[ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:43 PM 5/5/2007 +0100, ben zaiboc wrote:

>Oh, i just thought of another one:
>3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'.
>the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real.

My guess is that this is closest to the real dynamic. "Post-" has 
been the cool prefix for more than 30 years. Postmodern, 
poststructural, postfeminist... (Although the latter has a negative 
flavor in the academy.) As one of those who quite early adopted 
"transhuman" from Sir Julian Huxley, I find it interesting on 
reflection that I'm also a theorist of "transrealism," an extension 
of Rudy Rucker's approach to imaginative writing. (It's true that 
before I published an academic book about transrealism, I also did 
one on postmodern science fiction and an encyclopaedia entry on that 
topic, so I don't wish to give the impression that they're mutually 
exclusive.) I suspect if European philosophes had adopted 
"transmodern" as their sexy word, Hayles and the others in that club 
would now be happily discussing "transhumans" rather than "posthumans".

Damien Broderick