Critical Posthumanism:

Abstract

“Uncritical Posthumanism” celebrates the continuation of the human by non-human means (for example, a new techno-bio body) as well as the creation of a reality by “unreal” means. Posthumanists attempt to make the body more self-contained and energy-efficient, developing the interaction of body-technology and consciousness-digitality, biotechnology or bioinformatics. The mutual interference of body, consciousness and reality creates a new space of “Virtual Reality.” Critical Posthumanism attempts to disentangle the common characteristics of human reality and posthuman Virtual Reality and establishes communicative links between both by sticking to the conviction that simulation should never win over reality. Critical Posthumanism attempts to locate the human in the posthuman. This article analyzes the common points of Virtual Reality, biotechnology, and globalization by reflecting on the notion of the narrative. The existence of Virtual Reality, the gene-code, and globalization is due to the desire to elude any narrative and to express reality “directly.” Gene technology tries to grasp not a certain – temporally definable – stage of the entire process of generation, but the gene itself, as the essential quantity of generation that has no real place in generation itself. Globalization “globalizes” the globe and represents it as something that is neither the “real world” nor its narration but rather a new sphere that we have to accept as such. Critical Posthumanism defines the subtle differences between a Virtual Reality in the sense of a technological narrative and an existential Virtual Irreality that interprets the virtual in a more “human” fashion.