative shifts
living habitat, which Félix Guattari (1995, and methodological innovations. These
2000) reformulated in terms of the multiple also affect the critical studies areas
ecologies of “machinic autopoeisis.” Con­ that may have perfected the critique of
temporary monism supports this notion humanism but not necessarily relinquished
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of technology as vital and self-­organizing anthropocentrism. Take, for instance, the

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The CR ITIC A L POSTHUM A NITIES

continuing reliance of so many studies infrastructures have emerged as one

areas on the social constructivist meth­ version of the digital humanities, while
odology, which rests on the oppositional neomaterialist ecosophical studies are the
logic of the nature vs. culture mode and fastest-­growing area of the “green” — or
on uncritical anthropocentrism. The inner environmental — humanities. These inter­
tensions of this conventional method disciplinary fields of study spell the end
have been taken to task by many critical of the idea of a social order disconnected
discourses and writers, including, in the from its environmental and organic founda­
mid-­1980s, Donna Haraway, the most tions and call for more complex schemes
prominent contemporary postanthropo­ of understanding the multilayered form of
centric thinker. Through the figuration of interdependence between contemporary
the cyborg, Haraway (1985, 1990) fore­ nature and culture. They combine theories
grounds a dialogue between science and of historical subjectivity with “species
technology studies, race theory, socialist thinking,” proposing a postanthropocentric
feminist politics, and feminist neomate­ configuration of knowledge, which grants
rialism. This high degree of theoretical the earth the same role and agency as
hybridity is supported by notions of the human subjects that inhabit it. They
interrelationality, mobility, receptivity, and demonstrate the extent to which the field
global communication that deliberately blur will prosper if it shows the ability and will­
categorical distinctions (human/nonhuman, ingness to undergo a process of transfor­
nature/culture, male/female, Oedipal/ mation in the direction of the posthuman.
non-­Oedipal, European/non-­European). But this cannot be the full picture, of
Haraway’s focus on human/nonhuman course. A specific feature of the critical
relations is not merely thematic; rather, she posthumanities is the attention they pay
raises serious epistemological and ethical to the missing links and the omissions in
questions about the historical construction the new distribution of knowledge. These
of these categories (Haraway 1997). Put­ missing links are mostly the result of the
ting it in polemical terms, Haraway (2006) high degrees of specialization required by
asks: “When we have never been human, the second generation of transdisciplinary
what is to be done?” This approach studies areas I described above. In order
intersects with the project of the critical to account for them, we need to make
posthumanities and the formation of a a cartographic account of the missing
posthuman political subject that combines links in the emerging posthumanities (see
competence in contemporary biosciences Braidotti 2013). More specifically: Where
and information technologies with a firm do they leave feminist, queer, postcolo­
program of feminist social justice and nial, anti­racist, class-­conscious analyses?
CULTURAL POLITICS

critique of capitalist abuses. Are we not witnessing a resegregation of

these discourses in the new posthuman
Contesting Humanities landscape? Or, to translate this question
The driving force of the posthumanities into my main concern: What is the underly­
is the crossover between the digital and ing notion of the human in the posthuman­
the environmental humanities, sustained ities? It is urgent to create border-­crossings
by a posthuman ethical passion.2 Thus, between the new postanthropocentric
the fields of digital media studies and discourses and the multiple critiques of
385

media geology as study of planetary humanism emerging from the studies

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Rosi Braidotti

areas, notably the feminist and postcolo­ contexts.3 The projects of setting up post­
nial perspectives, which have historically colonial digital humanities and decolonizing
functioned as laboratories for the creation new media are timely, considering that the
of new concepts and methods, pioneering fields are highly popular with corporate and
critiques of the human in all its complexity. institutional sponsors who see them as an
For instance, on the postcolonial front, indispensable economic tool and an essen­
since Rob Nixon’s (2011) seminal work on tial element of the war on terror. These
slow violence, the missing links between transversal projects pursue the critical
postcolonial theories, the environmental analysis of power formation of the “high”
humanities, and indigenous epistemologies postcolonial studies era into the complex
have been exposed and analyzed, resulting cultural analysis of the posthuman era.
in a growing convergence between them. Walter Mignolo and the decolonial
Nixon is critical of the parochialism of movement propose a similar focus but with
some environmental humanities that focus a different approach. Defining coloniality
only on conservation and urban recycling. as the matrix of European power and its
Arguing that the status of environmental quintessential logic, Mignolo (2011) calls
activism among the poor in the global for a radical break from this tradition, so as
South has shifted in recent years toward to de-­Westernize the ideals of humanity.
the transnational environmental justice The decolonial movement targets epis­
movement and the assessment of dam­ temic as well as material manifestations
ages caused by warfare, Nixon proposes to of Eurocentric power, namely coloniality
develop new crossover dialogues between and modernity, and calls for “epistemic
these movements, producing a trans­ disobedience” (2011: 122 – 23) as a way of
national ethics of place. At the level of the delinking from this disastrous legacy. Indig­
political economy of the posthumanities, enous ways of knowing and non-­Western
this results in the production of new areas epistemologies can provide inspirational
of studies that cross over the complex material in this quest. This results in new
postanthropocentric axes of enquiry: post­ alliances between environmentalists, First
colonial environmental humanities come to Nation peoples, new media activists, and
the fore, and transnational environmental antiglobalization forces, which constitute
CULTURAL POLITICS   •  12:3 November 2016

literature emerges as a crossover between a significant example of new political

Native American studies and other assemblages.4 Mignolo concurs with Nixon
indigenous studies areas and the classical about the importance of the transnational
environmental humanities. environmental justice movement and of
Similar developments are on the taking indigenous epistemologies seriously
way to fill in other missing links, including not as a relic of the past but as a blueprint
in digital culture and humanities, as the for the future. Another recent key example
articles gathered here clearly demon­ is the Hastac Scholars Forum that, explic­
strate. For instance, Sandra Ponzanesi and itly inspired by Mignolo’s work, focuses
Koen Leurs (2014), relying on the work of on colonial legacies, postcolonial realities,
pioneers such as Lisa Nakamura (2002), and decolonial futures of digital media.5
claim that postcolonial digital humanities The forum starts from the assumption that
is now a fully constituted field, with digital Eurocentrism and the devastation of indige­
media providing the most comprehensive nous ways of knowing can be exacerbated
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platform to rethink transnational spaces and by the adoption of digital technologies. The

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The CR ITIC A L POSTHUM A NITIES

intersection of digital technologies with species (Habermas 2003; Fukuyama 2002;

the humanities is especially targeted, as is Sloterdijk 2009; Borradori 2003). I would
research on alternative technologies that respond to these anxious reactions with
may work against colonization and postco­ intense doses of monistic ethics of affirma­
lonial legacies that maintain social injustice. tion (Braidotti 2006).
These theoretically sophisticated transver­ There is no question that the generic
sal discursive developments constitute a figure of the human — “we” — is in trouble
vital contribution to the emerging field of and that this is a serious matter. Such a
the critical posthumanities. They com­ sense of urgency, however, does not war­
bine attention to the earth, the geological rant generic reconstructions of humanity
dimension, with enduring care for the and a tacit new consensus about some­
people who live closest to the earth, the thing we may call “the human.” I would
indigenous populations, thus raising the argue, instead, for the need to keep
ethical and political stakes. They position tracking the changing perceptions and
the task of posthuman critical thinkers multiple new formations of the human in
close to the dispossessed and the disem­ the globalized, technologically mediated,
powered, adding that many of those are and ethnically diverse world we inhabit.
neither human nor anthropomorphic. The differential politics of location affect
If it is the case, therefore, that these the production of both knowledge and
fast-­moving developments in knowledge self-­representation of subjects within the
production across the field of the criti­ critical posthumanities.
cal posthumanities introduce qualitative We — the dwellers of this planet at
shifts of scale and method, they also raise this point in time — are confronted by a
more urgently than ever the question of number of painful contradictions: we are
relational ethics: How can we rethink our interconnected but also internally fractured
interconnection in the era of the Anthropo­ by structural injustices and discrepancies
cene, while rethinking our new ecologies in access to resources. Instead of new
of belonging? The connection to the natu­ generalizations, we need sharper focus on
ral environment and to the technosphere the complex singularities that constitute
of new media recasts the issue of alterity our respective locations. We need careful
in human and nonhuman terms that call for negotiations in order to constitute new
new conceptual and ethical schemes of subject positions as transversal alliances
thought. between human and nonhuman agents,
There is a problematic tendency in the which account for the ubiquity of techno­
Anthropocene to hastily recompose a new logical mediation and the complexity of
endangered humanity after the demise of interspecies alliances.
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anthropocentrism. “Humanity” is often Becoming posthuman consequently

posited in corporate and institutional dis­ redefines one’s sense of attachment and
courses as a new generic “we” — a unitary connection to a shared world, a territorial
category — just as it emerges as a threat­ space — urban, social, psychic, ecological,
ened or endangered entity (Chakrabarty technological, planetary, as it may be. It
2009). A panhuman bond of vulnerability expresses multiple ecologies of belonging,
engenders a negative or reactive sort of while it enacts the transformation of what
cosmopolitan interconnection, expressing we still call the self. This self is, in fact, a
387

intense anxiety about the future of our moveable and outward-­bound assemblage

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within a common life-­space, which the Notes

subject never masters nor possesses but 1. Donna Haraway (1990, 2003) is a pioneer of
merely inhabits and crosses nomadically, human-­animal studies. A companion to animal
always in a community, a pack, a group, or studies has just been published (Gross and
a cluster. For posthuman theory, the sub­ Vallely 2012), whereas a complete ecocriticism
reader has been available for a while (Glotfelty
ject is a transversal entity, fully immersed
and Fromm 1996). The Journal of Ecocriticism
in and immanent to a network of non­
is quite established, while a recent issue of the
human (animal, vegetable, viral) relations.
PMLA (2009) was dedicated to the question
The zoe-­centered embodied subject is of the animal. For a younger generation of
shot through with relational linkages of scholars (Rossini and Tyler 2009), the animal
the contaminating/viral/techno kind, which is the posthuman question par excellence.
interconnect it to a variety of others, start­ See Braidotti and Roets 2012; Davis 1997; and
ing from the environmental or eco-­others, Goodley, Lawthorn, and Cole 2014.
and include the technological apparatus. 2. For a more detailed discussion, see Braidotti and
The critical posthumanities require Gilroy 2016.
productive and affirmative forms of 3. See also the Postcolonial Digital Humanities
defamiliarization or disidentification from (2016) blog.
4. See, for instance, the land/media/indigenous
century-­old habits of anthropocentric
project based in British Columbia (Bleck, Dodds,
thought and humanist arrogance, which
and Williams 2013).
tests the boundaries of what exactly is
5. The Hastac Scholars Forum (2015) is coordinated
human about them (MacCormack 2014). by micha cárdenas, Noha F. Beydoun, and Alainya
Defamiliarization involves shedding cher­ Kavaloski. With thanks to Matthew Fuller.
ished habits of thought and representation,
even at the risk of producing fear and nos­ References
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CULTURAL POLITICS   •  12:3 November 2016

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor and founding director of the Centre for
the Humanities at Utrecht University. Her latest books are Nomadic Subjects (2011), Nomadic
Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti (2011), and The Posthuman (2013). In 2016 she coedited,
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with Paul Gilroy, Conflicting Humanities. Her website is www.rosibraidotti.com.

Published by Duke University Press