In the movie Matrix the protagonist Neo is introduced to the fact that the world he lived in is a simulacrum. Instead of directly perceiving and interacting with the environment, the world and experiences of Neo is completely fabricated by a technological algorithm that induces “a brain in a vat” to perceive the created world as the real. Matrix, a cinematically cyberpunk film, addresses the rising role of technology in human existence. With technology permeating different sectors in the human experience, it seems plausible that an omnipotent computer could, in theory, simulate a world all by itself. Matrix addresses a reflection towards human fate, it inspects the struggle between human beings and machines to claim sovereignty over human subjectivity (Bartlett and Byers, 2003). In this sense the movie attempts to offer commentary over a central debate in the academic field of posthumanism, a discipline that asks key questions accompanying the rise in relevance of technology in human life and perspectives in human-animal relationships.

Posthumanism in its history is a movement to reconsider the tenets of Humanism; there is hardly a well-defined creation of Posthumanism. Posthumanism cannot be considered as merely a temporal successor of Humanism, but as a totality of loosely connected intellectual strands, tied up in its rejection in different parts of Humanist principles. Humanist thinkers emphasized the ability of humans to shape their surroundings, and hence, be the measurement for it, such as the Vitruvian man in the center of a circle signifying the form of men following perfect proportions. The redefinition of science also led to successive thinkers applying scientific principles in the humanities and thereby the emergence of a particular interpretation of human nature that favors rationality and determinism. Posthumanism refutes this humanist depiction of humans and instead, often, seeks to locate new definitions within the complex boundaries between the human and the nonhuman.

The rejection of modern humanism by two different fields of studies, that of transhumanism and cultural posthumanism, demonstrates the different sides of posthumanist refutation, as they come from distinct fields and arrive at separate conclusions. Transhumanism can be located in a bio-ethical and philosophical context that have aroused out of new life technologies and speculations regarding new technological ways to approach the human body such as human enhancement. Cultural posthumanism arises from a tradition of critical theory, cultural studies, feminism, post colonial studies, etc. (Miah, 2009). This version of posthumanism attempts to pinpoint a new human nature in literature, given the instability and failures of the modern Humanist accounts of humanity. The human subject of Humanism, they claim, is static; it is thereby important to create a new conception of humans to better account for modernity or postmodernity.

One such discourse resulted by the increasing role of technology in biomedical studies is the relationship between the mind and the body. The humanist perspective can be traced to French philosopher René Descartes. He emphasized the separation of res extensa, the material world, and the res cogitans, the faculty by which such a world is perceived, the mind. The mind is separate from the body and the flesh of the world around it; this theory is often referred to as Cartesian dualism. Modern biotechnological research, especially genetic engineering, seems to suggest a similar outlook. An example of this is contemporary theorist Peter Sloterdijk’s interpretation of genetic engineering as a form of humanist societal improvement (Didur, 2003). He perceived that the “advance of reason” could only be resulted from the form of human progress that involves the selection and modification of genetic information (Didur, 2003). 

Katherine Hayles, however, pointed out the issue with the humanist arrogance in the attempt to engineer the human genotype. She situates Sloterdijk’s perspective in that of a separation between material and information; information is being seen as higher than material, something that can be harvested and altered, something that can be readily disembodied (Didur, 2003). However, information always has to act through a medium, and in this case, the inseparable body. Scientist of plant agriculture E. Ann Clark also raised doubts regarding the plausibility of utilizing genetic engineering in its current developmental stage. Inserting new genes, as she stated, is not a guaranteed success, but involves unrestrainable randomness; information is hence embedded with others and not as easily extracted (Didur, 2003). While proponents of genetic engineering often reference this Cartesian idea of mind-body dualism, criticisms were raised regarding this assumption of the separation between matter and form, and instead proposed a rejection of the Cartesian conception of mind and body through the emphasis of embodiment.

Rejection of this concept of the separation of the mind and body can also be found in critical feminist theories. Arguing against the metaphysical notion that the feminine is the physical site for the masculine endeavor of formation, philosopher Irigaray argued that this displacement of women came from the idea that privileged patriarchal logos can impose itself through infinitely malleable forms of generation (Burfoot, 2003). Burfoot applied this conception to the technoscientific fervent of new biotechnology when she coined the term “biopleasure” to refer to the desire to atomize the body and transcend material forms into a sort of disembodied informational immortality (Burfoot, 2003).

If the fantasies of going beyond embodiment is proved to be merely a perpetration of an oppressive aspect of the humanist thought, then how could one wield these emergent hybridities to their advantage? This is what theorist Donna Haraway seeks to explain in her renowned work The Cyborg Manifesto. In this work Haraway described the concept of a “cyborg” as a newly emergent identity that challenges the traditional perspective of the masculine logos and its totalizing theories (Haraway, 2016). She described cyborgs as ironic, a result of newly created technologies that can both serve as an oppressive apparatus and be utilized as a tool to ontological liberation. She thereby calls an engagement with technology that is neither that of complete acceptance, as the cyborg identities precisely reject the certainty of a human domination over technology, nor that of absolute denial. She embraced a state of both “desire and fear”, recognizing that these recent inventions are not simply us or not-us; they can be “both us and not us” (cited in Didur, 2003)

Risen alongside the reflection of technology as a force to be reckoned with in anthropology are the discussions of a new interpretation of human-animal relationships. The gradual dissociation of the distinction between human and technology parallels the reevaluation of the distinction between nature and culture. At the center of this discussion lies the concept of agency, a role traditionally only attributed to humans, and new intellectual strands have emerged to challenge the humanist differentiation of actors/non-actors and an emergent social realm that does not limit itself to the “cultural” sphere.

In Michel Callon’s investigation into the sociological significance of domesticating scallops of St Brieuc Bay, he emphasized a structural framework, which is often referred to as Actor-Network Theory (ANT), that bases itself on three core principles. The principle of agnosticism and the principle of generalized symmetry involves viewing and describing actors in a network impartially and in equal terms; the principle of free association requires the researcher to abandon any preconceived separation of the natural and the social, which necessitates considering non-human characters as agents (Callon, 1984). The chapter traces the characters embroiled in the relationship—the researchers, the local farmers, the scientific colleagues, and the scallops—through the several stages of a temporary actor network, and how their differing interests interact with one another. Relationships, under this framework, are only temporarily formed and based upon an inherently strenuous stability; there is nothing that cannot become an actor in a network, as even scallops have their own interests that intersect or betray other characters in the story. The issue at hand, therefore, is not simply how the researchers or farmers are to regulate or harness the scallops, but the process of translation that casts the net of relationships, and which the “social and natural worlds progressively take form (Callon, 1984).”

After non-humans are invited to be considered as agents, the concept of agency is also itself under scrutiny. The age-old sociological duality between structure and agency is brought into new light by alternative theoretical explanations such as “material semiotics[, which] disentangles agency from intentionality (Law and Mol, 2008).” John Law and Annemarie Mol observed the behavior of Cumbrian Sheeps during FMD outbreak, and they have concluded that these sheeps are neither passive beings nor masters. They are actors, no matter how much people played a part in epidemiology and/or economic regulations in the context of the story, the sheeps themselves reacted, in their own way, and their actions were irrefutable in the process of humans interacting with them, nor are their actions determinate, but that doesn’t make their status of actors less true. The distinction between “acting” and “being enacted” is being eroded, since every action can only be an effective action in a co-occurrence of being involved in a larger system, with co-actors that support or impede the action, and with the inevitable indeterminacy of any act. To trace the agency is no longer an important part of sociological analysis; instead, material semiotics aim to solidify the beings of the entities by inspecting the material-linguistic net that entangles them (Law and Mol, 2008).

Works Cited

Bartlett, L. and Byers, T.B. (2003) Back to the Future: The Humanist ‘Matrix’. Cultural Critique, (53), pp. 28–46. 
Burfoot, A. (2003) Human Remains: Identity Politics in the Face of Biotechnology. Cultural Critique, (53), pp. 47–71. 
Callon, M. (1984) Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review, 32(S1), pp. 196–233. 
Didur, J. (2003) Re-Embodying Technoscientific Fantasies: Posthumanism, Genetically Modified Foods, and the Colonization of Life. Cultural Critique, (53), pp. 98–115. 
Haraway, D.J. (2016) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In: Manifestly Haraway. University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3–90. 
Haraway, D.J. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press. 
Latour, B. (2007) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 
Law, J. and Mol, A. (2008) The Actor-Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001. In: Knappett, C. and Malafouris, L. (eds.) Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach. pp. 57–77. 
Miah, A. (2009) A Critical History of Posthumanism. In: Gordijn, B. and Chadwick, R. (eds.) Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity. pp. 71–94.