Defining posthumanism in 25 words or less

I'm a big fan of '25 words or less competitions'. I've never won one, never really cracked the formula, but I like giving them a go.

Defining posthumanism in 25 words or less is not easy. The Wikipedia entry for posthumanism gives it 5 separate definitions. It took Cary Wolfe an entire book. N. Katherine Hayles has had a few goes at it as well, as have countless other writers.

I'm defining posthumanism for my own specific purpose as part of my practice-led PhD. Naturally, this means it's only one of dozens (hundreds?) of possible definitions, and will open up more questions than it answers. But when I had my first bash at it yesterday this is what I came up with:

Posthumanism is a deliberate act to alter the human body surgically or chemically in order to attain additional skills, abilities or (???) beyond those a human maybe born with. The deliberate act must not merely enhance an existing skill or ability; rather it must create an new one that had not existed before.

Three problems immediately arise with this definition. Firstly, it's generally not good form to have ???? in the middle of a definition. Secondly, it's way over 25 words. Thirdly, (though I'm not sure this is a problem so much as a choice) it tends to focus more on physical attributes rather than philosophical ideals that define a human being.

Going back through the reading I've done on posthumanism, there are several definitions that appeal to me for different reasons. In his book What is Posthumanism, Wolfe quotes Joel Garreau who defines posthumans as:

beings ‘whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to no longer be unambiguously human by our current standards.’

In Our Posthuman Future Fukuyama describes posthumanism as a "potential moral chasm" and focuses on the dangers of biotechnology, in particular the use of neuropharmalogical drugs and genetic screening, while in the opening pages of How We Became Posthuman Hayles states:

Whether or not interventions have been made on the body, new models of subjectivity emerging from such fields as cognitive science and artificial life imply that even a biologically unaltered Homo sapiens counts as posthuman. The defining characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of nonbiological components.

 
In a nutshell, then, Garreau thinks posthumans are some kind of superhuman; Fukuyama thinks posthumans are potentially dangerous and socially divisive and Hayles thinks we're all posthumans. Okay, so that's a gross oversimplification but it does help me position my definition of posthuman more towards Garreau and further away from both Hayles and Fukuyama.

This is because I'm framing my definition for a fiction-writing perspective: if I'm to have posthumans in my book, particularly for a young adult novel, I want them to look or act posthuman in some way, and I guess, for me, that means having a skill or ability that no human is born with. Also, I'm writing a speculative fiction manuscript so the notion of the superhuman is not only accepted it is to some degree expected.

So for the purposes of my creative practice research, I'm offering the following definition:

A posthuman is someone who has chosen to alter their human body to attain additional skills or abilities other than those they were born with.

It passes the 25 words or less test, so that's a positive. But of course this definition is still problematic. For example, if you are born without legs and you use prosthetic legs does that make you posthuman because you were born without legs, even though most people are born with legs? What if you lose a limb in an accident and replace the lost limb with a prosthetic one that works better than your original limb - does that make you posthuman?

For now, at least, I think I'll use the above as my working definition. But I'm open to suggestions!

Osmosis and the hokey pokey: that's what creative-practice led research is all about

The past week I've focused on reading N. Katherine Hayles' How we became posthuman. It's a fascinating book that has sparked off lots of questions for me around what my creative piece is really about. It's also got me thinking about the relationship between my creative writing practice and my research; that is, how I use my research to inform my thinking about my creative practice.

Creative-practice led research is a tricky beast. It is often difficult to define the exact nature of the research/creative practice relationship, well for me anyway, but I'm going to put some thoughts down about how I see it working.

Almost three years ago, back when Dirt Circus League was a bunch of random ideas in a long-winded narrative that had no beginning, middle or end,  I stuck a sign on my mirror that encapsulated what I might want a reviewer to say about my book, once it was published. The sign says:

A Vonnegut for contemporary young adult readers... Wacky, fast-paced, original, off-beat, funny and wildly imaginative, always with an eye on the obscure and the absurd. A mash-up of neuroscience, action, dark humour and adventure with absolutely no lesson to teach.

It will be up to readers to tell me how much of that 'review' is true for the final product when Dirt Circus League is eventually published. But in terms of my PhD, and how my creative writing practice informs and is informed by my research, there are some interesting things to note about the 'review'.

From the start, it was always going to be speculative fiction. It was not going to be didactic. Like my writing hero Kurt Vonnegut, I wanted to make my readers both laugh and think and get some insight into the beauty, cruelty and absurdity of our planet earth. I referred back to the sign often but didn't try to specifically add in to the story elements from the sign, which would come across as false and implanted rather than naturally occurring. In other worlds, I wanted those elements to seep in by osmosis. And I want my research reading to do the same thing.

Research informing writing informing research

The timeline of story writing/ reading research breaks down roughly like this: 

• July 2010- March 2011: initial reading/first draft of manuscript simultaneously
• March 2011 - November 2011: lots of research into neuroscience and related fields (including reading my favourite Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology)
• November 2011-May 2012: further drafts and changes to manuscript along with reading into neuroscience and related fields such as critical neuroscience and reading another important text for me, Brain Culture)
• June 2012-October 2012: research reading, focusing on Bahktin's Rabelais and His World (my first real departure from neuroscience related reading)
• October 2012-December 2012: another significant rewrite of the manuscript
• December 2012 - now: reading literary criticism, some related to eco-criticism but mostly around speculative and science fiction; reading focused on posthumanism

The pattern shows intense periods focused on either researching or writing, with fewer periods where the two overlap. However, the basic plot and narrative of the story essentially hasn't changed. What the research does change in the manuscript is the deeper layers, the foundations of the manuscript and the ideas that form it. It's not so much that new ideas come into the manuscript, but that my research illuminates on what those ideas are really about. In turn, I make changes (sometimes quite subtle) that add layers of meaning to the surface story.

Coming back to Hayles' book, for example, I read a paragraph where she writes about Norbert Weiner's book The Human Use of Human Beings. Hayles posits:

'If memory in humans is the transfer of informational patterns from the environment to the brain, machines can be built to effect the same kind of transfer. Even emotions may be achievable for machines if feelings are considered not as "merely a useless epiphenomenon of nervous actions" (HU, p. 72) but as control mechanisms governing learning.'

When I read that I think about my protagonist Quarter, and how he is deliberately doing something to his body and brain that interferes both with memory and with how/what type of informational patterns will transfer from his environment to his brain because some of these patterns will now be bird patterns. I may use that thought to go back to my manuscript at some point and add in a detail, or perhaps even alter the ending slightly, to reflect that notion of the human and animal patterns within him. I'm not going to alter his character to add machine parts, or to incorporate a cyborg into the plot. Nevertheless the point Hayles raises inspires a series of questions for me about who or what Quarter really is, and what he may become.

In this way, my research dips and wiggles its fingers and toes in and out of my creative practice. It's kind of like the hokey-pokey but probably more like osmosis. Just as that sign on my mirror has influenced the type of book that Dirt Circus League is now and will become, so the research seeps its way into my creative writing, sometimes in ways I don't consciously recognise until my supervisor asks me a question about my work, and I realise that I can answer it.

Bypassing the middle, skipping to the end

In December 2012 I got the great news that I'd been awarded a scholarship to study my PhD full-time. Although the part-time study worked well for me at first, I'd reached a point where just grabbing a few hours here and there to devote to my research wasn't working. I'd start gathering ideas and pursuing a line of thought and bang - it'd be back to the day job. This meant I couldn't really bring my thoughts and ideas together, and I felt I was doing a lot of stopping and starting.

I had a few things to sort out but finally the time has arrived that I can get stuck into my PhD as a full-time student. I'm all too aware of how fast time can pass, though, so I'm determined to make sure I don't waste any time. (Ok, there may be the odd half hour here & there devoted to watching soap operas). So today I've organised my desk, done up a new project plan and set up a 'ideas board' on my wall (basically a bit piece of cardboard that will eventually be covered with sticky notes).

My PhD is creative-practice led, and the manuscript is well under control. So the next few months are all about trying to work out 'what it all means'. According to my ideas board, the four main ideas/themes underpinning my work are:

• neuroscience
• carnivale and the grotesque
• post/transhumanism
• belonging

My job is to somehow bring the threads of these themes together in a coherent way in a 30,000 word exegesis that supports/expands upon my creative practice (a 65,000 word manuscript). I've done a lot of reading on neuroscience, waded my way through Bahktin's Rabelais and his World, got a basic grip on the grotesque but I'm still trying to get my head around posthumanism/transhumanism. So, for the next few weeks at least, that's where I'll focus my reading.

I started off today with reading the final chapter of Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman and was intrigued by some of the arguments/ideas she put forward. I particularly liked the idea that the posthuman is not necessarily apocalyptic, and that "...we can craft others that will be conducive to the long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves."

If there are any must-reads people can recommend on posthumanism and transhumanism, I'd really appreciate it if you let me know about them.