THE INFLUENCE OF POSTHUMANISM ON POSTMODERN ART

by

SHANE DE LANGE

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

MAGISTER TECHNOLOGIAE: FINE ARTS

in the
Department of Fine and Applied Arts
FACULTY OF THE ARTS

TSHWANE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Supervisor: I Stevens
Co-Supervisor: J Thom

March 2007
DECLARATION

“I hereby declare that the dissertation/thesis submitted for the degree Magister
Technologiae: Fine Arts, at Tshwane University of Technology, is my own original work
and has not previously been submitted to any other institution of higher education. I
further declare that all sources cited or quoted are indicated and acknowledged by
means of a comprehensive list of references”.

S.K. de Lange

Copyright© Tshwane University of Technology 2007

i
 The Disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull
crustacean eyes. Slowly a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs,
distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can
no longer contain the crustacean horror that grows inside it (Burroughs, 2002:133).

Our task at the moment is to completely free ourselves from humanism and in that sense our
work is political work… all regimes, East and West, smuggle shoddy goods under the banner of
humanism… we must denounce these mystifications (Foucault in Mills 2003:26).

DEDICATED TO JACQUES DERRIDA

(1930 – 2004)

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank:

My supervisors, Muffin Stevens and Johan Thom, for their guidance, friendship and
support.

My mother and father for their love and understanding.

The Tshwane University of Technology and the NRF, for financial assistance.

iii
 ABSTRACT

This paper is an investigation into the posthuman influence on postmodern art and the
potential for art production in a posthuman context. It emphasises one particular period
in art history. The period spanning from the late twentieth century to the early twenty
first century is an era bent on the domination of the media and the promiscuity of
technologies. It is an era that provokes the onset of posthumanism, where the
distinctions that once held humanity in place have become dated; because it is no
longer clear who makes and who is made in the relationship between human beings
and machines. In this way, it is no longer necessary to write science-fiction since we
are currently living it. Our time is a posthuman era where the body has become
vestigial and obsolete; expendable under the confines of the global village, which has
imploded under the weight of its own progress. Posthuman art comments this
paradigm shift, where man submits to the vestiges of hyperreality and a dependence
on the media.

iv
 INDEX

CONTENTS PAGE

DECLARATION i

DEDICATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

ABSTRACT iv

LIST OF FIGURES vii

CHAPTER 1

1 INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 2: DECONSTRUCTING HUMANISM

2.1 DECONSTRUCTING HUMANISM 12

2.2 HUMANISM AND THE ‘GREAT FAMILY OF MAN’ 20

2.3 INHERENT CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN HUMANISM 25

2.3.1 DUALISM 27

2.3.2 HISTORY 31

2.3.3 VIRTUE 37

2.3.4 BODY 41

2.3.5 LANGUAGE 49

2.4 POSTHUMANISM AND THE END OF HUMANISM 59

CHAPTER 3: SOCIETY AND ART IN A POSTHUMAN AGE

3.1 THE POSTHUMAN FUTURE: POSTMODERNISM AND ITS TRIBUTARIES 65

3.2 PASTICHE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA AS POSTMODERN TRAITS 67

3.2.1 REREADING MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE? 69

v
 3.2.2 JEAN BAUDRILLARD AND IMPLOSION: THE MESSAGE IS LOST 77

3.3 THE IMPLODED GALAXY 85

3.4 POSTHUMAN FUTURES 96

3.5 FUTURES-PRESENT IN POSTMODERN SCI-FI CINEMA 105

CHAPTER 4

4 CONCLUSION 117

REFERENCES 124

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

CONTENTS PAGE

FIGURE 1: Damien Hirst. Hymn. painted bronze, 1999-2000. 610 x 274 x

122 cm (Shone:2001). 18

FIGURE 2: Andy Warhol. Cow wallpaper. 1966. Silksreen (Collings:2000). 21

FIGURE 3: Andy Warhol. Marilyn diptych. 1962. Silkscreen (Collings:2000). 22

FIGURE 4: Damien Hirst, Dead ends, 1993, used cigarettes (Violette and
Honey:1997). 35

FIGURE 5: Damien Hirst, Some comport gained from the inherent lies in
everything, 1996, steel, glass, cows, formaldehyde solution, 12
tanks, each 200 x 90 x 30 cm (Rosenthal:1997). 44

FIGURE 6: Jenny Saville, Plan, 1993, Oil on canvas, 274 x 213.5 cm,
Saatchi collection (Rosenthal: 1997). 46

FIGURE 7: Marc Quinn. No visible means of escape. 1996, RTV 74-30, rope,
180.3 x 59.7 x 30.5 cm (Rosenthal:1997). 51

FIGURE 8: Kiki Smith. Virgin Mary. 1992. Wax with pigment, cheesecloth,
wood, steel (Posner:1998). 52

FIGURE 9: Damien Hirst. Contemplating a self-portrait (as a pharmacist).

1991. vitrine, portrait, mixed media, other objects (Shone:2001). 54

FIGURE 10: Vanilla sky. The scene where David chooses the ‘splice’
between his waking life and his lucid dream (2001. [Video/DVD].
Paramount Pictures). 56

FIGURE 11: Matthew Barney, Cremaster 3, 2002, Production still

(Taylor:2005). 60

FIGURE 12: Nam June Paik. Detail from Family of robot: grandmother and
grandfather.1986. Various arranged televisions. 71

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FIGURE 13: Nam June Paik, Man, 1990. Various arranged televisions
(Bonito:2002). 72

FIGURE 14: Gattaca. A scene where an invalid ‘god-child’ is been

researched by an investigator (1997. [Video/DVD]. Columbia
Pictures). 73

FIGURE 15: Chen Cheih-Jen, Twelve karmas under the city: Rebirth I, 2000,
cibachrome colour photograph. 120 X 150 cm (Taylor:2005). 74

FIGURE 16: Damien Hirst, The acquired inability to escape, 1992, found
objects (Violette and Honey:1997). 75

FIGURE 17: Damien Hirst, Holidays/no feelings, various medications, mixed

media (Shone:2001). 79

FIGURE 18: Fight Club. A Scene where the Narrator and Tyler are on the
th
rampage performing anarchistic acts of vandalism (20 Century
Fox Home Entertainment). 81

FIGURE 19: Damien Hirst, A thousand years, 1990, steel, glass, flies,
maggots, MDF, insect-o-cutor, cow’s head, sugar, water, 213 x
427 x 213 cm. Saatchi collection (Rosenthal:1997). 83

FIGURE 20: Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Room 101), 2003, mixed media,
300 x 500 x 643 cm (Townsend:2004). 88

FIGURE 21: Andy Warhol. Silver disaster. 1963. Acrylic and silkscreen on
canvas. 203 X 203 cm. Zurich, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger
(Walther:2000). 89

FIGURE 22: Stelarc, Evolusion, 1982, performance using a mechanical third

hand (Gržinić:2002). 92

FIGURE 23: Blade Runner. A scene where Deckard has just killed a fleeing
suspect replicant (1982. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video). 94

FIGURE 24: An example of how a simulation can become a reality. On the

top left are two tricorders from the original Star Trek series, on
the right is the contemporary equivalent, a Palm PDA. 96

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FIGURE 25: Damien Hirst, The physical impossibility of death in the mind of
someone living, 1991, Tiger shark, glass, steel, 5%
formaldehyde solution, 213 x 518 x 213 cm, Saatchi collection
(Rosenthal:1997). 97

FIGURE 26: Spiderman battling against Venom, who used to be one of

Spiderman’s alter-egos (Marvel Comics). 101

FIGURE 27: Rachel Whiteread, Ghost, 1990, plaster on steel frame, 269 x
356 x 318 cm (Townsend:2004). 104

FIGURE 28: The Matrix. Opening scene (1999. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home
Video). 106

FIGURE 29: The Matrix. Neo is peeking through the doorway of his
apartment, which has the same number as Orwell’s broadcasting
room (1999. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video). 107

FIGURE 30: The Matrix. Scene depicting Neo when he wakes up from his
narcissistic existence inside the Matrix, and realises his cellular
blip-like existence as a human battery (1999. [Video/DVD].
Warner Home Video). 109

FIGURE 31: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). David realises his construction as an

android, and his objectification as a proposed commodity (2002.
[Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video). 112

FIGURE 32: Artificial Intelligence. A scene where David awakens from his
two thousand year long frozen slumber to meet the evolved
machines (2002. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video). 113

FIGURE 33: The Terminator. An anthropomorphic machine terminator in a

post-apocalyptic world (1984. [Video/DVD]. MGM Home
Entertainment). 114

ix
Introduction

Recent theorists, such as Donna Haraway (2000:69) and Katherine Hayles (1999),
seem to agree that ‘we’ are well within the beginning of a post-human condition.
Immediately, when one mentions the concept of ‘posthumanism’, most of ‘us’ would
come to a literal interpretation, something like the post-apocalyptic visions of films
like The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999) or the inhuman perceptions of
William Burroughs (2002) and the neurotic futuristic visions of Phillip K. Dick (2005).
However, even though the message that these texts depicts can be seen as
posthuman, posthumanism is far more diverse than just a discourse on how the end
of humanity will come about, or a negative outlook on the human condition.1 The
crucial aspect of posthuman discourse that is often ignored is the deeper historical
and philosophical implications, specifically in relation to art and the tradition of
humanism that art represents; that is to say, posthumanism can, and will, be seen as
an alternative to the narratives, stemming from humanism, that has somehow
managed to find its way into the social sphere of popular culture. This is evident in
the amount of discourse that the west and westernised societies are producing,
dealing, in some way, with subjects that can be called posthuman. These discourses
include postmodern science fiction films or the cult novels of Stewart Home (1996),
J.G. Ballard (2004), and Chuck Palahniuk (2003), to name a few. Postmodern
philosophers such as Baudrillard (2002), Paul Virilio (2005), and Haraway (2000),
and theorists like Scott Bukatman (1993), Francis Fukuyama (2002), and N.
Katherine Hayles (1999) can also be said to have contributed to posthumanism.
However, posthumanism does not draw only on sci-fi,2 although it can be argued that
sci-fi has popularised posthumanism, neither does it depend on the deliberations of
postmodern philosophers.

Posthumanism can be viewed as a kind of ‘coming together’ of various ideas critical

of the discourses and practices associated with modernism and humanism. These
narratives include deconstruction, feminism, and post-colonialism. Together, these
various texts and narratives form posthumanism, and, as such, can be viewed as a
tributary of postmodernism. Like postmodernism, posthumanism can be very difficult
to characterise mainly due to the fact that most of the available texts on the subject
differ greatly in opinion and approach, evident when comparing the more scientifically

1
This will become especially evident when it comes to a deeper analysis of The Matrix (1999) and its sequels:
Reloaded (2003) and Revolutions (2003), also including the Animatrix (2003), later in chapter 3.
2
‘Sci-fi’ is jargon for ‘science-fiction’ and is a commonly used term amongst cyberpunks.

1
based publications of Fukuyama (2002) or Hayles (1999) to the more philosophical
writings of Haraway (2000) and Bukatman (1993). Furthermore, many theorists who
can be labelled posthumanist, such as Jean Baudrillard, do not recognise themselves
as such. Posthumanism is not a coherent narrative, as Paula Rabinowitz (2000:42)
states, “A simplistic reading of the posthuman might see it as beyond and before time
and type, and outside the boundaries – chronological and spatial and generic – that
have held humanity and humanism”.

One aim of this paper is to place posthumanism within a more understandable and
uniform body of theory, but it must be understood that this cannot always be a
possibility. Posthumanism is too young a discourse to be recognised and respected
as part of the institutional system. In many ways posthumanism does not want to be
institutionalised, exactly because it is based on pluralistic and subversive ideals
which is one motive underlying its incoherency. One way to research posthumanism
and its inconsistencies is to look at the field of contemporary art, a field of practice
where contradiction is often embraced as a tool and incoherency applauded as a
form of subversion. The practices of contemporary western art are currently
saturated with the concept of posthumanism. Not only can it be found in sci-fi films
such as The Matrix (1999), but also in the music of Matmos and Matthew Herbert, in
related technologies such as the internet, biotechnology, and even in medical
practices such as plastic surgery. In a related, but more artistically inspired, sense,
Matmos uses surgical equipment and visceral sounds recorded in the operating
theatre to construct the ‘bodies’ of their musical compositions, thus presenting a
posthuman criticism of traditional ‘human’ notions’ of inside/outside,
absence/presence, mind/body, time/space etc. Electronic sampling creates an
alternate body that exits as part of a digital world. However, this posthuman, digital
transformation of the body should not necessarily be viewed as being a radical a
break from the past. As Jacques Derrida (Hoesterey, 1991:3) states:

Structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, Marxism, post-Marxism, or any of

the other “new-isms” and “post-isms”? They all make the claim to reinterpret
globally the state and their own inscription of and within the state. The formalisation
of both the past and the future of the state has to be read in the present; and the
new and the post, what they announce and what they outdate, give the exact
measure and the clear, synchronic, and systemic formulation of the present.

2
This paper is a deconstructive investigation of posthumanism. In accordance with a
deconstructive approach first devised by Derrida (1997), the practice of art, thanks in
part to mechanisms of authorship and documentation, can be identified as a
discipline owing its existence to the figure of man and his humanism. As Michel
Foucault (1998:222) states:

When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, one has
an ideological production. The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one
marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.

In saying this, I seem to call for a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited
by the figure of the author. …, the author has played the role of the regulator of the
fictive, a role quite characteristic of our era of industrial and bourgeois society, of
individualism and private property, still, given the historical modifications that are
taking place, it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in
form, complexity, and even in existence.

Thinkers like Foucault and Derrida saw humanism as a meta-narrative nearing its
end, and this is a trend that has been institutionalised during postmodernism,
opening up the possibility for posthumanism to develop. However, a critical stance
must be taken on the verification and acknowledgment of any discourse, such as
postmodernism, which calls for the renegotiation of all other ‘isms’, the dismantling of
ideology, and the end of everything. As Patricia Waugh (1989:342) states: “Endings
confer meaning and for all human beings, ‘the End they imagine will reflect their
irreducibly intermediary preoccupations… we thrive on epochs’. Could it be that
postmodernism is the Ending invented by its theorists searching for their own
significance?”. In this way, posthumanism will be discussed as a ‘passive’ discourse
that acknowledges its contradictory position within the systematic formulation of the
present. Posthumanism is a deconstructive practice where the very attempt to reason
is actively questioned.

This paper is an attempt to dismantle the dismantlers using as its point of departure
the very humanism that has come to be our tradition, a humanism that is seminal to
the practice of art and politics for example. This paper is also an attempt to establish
how posthumanism succeeds in revealing the contradictory nature of humanism,
unlocking a certain narcissism which leads us into ‘new’, or rather ‘alternative’,
epochs.

3
‘We’,3 in the west, seem to be bombarded with ‘isms’ at every turn. With the
introduction of posthumanism during the late 20th century and the influence of
science fiction, cyberpunk, new information technologies and an increasingly
accelerating world that results from these technologies, it seems that western, and
‘westernised’, society’s logocentrism has resulted in a hunger for new ‘isms’
unrelenting in its boredom with already existing ‘isms’, thus the creation of the ‘post’.
Martin Heidegger (1998:241) argued that we cannot seem to exist without ‘isms’, and
we cannot seem to live with them; why else would we keep constructing ‘new’ ones?
Like a virus we are always in the process of destroying our present host,
posthumanism unveils a human-condition, based on a set of circumstances, that is
killing itself through its own systemic methods. We are continuously striving forward
towards the ‘new’. However we are always a product of our context and therefore this
process may be likened to a form of self destruction,4 because the ‘new’ is an
unknown abstract construct, something made from nothing, a fictive ideal we strive
for.

Posthumanism is a philosophical attitude that has developed from postmodern

discourses, technologies, trends and practices, such as post-colonialism,
deconstruction and feminism. Generally, postmodernism challenges the established
humanist beliefs of western society. However, even though parallels may be made
between posthumanism and postmodernism, theorists like Ziauddin Sardar (1998)
have pointed out some difficulties that can be turned into a postmodern/posthuman
polemic of sorts. Most notably, that postmodernism’s ‘open-endedness’ only
succeeds in supporting ongoing globalisation. With its belief in pluralism and an
acknowledgment of otherness, postmodernism has turned globalisation and
westernisation into the key features of our spectacular culture. However, it can be
argued that postmodern pluralism is just another advertisement for western
imperialist notions, such as humanism, as Sardar (1998:22) states: “The quest for
synthesis of cultures in postmodernism should be seen as a logical step in the
process of the westernisation of the globe, and universalisation of western civilisation
itself”. Sardar’s statement distinguishes the difference between posthumanism and
postmodernism.
3
The use of quotation marks above terms like ‘we’, ‘our’ etc. emphasizes the context of the specific “claims to
reinterpretation” that are made by many western narratives such as feminism and post-colonialism, which can be
said, because of an opposition to traditional and foundational structures, to fall under the banner of humanism. Such
quotations also aid in signifying a process of signification, of representation, than can be understood as a perspective
of the autonomous liberalist self, the inside, the identity or “I”, the context of ‘man’ in ‘his’ humanism, that is often
assumed as the global status-quo. That is to say, the quotations simply place humanism as a text which ‘we’ draw
upon to establish ‘ourselves’ and ‘others’.
4
This stance is commonly connected to Freud’s notion of “Thanatos” or “death drive”, it may also be likened to a
virus.

4
As postmodernism dismantles the liberalist human subject ‘we’ come to realise the
limitations of traditional human constructs like capitalism, religion, gender, and art (all
of which, in their western manifestations, are classifiable under humanism). Put
another way, posthumanism openly contests these constructions and can thus be
seen as a reaction toward our changing social and natural enviroment spurred on by
our latest extensions,5 such as information and digital technologies. It makes us
question what it means to be human. As Bukatman (2002:250) states: “If the unitary
truth of the Cartesian cogito is insufficient in grounding the experience of the human,
… , then this insufficiency is more pronounced under the terms of a postmodern
reality”. That is to say, Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’ becomes an untenable
equation in postmodern times. Today, the ‘I’ is revealed as contradictory and
incoherent because it is no longer secure and self reliant. In fact the self is highly
reliant on its context for its sense of identity and individuality.

Postmodernism thus symbolises both the culmination of modernism and the epitome
of humanism. This cessation has developed into a paradigm where radical alterations
have to be applied to social spaces and individual bodies. Postmodernism is a space
that can be regarded as a ‘shock’ period where the culture of the west is realised as
inherently problematic. This shock is mainly caused by anxieties stemming from
certain actions and events which have been facilitated by modernist meta-narratives,
such as the author, where the ‘I’ came to be regarded with god-like status. This has
resulted in a seeming ‘limbo’ that ironically draws inspiration from the past,
specifically modernism, yet at the same time criticises it. Bukatman (1993) calls this
hyperbolic state “terminal identity”,6 an era when emphasis is placed on our
“presence in the future”, or rather, our presence in our simulacra, and, at the same
time, the appropriation of the past. This is evident when Bukatman (2002:228) states:

The disembodying spaces of the terminal era exist independently of human

experience or control, and thus our presence in the future has initiated a seemingly
inexhaustible period of mega-nostalgia, an obsessive recycling of yesteryear. Even
futures past are exhumed and aired, their quaint fantasies simultaneously mocked
and yearned for.

5
The use of the term extension rather than a term like invention is a reference to Marshall McLuhan, who will
become important from chapter 2 onwards.
6
Terminal identity is a key term used by Bukatman primarily to describe postmodern existence.

5
This ‘nostalgia’ can be likened to the Romanticists and the Pre-Raphaelites and their
yearning for a return to nature, caused by historical events like the industrial
revolution. In this way, postmodernism can be seen as a need to escape the grip of
modernism and humanism, whilst not knowing anything other. As Frantz Fanon
(2000:25) states:

… let us flee from this motionless movement where gradually dialectic is changing
into the logic of equilibrium. Let us reconsider the question of cerebral reality and of
cerebral mass of all humanity, whose connexions must be increased, whose
channels must be diversified, and whose messages must be re-humanised.

Postmodernism places quotation marks around terms like ‘I’, ‘we’, and ‘our’, to
suggest that western existence, and the influence this existence has on the rest of
the globe, is a construction of a context-specific history. That is to say, ‘our’ world is a
construct of ‘man’ in ‘his’ humanism and its dictation of ‘mankind’.7 Postmodernism
can thus be understood as an enlightening period where alienation is embraced. By
using inverted commas to signify our context-specific history and western
universalism, the disestablishment of the traditional self becomes possible. The
concept of humanity is a fabrication developed from a contradictory system of
binaries and hierarchies, given meaning and value by man. With this understanding,
all that was previously believed to be universal and autonomous becomes
problematic and self contradictory, especially with regard to terms like ‘humanity’ or
‘man’, because they are invariably connected to an abstract and fictive humanist
ideology. In a postmodern world nothing seems to be real or authentic: everything is
a representation of a representation, a total simulation. In this way postmodernism
becomes relevant to issues of identity and representation, as Bukatman (1993:250)
states: “…in the age of terminal identity, there are a myriad of selves and a multitude
of realities”. It is here, in this postmodern, media orientated, or rather disorientated,
world that posthumanism comes into being.

Naturally there are positive and negative conclusions to be drawn from posthuman
discourse, but for now it will suffice to say that new technologies and media, in
existence mainly due to the explosive progress of modernism, are changing human
beings on physical and metaphysical levels. Posthumanism is defined in and through

7
Mankind can be equated with the human condition because it also refers to humanity-as-a-whole under the
auspices of a western ideology. This will become clearer in chapter 2, especially with reference to Roland Barthes
and his notion of the “great family of man”, where contemporary experience lends itself directly to a baseless and
frivolous humanistic understanding and articulation.

6
the extensions that currently construct our selves and our bodies in their various
forms, shapes, sizes, and colours. These new technologies bring into question the
relationship between man and his extensions. What Marshall McLuhan (1962:43)
called the “Global Village” is a reality today and is struggling to keep up with its
acceleration,8 where the boundary between who makes and who is being made, in
the relationship between ‘man’ and machine, becomes unclear. However, this does
not have to mean ‘our’ eventual demise, rather, as Haraway (2000:74) states, it can
be “about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which
progressive people might explore …”. Given this statement one can come to the
conclusion that traditional humanism is no longer adequate for contemporary needs
because our experience is uncovered as being ambiguous – a confusion of the
manufactured and the factual – and a posthuman attitude begins to penetrate
popular thinking. Thus in many respects we are in a posthuman condition, as Hayles
(1999:246) states:

What are we to make of the posthuman? As the liberalist subject is dismantled,

many parties are contesting to determine what will count as (post) human in its
wake… increasingly the question is not whether we will become posthuman, for
posthumanity is already here. Rather the question is what kind of posthumans will
we be.

The concern of this research is to investigate the impact that the rise of
posthumanism has on art, and to determine whether any definition of posthuman art
is possible. Due to the close link between the practice of art and the ideology of
humanism, it is important to know what humanism is. As Ihab Hassan (Hayles,
1999:1) states:

We need first to understand that the human form – including human desire and all
its external representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be re-
visioned. We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be
coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something we must hopelessly
call posthumanism.

Given much of what has been said, posthumanism can be viewed as being terrifying.
However, posthumanism can only be equated with horror if one does not see the

8
Acceleration is a term McLuhan uses to describe the effect that occurs when a new extension is introduced. A
speed up of networks is facilitated by the resultant reaction of irritants and counter-irritants i.e. the introduction of
roads allowed for faster communication between communities.

7
cannibalism inherent in western history, its production and consumption of
‘otherness’, the ideological processing and distribution of the body in the west. The
boundaries between the west and the non-west have become transparent, marking a
historical shift from humanism to posthumanism. It is an innately ‘human’
characteristic to fear difference, but from a posthuman perspective ‘man’ as the
author of history is the real terror. In this regard posthumanism can be seen as
posthumous to the author, to god, to the self, and to man.

We thrive on dualisms, which are structured by binaries – oppositions given value in

order to construct the hierarchies that dictate our existence. The dualism between
civilisation and chaos, light and dark, inclusion and exclusion, can not only be said to
have fuelled the way the west perceives the world, but it has also caused the
acceleration of history and created the possibilities for the practice of art as we know
it. As the contradictions within humanism become more apparent, the possibilities for
the production of art within a posthuman context continue to expand. The basic
foundation of humanism, specifically the paradoxical and contradictory nature of
humanism, allows for an alternate space of artistic production. Thus, further exploring
and exposing the contradictions of humanism is essential in finding a new space for
the production and consumption of art. A major issue is to establish whether or not
the structures of posthumanism are merely the continuation of humanism in the form
of its direct opposite, or a viable alternative to that of humanist ideology.

The general breakdown of this paper will initially focus on a basic understanding of
the contradictions within humanism, developing gradually into a
deconstructive/postcolonial/neo-feminist dialectic which will act as bridge from the
very modernist, and humanist, narcissism of man to the more postmodernist and
posthumanist scepticism of recent times, which will lead into the detection of
posthuman art, at all times having a post-structuralist/deconstructive undertone; that
is to say all aspects of this paper will be from a postmodern perspective. Thus,
Chapter 2 emphasises our understanding of humanism and why it is being
questioned in contemporary society, basing its critique on the ideas of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Nietzsche. These two key modernist thinkers can be said to have
disseminated the seeds of anti-humanism with the announcement of the death of god
and the objectification of the subject. Resultantly, Chapter 3 focuses on the
development of posthumanism, starting with the end of man (suicide) and ending
with examples of posthuman art. Chapter 3 specifically focuses on the writings of two
key postmodern theorists, Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard, who have come

8
symbolise the shift from humanism to posthumanism. Chapter 4 concludes with a
brief overview of what has been learned in this paper. The literature of William
Burroughs, the art of Damien Hirst, and postmodern cinema are consistent
throughout his paper.

Chapter 2 is broken up into four sections. Section 2.1 is a basic introduction to the
deconstructive approach towards humanism in this paper, specifically focusing on the
required ability to be self-critical and suspend judgement. It also introduces the
meaning of the term humanism. Section 2.2 suggests the totalising effect of
humanism on the rest of the globe, thereby making the universalism of man apparent
and problematic. Section 2.3 introduces the five key inherent contradictions within
humanism, and is thus broken up into five subsections based on the ideas of Marx
and Nietzsche. Subsection 2.3.1 relates to the roles language and dualism have to
play in the development of western imperialism and domination, essentially focusing
on humanism as the agent that dictates the hierarchies of various established
dualisms such as man/women or One/Other. The space of humanism will be
revealed as a dualistic structure. Subsection 2.3.2 implies the effect that western
dualistic structure have over time, sifting out the tragic events, such as colonialism,
that have come as a result of humanist ethics. Thus history is seen as a nightmare,
rather than the progressive dream man in his quest for truth and knowledge.
Subsection 2.3.3 moves into an investigation of the Eurocentric ethical stance of
humanism, by dissecting the paradoxical nature of western moralism. This sub-
section basically investigates the relationship between humanism and morality.
Subsection 2.3.4 develops into a debate on how this moralism structures the
identities of the colonised Other, specifically emphasising the selection criteria of
humanism: who counts as ‘us’? This sub-section also realises the body as a text that
signifies the conditions of becoming part of the human family. Sub-section 2.3.5
finalises the exploration of the inherent contradictions within humanism by reasoning
that the four previous contradictions are killing man, which can ironically be related to
as a self-imposed death or suicide leading into a postmodern era. Essentially this
sub-section describes the end of humanism and the ‘death of the author’. The
conclusion of Chapter 2 comes with Section 2.4, which introduces posthumanism as
a postmodern pseudo-successor to humanism in lieu of the death of the author/god.

Chapter 3 applies what was learned in Chapter 2 about humanism, and its
development towards death, with an investigation into posthumanism and its
influence on postmodern art. Chapter 3 is split up into five sections. Section 3.1

9
highlights the end of history and that futures now penetrate society. Further emphasis
is placed on the relationship between postmodernism and posthumanism, thereby
introducing aspects of postmodern art into the lottery of posthuman discourse.
Section 3.2 is comprised of two subsections, which are based on the ideas of
Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard. Subsection 3.2.1 stresses the alterations in
contemporary society that force a rereading of McLuhan’s ideas, specifically relating
to the global village and his belief that the medium is the message. Subsection 3.2.2
follows the trend set in the previous subsection by applying its findings to the
postmodern philosophies of Jean Baudrillard, and finding contemporary equivalents
to McLuhan’s approach. Section 3.3 can be seen as an amalgamation of McLuhan’s
groundwork and Baudrillard’s perspective, envisioning the imploded world of
humanity in a posthuman solar system. Section 3.4 goes on to investigate how the
future is moving in a reverse direction, emphasising the potential for art production in
a posthuman context. Section 3.5 concludes with the application posthuman ideals
and the culmination of the imploded galaxy, using examples from postmodern sci-fi
cinema. The Matrix (1999) will be the main focus of the application.

Chapter 4 is the conclusion to this paper, basically accentuating what has been
discovered in this research and underling answers to the question of posthuman
influence on postmodern art, also stressing the potential for future art production in a
posthuman paradigm.

10
Chapter 2
Deconstructing humanism

11
2.1) Deconstructing humanism

…Myth is unsuccessful in giving man more material power over the environment.
However, it gives man, very importantly, the illusion that he can understand the
universe and that he does understand the universe. It is of course, only an illusion
(Lévi-Strauss, 2003:13).

To understand what constitutes posthumanism it is important to know what

humanism is, which qualities humanism possesses and why these qualities are being
disrupted and disputed during postmodernism.

Humanism is a western ideology that dictates what and who ‘man’ is: a process of
commoditisation that has helped the west successfully capitalise from the actions of
‘man’. Throughout the history of the west there have been many manifestations of
humanism, all of which can now be correlated into a more generalised type of
‘modern’, and eventually ‘post’, humanism. Such manifestations of humanism find
their roots in Greek humanism9 and include (Edwords:1989): Literary humanism,
which is committed to the humanities and literary culture, and can be said to include
this very text, its structure, its approach etc. Renaissance humanism is an attitude
towards scholarship and knowledge that developed near the end of the middle ages
with the revival of classical Greek texts, initiating a renewed belief in humanity to
determine the difference between truth and falsehood. Renaissance humanism later
developed into Cultural humanism; a rational and empirical institution that originated
with the ancient Greeks and Rome and evolved throughout European history to
constitute ‘our’ traditions and conventions; ‘our’ approach to science, politics, ethics,
and law. Philosophical humanism is related to cultural humanism because it
concentrates on anything pertaining to human need and interest. Christian humanism

9
According to Edwords (1989) Modern humanism can be connected to the Ancient Greeks through common links
with the Renaissance. The key humanist figures from Ancient Greece include: Sixth century B.C.E pantheists Thales
of Miletus and Xenophanes of Colophon. Thales is best known for his axiom "Know thyself", and Xenophanes is most
popular, amongst other things, for his skepticism towards the divine; preferring to belief in the principle of the
universal over the worship of any supernatural deity. Anaxagoras is another important Greek figure who contributed
to the birth of humanism, most notably propagating the discipline of science into the human arena as a method of
understanding the universe. The development of democracy was first employed by Pericles, who was a student of
Anaxagoras, thus playing an important role in the construction of humanism with such concepts as freedom of
speech and skepticism towards earlier religious superstitions. Humanist concern with history can be attributed to
Thucydides who took a scientific and rational approach to history. The adoption of agnosticism and development of a
spiritual moralism in humanism was pioneerded by Protagoras and Democritus, both of whom shunned the
established dogma of time, which was primarily based on the supernatural and superstition. Humanist concern with
history can be attributed to Thucydides who took a scientific and rational approach to history. When all of these ideas
are combined it is easy to see how and why ‘we’ act in the modern era.

12
it is dedicated to the self-fulfilment of ‘man’ within a Christian context; a context
responsible for much Renaissance humanism with its scholastic roots in the middle
ages, finding its antithesis in modern humanism. Modern humanism, which is also
called scientific humanism, ethical humanism, or democratic humanism, is
characterised by a dual conception consisting of both religious and secular
components that developed gradually from the onset of industrialisation, which began
in the 18th century, where science began to take the upper hand in a dispute with
religion, thus creating a complementary secular form of humanism. Secular
humanism is an outgrowth of the 18th century enlightenment and 19th century free
thought. Coupled with Religious humanism, which emerged out of an ethical culture
based on Unitarianism, and universalism, modern humanism developed into a kind of
religion itself within the confines of modernism during the 20th century.

All these forms of humanism can be isolated and characterised under the terms and
conditions a modern humanism that is primarily based on modernist ideals. Currently
this modernist position is under assault and criticised in the wake of postmodern
scepticism and dissolution, caused by the realisation of certain irregularities and
contradictions found mainly in the relentless western drive for progress, conquest,
and universalism. However, western addiction to progress is an abusive situation that
leaves nothing but a stagnant socio-politic and economic sameness in its wake, thus
resulting in the current postmodern limbo. This process could almost be described as
a form of suicide, comparable to the gradual deterioration of a junky towards a self
inflicted death.

Let us try to question ourselves, that is, admit in the form of a question something
that cannot reach the point of questioning (Blanchot, 1986:382).

As Blanchot suggests, to understand humanism we must develop the ability to

critically analyse ourselves and to investigate those elements that make us human.
The structures that anchor the self must be dismantled, using the same linguistic
tools that constructed them, in order to expose the institutional processes that secure
in place humanist ethics and history. This questioning will be difficult because it
implies that we sacrifice ourselves, and the answers may not be easy to accept. At
present much of western theory and philosophy is pre-occupied with deconstructing
humanism. During postmodernism, humanism has been derailed and exposed as a
“fictive theory” that has culminated in an awareness of western apathy towards
cultural difference. Apathy in this context can be regarded as a total indifference

13
towards otherness by the west, and the west’s desire for universality and global
homogenisation. This western identity, and the humanist structures that support it,
has been referred to as the One. The One signifies a narcissistic faith in the unity and
autonomy that is embodied in the western concept of the self or ‘I’. The One always
assumes dominance over its assumed opposite, the desired Other, acts upon it, and
views it as fragmented and dependant. Both Marshall McLuhan (1962:32) and
Fredric Jameson (1998:3) view the One as schizophrenic, both One and not-One,
due to modern manifestations and influence of western pop culture, media, and
globalisation, and the ubiquitous western desire for union with and separation from
the Other. The One is inclusive with its belief in universalism, but is also exclusive
when allowing access to this universal space.

Postmodernism can be viewed as a process of coming to terms with ‘terms’.

Postmodernism investigates the binary structure of western thought, rethinking our
relationship with the Other by trying to level hierarchies evident in the dualisms we
live by. With the dominance of western culture around the globe, it is no surprise that
the rise of postmodernism coincides with globalisation. Postmodernism dissects
humanism using a pragmatic and self critical stance towards what Marshall McLuhan
(1964:37) has described as the “global village”. The global village can be understood
as the culmination of what modernism and humanism stand for: the complete
homogenisation of the globe utilizing a humanizing universalism through technology
and capitalism, and a fraternal ‘liberation’ of all mankind.10

Posthumanism is a niche area in the postmodern investigation of humanism. Sardar

(1998) suggests that postmodernism may be unable to discard its roots in humanism
but, despite this fact, it has managed to give birth to posthumanism, both as a theory
and a way of life. In this regard posthumanism can be seen as an alternative, not
necessarily in opposition, to humanism. The One is ‘now’ put in its place and placed
under increasing pressure. As Lacan (In Badmington, 2000: 7) states: “What is it to
say I? … One must start here”. With Lacan’s reasoning as a point of departure
humanism can be unravelled as a contradictory system of values that structures ‘our’
identity and sense of self or individuality, dictates western ‘reality’, and creates the
concept of the ‘human’ condition or ‘mankind’. Given all the theories put forward by
thinkers like Nietzsche (1990), Marx (1996), Derrida (1997), Foucault (2002), Said

10
It is important to bear in mind that both the concepts of ‘liberty’ and ‘mankind’ are western constructs placed upon
the conventions of the Other in order to put the Other in its place and extend the imperial reach of ‘man’: they are
‘terms’ used to propagate the status of humanity within the gaze of the One.

14
(2003), and Baudrillard (1995) the overwhelming consensus would be that humanism
dictates what it means to be human, thereby substantiating the notion of the One.

A distinction can be made between the ‘human condition’ and ‘humanism’. Because
of the ambiguous nature of the human condition, its history and construction,
humanism can be seen as the foundational element that creates the very concept of
humanity. Contemporary western society seems to be under the ‘illusion’ that to be
‘human’ is a universal and ‘humane’ ‘truth’ or absolute given. However, given the
distinction between humanism and the human condition it seems that in order to be
human one must be male, heterosexual, European, and for the most part Christian to
make any kind of claim to, or reinterpret the space of humanism.11 As Guattari
(Bogard, 2000:7) states: “To be ‘really’ human, as excluded groups in any social
order know well, means to have the right flow of blood, currency and equipment, to
bear the right series of distinguishing marks (eye colour, skin colour, hair colour)
maintain the proper rhythms, habits, routines, and so on”. This is not to say that
people of other ethnic groups or geographical position are not ‘human’, it merely
means that the west has dictated its own concept of the ‘human’ by asserting
Eurocentric assumptions onto the rest of the globe through such oppressive acts as
colonialism.

In a western sense the human condition is therefore always a dualistic relationship

between the One12 and the Other.13 The acknowledgment of this binary relationship
reveals a basic polemic: our social ‘norms’ and moral ‘truths’ may simply be abstract
constructs or myths. Myth gallivanting as truth is evident in western values such as
the distinction and assumed meaning ‘given’ to concepts like good and evil. Based
upon the presumption of western dominance, this moralism forms the backbone of
human social and cultural institutions, born from a particular western point of view
that directs the gaze of the Other in a specific direction. The assumed universalism of
humanism makes it an ideology that assembles the individualism of the subject into
an objectified, consumable and marketable self existing in a postmodern world of
multiple identities and instant communication. An individual in the global village
wears the mask of the citizen, who must abide to the accepted habits, behaviours

11
This is evident in the fact that most feminist or post-colonial theorists have had a western education or come from a
western social geography.
12
‘One’ commonly refers to the west or occident, ‘man’, the autonomous ‘self’ or individual subject, which will come to
be understood as very fragile concepts, specifically in chapter 2.
13
‘Other’ can be understood as that which differs, or is excluded, from the ‘One’, such as the orient, woman, African,
the schizophrenic ‘self’, the neurotic subject etc. Both One and Other thus form the key dualism that allows
humanism to be the dominant structure, the backbone in ‘our’ anatomy.

15
and anatomical precursors that are exemplified by the One. Being a citizen makes an
individual ‘human’; a subject/object ratio that allows access to the correct passwords
and codes accepted in our spectacular society of electronic use and exchange value.

Assigning meaning to abstractions, such as ‘human’, can be viewed as an act-of-

naming, branding, or labelling that turns myth into ‘truth’. Perhaps the most important
label is the unquestioned “I” of the One. Once this “I” is disputed, humanism can be
established as a text, an abstraction, and a thing-in-itself. The oblique heritage of
humanism can thus be seen as a death drive for us because we have based ‘our’
entire existence on abstract notions that do not occur in nature. This realisation is
why humanism is reaching a finality in the form of a postmodern stagnant
‘sameness’, where attempts are made to balance the hierarchies and eradicate the
assumptions made by the west, specifically during the latter part of the 20th century
where modernism began to give way to postmodernism with such claims to
reinterpretation as feminism and post-colonialism. As Bill Readings (In Badmington:
2000: 126-128) states:

The suggestion that all cultures are fundamentally the same is the trademark of the
imperialism of modernity, which seeks to erase rootedness and difference, to
reduce everyone to a blank abstract humanity, a bleached out indifference. To put it
bluntly, saying that we are all just human is an act of imperialism, because it means
we are all white under the skin… the assumption of universal human nature, like all
modernist metanarratives, lights the way to terror even as it upholds the torch of
human rights. The problem of averting genocide demands a respect for difference,
a deconstructive ethics that is prepared to relinquish the concept of the human, to
separate liberty from fraternity.

Readings can be said to reiterate Derrida’s deconstructive approach because he

describes a stance towards ‘our’ self inflicted narcissism. To separate liberty from
fraternity requires the ability to acknowledge the One as a thing-in-itself: a unity that
is completely immersed in the totality of its own order of things, unable to
comprehend the existence of difference in the world. Much attention has been
focused on this narcissistic state during postmodern times, although it can be said
that Karl Marx14 and Friedrich Nietzsche had already placed emphasis on this notion

14
Marx and Nietzsche are arguably two of the most important figures to make the significant break from humanist
ideals. Marx reassessed such concepts as ‘essence’ and ‘spirit’, turning Hegelian theories upside-down, to form a
new philosophy that emphasised forces of production and relations of production, thus making the One just as much
an objectified construct as the manufactured Other. Nietzsche pointed out the frivolity of petty dualisms, such as
good and evil, and he questioned the moral structure of humanism based on such abstract notions. Both revealed

16
over a century ago. A parallel to this narcissism can even be found in Descartes’
(1997:135) concept of being in a dream within a dream or Plato’s Cave (Plato,
2005:97).

Foucault (1991:201) connects humanism to the notion of the ‘Panopticon’, where

Plato’s cave can be understood as a simile to western narcissism; a self-made
prison. Foucault’s view of the Panopticon can be seen as an Orwellian conception of
power, control, and surveillance surrounding the subject in society. The dual
concepts of the One and the Other are dependant on and nurtured by this prison
house of being.15 The Panopticon is an enclosed space where territories are
disputed, identities manufactured, where there are interplays of power relations and
the gaze is always observing, and where the body is constructed, sacrificed, and
mutilated. Postmodernism attempts to break down the walls of this discursive prison
(cave). In this way Foucault relates the Panopticon to the limits of humanism. In this
context, all the elements of the Panopticon, such as power relations and the gaze,
are, as Burroughs phrases it, ‘soft machines’;16 mechanisms with no solid grounding
or structure. These soft machines are mechanisms that name, brand, label, encode,
mask, plot and map our identities and bodies.

Mankind’s narcissism and dualistic thought is symbolized by the gaze. The gaze is
where ‘our’ representation(s), archetypes and stereotypes, come from; it embodies
the entire notion of ‘us’. This ‘embodiment’ can also be understood as the objectified
body, the surveyed text, or the observed image. Damien Hirst plays with this idea in
Hymn (Figure 1, below), exposing the fake viscera of a giant synthetic body, inviting
the viewer to gaze as much as she/he would like. In relation to history, Plato’s notion
of ‘logos’, the divine idea of ‘good’, and the human quest for truth, can be understood
as the anatomy of western totalitarianism. This anatomy is masked and enclosed by
the borders, or rather limitations of humanism that form an intangible skin of inherent
contradictions. Man the evaluator and mankind the evaluated, are actually invented
interpretations based on contradictory assumptions in an attempt by the One to
convince itself of ‘itself’, as Nietzsche (1968:267) states:

‘Everything is subjective’, you say; but even this is an interpretation. The ‘subject’ is
not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what

humanism as an ideology, thereby positioning the human subject as a commodity, and turning the self into a mere
text. Both thinkers led the way for future theorists like Foucault, whose ideas influenced discourses such as
Feminism.
15
Heidegger (1999:239) refers to language as the “house of being”.
16
Soft machine is the title of one of William Burroughs’s novels, essentially denoting language as a flaccid tool.

17
 there is. Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even
this is invention, hypothesis…

It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every
drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel
all the other drives to accept as the norm.

Figure 1 (above): Damien Hirst, Hymn, painted bronze, 1999-2000, 610 x 274 x 122 cm, Saatchi Gallery (Shone:2001).

To a large extent it only possible to talk of such issues because such theoretical
approaches as deconstruction, feminism and post-colonialism have infiltrated popular
postmodern culture. However, one should be cautious in fundamentally embracing
these deconstructive ethical approaches, which can be witnessed in ‘current’
postmodern pluralistic attitudes. Even though postmodernism can be said to
understand and respect difference or otherness thanks in part to the influence of
these critical approaches, it is dangerous to assume that it is a solution to the
contradictions and problems of humanism. These approaches can only make us
aware of ‘our’ situation within humanism. As Sardar (1998: 13 -15) has pointed out:

18
 While postmodernism is a legitimate protest against the excess of suffocating
modernity, instrumental rationality and authoritarian traditionalism, it has itself
become a universal ideology that kills everything that gives meaning and depth to
the life of non-western individuals and societies. It represents a partial displacement
from repression to seduction, from the police to the market, from the army to the
bank, from depth reading of epistemology to a surface reading of hermeneutics. If
postmodernism had a slogan it would be ‘anything goes’; but when ‘anything goes’,
everything stays and expediency guides thought and action. Postmodernism
preserves – indeed enhances – all the classical and modern structures of oppression
and domination. Hence, Other cultures are becoming prisoners in the world that
postmodernism is creating… Seen from this perspective, postmodernism emerges
as a worldview conjured from pathological necessity of the west to define reality and
truth as its reality and truth. Now that the west itself doubts the validity of its own
reality and truth it seeks to maintain the status quo and continue unchecked on its
trajectory of expansion and domination by undermining all criteria of reality and truth.
Western oppression of Other cultures seems to move in endless spirals, taking over
from modernity, which is itself a product of colonialism… Thus postmodernism takes
the civilising mission of the west to render the Other in its own image, into new
arena’s of oppression and subjugation.

Thus postmodernism can be seen as another form of colonialism or imperialism

because the idea of pluralism and a ‘do-gooder’ faith in multiplicity can be seen as a
patronising and ‘tolerant’ enterprise. To tolerate something, One must assume a
position of dominance. Contemporary theorists such as Sardar, Franz Fanon, and
Noam Chomsky, instil an awareness of the continued condescending relationship
between the One and the Other in postmodern times. What these theorists draw on
is the fact that ‘we’ cannot completely abolish humanism because it would simply be
another ‘form’ or ‘act’ of negation and opposition. An example of this would be the
mistakes made by second wave feminists in assuming that all women shared a
common feminism, thereby imparting the same universalism that patriarchy is guilty
of by conforming to a binary system of thinking. It is, however, possible to realise
‘our’ position within this imprisoning narrative structure. As Derrida (1997:158)
proclaims, “there is nothing outside of the text”. Any attempt to escape the system
would merely be an act of negation or subversion using the same language that
holds the system in place. Much like a virus, all we can do is attack the system from

19
the inside, and suspend any belief in pure exteriority.17 In this way, man is a virus
born from a virulent historicism and a self-destructive pathos.

Postmodern investigation into concepts such as man and humanism can be equated
with virulent behaviour. Viruses eat away at the very structure that created them from
the inside. By blindly destroying its host the virus kills itself. As a disease, humanism
expresses mankind’s unrelenting and unconscious “will to power” (Nietzsche:1968)
and the desire to progress toward ultimate abstraction, fuelled by a need to know the
truth. Once this ‘human virus’ has ravished the body and exposed the truth for what it
is – assumption, abstraction, myth – the suicide of man becomes a certainty, marking
a shift from the human condition to posthuman condition. Conventional
understandings of terms such as ‘our’, ‘we’, ‘us’, and, perhaps most importantly, ‘I’,
become irreversibly altered. This can be related to Derrida’s notion of the
“Pharmakon” (2004:98), meaning the cure is the poison. During postmodernism there
is an awareness of the splicing of the space18 between One and Other, thereby
making us all too familiar with the proximities of individuals in a homogenised and
spectacular society. Any claims to reinterpretation are thwarted by man’s relation to
his objectification, his essence as a text. This context reads like a script based on
notions of Prophylaxis and Virulence,19 Good and Evil, One and Other, the
investigation of which brings posthumanism into the lottery of postmodern pastiche
and schizophrenia.20

2.2) Humanism and the ‘great family of man’

The suicidal western hunger for ultimate perfection, abstract universalism, or ‘truth’,
is the leitmotif that demolishes all difference in the world. This sterility is the pinnacle
of all modernist achievements. The Pop artist Andy Warhol (Figure 2, below) helped
instigate an awareness of this modernist death-drive. Warhol’s work depicts a media
orientated world bent on representation, consumerism, and capitalism. His methods

17
This is where Derrida and Foucault differ in opinion. Derrida does not believe in any form of being outside the text,
whereas Foucault has a resolute faith in the possible exteriority of things.
18
I refer to splicing of space as a precursor to the concept of hyphen and splice which will be introduced in chapter 3.
Basically the hyphen signifies dualism, and the paradigm of humanism, and the splice calls for a leveling of this
opposition-based structure.
19
Prophylaxis and Virulence are terms taken from an essay by Jean Baudrillard of the same title. In this essay
Baudrillard puts forth the notion that dualisms, like Good and Evil, can be equated with the relationship between
Prophylaxis and Virulence, which feed off of each other in order to exist. Baudrillard argues that in a postmodern
context this relationship has reached such a level of transparency that the distinction between the two is no longer
clear.
20
Pastiche and Schizophrenia are terms that Fredrick Jameson uses to describe postmodernism, which can be
related to Baudrillard’s notions above, not only with their connection to medical terminology, but also to the ambiguity
towards terms and texts that such notions bring forward or describe.

20
often amplify the idea of representation by accentuating media processes thereby
commenting on the humanist will to power that has developed into the artifice of
modern politics and moralism. Thus Warhol’s art marks a major development in the
growth of postmodern thought.

Figure 2 (above): Andy Warhol, Cow wallpaper, 1966, Silkscreen (Collings:2000).

Roland Barthes (2000:100) refers to this postmodern saturation point in an essay

titled The great family of man. In this essay Barthes establishes a key distinction
between humanism and the human condition. Barthes’ position is an attempt to
recognise the Other without having to rely on western stereotypes and assumptions,
thus facilitating an awareness of western dualistic structures.21 This stance opens up
humanistic systems of incorporation and inscription to scrutiny, making apparent the
relations of power that institutionalise western stereotypes and myths and disguise
them as a priori givens or ‘truths’. As Barthes (2000:100) states: “We are at the
outset directed to this ambiguous myth of the human ‘community’, which serves as
an alibi to a large part of our humanism”. The human condition or ‘mankind’ can be
viewed as the various social and cultural clothes that have been taken by the One
and given to the Other. This is not to say that difference is not acknowledged within

21
The human gaze is made apparent here initially to introduce issues of voyeurism and imperialism, and processes
of assimilation or appropriation. As is the case with feminism and the second wave concept of the male gaze, the
exploitation of females and the degradation of different ethnic and cultural geographies are central to the concept of
the human gaze.

21
humanism, but in many cases22 it is certainly not respected; most of the time the
Other is tolerated but not allowed to speak.

It is the ambiguity of this twofold path – human tolerance and western indifference –
that gives rise to serious contradictions within humanism, especially pertaining to
issues of exclusion from or inclusion into the space signified by the quotations above
the term ‘human’. In this paradoxical space there are often rash statements made by
the self proclaimed author(ity) of the west about diversity, which are usually followed
by contradictory claims for unity and universalism. It is this stance that forms the
homogenous geography of the One, the west, ‘man’, and the hegemonic ‘I’. As
Barthes (2000:100) states:

…First the difference between human morphologies is asserted, exoticism is

insistently stressed, the infinite variations of the species, the diversity of skins, skulls,
and customs are made manifest, the image of Babel is complacently projected over
that of the world. Then from this pluralism, a type of unity is magically produced: man
is born, works, laughs and dies everywhere in the same way; and if there remains in
these actions some ethnic peculiarity, at least one hints that there is underlying each
one an identical ‘nature’, that their diversity is only formal and does not belie the
existence of a common mould.

Figure 3 (above): Andy Warhol. Marilyn diptych. 1962. Silkscreen (Collings:2000).

22
One example of this disrespect towards the Other would be the U.S.A’s recent actions in the Middle East.

22
There is little consideration for difference in this processed and simulated ‘man-made
humanity’. Warhol (Figure 3, above) presents this mould in the form of a facsimile in
his serialised art, turning media icons, such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, into
recurring, simulated glitches. Warhol’s images depict the obsessive and neurotic
sentimentality of the west, with its grandiose disguises that hide voyeurism of the
One. Warhol makes a statement about a humanizing process that has exhausted the
resources that it needs in order to survive: Other spaces and bodies.

This chapter is an attempt to unravel the misleading and mythical elements of

humanism, which are irremovably inscribed into the pathways of the western mind
and incorporated into the body of the Other, historically and theoretically, to create
what is called human spirit, human nature, or human essence. All these aspects can
be said to have a hand in the construction and structure of ‘man’ and what ‘he’
dictates as the human condition. These axioms so characteristic of humanism can
thus be revealed as problematic and contradictory in structure – genealogically23 and
archeologically24 – precisely because they are assumed and therefore need to be
assessed. It must be stated that such conclusions about humanism are in many ways
extremely narrow and generalised, but a full evaluation of humanism would exceed
the limits of this text and would most likely be impossible. Making a study of
humanism and its related concepts is extremely broad and quite daunting which is
why the approach taken in this chapter will touch on, and utilise, the specific
theoretical manifestations and narratives that can be said to have given birth to
postmodernism, namely: Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism, and deconstruction.
These narratives will, in turn, aid in finding the inherent contradictions within
humanism, and assist in unveiling how the seeds of posthumanism have, and are,
themselves being manifested.

It is ironic that narratives such as Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism, and

deconstruction can find common ground with their respective investigations into
humanism, under the banner of posthumanism, because they all claim to reinterpret
the basic premise of their inscription into history. All these narratives tend to subvert
the institutions that created them, becoming institutionalised themselves in the
process. By acknowledging this paradox ‘our’ perception of humanism becomes
compromised. In the act of trying to escape ‘our’ humanism we become more

23
Nietzsche used the term ‘Genealogy’ to designate a mode of analysis that separates his approach from that of the
traditional historians and their moralism. Genealogy is a method used by Nietzsche to critique ‘morality’ and ‘history’.
24
Archaeology is a tool that Foucault used early in his career to analyze the formulation of statements. He later
moved to the use of Genealogy; however, the two concepts are not dissimilar.

23
entangled in it; through negation ‘we’ only amplify the situation25 and empower the
hierarchy of dualisms that humanism dictates. An example of such a situation would
be the error made by second-wave feminists during the 1960s in assuming that all
women’s lived lives are universal to that of the ‘suffering’, bourgeois, middle-class
wife. However, what of the starving and desolate mother in Somalia, or the
disciplined and seemingly impeded Muslim woman in Afghanistan? Is it the right of
the west to say that these women’s lives are incorrect and that they should all have
the life of the American middle-class wife? It is important to note, once again, that
this paper is specific to a western perspective, where humanism is a custom that has
developed into what can only be described as a kind of ‘quasi-religion’ assumed to
be universal to all geographies, times and spaces, yet possesses a system of
categorisation and exclusion that creates the Other, which, until recently, included
women, homosexuals, and people of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds. Thus
the question has been formulated: how can a meta-narrative such as humanism
remain coherent if it is based on a contradictory system of codes? The current
worldview of humanism has gained its distinction historically, gradually becoming
convention. This convention can also be understood in terms of the development of
documents into monuments,26 what Derrida (Royle, 2003:62) has referred to as
“logocentrism”, where time and space, reality and simulation, eventually morph into a
singularity of homogenization and globalization.

The ambivalence of humanist inclusiveness and exclusiveness, evident with its belief
in universality, hierarchy, and dualism, is a recurring theme in the history of the west.
This is a tautology that prompts humanism to draw imaginary lines that have
facilitated the dominance of western existence and the eradication of the Other. But
there is no ‘man’ without ‘other-than-man’. What humanism often fails to admit is that
other traditions and histories which run counter to it are pivotal links in it own survival.
Such concepts as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are merely lines than have been drawn by man. It
is the oppositional context of humanism that structures One and Other. Following
Derrida (), there is no escape from context. Without this context no mention could not
be made of the ‘human’, because humanism fashions the space for the ‘human’ to be
thought. As Felipe Fernảndez-Armesto (2004:89) states: “Inclusiveness has not been
scientifically discovered – it has been painfully imposed. We need an inclusive self-

25
Any situation where quotations are needed, or where a ‘post’ or ‘ism’ is utilized, can be said to be connected to
humanism in some way or other, even if such situations claim to be ‘anti-human’, so to speak, simply because it
denotes that a specific context is being stressed.
26
Documentation can be related to narrative, and monuments can be connected to discourse and institutionalization,
all of which aid in the construction of history. Also, it can be likened to the transformation of myth into truth.

24
perception in order to empower us for peace in multi-cultural societies and a multi-
civilizational world”.

Humanism is an ideology structured by binary oppositions, a mythological system

that is both an effect and an affect of language, discourse, history, power relations
and institutions. ‘Man’ exists inside this age old contradictory tradition, fuelled by a
desire for abstract exteriority of absolute truth. Foucault (2002a) refers to this
tradition when he speaks of The Order of Things, which can be related to Nietzsche’s
will to power; both ideas relate to a chronological space where serious contradictions
come-into-being, as it were. It can also be said that humanism has been ‘given’ its
authority to dictate the order of things through the will to power of man – a seductive
and deceptive scheme at best. It is also peculiar that terms such as seductive and
deceptive, words used here to describe humanism, are traditionally used to describe
the Other.

One must also realize that making such statements about humanism is in itself not
without paradox, because one is using a process of opposition to oppose a system of
opposition. As Fred Alan Wolf (Bukatman, 1993:174) states: “The task of history is
doomed in the absence of a model that can avoid paradox, and paradoxically, it is
the desire for order and explanation that brings paradox into existence in the first
place”.

2.3) Inherent contradictions within humanism

The inability of humanism to cope with contemporary issues such as globalisation,

due to the speed up of technology and faster communication networks, has exposed
it as an ideological institution that has governed ‘our’ enlistment into the human. That
is to say, traditionally and historically, the west has dictated who qualifies as human,
normal, acceptable, etc. When the hierarchical selection criteria underlying
enlistment into the human are exposed, certain irregularities begin to emerge,
gradually unravelling the inherent contradictions within humanism as a totalitarian
discourse. This section will place emphasis on such irregularities within the west,
specifically focusing on certain key contradictions. Each inherent contradiction will
take the form of a subsection and will be interrogated individually. The concept of
humanism will thus be unpacked into five interrelated subsections in an attempt to

25
uproot the paradoxical western convention of a common human mould.27 The focus
of each subsection will be structured as follows: 1) Dualism, specifically in relation to
the construction of imaginary borders, the setting up of limitations and boundaries,
and the distancing of extremities, thereby marginalising the Other; 2) History is
something that will come to be seen as a nightmare in relation to dualism; a
cancerous construct of ‘freedom’ and ‘virtue’, the viral stem of human sentimentality,
moralism, and convention; 3) Virtue will be revealed as vice in accordance with
human actions throughout history in the name of western moralism; 4) Anatomy or
body, likened to skin, clothes, and masks, are metaphors for the embodiment of
western convention in the form of the human, where vanity and bigotry incarnate the
simultaneous arbitration and repudiation of the Other; 5) Language is revealed as the
nurturing agent to this ‘human anatomy’; the mother cell to the human virus,
appropriating and assimilating whilst still maintaining a structure dependant on
difference and opposition.

Together, these five subsections can be understood as the primary contradictions

within humanism. Postmodern narratives, such as deconstruction, neo-Marxism, and
feminism, often attest to these contradictions by acknowledging their role in
humanism. The various texts that comprise this paper are, in their ‘anti-humanism’,28
part of humanism. Thus humanism can be described as SELF contradictory. That is
to say that postmodernism is not free of humanism; postmodernism merely realises
its position within humanism. Sardar (1998:13-14) has gone as far as to say that
postmodernism increases the imperial reach of modernism by trying to include the
Other into its context with its belief in pluralism: “While postmodernism is a legitimate
protest against the excesses of suffocating modernity, instrumental rationality and
authoritarian traditionalism, it has itself become a universal ideology that kills
everything that gives meaning and depth to the lives of non-western individuals and
society”. Following Sardar, despite all its ‘civilising’ or ‘humanising’ characteristics, it
is postmodern scepticism towards modernism that makes it important, because
postmodernism acknowledges that ‘man’ is sick and dying from ‘his’ quest for ‘truth’;
‘he’ is infected by humanism. As Sardar (1998:15) concludes: “Seen from this
perspective, postmodernism emerges as a worldview conjured from a pathological
necessity of the west to define reality and truth as its reality and truth”.

27
It can be said that this mould includes our values, stereotypes, ‘truths’ and givens.
28
Anti-humanism opposes humanism, and humanism has already been established as a binary, hierarchical system.
Thus, anti-humanism uses the same system of opposition that humanism does, despite its negation of humanism.

26
2.3.1) Dualism

There are many dualisms that make up ‘our’ ‘body’,29 ‘our’ language, and ‘our’ reality,
or whatever can be referred to as ‘us’, however only five key dualisms will be
discussed here in order to establish humanism as a text that gives meaning and
structure to things. These dualisms include: 1) The classic Cartesian (1997) Mind vs.
Body dialectic 2) The Manichean relationship between Good and Evil that Nietzsche
interrogated in The Birth of Tragedy (1999) and Beyond Good and Evil (2003). 3) The
Inside/Outside polemic interrogated by structuralists and post-structuralists alike,
following Derrida (2001), Barthes (1977), and Foucault (1998). 4) The post-colonial
issue with One and Other evident in the work of Sardar (1998), Said (2003), and
Fanon (2000). 5) And lastly, and probably most importantly, the distinction between
True and False, also related here to Presence and Absence, which can be said to
mediate all of the previous dualisms.

The western understanding of ‘man’ is intimately connected to dualism, because it

forms the basis for all ‘our’ claims to authority, autonomy, and dominance. Such
claims are founded through the construction of binary oppositions and the values
which are allocated to the two terms that comprise such a pairing. Binaries are
allocated hierarchies, creating concepts such as the One (symbolising ‘truth’, ‘good’,
or ‘authentic’ and ‘presence’) and the Other (denoting ‘falsity’, ‘evil’, ‘imitation’ and
‘absence’). In this way, ‘truth’, the Platonic supreme idea of good, becomes
apparent,30 specifically when one particular term out of a binary pair is privileged at
the expense of the other. This can be seen as a method of censorship that connects
‘positive’ or ‘negative’ values to a priori western absolutes. It is the very apparentness
of ‘truth’ that makes ‘us’ assume that the ‘good’ and authentic relates to absolute and
foundational values or codes, whilst what is assumed ‘false’, ‘evil’, and ‘imitation’
corrupts these ‘original’ ideals. Thus there is a reflexive connection between dualism
and the valuation of ‘truth’, which creates the illusion of binary oppositions. Western
moralism depends on such self-chosen hierarchical pairs. As abstract evaluations,

29
The word ‘body’ has many meanings here, it obviously refers to the physical or biological body, but it can also be
used as an analogy for structure and context, specifically with regards to issues pertaining to borders and limitations,
boundaries and extremities. ‘Body’ will also come to be closely related to terms like skin, clothes, masks, and
anatomy. This understanding of ‘body’ can be correlated with the ideas of Burroughs, Baudrillard, and McLuhan, who
all use biological metaphors in their work. ‘Body’ can also be seen as a play on Descartes classic mind/body dualism.
In this way, ‘body’ describes the epistemological and ontological, physical and metaphysical, meanings that can be
applied to the current situation in western society, with plastic surgery and cyborg politics standing side by side in a
cultural milieu that will come to be known as posthumanism.
30
This notion can be connected to Derrida’s views on the “trace”; an apparition or ghost-like occurrence connected to
his notion of the “supplement”.

27
‘human’ values precede the real, they Platonic, man made truths, which no tactile the
natural world. As Nietzsche (1968:302) explains:

The properties of a thing are effects on other “things”: if one removes other “things”,
then a thing has no properties, i.e., there is no thing without other things, i.e., there is
no “thing-in-itself”…

Things that have a constitution in themselves – a dogmatic idea with which one must
break absolutely.

Contradictions within humanism develop when the difference between ‘truth’ and
‘falsehood’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’, are revealed as an effect of a worldview that does not
acknowledge that its ‘truth’ is merely one amongst many others. Thus ‘truth’ can be
described as an empiricism that bases ‘our’ existence on fictive models that are
cognitively labelled by ‘man’. ‘Truth’ becomes the absolute standard, and the goal
that shapes ‘our’ values; it is an ideal that moves us towards an abstract space that is
assumed above and beyond31 life, reality, existence, the world.

In this way the dualisms and the contradictions within humanism compliment each
other. Paradox develops from this situation because inclusiveness and exclusivity,
traditionally opposing concepts, can be seen as key characteristics of humanism.
Western history is dualistic in its construction of humanity in the sense that it creates
polarities such as heroes and villains, virtues and sins – the age-old Manichean ideal
of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ where ‘good’ always wins. The space between such supposedly
opposing terms can be said to create boundaries or limits; extremities that are almost
impossible to reach, and even when such limits are breached they are branded as
being taboo.

In this way, all human space can be conceived of as territory, property that must be
acquired, and its resources accumulated. This can be explained as a merger of
proximity and promiscuity that mercilessly does away with all cultural and
geographical diversity, thereby verifying that the ideology of the west is a form of
terrorism incurred upon Other territories. The west is a territory from which humanism
can be said to have originated; it is the foundation of ‘man’. There is discrepancy in
the idea that the west has recognized itself as different from other geographies and

31
There are issues with this term ‘beyond’ because it suggests exactly that thing for which ‘we’ strive, which ‘we’
have fought wars, killed for, and died for throughout the centuries, but ‘we’ do not quite know what it is.

28
cultures, and given itself authority over various Other territories. In its assumed
authority, the west claims access for all of these, now almost vestigial, spaces,
cultures, and disputed territories, but it is also selective in deciding who else is
allowed into the hallowed space of humanity. Otherness is kept in its place, allocated
a name, and marginalized by the western dogma of humanism; the self-appointed
position of the One who ‘brands’ the Other. However, this relationship loses its power
when it no longer has control over the representation of the Other. The ‘totality’ of
humanism and its capacity for ‘universalism’ can only find coherence at that border
where dualism is born, where the contradiction is ‘law’, and where the waning of
humanism, the end of history, and the death of ‘man’ – the author/god – is most
likely to occur.

Dualism is thus pivotal to ‘human’ systems of valuation, a process that can be

regarded as an act of naming or branding by the dominant discourse. The Other is
robbed of difference and identity through such processes of naming. The Other is a
representation of the west, brought about by an innate desire to assimilate and
incorporate anything traditionally thought of as ‘alien’, ‘exotic’, ‘primitive’, or
barbarous. Resultantly, only representation remains and nothing authentic exists.
The realisation of this ‘sameness’, caused by the commoditisation and consumption
of the Other, instils an awareness of the limitations of humanism, also acknowledging
the flaws generated by a system meant to find ‘authenticity’ and ‘truth’. Instead of
finding truth and enlightening humanity, humanism actually drains the life-blood from
humanity by accumulating all difference to the point where ‘death’32 is immanent.
Thus branding in relation to dualism helped build the west, but human relations have
changed and naming has become poisonous. As Foucault (Stone in Halberstam,
1995:23) states, “the name is the end of discourse”. History bears witness to this
effect of western dualistic thinking, as Rosiland Coward (Badmington, 2000:17)
states:

The history of this process of accumulation is none other than the specific history of
property relations. In some cases, like our own, it has led to a capitalist mode of
production… Now the point of this demonstration is not that aggression, dominance
and power in our society do not occur as in nature, they occur in a society based on
divisions…

32
Thus a parallel can once again be made to the virus or cancer, and the analogy of the ‘body’ remains.

29
The west seems to exist on the frontline, where borders are disputed and territories
gained or lost. The territory of the west has grown so vast that it encompasses the
globe. A contradictory situation develops from this concept of the global village
because everything is becoming westernised and the same; divisions have to be
invented so that borders can be maintained in order to ‘insulate’ humanist institutions
and power structures. This is why dualism can be seen as an inherent contradiction
within humanism, because it is founded on the allocation of value to given absolute
truths,33 such as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Such abstract notions have developed into a
hierarchy of brands that commodify things into the One or the Other. Thus the victor
of a great battle in history would most likely be seen as ‘good’ and would naturally
seem to be of benefit to ‘mankind’.34 Moreover, the victor is the One who writes the
history books, and ‘he’ is the One who assumes dominance, dictates and creates
reality. ‘Man’ is thus the One who destroys and constructs, structuring an ironic one-
sided documentation that, over time, has been transformed into a monument for all
‘humanity’. It is this contradictory nature of humanism that confers on myth the status
of ‘truth’. Here the vanquished have no say towards their inclusion into the ‘great
family of man, ‘they’ have no choice but to don the masks handed down to them by
the west.

It is this humanist point of view that misconstrues the ‘noble’ African as a ‘primitive
savage’ ‘barbarian’, an eccentric as ‘mad’, women as ‘inferior’, or anything different to
humanistic ‘norms’ as ‘Other’. This cultural imperialism can be seen as a kind of
fetishism on the part of ‘man’, the author/god, who practices and enforces a violent
indifference towards anything other-than ‘man’. The passivity of this “Other” towards
its forced certification into the human is also alarming. ‘Indifference’ seems to be key
in relation to dualism because both terms are related to the entry of the Other into the
One. The Other is pigeonholed, taxonomically mapped, plotted, processed and
graphed-out like a blinking sign on a computer screen.35

Given the current understanding of humanism, the west is thus a product of

bricolage. Derrida (Bukatman, 1993:160) describes bricolage as “the necessity of
borrowing ones concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or
ruined”. The term ‘bricolage’ can thus be related to western processes of mapping,
plotting, naming, and branding.

33
Givens or absolutes can be related as ‘truths’ that are assumed but are seen as natural or innate.
34
Many examples of this can be found in ‘our’ myths, such as Homer’s Iliad, and in religious acts like the Crusades.
35
In this way, the quotations also express the variety of cultural differences that are often obscured by ‘our’ western
masks; a kind of erasure that only succeeds in amplifying the magnitude of the ‘object’ it wishes to erase.

30
The ubiquitous, exclusive and inclusive, dualistic character of ‘man’, and the
presumptuous nature of his ‘spirit’, are often seen as a ‘gift’ ‘given’ to ‘us’ by god,
Plato, or any one of the Ancient Greek philosophers. This ‘gift’ has been developed
over the centuries to its rational and logical finality by Bacon, Descartes, Kant, and
Hegel, to the point that virtues, such as tolerance, dignity, and liberty, so dear to the
west, prove not to have any significant value at all. The meanings instilled by such
values are ‘given’; values are allocated to dualism to form a hierarchy, and the
simultaneous benefactor and beneficiary of this hierarchy is ‘man’. God has no part
to play in this, other that the fact that he is an idea that gives impetus to the need for
hierarchical and authoritative structures in western society. These ‘givens’ can be
said to order the exclusion, generalisation, and patronising attitude towards
geographical and conceptual spaces other than the west. Nonetheless, the space of
humanity is a self reflexive space, and this is evident in ‘our’ grim history.

2.3.2) History

Man – that “negative being who is solely to the extent that he abolishes being” – is
one with time Man’s appropriation of his own nature is at the same time the
apprehension of the unfolding of the universe. “History itself”, says Marx, “is a real
part of natural history, and of nature’s becoming man”. Conversely, the “natural
history” in question exists effectively only through the process of a human history,
through the development of the only agency capable of discovering this historical
whole; one is reminded of the modern telescope, whose range enables it to track the
retreat of nebulae in time toward the edge of the universe. History has always
existed, but not always in its historical form. The temporalization of man, as effected
through the mediation of society, is equivalent to the humanization of time. The
unconscious movement of time becomes manifest and true in historical
consciousness (Debord, 2004:92).

History reproducing itself becomes farce. Farce reproducing itself becomes history
(Baudrillard, 2002:V).

History has been treated by writers and theorists such as Burroughs, Baudrillard
(2002), Debord (2004), and Joyce (2000) as if it were pathological or nightmarish.
For these authors, western history is merely a dream about itself, a narcissistic prison
house of axiomatic illusions that have tricked man into creating the idea of a
universal human nature. Initially this dream may seem familiar and welcoming.

31
However, as the myth of Narcissus portrays, this dream can be construed as an
inescapable farce, where ‘man’ can only dream about himself. This analogy can be
extended, following Foucault (2002) and Burroughs (1993), to the point that ‘man’
can be understood as having invaded and infected humanity with ideological notions
such as ‘universalism’ and ‘human spirit’, which have been spurred on by traditional
human characteristics such as rationalism and reason. Donna Haraway (2000) and
Baudrillard (1989) connect these ideological notions to history and dualism by
referring to the ‘integrated’ or ‘closed’ circuit’.36 History is closely linked to ‘man’
because history can be identified as the producer of ‘man’, ‘he’ looks back on history
for ‘his’ ‘spirit’ or ‘essence’, and without this ‘spirit’ history cannot be made. This
symbiotic relationship is a topic that can be connected to Hegel’s ideas on spirit.
History and ‘human spirit’ are dependent on one another in that human spirit is not
static; it changes over time, in turn creating history. And, if a nightmare can be
described as a confused dream, or at least related to a confused dream, then the
analogy can now be grounded, as Schopenhauer (Gray, 2003:44) writes: “What
history relates is in fact only the long, heavy and confused dream of mankind”.
Furthermore, if history is a confused dream of mankind, then, as with the ‘human’,
history can be seen as a mythological process.

If history is a mythological process, rather than being the harbinger of truth, then it
means that all ‘human’ documents throughout time are monuments to myth, or rather
a ‘truth’ constructed from a milieu of myths. As Levi-Strauss (Derrida, 2001:363)
describes in relation to his own writing:

As myths themselves are based on the secondary codes (the primary codes being
those that provide the substance of language), the present work is put forward as a
tentative draft of tertiary code, which is intended to ensure the reciprocal
translatability of several myths. This is why it could not be wrong to consider this
book itself a myth: it is as it were a myth of mythology.

Lévi-Strauss (2003:9) points out a similar pathology by connecting myth and truth to
history when he states:

…the simple opposition between mythology and history which we are accustomed to
make – is not at all a clear-cut one, and that there is an intermediary level… The

36
This relates to a group of idioms, analogies, and metaphors used in contemporary information technologies such
as computer technologies and the internet, and what is known today as the “Global Village”, which will become very
important in chapter 3.

32
 open character of history is secured by the innumerable ways according to which
mythical cells, or explanatory cells which were originally mythical, can be arranged
and rearranged….When we try to do scientific history, do we really do something
scientific, or do we too remain astride of our own mythology in what we are trying to
make as pure history?

This relation of history, myth, and pathology is in no way new; William Burroughs
often equates myth with a lack of freedom in his own attempts to represent the
dualism between power and freedom, acknowledging that representation and myth
run on parallel lines.37 As Burroughs (Bukatman, 1993:77) writes: “I may add that
none of the characters in my mythology are free. If they were free they would not still
be in a mythological system; that is, in the cycle of conditioned action”. In this way,
history can be seen as the cycle, and ‘man’, including all ‘his’ extensions and
incorporations, can be viewed as the conditioned action. One can take Burroughs’
statement even further to mean that the ‘body’ of the text and its contents are not free
due to its connection to the mythological system of history and its context in
language.

One can now begin to understand how statements regarding the ‘new’, or claims to
reinterpretation, proclamations of paradigm shifts, or teleological assertions of
successive, progressive, linear movements, are all vain declarations of a feeble
‘human spirit’ and a rationalism that can be said to construct history. The Hegelian
notion of ‘spirit’ is just as much an act of imperialism as colonialism. ‘Human nature’
can be understood as a kind of totalitarianism, which is parallel to the progressive
cancer of history which entraps us, causes ‘our’ narcissism, and forms a prerequisite
for the inverted commas that frame ‘us’. Thus, claiming that we are currently
undergoing a paradigm shift from the ‘human’ to the ‘posthuman’ can essentially be
seen as a typically humanistic thing to do.

So too, traditional western institutions such as Christianity, communism, democracy,

capitalism, and the like should be regarded with scepticism. For example, Christianity
can be regarded as an institution that has a major role to play in western history,
especially in relation to the institutionalisation of the humanism. More than any other
religion, Christianity seems to have had the greatest effect on western and
westernised cultures. This could be the reason why Christianity needs to make sense
of history more than any other religion, because it needs to ground itself in fact, in

37
Representation has also been paralleled with identity, branding, naming, consumerism and commodification.

33
‘givens’ and ‘truths’, perhaps to hide the fact that it is an institution. With this
realisation Christianity is exposed as mythical and as having abstract origins. In this
way, it can be said that all that institutions do is to mask and obscure myths in order
to mirror them as truths.

These are certainly not new concerns; they have been explored by many thinkers
throughout history, including Nietzsche and Marx. Successive theorists such as
Barthes (1977) have researched this topic to the point that god has become a fragile
concoction of ‘man’ – the author/god. That is to say that history signifies the
manufacture of god. The product that develops from this kind of manufacture is the
supreme and absolute ideal, the ultimate goal, the platonic divine archetype of the
‘good’. God is a commodity, just like the Other, produced and consumed by ‘man’.
History is a gradual search for the abstract. Without this history as a monumental
process of documentation to disguise our typically western systems of incorporation
and inscription, it would not be possible for truth to exist, and man would have no will
to power. This will to power does not make compromises for alternate or conflicting
ideologies; there is no space for different ‘truths’. For the west there has only been
conquest and eradication, or appropriation and assimilation, progress and death.

Damien Hirst works with concepts that deal with the confusion of history and its
progression towards nothingness. In Dead ends (Figure 4, below), Hirst depicts a
number of used cigarette stubs neatly placed in a minimalist manner on a clinically
clean shelf. In this work Hirst not only finds analogies between history and cancer,
consumerism and epidemics, and media and pathology, but he goes further to say
(1997:100) that “god is cancer”. Hirst finds a connection between contradiction and
addiction, stating metaphorically that we are willingly killing ourselves through our
desire for power, capital, territory, and the like. In Dead ends Hirst symbolises these
needs in the form of aged and useless, cancer inducing, consumables. As Hirst
(1997:111) states: “To smoke is somehow to admit how the world really is”38.

38
It is ironic that a cigarette package tells you blatantly that by smoking you can die, but people still smoke. Thus a
cigarette is an addictive capitalist product analogous to the will to power, history, and the globalization.

34
 Figure 4 (above): Damien Hirst, Dead ends, 1993, used cigarettes (Violette:1997).

Religion is a recurring motif in the development of history as a contradictory process.

Religion can be understood as an abstract system of codes that constitute the
various values, myths, archetypes and stereotypes, that have been bred into ‘us’
over a certain expanse of time, thereby fuelling the mimetic desire for truth that
history represents. Thus the development of documents into monuments is the
culmination of achieved truths. Terms such as manufacture, consumerism,
construction, and production, can be translated as forms of documentation, which
later develop into symbols of establishment, commodification, indoctrination,
institutionalisation, inscription and incorporation – monuments to the status quo. In
this way, the ‘victors’ (One) documentation (history) becomes a monument (lost
memory) of the vanquished. As Nietzsche (1968:346) states: “Appropriation and
assimilation are above all a desire to overwhelm, a forming, shaping, and reshaping,
until at length that which has been overwhelmed has entirely gone over to the power
domain of the aggressor and has increased the same”.

Thus contradiction can be found in the idea that monuments do not exist for
remembrance, they are constructed because something has been forgotten or lost.
Humanism shuns ‘pagan’ ideas, but it is also ironic that humanism is an
amalgamation of collected myths and incorporated Others; the monuments of the
west testify to this. This is something reiterated by Gray (2003:26) when he states:

35
“In any case, only someone miraculously innocent of history could believe that
competition among ideas could result in the triumph of truth. Certainly ideas compete
with one another, but the winners are normally those with power and human folly on
their side”.

However, just because history is analogous to a confused dream, or seen as

mythical, does not mean that the past and past events did not happen or are not real,
it simply means that these happenings consist of nightmarish actions that have their
basis in abstract concepts that have been given form by the west and man’s desire
for truth and self-validation. As Felipe Fernảndez-Armesto (2004:170) states:

That humans are uniquely rational, intellectual, spiritual, self-aware, creative,

conscientious, moral, or godlike seems to be a myth – an article of faith to which we
cling in defiance of the evidence. But we need myths to make our irresoluble
dilemmas bearable. And our claims for our nature are more: not mere myths but also
aspirations, still waiting to become true.

‘Man’ wants to be remembered, and this is evident in human representation as far

back as the cave art of ‘primitive’ Palaeolithic and Neolithic peoples,39 or the art of
the Ancient Greeks, and even the icons of the Byzantine. Such representations prove
the importance of art throughout history as a form of documentation, and how such
documents have become monuments to ‘our’ humanism. It is ironic that most of
these monuments remain cryptic to us and this is precisely because the original
reason for their documentation has been lost, their meanings forgotten. This also
pertains to the history of human communication; as language evolved so did ‘man’s’
social structure and culture, where stories are passed on, ‘truths’ preserved.
Forgetting helps transform documents into monuments, allowing myths to be
translated into truth. Dualism and history convene thanks greatly to the loss of our
mythical origins. Truth is maintained due to forgetting, As Nietzsche (1999:144)
states:

If truth alone had been decisive in the genesis of language, if the viewpoint of
certainty had been decisive in creating designations, how could we possibly be
permitted to say, ‘The stone is hard’, as if ‘hard’ were something known to us in

39
This is a generalized statement, because recent studies have linked these images to shamanistic rituals. However,
this is all still speculation and nobody really knows what these images actually signify, there is no solid tradition or
history for anthropologists to research and extract meaning from. The true purpose of the images have long since
been lost or forgotten, and in this way these documents have become monuments. The original meanings for these
‘artworks’, seen as art to ‘us’ today’ but might not have been seen as such by their creators, are long gone. ‘Our’
‘spirit’ has changed since then.

36
 some other way, and not merely as an entirely subjective stimulus?... How arbitrarily
these borders are drawn, how one-sided the preference for this or that property of a
thing!

Thus the nightmare of history, specifically with its connection to institutions like
religion, can be described as a process of moralisation that masks an often violent
and fear-filled image of ‘man’. This can also be viewed as a mask that people have to
wear in order to be accepted as human and be inducted into the ‘great family of
man’. The history of man is inseparable from this dualistic and contradictory system
of valuation and moralisation that can be said to obscure the mythological origins of
human representation, and it is with this point that the issue of virtue comes to light.

2.3.3) Virtue

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified (Shakespeare, 2000:721).

Which qualities does humanism have? What is this ‘humanism’ that speaks of values
that are assumed as ‘given’ and represented as ‘things-in-themselves’? One could
say that humanism is an institution that designates authority unto itself, thereby
allowing itself to dictate values to all things Other. Postmodernism, despite having
knowledge of the self appointed designation of the west, still seems to excuse such
givens, allowing the narrative of humanism to remain coherent.

There are a number of virtues that can be said to constitute humanism and western
moralism. For this reason I will only focus on the western perspective on the
assumed virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is an important virtue to emphasise because
it seems to be a term, or rather euphemism, which is often used by the media and
other power structures to compliment or disguise hostile actions and bigoted beliefs.
Andre Comte-Sponsville (2001:160) connects tolerance to the contradictory nature of
humanism when he states: “…universal tolerance would also be self-contradictory in
practical terms and thus not just morally reprehensible but also politically doomed…

37
Tolerance, therefore, can only apply within certain boundaries, which preserve the
conditions that make it possible”.

When values are allocated to dualisms, hierarchies are formed and contradiction
ensues. The same situation arises when values are ‘given’ to morals and virtues are
born. Virtues such as tolerance can be understood as an excuse that blinds people to
the production and consumption of the Other. Tolerance exemplifies the ambiguous
inclusive and exclusive nature of the west, which has developed into the ‘sameness’,
or ‘pluralism’, of postmodernism, as Sardar (1998:46) states:

The ambivalence of postmodern morality does not allow a value judgment to be

made against barbarity; neither does the moral ambiguity of postmodernism allow
action to be taken against those who engage in barbaric behaviour. The authority of
postmodernism is based on this moral – and hence political ambivalence – this
ability to see all sides, to defer judgement and to refuse agency.

Sardar reveals a fatal flaw within postmodernism, because it is a culture that is

conditioned by contradiction.40 Binary oppositions have no basis without this
paradoxical situation; the One must always be above the Other. The One depends
on the Other to exist. As a human moral, the concept of tolerance follows a similar
paradoxical premise. To tolerate, One must assume superiority over the Other.
Tolerance can be seen as an assumption by the One of dominance over the Other,
which in most cases has resulted in the eradication, assimilation and incorporation of
difference. Scott Bukatman (2002:162) relates to this notion of tolerance with
reference to Roman Jakobson’s (Bukatman, 2002:161) idea’s on ‘the dominant’:
“…the dominant is not the sole characteristic of the text, but it exercises a
determining influence over the rest; even in the case of a self-contradictory text, the
dominant would serve to guarantee some structural integrity”.

In this way, virtues can more accurately be described as vices that are excused as
virtuous, just as myths are excused as truths. Values are not fixed, yet they are
accepted as such despite their abstract attributes and valueless origins. As a
conceptual construction, man evaluates and gives meaning to all things Other,
thereby contributing to an already abstract system of values that over time makes
history from nothingness.

40
This relates to a space where the contradiction is obvious but ignored. This will later be related to Guy Debord’s
concept of the society of the spectacle.

38
 The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated
From Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio
Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities
To destroy Imagination, the Devine Body, by Maryrdoms & Wars (Blake in McLuhan,
1962:314).

Human moralism is a spectacle epitomised by the global village, and the concept of
tolerance certainly proves how deceptive virtues can be in the context of
globalisation. As John Gray (2002:162) states: “The days when the economy was
dominated by agriculture are long gone. Those of industry are nearly over. Economic
life is no longer geared chiefly to production. To what then is it geared? To
distraction”. Terms such as distraction and deception are indicative of tolerance,
which can be said to drive the “endo-colonialism” (Virilio, 2005b:58) of postmodern
times, especially with regard to the ever increasing fast-food culture, and hunger for
instant communication that is evident worldwide41 due to globalisation. Endo-
colonialism is thus a term that can be used to describe how authoritative values
conceal the history of their emergence.

Ordinarily opposing terms such as tolerance and terror transform into similar
concepts, dependant on the inclusive universalism of the west and its exclusive
indifference towards the Other. Whether or not tolerance is perceived as good or bad
results from a person’s position either inside or outside the boundaries set by
humanism. Presently, the United States of America typifies this understanding of
tolerance, as Bill Readings (2000:117) describes quite passionately:

American hatred of difference and fear of the other is so persistent and complex
precisely because Americans believe themselves to be human. Theirs is not a
tolerance of difference, but of identity, of the identity of an abstract human nature. Or
to put it less provocatively, they believe that they can say ‘we’, and that their ‘we’ will
stand for humanity, that it can mean ‘we humans’. … .That ‘we’ has the effect of
never allowing the question ‘Who are we to speak?’ to arise. … .Our community is
based on the suppression of difference and the revelation of a common humanity
that underlies our various cultural and racial ‘clothes’. The achievement of tolerance
will be a consensus, the community of a homogenous ‘we’, in which our association
is grounded on our common humanity. But the question we don’t ask, can’t ask, is

41
This can be related to the Americanization of the globe, with a McDonald’s appearing in every major city street
corner , and the monopoly on global fuel, global warming, over-population, decease; the list goes on.

39
 ‘Who are we to speak?’. We cannot enquire into the ‘we’ that grounds the possibility
of our becoming ‘ourselves’.

Morality is the expression of abstract truths. Morality is a nice story that we tell
ourselves in order to hide our mythical origins and ignore our immoral actions.
Nietzsche (1990:32) translates this as the relation between truth and metaphor,
which can be paralleled to the connection between truth and myth. For Nietzsche,
Plato’s divine archetypes are dogmatic forms developed by Socrates, a man whom
Nietzsche viewed as responsible for the birth of tragedy:42

It seems that, in order to inscribe themselves in the hearts of humanity with eternal
demands, all great things have first to wander the earth as monstrous and fear
inspiring grotesques: dogmatic philosophy, the doctrine of the Vendanta in Asia and
Platonism in Europe for example, was a grotesque of this kind. Let us not be
ungrateful to it, even though it has to be admitted that the worst, most wearisomely
protracted and most dangerous of all errors hitherto has been a dogmatist’s error,
namely Plato’s invention of pure spirit and the good in itself. But now, when that has
been overcome, when Europe breathes again after this nightmare and can enjoy at
any rate a healthier – sleep, we whose task is wakefulness itself have inherited all
the strength which has been cultivated by the struggle against this error. To be sure,
to speak of spirit and the good as Plato did meant standing truth on her head and
denying perspective itself…

Nietzsche’s perspective can be understood as an interrogation of truth, value and the

antithetical beliefs that form the backbone of western constructs. Thus truth does not
exist within a transcendental realm of divine archetypes that is beyond human
identification as Plato believed. Virtues and truths mask the multiplicity of
perspectives in the world. Truth functions by inflicting an ambiguous western
moralism on the Other, gradually erasing the diversity that holds humanity intact.
Modernism is characterised by concepts such as individuality, autonomy, and
identity, but this is all lost when everybody wears the same western mask.

Dualisms such as inside and outside, One and Other, are often evaluated according
to stronger or weaker morals. Nietzsche sees these absolutes as petty hierarchical

42
According to Nietzsche tragedy is a concept that can be understood in two ways. Firstly, the birth of tragedy can be
understood as the invention of humanistic moralism that Nietzsche places with Socrates and ‘dialectics’. Secondly,
Nietzsche describes a time before the birth of tragedy, where people embraced ‘real’ tragedy – everyday hardships
like death, disease etc. – as immanent to existence; life and death, good and evil, are seen as inseparable, where the
Apollonian and the Dionysian form a symbiotic relationship. With the birth of tragedy and Socrates’ dialectics there is
a segregation of these concepts, dualism develops and ‘man’ is born.

40
formations made for the purpose of self-assertion and self-validation. The most
obvious result of this self-assertion is God, as Nietzsche (1990:148) states:

A God who demands – in place of a God who helps, who devises means, who is
fundamentally a word for every happy inspiration of courage and self-reliance….
Morality is no longer the expression of the conditions under which a nation lives and
grows, no longer a nation’s deepest instinct of life, but become abstract, become the
antithesis of life – morality as a fundamental degradation of the imagination, as an
‘evil eye’ for all things…

Whilst virtues may appear to be unconditional, they are ultimately the consequence
of man’s imprudence. This nonsensical ethical foundation establishes our
acceptance and entrance into the human norm. Terms such as masking and
branding are metaphors that describe our entrance into the ‘great family of man’. As
Gray (2003:58) states: “Being a person is not the essence of humanity, only – as the
word’s history suggests – one of its masks. Persons are only humans who have
donned the mask that has been handed down in Europe over the past few
generations, and taken it for their face”. These masks are analogies to concepts such
as ‘citizen’, bureaucracy’, and ‘nation’, which are words that adhere to the
superficiality of our western moral anatomy. It is not enough to merely wear a mask;
one must abide by the codes that give value to that mask. How we are entered into
this contradictory system of codes is the topic of the next section.

2.3.4) Body

In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin (McLuhan, 1964:52).

The problematic nature of being accepted and labelled as human will be focused on
here. An interrogation of this kind requires the questioning of common concepts such
as, citizenship, identity and representation. In this context, representation is the
mediation of the Other by the One. This kind of media also dictates what type of
bodies is acceptable. Thus, the idea of a universal human identity will be connected
to the appropriation and assimilation of the Other, specifically with regard to western
language, history, and moralism, and the human body politic. Essentially, this section
is an attempt to identify who qualifies as ‘us’, as Donna Haraway states (2000:75):
“… who counts as ‘us’ in my rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a

41
political myth called ‘us’, and what could motivate enlistment in this collectively?” N.
Katherine Hayles reiterates this point (1999:87) when she states:

Inclusiveness has been painfully imposed … the tendency to use the plural to give
voice to the privileged few while presuming to speak for everyone; the masking of
deep structural inequalities by enfranchising some while others remain excluded;
and the complicity of the speaker in capitalist imperialism, a complicity that his
rhetorical practices are designed to veil or obscure.

Humanism stipulates that the Other has to sacrifice its identity in order to be
represented as human. That is to say, to gain access to the global village a person
has to become part of a certain moral code – to be a ‘law’ biding citizen. In order to
be a citizen a person usually needs to have the correct political views, religious
convictions, ethnic and cultural background, economic status and social standing.
Thus to be granted access to the human norm a person must possess the correct
passwords, which is guaranteed by the mask that the subaltern person wears. This
can be understood as a typically western kind of fetishism. It is the human mask that
hides and binds ‘us’. This kind of fetishism establishes the illusion of universalism
that fuels our addiction to truth and power. Debord (Bukatman, 1993:37) relates this
to spectacle when he states:

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and
as an instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which
concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is
separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness,
and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalised
separation

The use of terms such as universalism and pluralism are semantic ploys on the part
of the west in order to assimilate the identity of the Other, who has no say in the
matter. Thus the positive evaluation that humanism endows on terms such as
universalism and pluralism can be seen as tantamount to a kind cancer, infection or
virus that appropriates the resources of its host, taking control of the body, eventually
destroying it and killing itself. As Burroughs (1993:111) states: “The end result of
complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus
are its cancer… Bureaucracy is wrong as cancer, a turning away from the human
evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent
spontaneous action, to the complete parasitism of a virus”. In another text Burroughs

42
(1992:73) establishes this notion more subversively: “What does virus do wherever it
can dissolve a hole and find traction? – It starts eating – And makes exact copies of
itself that start eating to make more copies… and so forth to the virus power the fear
hate virus slowly replaces the host with virus copies…”.

Humanism has already been established as a bricolage that has developed from the
problematic dualistic nature of our language and history. From this point of view
bricolage and virulence tend to compliment each other. Often Burroughs refers to
terms such as word or image,43 as a virus (1992:48) or cancer (1993:111), and he
uses this approach as an analogy for history, politics, moralism, and the like. The
human virus (Burroughs, 1993:136) is a pathology that has pastiche and
schizophrenia44 as its symptoms, caused by a manic addiction to the consumption of
difference and a fetish for the production of otherness. However, these resources are
not infinite, globalisation is rife and everything is becoming westernised. Soon there
will be no Other and the virus will run rife and eventually die. Bukatman (1993:76)
relates to this notion by connecting Burroughs’s ‘soft machine’ (1992) to McLuhan’s
global village:

The virus is a powerful metaphor for the power of the media, and Burroughs’s
hyperbolic, and perhaps parodic, Manichaeism does not completely disguise the
accuracy of his analysis. There is some disagreement over the precise biological
status of the virus. Whether the viral form is an actual living proto-cell or simply a
carrier of genetic information, it clearly possesses an exponentially increasing power
to take over and control its host organism. The virus injects its genetic material into
the host cell, seizing control over the reproductive mechanism. The cell now
becomes the producer of new viral material, and so forth. The injection of information
thus leads to control and passive replication: the host cell “believes” that it is
following its own biologically determined imperative; it mistakes the new genetic
material for its own…. The image/virus is posited as invasive and irresistible, a
parasite with only self-replication as its function. It is a soft machine.

Those who use the internet, eat processed food, drive petroleum cars, watch
television, subscribe to magazine tabloids, and the like are all citizens of the global
village. This means that most people are infected by the human virus. Burroughs
(1993:136) succinctly characterises this entropic situation with the pathology of the
virus, when he states: “The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute, and
43
Terms such as word and image can be related to issues of representation and identity. For instance, image is a
description of a specific representation. Furthermore, the term image can be analogous to the concept of a mask.
44
Burroughs (2001: 41) refers to this as the two halves of the human organism.

43
cell by cell. … Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all
symptoms of The Human Virus”.

The abstract image of man is a representation that infects the subaltern observer.
Jean Baudrillard refers to this as Transparency of evil (2002b), a space where evil is
pitted against evil, image begets virus, information is currency, and communication is
transparent, total and instant. Everything is known and knowable, and hence at an
end. British artist Damien Hirst depicts the human virus in his work titled Some
comfort gained from the acceptance of the inherent lies in everything (Figure 5,
below). Hirst has used the carcass of a cow as an analogy to Baudrillard’s concept of
transparency. By spacing the spliced anatomy in a grid-like formation, Hirst exposes
the organs of the cow to the viewer, allowing the viewer to pass through its body and
observe, almost voyeuristically, the fragmented viscera. Just like an infected host
cell, the cow is split-up into remnants of its original self, it is almost unrecognisable,
even though the viewer is able see more of the cow than when it was alive.

Figure 5 (above): Damien Hirst, Some comport gained from the inherent lies in everything, 1996, steel, glass, cows,
formaldehyde solution, 12 tanks, each 200 x 90 x 30 cm (Rosenthal:1997).

The cow is also commonly branded as a dumb animal that mindlessly moves toward
its own slaughter, which can also be seen as an analogy to the virus eating and
infecting its way to its own demise – a suicidal manoeuvre, so to speak.

Masks symbolise our indoctrination into the global village, based on western power
structures such as capitalism, democracy, and christianity. Masks are also indicative

44
of the plastic surgery of the Other (Baudrillard:2000). Masks represent the process of
being branded a citizen, being infected by the human virus. These distinctions
become frivolous when everything becomes transparent and the virus controls the
host, when the territory no longer precedes the map.

The art of Jenny Saville is motivated by the simultaneous transparency and

superficiality of our supplemented anatomy. Saville manages to find parallels with
concepts such as masks, branding and virulence by emphasising the augmentation
of the postmodern body. Plan (Figure. 6, below) is a work by Saville that comments
on the idea of ‘body’ as a contested space and consumable object. Saville uses
feminist notions surrounding identity and patriarchy to introduce her intentions, which
lead to a more critical perspective on humanism. The title of the work, Plan, is a word
that suggests an act of plotting or mapping. In this work mapping is equated with
surface by drawing isobars directly onto the skin. These isobars also indicate the
areas of the body where surgery will be performed. Skin is thus a contested and
fragile boundary, a barrier that separates the inside and outside. As Joan Broadhurst
Dixon (1998:124) states:

Ethics has been about integrity, but that integrity has always been misconstrued.
Historically, the term has been functioning as an ethics of objective boundaries –
hard, impenetrable, protective disclosures of sacred territories that demarcated
European identity. The state, the city, the wall, the home, the skin, have all, in their
time represented limits of authority and privacy, denoting a relationship of inside and
outside.

In this way geography and anatomy are turned into synonyms to communicate the
message of a colonised and altered human anatomy. The woman depicted in Plan
does not seem to adhere to society’s standards and henceforth needs to be changed
to suit it. Without altering her body, thereby donning the mask of humanity, she will
not be properly accepted into society. Plastic surgery will grant her access to the
correct passwords.

45
 Figure 6 (above): Jenny Saville, Plan, 1993, Oil on canvas, 274 x 213.5 cm, Saatchi collection (Rosenthal:1997).

In the film Silence of the Lambs (2001) the abject designation of the postmodern
augmented body is an analogy for western ideals such as ownership, territory,
authorship, moralism and politics. The film has two complimentary yet opposing
villains, Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. Rather than simply map the bodies of his
victims, Buffalo Bill has a fetish for wearing the actual skin of his female victims.
Hannibal Lecter likes to interfere with the psychological state of his patients before
proceeding to eat them. Both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter can be said to invert
the notion of the mask or map, because Bill wants to obscure his identity, his skin,
with the appropriated skins of his victims, and Hannibal wants to consume the
identities of his victims. Both characters are inhuman monsters, yet they are human –
author/gods. This suggests that schizophrenia is the only viable solution to the
problematic of humanism in postmodern times, as Badmington (2000:59) states:
“Skin becomes a metaphor for surface, for the external… But skin is also the movie
screen and the image, the destination of the gaze, the place that glows in the dark,
the violated site of visual pleasure [sight/interference]”. Neither Buffalo Bill nor his
mentor, the infamous Hannibal Lecter, can be placed as inside or outside. Hannibal
tries to get inside people’s heads and he is also a cannibal, literally putting people
inside him. In opposition to this is Buffalo Bill who wants to be inside his victims by

46
assimilating their exterior. Both of these villains portray many of the grotesque
aspects of humanism, specifically with regard to concepts such as masking, which
expose the problematic nature of representation and identity and the inherent
contradictions within humanism. Donna Haraway (Badmington, 2000:74-75) brings
this analogy to light when she states:

Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory,

partial, and strategic… Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement
forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities
of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

As the examples of Hirst, Saville, and Silence of the Lambs indicates, postmodern
threads begin to emerge when we begin to question our given identities and attempt
to remove our masks – an anti-human attempt as it were.45 Marx realized the fatal
flaws inherent in western forms of representation such as capitalism and democracy.
However, he did not assume that having knowledge of these flaws might necessarily
demolish humanism. Rather he acknowledged that his theory was just as much a
part of the ideology in question. Marx’s theory set the tone for future theorists such as
Jacques Derrida (1997:158) with his claim that nothing is outside the text, Michel
Foucault and his notions of ‘episteme’ and the Panopticon (1991:200), and Guy
Debord with his statements about the society of the spectacle (2004). These ideas
have created the current postmodern paradigm, which has, despite its own flaws,
raised to the question of humanism. Marx established a connection between anti-
humanism and the humanist codes that spawned it. Humanism is an ideology
necessary for the existence of anti-humanism, just as the One depends on the Other
for its own existence, and vice-versa. Althusser (2000:33) would seem to agree with
this statement: “The recognition of this necessity is not merely speculative. On it
alone can Marxism base a policy in relation to the existing ideological forms, of every
kind: religion, ethics, art, philosophy, law – and in the very front rank, humanism”.

Although anti-humanism is a fixed discourse within the space of humanism, it can be

seen as an attempt to forego the idealism of humanism. Anti-humanism sparked
awareness of how meaningless concepts such as human nature, essence or spirit
can be, especially in terms of western social, political, and economic standards. Marx
made this point by relating seemingly subjective issues such as identity and
representation with supposedly objective social matters such as forces of production,

45
Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx were two of the earliest thinkers to bring forth this anti-humanist perspective.

47
powers of distribution. This approach suggests that humanism – dualism, history,
moralism, branding – and the institutions that propagate it – capitalism, christianity,
democracy – are based on the simple equation of use/exchange value. Given the
inherent problems within this meta-narrative, and given the abstract nature of
western foundations, it is not difficult to imagine how this contradictory, patriarchal
and hierarchical system could fail. Althusser (2000:32) makes this point when he
states: “It is impossible to know anything about men except on the absolute
precondition that the philosophical (theoretical) myth of man is reduced to ashes”.

Following the ideas of Marx and Nietzsche, Derrida can be seen as a key component
in the development of anti-humanism. The schizophrenic message in Silence of the
Lambs attests to the obsession Derrida had with the curious dualism between
absence and presence.46 Silence of the Lambs equates dualisms such as inside and
outside with mind and body, which can be compared to Derrida’s ideas on absence
and presence. In this way, schizophrenia can be equated with the in-between space
of dualisms; a space where boundaries are blurred and created.47 A promiscuous
sense of proximity is created in Hirst’s installations, with his use of grid-like spaces
and closed boxes, which can also be compared to Derrida’s insistence on the ‘in-
between’. Derrida often refers to this ‘in-between’ as the dangerous supplement
(1997:141), because it is a point of convergence and separation where contradiction
is constructed.

The ideas brought forth by Marx, Nietzsche, and Derrida emphasise the totalitarian
schematic that underlies the abstract universalism of humanism. Gray (2002:197)
describes this belief in terms of ‘human desire’ when he states: “Values are only
human needs… turned into abstractions. They have no reality in themselves…”. This
need or will is a characteristic of the west in its attempts to maintain autonomy and
proximity, whilst parading notions of pluralism and universalism. The human virus is a
mimetic contagion that spreads and communicates its values and manufacturing
dualisms based on absence and presence, inside and outside. Being the object of its
self-proclaimed signification, the mask remains to conceal an empty husk eradicated
by the human virus.48 Such concepts can be connected to the death of humanism, or

46
Derrida paralleled the dualism between absence and presence and the dualism between writing (parole) and
speech (langue). Writing is seen as an absent form of communication and speech is more present.
47
This can also be likened to the conception of the mask, which can represent the archetypal two-face. It can also
suggest the superficiality of identity and the anonymity of the brand.
48
Deleuze and Guattari (2004) have referred to this as the ‘body without organs’ (B.W.O.).

48
more specifically the death of the author or ‘god’.49 Plato’s (2005:97) simile of the
cave thus needs to be altered, as Baudrillard (2003:46) states:

Just as shadows are produced by the sun being intercepted by a physical body, so
doubles are produced by the Subject intercepting the sun of otherness. We have,
alas, become transparent, and we have lost our shadows. We have become
translucent, and we have lost our doubles. Or it is the light source of otherness
which has disappeared.

2.3.5) Language

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was with God in the beginning (John: 1).

What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: the word
(Burroughs in Shaviro, 1995:38).

Burroughs makes a biblical reference to the ‘word’ to suggest that the human virus is
the progeny of language; what he often calls the ‘word virus’ (2001:39). In
Burroughs’s idiom the word is the primary practice of inscription that documents
history and constructs the body. The word virus reifies the inherent contradictions
within humanism, making it as a corporeal ideology – the word becomes flesh.
Burroughs elaborates on this virulent logocentrism when he states (1992:48): “word
begets image and image is virus”. Hayles describes the telos of ‘our’ incorporation
and inscription by linking (1999:197) image with body and virus with embodiment with
this statement: “In any given period, experiences of embodiment are in continual
interaction with constructions of the body”. This is reminiscent of Derrida’s
‘supplement’ because it begins to emphasise the temporal problematic of the ‘pre-‘
and the ‘post-‘, and the manufacture of ‘isms’ in relation to such notions as language,
history, dualism, identity and representation. As Foucault (2000:28) states:

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant
problem that has been posed to human knowledge. Taking a relatively short
chronological sample within a restricted geographical area – European culture since
the sixteenth century – one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it …

49
This is a topic that has been investigated by many theorists, such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques
Derrida, and Friedrich Nietzsche

49
 As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date.
And one perhaps nearing its end.

The word is a system of representation that dictates our identity and constructs the
body, as Fernảndez-Armesto (2004:22) states: “Language, of course, is a kind of
symbolic system, in which words or signs encode the realities they represent”. The
word shapes human reality, allowing the west to construct things in the image of
man. Currently the image of man has been broadcast across the globe by new
technologies, infinitely networking the virulence of the word across the globe.
Burroughs (1992) has labelled the manufacture and construction of image and body
as a soft machine.50 Derrida (2001:285-286) makes a similar point with his analogy to
the word as machine:

That the machine does not run by itself means something else: a mechanism without
its own energy. The machine is dead. It is death. Not because we risk death in
playing with machines, but because the origin of machines is the relation to death…
Representation is death. Which may be immediately transformed into the following
proposition: death is (only) representation… A pure representation, a machine, never
runs by itself.

The word can be regarded as a technology, and thus an extension of the body.
However, the body has already been established as an extension of the word.
Derrida’s dilemma with the dualism between absence (writing/parole) and presence
(speech/langue), and Burroughs’s preoccupation with image and virus can be
equated with this primary contradiction established by the body being simultaneously
subject and object. The word is the amalgamation of all the contradictions discussed
thus far – dualism, history, moralism, and branding. The word is a machine, infection,
and addiction analogous to a world based on the amputation, assimilation, mutilation,
and simulation of the body. Plato’s divine archetypes have mutated into a ubiquitous
and ambivalent form where telos has been achieved through the total conception of
logos.51

50
The soft machine not only pertains to language per se, but also its relation to identity and representation, which is
the main reason for the dissection of the question “who are ‘we’ to speak?” The world is also highly mechanized and
communication plays an important role in that process. The fact of the matter is that language is an abstract medium
of representation and a technology for communication. The machine is an extension of the body, a representation the
churns out image, spreading the human virus.
51
This relates to the consumption and production of the Other, and the representation of reality.

50
 Figure 7 (above): Marc Quinn, No visible means of escape, 1996, RTV 74-30, rope, 180.3 x 59.7 x 30.5 cm
(Rosenthal:1997).

Addiction and fetishism are also corporeal experiences associated with issues of sex
and gender, voyeurism and the male gaze. With the inclusion of the infected and
addicted body into the concept of the global village, the idea of the male gaze can be
extended into a mechanism that incorporates all incorporated Others. The
perspective of the ‘human gaze’ is thus responsible for the western perception of
moralism and history. It is the human gaze that selects which host bodies,
assimilated from the Other, will be inscribed into the annals of history and embodied
by the word. Postmodern films and games, such as Alien, Doom, Resident evil, and
Silent hill, often cross-breed narratives, exchanging media, and focus on the
voyeuristic and virulent nature of the human gaze, specifically in the context of the
global village. The narratives in these texts usually revolve around the demise,
control of, or infection by some kind of alien, demonic, or unknown source that can
be said to reflect corporeal postmodern anxieties about our technology dominated
society. As Rosiland Coward (Badmington, 2000:18) states: “…sex is always an
activity wrapped around cultural meanings, cultural prescriptions, and cultural
constraints”. Marc Quinn emphasises this point in No visible means of escape
(Figure 7, above) by depicting an ambiguous mutilated and visceral figure. The body

51
of this figure is clearly a corps, and it looks as if it has been intruded upon or
something has escaped from it.

Thinkers such as Foucault (2000:205) and Barthes (1977) saw the end result of this
mutation as the death of the author. Debord referred to this ambiguous situation as
the spectacle, Baudrillard has called it hyperreality, and Nietzsche (1968:305)
referred to it as such: “The ‘real world’, however one has hitherto conceived it – it has
always been the apparent world once again…. The apparent world, i.e., a world
viewed according to the viewpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and
enhancement of the power of a certain species of animal”. The global village is
based on the premise of a virtual and singular, instantaneous and spectacular
society, controlled by the media.

Figure 8 (above): Kiki Smith. Virgin Mary. 1992. Wax with pigment, cheesecloth, wood, steel (Posner:1998).

In this contemporary media-orientated spectacle the intrusive and domineering

actions of the west have developed reflexively into a fatal feedback loop. Francis
Fukuyama (2002) has gone as far as to call this the end of history and Will Self
(Appignanesi 2003:V) stands by the end of everything. A parallel can be found here
between the concept of the ‘new’ and the idea of the ‘end’. The ‘new’ represents our
claims to reinterpretation, telos, will to power, and the drive for the abstract. The ‘end’

52
can be seen as the complete realisation of the ‘new’ that hastens the entropic decay
of humanism and the suicide of man. When the word is murmured the author fades
away. An author’s signature establishes his ego, but it all goes away when his name
is revealed as a construct.

Many questions can be asked as a consequence of this contradictory situation. Who

or what gave the west the right to infect humanity with the word? Where does the
authority and recognition of the author’s signature come from? Who are we to speak?
One can take into account the idealistic, religious assumption that it was god who
endowed man with the authority to control and dominate the globe. Alternatively, one
could follow Nietzsche’s nihilistic approach where it is man who endowed god with
authority and power in a feeble attempt to rid himself of any responsibility or guilt in
relation to his actions, and to convince himself of his own meaning and purpose. Man
claims ownership over his signature by ignoring the fact that it was he who created
the name of the author/god to begin with. Kiki Smith approaches the death of the
author through an amalgamation of religious iconography and mythological narratives
in Virgin Mary (Figure 8, above). Smith literally removes the skin from her subject
creating an allegory to Buffalo Bill’s female suit in Silence of the lambs. Smith reveals
the simultaneous voyeurism and censorship of the body by removing the patriarchal
shell from the Virgin Mary, thereby breaking the observer’s gaze. She does so by
connecting the traditional male gaze, which only focuses on the surface, to the
underlying anatomy of the human subject.52 Once again the idea of the mask and the
notion of embodiment are suggested here. Being in opposition to the traditional and
aesthetically pleasing representations of this Christian icon, the visceral figure of
Virgin Mary looks gruesome and monstrous, suggesting the meaningless foundation
of the human, which has been created by the human gaze.

In Contemplating a self-portrait (Figure 9, below) Hirst seals all such concepts,

relating to history as a temporal system of author worship and self indulgence that
has inevitably lead to a self imposed death. He places the ‘idea’ of god in a steel
framed glass box and exhibits it for all to observe. This is evident by the fact that
Hirst has chosen not to include the artist in front of his sealed portrait, thereby
making the viewer aware of himself as an author and spectator. Hirst continually
suggests that the author was here, but is no longer here. It is also intriguing to note
that Hirst amplifies this inherent absence of the author by sealing the representation

52
The concept of human subject can also be related to notions such a citizen, self, individual, and ego.

53
of the artist within a separate container to the already contained space where the
author once was.

Figure 9 (above): Damien Hirst. Contemplating a self-portrait (as a pharmacist). 1991. vitrine, portrait, mixed media, other
objects (Shone:2001).

The death of the author/god has been a certainty since Nietzsche’s oft-quoted
declaration in The Gay Science (2003:119):

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers
of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all
that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe
this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this
deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of
it?

The concession that god is an invention, and the human is a self-constructed body
has triggered a reciprocal period of mega-nostalgia and self-destruction. Man’s
narcissistic dependence on the word and image can thus be said to convey the
artifice of the author/god. In this way Nietzsche (1969:85) sees the author/god as a
product of the word/human virus when he states:

54
 Truly, men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it,
they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven. Man first
implanted values into things to maintain himself – he created the meaning of things,
a human meaning! Therefore, he calls himself: ‘Man’, that is: the evaluator.
Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creative men! Valuating is itself the value and the
jewel of all valued things.
Only through evaluation is there value: and without evaluation the nut of existence
would be hollow. Hear it, you creative men!
A change in values – that means a change in the creators of values. He who has to
be a creator always has to destroy.

The dialogue between Stephan Dedalus and Mr. Deasy in James Joyce’s Ulysses
(2000: 42) plays with Nietzsche’s nihilistic perspective on the author/god, specifically
in relation to history. During his dialogue with Mr.Deasy, Dedalus makes a Cartesian
statement that is reminiscent of Schopenhauer’s confused dream: “History… is a
nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. Mr. Deasy responds, in typically
modernist fashion, by saying, “All history moves towards one great goal, the
manifestation of God”. The goal of god’s manifestation can be said to be based on an
addiction to progress and a fetish for the new, which, like many addictions, can only
lead to the self inflicted death of the addict. If the author/god is dead, as philosophers
such as Nietzsche and Foucault suggest, then one could take Mr. Deasy’s statement
to mean that history is a movement away from presence towards absence – a
confused dream of the future that has turned into the nightmare of history. Dedalus’
statement is not that far removed from Descarte’s thoughts on the evil genius
(1997:137)53 where god is imagined to be a great deceiver who toys with our
experience of reality by blurring the boundaries between our waking lives and
dreaming state. The acquired knowledge of this confused dream within a dream is
reminiscent of Baudrillard’s (2004) ideas on simulation and hyperreality.

Vanilla sky (2001) is a postmodern film with existentialist undertones that are placed
alongside a hyperreal perspective, where Descartes’ dream within a dream is
morphed into a schizophrenic, solipsistic tragedy. Vanilla sky is a story about a man’s
conception of a perfect world inside a self-induced, or rather purchased, lucid dream.
The main character in the film is David Aames, a narcissistic publishing giant/media
mogul addicted to power and decadence. In the beginning of the film David lives out

53
Sometimes this is translated as the evil demon or the great deceiver.

55
the American dream, and he is not shy to squander his wealth with a lavish lifestyle
of cars, parties and beautiful women. However, during an almost fatal accident
caused by Juliana, a disgruntled lover, he loses his dream, and the film begins to turn
into a nightmare. Due to the accident, David’s face is severely disfigured, forcing him
to wear a mask, pushing him into a state of depression that almost destroys his
empire.

Figure 10 (above): Vanilla sky. The scene where David chooses the ‘splice’ between his waking life and his lucid
dream (2001. [Video/DVD]. Paramount Pictures).

David also experiences schizophrenic episodes where he imagines he is in love with

a woman called Sofia. Throughout the film Sofia (David’s goddess) and Juliana
(David’s stalker) exchange identities and bodies. During one of his schizophrenic
periods David murders Sofia, thinking that she is Juliana. From this point onwards
the film undergoes a kind of deconstruction, continually changing perspective,
shifting from a nightmarish period in prison, to a blissful state with Sofia. Not knowing
that his reality is a construct of his own mind, David cannot understand the obscurity
of his experience, nor can he live with the idea that he has killed the women of his
dreams. David is contacted by a man who tells him that he is David’s ‘tech support’; a
helpline supervisor from a company that sells lucid dreams as a form of escapism.
The man informs David about his self-imposed fake reality, a mirror of his previous
life, minus the accident (Figure 10, above). David’ world has somehow become
corrupted, and in order to return to his lucid dream David must commit suicide and

56
wake up to the real world. By the end of the film David realizes that he is dreaming
and commits suicide, leaving his nightmare behind, penetrating into his waking life.
The films ends as it began with Sofia saying: “Open your eyes”. This kind of suicide
is ambiguous because it lacks closure, David lives on in death. David’s attempt to
save himself by killing himself is an allegory to the attempts of contemporary
spectacular society to adhere to the requirements of new media. Antonin Artaud
(Dixon 1998:11) communicates a similar message when he states: “By suicide, I
reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my
will. I free myself from the conditioned reflexes of my organs… and life is for me no
longer an absurd accident whereby I think what I am told to think”.

Vanilla sky allegorically implies that the death of the author is a reaction to the human
virus. Analogies that pertain to the human virus, such as body and embodiment,
suicide and mutilation, masking and branding, derangement and imprisonment,
dreams and nightmares, surveillance and schizophrenia, entertainment and
narcissism, are used extensively in Vanilla sky to portray the problematic nature of
humanism in the global village. The film is thus an aesthetic amalgamation of all the
contradictions discussed thus far. Hayles (1999:107) makes a similar point to the
message communicated in Vanilla sky when she states: “When the physical
boundaries of the human form are secure, he celebrates the flow of information
through ‘his’ organism. All this changes, however, when ‘our’ boundaries cease to
define an autonomous self, either through manipulation or engulfment”. Vanilla sky
translates the terminal illness of Burroughs’ human/word virus into ‘terminal identity’
(Burroughs, 1992:13) of the global village. By splicing the authentic world with the
inauthentic, toying with the meaning of death, and changing the (e)ffect of reality into
the (a)ffect of mediation, Vanilla sky reveals how identity and representation can exist
in a simulated world. This approach can be said to produce a posthuman
perspective, similar to anti-human notions, but with the added influence of the media
on a hyperreality that is posthumous to man. As Baudrillard (1988:12 -16) states:

The opposition between the subject and the object was still significant, as was the
profound imaginary of the mirror and the scene. The scene of history as well as the
scene of the everyday emerge in the shadow of history as it is progressively divested
of politics. Today the scene of the mirror has given way to a screen and a network.
There is no longer any transcendence or depth, but only the immanent surface of
communication…, the surrounding universe and our very bodies are becoming
monitoring screens…

57
 That which was previously mentally projected, which was lived as a metaphor in the
terrestrial habitat is from now on projected, entirely without metaphor, into the
absolute space of simulation.

The word is invented by man, and the word controls man, in this way consolidating
western acts of embodying into a ubiquitous performance of self-validation and self-
transformation. Western identity is a fickle representation because it is mediated
through its own processes of identification – the human gaze. As Bukatman
(1993:218) states: “The human appropriates the space through the exercise of a
powerful, nearly omnipotent gaze. The author/god, the word/human virus, history and
body are unstable productions reliant on supplementation from the Other. When the
Other is lost and also has to be produced, the concept of man turns toward bricolage.
Our extensions, the media that we invented, starting with the word, have undergone
a reflexive doubling-back, turning into essential prostheses for the body. But anatomy
is not destiny, sexuality and gender roles are not absolute. The body is a construct
and all bodies can infect and be infected. Most importantly, the body is not
impervious to its own mortality; it can die and be dissected. The body is the site for
incorporation and inscription, and it is the origin and focus of sight. The body has a
history that is not secure due to the nature of the human virus.

The soft machine has thus evolved into a cybernetic symbiotic form:
absence/presence, inside/outside, mind/body, all become ubiquitous and
meaningless. Hayles (1999:212) relates this to the human virus when she states.
“Chief among these parasitic forms is ‘the word’”. The decline of humanism has been
a certainty since Marx and Nietzsche first introduced anti-humanism to western
thought. The death of the author and the influence of new technologies on the body
have accelerated this narrative to the point that the concept of posthumanism can be
debated. McLuhan (1964:51) introduces a similar idea by emphasising the influence
of electronic media over the body: “The principle of numbness comes into play with
electric technology, as with any other. We have to numb our central nervous system
when it is extended and exposed, or we will die”. What happens when the body has
no anatomy and there is no face behind the mask: who are ‘we’ to speak? As
Haraway (2000:74) states: “Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute.
Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic… Gender, race or class
consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of
the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism”.

58
With this man can be declared dead, and it is certain that in the event of this death
humanism will also come to an end. Baudrillard (2002:67) constructs a bridge from
the end to the posthuman when he states:

The individual we have produced, the absolutely self-regarding individual we glorify,

the individual we protect in his impotence with the whole legal panoply of human
rights is the ‘last man’ Nietzsche speaks of. He is the end-user of his own self and his
own life, the terminal individual, with no hope either of descendants or transcendence.
He is the end-of-the-line man, doomed hereditary sterility and the countdown. This
individual is the end of the cycle and of the species. All that remains for him is to
attempt desperately to outlive himself by being spectralised, fractalised, pluralized, by
becoming his own creation and his own clone… This is the destiny – or, rather, the
absence of destiny – of the last man.

2.4) Posthumanism as the end of humanism

Modernisation and more efficient forms of communication have resulted in the

overextension of the nervous system. The global village does not have a foundation
based on morality, identity, dignity or humanity; it is purely focused on the
use/exchange value of information, and the most efficient means of communication.
Posthumanism emerges as a paradigm where technology dominates the landscape,
all difference has been eradicated, proximity is a thing of the past, and the
promiscuity of electronic communication runs rife. In this situation there is no One or
Other, there are only ones and zeros. The build up to this singularity has already
caused the death of the author/god and created the body without organs. Lévi-
Strauss (2003:15) refers to this simulated, hyper-accelerated, and over-
communicated existence when he states:

It is only through difference that progress has been made. What threatens us right
now is probably what we may call over-communication – that is, the tendency to
know exactly in one point of the world what is going on in all other parts of the world.
In order for a culture to be really itself and to produce something, the culture and its
members must be convinced of their originality and, even, to some extent, of their
superiority over others; it is only under conditions of under-communication that it can
produce anything. We are now threatened with the prospect of our being only
consumers, able to consume anything from any point in the world and from every
culture, but of losing all originality.

59
Postmodern media is reinventing the body and if the body is to survive it will need the
prosthesis of its former extensions to function properly. Matthew Barney (Figure 11,
below) employs this understanding in Cremaster, where even gestures of gender are
seen as prosthetic. It is this significant shift from amputation to prosthesis and
ultimately to augmentation that defines posthumanism as a narrative. This shift can
also be equated with the shift from nature to representation to simulation. The word
and the human gaze have already shown to be instrumental in the allegorizing of
reality, and in the shift from nature to representation, as Hayles (1999:97) states,
“…language is always analogical”. The word claims to reinterpret and represent the
outside world ‘truthfully’ and ‘objectively’ through the empiricism of the human gaze.
However, truth exists subjectively based on the ontology of concepts such as ‘I’, ‘us’,
‘we’, and ‘man’, which in turn construct our epistemology – the corpus of humanism.
Posthumanism proves that this corpus is a corpse.

Figure 11 (above): Matthew Barney, Cremaster 3, 2002, Production still (Taylor:2005).

Posthumanism confronts a spectacular society where the body is just another

mechanism in the machinery of the word. As Gray (2002:171) states, “In evolutionary

60
prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language. Today it is a by-
product of the media”. Hayles (1999:210) uses Burroughs’ experiments with tape
recorders as an example of this displacement of the body; from man using and
making the machine to man needing and becoming the machine:

His language locates the disconcerting effect… between voice and presence. When
these qualities of the audiotape were enacted with literary productions, a complex
interplay was set up between representational codes and the specificities of the
technology. When voice was displaced onto tape, the body metonymically
participated in the transformations that voice underwent in this medium… the body
54
became a tape recorder.

Matmos is an electronic music group that utilises a similar approach to Burroughs’

tape recorder experiments; only they use more sophisticated technology. This duo
visits operating rooms and records the visceral sounds, that are caused by the
surgical machines that cut into the anatomy and keep the patients body alive.
Matmos utilises these samples to construct the ‘bodies’ of their songs, appropriating
them from the realities of everyday mortality and transferring them into the vacuum of
the electronic audio environment. Thus Matmos envisages a different type of body,
one that exists as digital sound information; a body that needs to be altered to suit its
surroundings. In a similar fashion, Matthew Herbert records sounds of consumable,
everyday objects, produced and synthesised items, such as the sound of McDonalds
packaging, Coca Cola cans, and Total petroleum machines. Herbert’s compositions
can be seen as extensions to the ‘bodies’ that Matmos produce, thereby
complimenting the current understanding of the body and the media, specifically with
regard to Burroughs.

Artists such as Matmos and Herbert make compositions about the chimera of man
and machine in the mutating ideology of the west. Burroughs’s narcotic concoctions
and poetic pronouncements of a parasitic invasion, addiction, and viral infection,
become especially relevant here because the body has turned into a random
information pattern, and information is a powerful commodity in the digital
postmodern era. The body can be cloned, copied, and packaged, as Hayles
(1999:104) states: “…the body ceases to be regarded primarily as a material object
and instead is seen as an informational pattern”. Hayles continues (1999:105) with
this idea by explaining the indifferent prosthetic nature of postmodern media: “The

54
The virus passes from medium to medium, not restricted to any particular body or context.

61
dominance of the machine presupposes a society in the last stages of increasing
entropy, where probability is negligible and where statistical differences among
individuals are nil”.

In a technological world objects and bodies are analogous to subjects and texts.
Methods of exchange (language and ‘sharing’), value (moralism, truth and virtue),
consumption (addiction, voyeurism and fetishism), and distribution (‘sharing’ and
branding), have resulted in a spectacular entropic society that could lead to the total
demise of humanity. Man is the product of his own making, an object for consumption
and a subject for appropriation. This is why the end of man is written in the language
of man. This Medusa-like, doubling back or feedback loop has been characterised by
Steven Shaviro (Halberstam, 1995:39) as the “Ronald Reagan gene or meme: the
program for deceiving others more effectively by at the same time deluding yourself”.

The contradictory nature of humanism is epitomised by modernism, which can be

regarded as a secular religion based on the remnants of christian moralism, liberal
democracy, market capitalism, and the scientific progress. Postmodernism55 can be
described as a bricolage pieced together from the vestigial project of modernist
formalism, idealism, and imperialism. The ‘great family of man’ is disguised by the
pluralism of postmodern ‘endo-colonialism’,56 and the shift from systems of
representation to programs of simulation. As Bukatman (1993:72) states, “… all
power to act has been transformed into the power to appear”.

Humanism is a pseudo-historical effect sustained by a system of domination

(assimilation and inclusiveness), tolerance (preference and exclusivity), and
appropriation (incorporation and inscription). The ubiquitous and virulent organization
of humanism is hidden behind the mask of the word and obscured by taboos that are
placed upon the body. The ideology of humanism is no longer suitable to cope with
the acceleration of the global village, revealing the deceptiveness of modernist claims
to universalism and inflated postmodernist claims to reinterpretation. As Frederic
Jameson (1993:21) states:

This approach to the present day by way of the art language of the simulacrum, or of
the pastiche of the stereotypical past, endows present reality and the openness of

55
If humanism and capitalism can be seen as a simple model for modernism, then it could be said that anti-
humanism and late capitalism form the basic premise for postmodernism.
56
The terms ‘endo-colonialism and ‘exo-colonialism’ are concepts that Paul Virilio (2005:58 and in Hayles: 1999:114)
uses to describe certain aspects of American society. Endo-colonialism is a secretive, conniving, and deceptive form
of colonialism, whereas exo-colonialism is blatant and transparent.

62
 present history with the spell and distance of a glossy mirage. Yet this mesmerizing
new aesthetic mode itself emerged as a elaborated symptom of the waning of our
historicity, of our lived possibility of experiencing history in some active way. It
cannot therefore be said to produce this strange occultation of the present by its own
formal power, but rather merely to demonstrate, through these inner contradictions,
the enormity of the situation in which we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning
representations of our own current experience.

The present posthuman enquiry acknowledges the finality of trying to subvert

humanism by admitting its part in the same organisation as humanism . As
Badmington (2000:9) states, “…every such gesture will have been unconsciously
choreographed by humanism. There is no pure outside to which ‘we’ can leap. To
oppose humanism by claiming to have left it behind is to overlook the very way that
opposition is articulated”. This death of man is documented, using the language of
man, by technologies that gradually succeed man.

Humanism is an ambivalent idiom of inferiority and weakness versus dominance and

power. The language of humanism is derived from the word and the human gaze on
the body, which places the Other in a disadvantaged position to the benefit of the
One. This language has also turned into a mimetic virus that has made the One total
and absolute. History is a temporality of lost documentation with only the monuments
of the forgotten Other to remind us of their loss, as Jameson (Badmington, 2000:11)
states, “… it is safest to grasp the postmodern as an attempt to think the present
historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place”. The
idealism and man’s essence, and the rationalisation of his gaze can thus be regarded
as an ‘obsessive-compulsive order’. Burroughs (1993:180) describes this
ambivalence eloquently: “… Gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the
flash bulb of orgasm…. Through these orifices transmute your body…. The way OUT
is the way IN…”.

63
Chapter 3
Society and art in a posthuman age

64
3.1) The posthuman future: postmodernism and its tributaries

The future would begin with the end of Man (Badmington, 2000:7).

Is this science fiction? Yes, but up until now all environmental mutations derived
from an irreversible tendency towards a formal abstraction of elements and
functions, to their homogenization into a single process, as well as to the
displacement of gestural behaviours: of bodies, of efforts, in electric or electronic
commands, to the miniaturisation in time and space. These are the processes where
the stage (which is no longer a stage) becomes that of the infinitesimal memory of
the screen (Baudrillard, 1988:17).

The previous chapter focused on humanism by introducing the notion that traditional
western ideology is reaching an end; a standpoint that can be described as a critique
of humanism from a posthuman stance. By uncovering the inherent contradictions
within humanism and establishing that the human-condition is problematic, this
chapter can focus on the paradigm shift from humanism to posthumanism. The
polarity that was established in the previous chapter between modernism and
postmodernism will become important here because it has influenced a lot of
discourse around posthumanism. That is to say, posthumanism will come to be seen
as a tributary of postmodernism, specifically with regard to the epistemic roots that
can be found in the anti-humanist feminism, post-colonialism, and most importantly,
deconstruction.

The assumptions and contradictions that characterise western philosophical, artistic,

scientific and religious inquiry for centuries have, to a certain extent, been exposed,
creating the space for an alternative inquiry. From this understanding, humanism is
an immanent and terminal meta-narrative, altering our perception of the body,
exposing the word/human virus. The demise of meta-narratives forces the realization
that western, human absolutes are no longer clear or total. Instead of making history,
man is becoming history, and the body is being replaced by its extensions. As Steven
Shapiro (1995: 38) states:

Our bodies are never ourselves, our words and texts are never really our own. They
aren’t “us”, but the forces that crush us, the norms to which we have been subjected.
It’s a relief to realize that culture is after all empty, that its imposing edifices are
sound stage facades, that bodies are extremely plastic, that facial expressions are
masks, that words in fact have nothing to express. Bodies and words are nothing but

65
 exchange-value: commodities or money. All we can do is appropriate them, distort
them, turn them against themselves. All we can do is borrow them and waste them:
spend what we haven’t earned and don’t even possess.

The first part of this chapter will establish the idea that posthumanism emerged from
postmodern discourses, and specifically those discourses derived from pop culture
and science fiction narratives.57 The anxieties brought forward by these narratives
can be related to the shift from modernism to postmodernism in the context of
Debord’s Society of the spectacle (2004) and Baudrillard’s theories on simulation. As
Bukatman (1993:68) describes: “The passage from Debord’s ‘spectacle’ to
Baudrillard’s ‘simulation’ is precisely a shift from a state which constructs the
spectacle, to a spectacle which now constructs the state”. This shift sees modernism
as a utopian discursive space, whereas postmodernism can be viewed as a sublime
reagent to this space. Postmodernism is the dystopian other-half58 to the utopian
space of modernism, which has collapsed into the singularity of the global village. In
this singularity everything must be instantaneous and synchronised; it is a landscape
that has no place for a body that lacks the capacity to keep up with infinite speeds of
electronic media.

Despite its umbilical connection to modernism, postmodernism is an awakening

period that acknowledges the quotation marks above terms such as ‘I’, ‘us’ and ‘we’.
Posthumanism can be understood as a tributary of postmodernism because it
realises the mask created by these quotation marks, and it also exposes the
emptiness of the body without organs, surviving on the prosthesis of external media.
Posthuman ideas often express and combine terminologies from medical and
technological sources to create a unique discourse about the fusion of the organic
and the mechanical. The refusal of humanism to accept many of the technological
aspects of society has resulted in the recognition of man’s limitations, specifically
with regard to the ethical and moral issues that have arisen from the current
advances in genetic engineering, cloning, nuclear power, and artificial intelligence.
The continued negation of christian moralism introduces posthumanism as a pivotal
evolution in an already westernised and modernised society. Postmodernism has
made it possible to be sceptical about humanist perspectives on reality and western
idealistic norms. The dwindling of the autonomous human subject has turned into an

57
Most postmodern sci-fi texts, such as Do androids dream of electric sheep (2005) and the Matrix trilogy (1999-
2003) exemplify a popular strain of posthuman thought, which can be understood as the antithesis of postmodern
anxieties towards new media.
58
Burroughs (2001:38) refers to the word as the body’s ‘other half’. This can be described as a shift from the utopian
to the sublime, in a decadent motion of entropic decay.

66
identity crisis, where everything is directly obtainable and at once out of reach.
Identities are multiple and singular, and the image dominates in a continuous flow of
information – a virulent and addicted body, stemming from the schizophrenia and
pastiche of the media landscape.

3.2) Pastiche and schizophrenia in relation to postmodernism

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy (McLuhan, 1962:32).

In any case, we will have to suffer this new state of things, this forced extroversion of
all interiority, this forced injection of all exteriority that the categorical imperative of
communication literally signifies; … we are now in a new form of schizophrenia. No
more hysteria, no more projective paranoia, properly speaking, but this state of terror
proper to the schizophrenic: too great a proximity of everything, the unclean
promiscuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance
(Baudrillard in Bukatman, 1993:92).

Baudrillard uses the concept of schizophrenia to describe the self-imposed waning

authority of humanism, which is caused by the replacement of the real with the
representation of the ‘real’. Following Jameson (1998:3), the inflated ego of man has
deflated into a pathological state of schizophrenia and pastiche.59 Baudrillard has
also related this deflation to a point of critical mass (Bukatman, 1993:34), where
spectacular society collapses in on itself. Taking this pathological approach into
account, postmodern schizophrenia has mutated from the degradation of the
autonomous self, the mutilation of the body, and the re-evaluation of western values.
Thus, as Jameson (1999:3) describes, pastiche and schizophrenia are the result of
current anxieties about new technologies, and also the shock caused by the inherent
contradictions within humanism. The fall of humanist master-narratives, such as
modernism and colonialism, has made it difficult for the self or subject to cohere. This
‘new’ postmodern foundation of schizophrenia and pastiche developed from what
Robert Hughes (1996) describes as the “shock of the new”.60 In postmodern theory
telos has been achieved and nothing ‘new’ really exists, making it difficult to contain
and propagate the concept of ‘being-human’. This inability to put things in their place
suggests that human processes of supplementation, such as the gaze, word, and
body, are now transparent and meaningless.
59
This characterization of the postmodern state will be likened to a similar characteristic of posthumanism called the
hyphen and splice.
60
The shock of the new can be described in terms of the ecstasy we draw out of our own alienation, given the
already mentioned processes of history, moralism, and representation.

67
Thus, it is not surprising that schizophrenia is a consequence of the inherent
contradictions within humanism – the isolation and reflexivity of pathologies such as
the human virus and the cancer of history. In a society bent on information overload,
schizophrenia seems to be the only rational, or non-rational, outlet for an almost
extinct moral system. However, despite the obvious ethical symptoms of
schizophrenia, various pathologies can be found in postmodern perspectives as well,
such as a belief in multiple identities and pluralism (split personally), loss or
denouncement of the ego (dementia), appropriating from the past and producing the
Other (seeing ghosts and hearing voices).

Schizophrenia can creates the anxieties that instigate and infect our spectacular
society, which are further instilled by a disbelief in the subject after the realisation that
he is a fictive observer, a linguistic construct. The observer becomes a spectator, an
objectified self, in a media dominated singularity. The proximity of the body in relation
to the promiscuity of the gaze has shifted as a result of the dominance of the media,
as McLuhan (1964:51) states: “Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the
machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve
into ever new forms”. Debord (2004:22) relates to McLuhan’s perspective and the
alienation caused by the media: “The spectacle’s externality with respect to the
acting subject is demonstrated by the fact that the individual’s own gestures are no
longer his own, but rather those of someone else who represents them to him. The
spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere”. Debord’s notion
of the society of the spectacle can also be connected with Jameson’s dissection of
schizophrenia and pastiche. Posthumanism exists when these ideas are merged and
penetrate popular thinking. Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality exemplifies this kind of
penetration. As Debord (2004:12) states: “The whole life of those societies in which
modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation
of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become mere representation”.

With the speeding up of networks and the acceleration of objects into a schizophrenic
point of singularity in a binary world, a decisive saturation point has been achieved
where the body moves towards simulacra. As Bukatman (1993:51) states: “The
psychosis is defined by a slippage of reality, a perception of the world which strips it
of its status as real, and constructs it instead as a mechanical simulacra of reality: a
spectacular mimicry of the natural world. A diagnosis of schizophrenia is
inevitable…”.

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Although McLuhan did not really emphasise power relations and meta-narratives in
his theory, he did express concern about simulation, spectacle, and schizophrenia.
The uncertainty created by pastiche and schizophrenia can be understood, in relation
to McLuhan’s ideas (2001:7), as the simultaneous blurring and transparency of the
medium and the message. Simply put, schizophrenia is the pathological state of the
current postmodern limbo, which creates its own posthuman tributaries as a counter-
irritant to the singularity of the global village.61 The influence of McLuhan’s thought
becomes apparent here, specifically the manner in which it has been realised in the
current form of the global village. This is especially evident in Baudrillard’s (2002:7-8)
writings, which tend to transform McLuhan’s notion of the medium is the message
into a postmodern séance62 of sorts:

Pitting good against evil no longer exists as a strategy. In transparent – homeostatic

or homeofluid – systems, the only remaining strategy is that of Evil against Evil: the
strategy of the greater evil. The only possible strategy is a fatal strategy. And this is
not a matter of choice: we can see it happening before our eyes. There is, then, a
homeopathic virulence to AIDS, to stock market crashes, to computer viruses etc.
Stock market crashes, terrorism, computer viruses, debt etc. are the part of the
catastrophe which shows above the waterline. The other nine tenths are submerged
in virtuality … Catastrophe reveals itself then, to be a well tempered strategy of the
species. Or, rather, our viruses, our extreme phenomena – very real, but localized –
would seem to enable us to maintain intact the energy of virtual catastrophe, which
is the engine driving all our processes – in the economy, in politics, in the arts and in
history. And isn’t energy itself, in its concept, a form of catastrophe?

3.2.1) Rereading Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message

Concepts and generalisations such as the medium, message, word, god, author,
history, logos, telos, body, and so forth, can all be correlated with Burroughs’s
(1992:48) understanding of image, cancer and virus – “Word begets image and
image is virus”. It has already been established that we are addicted to the image
and infected by the virus. Information is increasingly becoming the ebb and flow of
human existence – communication begets the exchange of information and the

61
The sharing of information is important because it is a disguised form of branding or naming, which can be linked to
Virilio’s complimentary notions of endo- and exo-colonialism.
62
In deconstructive sense, specifically with relation to Derrida’s use of the term ‘supplement’, McLuhan’s phrase ‘the
medium is the message’, describes a ghostly ‘trace’ of sorts. In trying to find the meaning (‘truth’) behind McLuhan’s
statements, one is involved in a kind of communication with ‘ghosts’ – the dead author.

69
amount of access to information begets the value of the media.63 To this end, the
need for faster networks and increased access has caused the medium to implode
on the message, and has turned subjects into commodities. As Sardar (1998:14)
states: “…information is the desired commodity; and information has become the
prime commodity of our global village”.

To a certain extent, McLuhan’s (2001:7) statement that the medium is the message,
has developed into an inverted declaration caused by a virulent pathology. The
medium is the message only existed coherently in a modernist paradigm, and is no
longer a certainty today; it is not a quaint aphorism anymore, but rather a serious
question about the human virus and the mechanisms it uses to spread the human
mask. What is the medium in relation to the message? As Burroughs (In Shaviro,
1995:39) states: “Who’s the parasite and who’s the host”?64

Burroughs’s literature describes the transparency of inside/outside dualisms,

transcendence of body politics, and the concession of a digitised world wide
community. Furthermore, Burroughs’s parasitic notions can be allocated a Darwinian
distinction, where the strongest message prevails over the weakest medium and vice
versa.65 The link between viruses in nature and the human/word virus also
corresponds to the current conception of schizophrenia, specifically in relation to the
global village, because cities and industries are growing organically at virulent
speeds. In the same vain, the nervous system is externalised and spreads. In this
way, the concept of the global village can be compared to the modern image of the
city. McLuhan’s modernist narrative lacks Burroughs’s postmodern perspective,
which envisages the penetration of the image and the infiltration of late-capitalist
power structures. The re-evaluation of McLuhan’s ideas allow for an understanding of
the shift from humanism to posthumanism in the context of the global village. As
Baudrillard (In Bukatman, 1993:73) states: “There is no longer any medium in the
literal sense; it is now intangible, diffuse and diffracted in the real, and it can no
longer be said that the latter is distorted by it… a viral endemic, chronic, alarming
presence of the medium… the dissolution of TV into life, the dissolution of life into
TV”.

63
Jameson (Hayles, 1999:42) proclaims that an information-based society is the purist form of capitalism.
64
This can also be related to Derrida’s notion of the Pharmakon, taken from the Greek term ‘Pharmacos’, meaning
both the poison and the cure.
65
Nietzsche relates to this ambiguous dualism in terms of master and slave morals.

70
Figure 12 (above): Nam June Paik. Detail from Family of robot: grandmother and grandfather.1986. Various arranged
televisions.

Bukatman (1993:15) relates to this diffusion of the body into its own extended media
when he states: “The blurring of boundaries between human and machine results in
a superimposition that defines contemporary aesthetics”. This is where art begins to
infiltrate posthuman thinking and vice versa, as the art of Nam June Paik exemplifies.
In Paik’s series of work titled Family of robot (Figure 12, above), which consists of
two anthropomorphic robot-like figures made from television sets, he makes a
statement about the fusion of the media and the body. Paik also suggests the change
in western perceptions of the family, and how it has evolved from a closely knit family
unit, to the distanced nuclear family, and into the universalised great family of man. In
another work called Man (Figure 13, below) Paik constructed two towers, again built
from old television sets, which randomly depict various images of modern panoptical
existence. In this work Paik renders man as the message to the medium of television:
the content of the image. It is also interesting to note that he uses dated televisions,
suggesting that they are disposable and expendable. The images that are depicted
on these screens are usually haphazard and fragmented and tend to cause feelings
of anxiety and uneasiness in the viewer. Most importantly, Paik’s art makes the
viewer acknowledge his demoted status as a spectator, and the ascension of
technology.

71
 Figure 13 (Above), Nam June Paik, Man, 1990. Various arranged televisions (Bonito:2002).

Paik’s work bears witness to the implosive influence of electronic media, such as
television, on the body by turning it into an informational pattern, and incarnating or
reifying the word. Paik communicates the concept of schizophrenia with the melding
of mechanical and corporeal forms, embracing electronic intrusions and
disfigurations. In this way, Paik recollects McLuhan’s ideas on the extended nervous
system, auto-amputation and counter-irritation, and introduces alternative types of
figuration and representation. Paik depicts the simultaneous transparency and
opacity resulting from the confusion of the medium and message, where the body
gradually becomes the substance to its former extensions.

72
 Figure 14 (above): Gattaca. A scene where an invalid ‘god-child’ is been researched by an investigator (1997.
[Video/DVD]. Columbia Pictures).

Posthuman art witnesses the implosion of McLuhan’s idiom, documenting a shift in

our understanding of the media. New technologies are supposed to give us more
control and increase human living standards, but in many cases,66 new products and
models only increase our dependence on technology. This dependence on often
unreliable media tends to sometimes lower standards, and there are few people who
can actually afford such products, suggesting the beginning of a class distinction
between rich and poor. Gattaca (1997) is a film that depicts this scenario by
foreseeing a future where the wealthy upper class consists of genetically altered
super-citizens. Society’s servants are the opposing class to these god-like subjects,
comprising of poor and genetically unaltered ‘god-children’ (naturally birthed
humans). Thus, Gattaca posits the posthuman survival of those with the economic
means to finance their continued existence in a media dominated society (Figure 14,
above).

The reflexive nature of technology in postmodern society, and our addiction to the
media can be found in the art of Chen Chieh-Jen. In Rebirth I (Figure 15, below),
taken from a series of enhanced photographs titled Twelve karmas under the city,
Chieh-Jen depicts a futuristic setting seemingly brought about by ideological
repression and technological acceleration. Rebirth 1 is composed of a group of

66
Computers continually need to be upgraded or replaced in order to keep up with the pace of complimentary
technologies, such as graphics generation, file storage, gaming and internet access speed. Often technologies break
down and slow the pace of labor, increasing the workload.

73
diseased citizens dying in the blue neon haze of a dilapidated subway corridor. The
contaminated pedestrian walkway in Rebirth 1 looks much like a slaughter house or a
once sterile hospital ward, inferring a shift from utopian modernism to a sublime state
of human suffering. The scarred and sickly subjects have pieces of metal attached to
their bodies, with computer wiring leading to anatomically inserted cameras,
suggesting some kind of epidemic, possibly caused by technological alteration, war,
or terrorist attack.67 Rebirth I is an ambiguous portrayal of how our media have
become alienating agents rather than enlightening objects, especially when forces of
power are involved. That is to say, ideological representations meant to improve
human life in actual fact make things worse. The pregnant female survivor also
implies a possible element of hope in the coming posthuman era.

Figure 15 (above): Chen Cheih-Jen, Twelve karmas under the city: Rebirth I, 2000, cibachrome colour photograph. 120 X
150 cm (Taylor:2005).

The global village is a reified and corporeal entity, taking the form of busy
cosmopolitan highways, street networks, and broadcast signals, which stem from
modernist ideologies, replacing human life with controlled and integrated circuits. The

67
This exemplifies many of the characteristics mentioned thus far – human/word virus, cancerous historicity, and
most importantly, panoptical ideology (surveillance and censorship). It also suggests the ideas of writers such as
Orwell and Burroughs.

74
global village is no longer a metaphorical mechanism, contrary to McLuhan’s
conception of it. As Bukatman (1993:73) states: “The media are no longer the
extensions of man; man has instead become the extensions of them: a terminal of
multiple networks”. Today the global village is a world void of any distinction between
the medium and the message, as Baudrillard (In Bukatman, 1993:91) states: “The
medium is no longer identifiable as such, and the merging of the medium and the
message is the first great formula of this age …”.

Figure 16 (above): Damien Hirst, The acquired inability to escape, 1992, found objects (Violette and Honey:1997).

In this information age the self or subject becomes a blip on the computer terminal,
an apparent presence under a flashing banner stating the words: “THE GREAT
FAMILY OF MAN”. The concept of the global village has become inverted to form a
virtual panoptical capsule where the body is fragmented into multiple messages, and
transported on a network of infinite mediums. Hirst suggests this doubling-back effect
of the media by evoking an inside-out prison house of spectacular culture. In The
acquired inability to escape (Figure 16, above) Hirst uses cigarettes as homage to
the dying state of western society and dated capitalist structures. Hirst amplifies this
concept with the addition of an office chair and table to imply the mundane state of
postmodern living. The absence of an office worker suggests a spectre or trace of the

75
human body, now lost. By enclosing the office apparel in a steel-framed glass box,
Hirst confines the idea that we have been betrayed by our extensions, and exist as
mere cellular automata. Furthermore, these boxed-in objects imply the missing self,
turned ghostly subject; they objectify the absence of man through the presence of his
extensions. The enclosure also looks a bit like an interrogation room, hinting at the
concept of the panopticon.

Hirst’s art relates to a perspective of the global village where individuality has been
erased, but the ghost of autonomy remains. The schizophrenic subject, developed
under McLuhan’s premise that the medium is the message, has prompted an
interplay of the alienated ‘I’ and an alienating ‘not-I’. The Acquired Inability to Escape
is a consumerist analogy for the reification of information and the reflexivity of
technology on the agent of its incorporation. Hirst depicts the self as an apparition
and the artist is a vestigial, infused image. Bukatman (1993:97) delivers a similar
message when he states:

In becoming a consumer and acquiring a commodity, the subject fixes the lack,
repairs appearance, becomes an image… The modern commodity functions as both
reassurance and threat in that it conforms one’s relation to and position in the world,
but only by constructing a temporary state of pseudo-satisfaction which only lasts
until the can is empty or the next commercial is viewed.

The amputation of the body has turned the remaining husk into a critical conduit for
the dispersion of information, resulting in a total withdrawal from the real and the
penetration of the image. We are numbed by our extensions through the amputation
of the obsolete limbs, and are finding more efficient prostheses to replace these
useless visceral parts. In this way, we are all augmented beings, gradually changing
through processes of amputation until we become the technologies that sustain us.
That first media, language, which scarred us into flesh, now rips us from our bodies –
the word has been given form. The uncanny pace of the media, as a direct result of
such amputation, has forced society into a state of simultaneous expansion and
singularity, thus reversing the explosion of modernist progress into the implosion of
the global village. As Foucault (2000:28) states: “Since man was constituted at a time
when language was doomed to dispersion, will he not be dispersed when language
regains its unity”.

76
Compelling as it might be, and despite its major influence, McLuhan’s idiom is
outdated. To have a better understanding of the global village in a postmodern
context, thus facilitating recognition of posthumanism, it is best to look at the ideas of
a philosopher who has altered McLuhan’s idea’s to fit the current global state.
Furthermore, it is important to know how we can function without humanism as a
supporting structure, specifically regarding the technological additions and intrusions
to our lived lives. Many things have changed since McLuhan first introduced his
ideas. Baudrillard’s strategies, specifically in relation to schizophrenia and the
dissolution of the medium and the message, describe McLuhan’s ideas in more
contemporary, pathological terms. Baudrillard often relates to the dual concepts of
prophylaxis and virulence to describe the disillusionment and penetration of the
image, caused by a dependence on the media. If McLuhan’s idea’s can be described
as a kind of séance in a dimly lit room then Baudrillard’s thought can be defined as
the glitches and flickers of light, when the connection is broken and the farce
revealed.

3.2.2) Jean Baudrillard and dualism: the message is lost

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer… Maybe self-destruction is the answer

(Palahniuk, 2003:49).

In the development of a posthuman enquiry, Jean Baudrillard is possibly the key

postmodern philosopher, specifically in relation to McLuhan’s writings. Baudrillard
supports the idea that man-made tools68 are no longer controlled by humans, it is
simulacra that determine our fate, and the medium is confused with the message in a
vacuum of transparency and the hubris of a post-industrial society. By linking this
ubiquitous situation to postmodern characteristics such as schizophrenia and
pastiche, we begin to see interplay between the host and the parasite. Baudrillard
(2000) has referred to this interplay as an immixture of prophylactic and virulent
forces. Baudrillard uses the simultaneous merger and separation of these forces to
describe the schizophrenic state of the global village and its citizens (consumer is
commodity, and subject is object); orientated, as they are, towards addiction (word)
and fetishism (image). Traditionally prophylaxis and virulence are opposing terms,

68
Tool is another term for extension or technology.

77
but Baudrillard’s perspective dictates a chimeric postmodern avatar where proximity
communicates promiscuity.69

Baudrillard thus relates to the singularity of the global village as a kind of postmodern
chimera. However, in relation to McLuhan’s ‘medium is the message’, the effect of
this chimera is tantamount to scrambling traces of information from a corrupted
database. Attempting to retrace this ghostly trail of representation only succeeds in
enacting the same supplementary process of history, further lampooning the detritus
of humanism into the integrated circuit of the global village. To Baudrillard, only
Xerox copies of reality remain, where the singularity can be described as a saturation
point or critical mass, and man is sacrificed to the possible futures of the posthuman.
Humanism has been transgressed and the image has been penetrated.

Baudrillard agrees with McLuhan’s ideas on acceleration, amputation and progress,

but he finds limits to these notions because they do not take into account the affects
of reversal and implosion in lieu of the singularity. As Baudrillard (2000:36) states:
“When a certain saturation point is reached, such systems effect this reversal and
undergo this alteration willy-nilly – and thus tend to self-destruct. Their very
transparency becomes a threat to them”. In this way, Baudrillard begins to relate the
effect of McLuhan’s acceleration and auto-amputation to the affect of suicide.70 Hirst
depicts a similar message in Holidays/no feelings (Figure 17, below), where he uses
a medicine cabinet as a metaphor for the transparent compartmentalisation of
western ‘tourist culture’.71 The ordered, structured and segmented layout of the
medicine cabinets suggests notions of Eurocentrism and logocentrism; the putting-in-
place of the Other and the serialisation of society. The various medicines in the
cabinet can cure illnesses, but when they are taken in excess they can also kill, thus
blurring the boundaries between prophylaxis and virulence, and suggesting the
suicide of man through the assimilation and production of the Other – the will to
power. The way that Hirst has positioned the medicines also hints at a production line
of a factory; a metaphor for the binary structure of society. Drugs can also subdue or
stimulate, further suggesting notions of addiction and narcissism.72 Holidays/No
Feelings is also reminiscent of a Chapter title in Derrida’s Dissemination (2004),

69
Promiscuity refers to already mentioned issues of fetishism, addiction, and voyeurism. It also relates to the
singularity of otherness and sameness.
70
The transformation of the will to power into the death drive.
71
Tourist culture describes the voyeuristic nature of western society – the exploration of the gaze, and its exploitation
of the Other.
72
This can be related to McLuhan’s notion of Narcosis (2001:45), an analogy he uses to describe our addiction to the
media and our indifference to it.

78
called Plato’s Pharmacy (2004:67), further emphasising Baudrillard’s post-Platonic
views on pathology and simulacra.

Figure 17 (above): Damien Hirst, Holidays/no feelings, various medications, mixed media (Shone:2001).

Suicide succeeds through the erasure of otherness, the death of the author, and the
penetration of the image. Hyperreality is the direct result of this self-imposed
metaphorical death, which can be described as the ‘post-embodied’ interplay of
prophylaxis and virulence, as Baudrillard (2000:36-37) states: “total prophylaxis is
lethal… The absence of otherness secretes another, intangible otherness: the
absolute other of the virus”. Humanism and its ability to obscure and universalise has
evolved into the clinical state of the virus, as Baudrillard (2002:2) states: “Virality is
the pathology of closed circuits, of integrated circuits, of promiscuity and chain
reactions. It is a pathology of incest…”. Schizophrenia is a postmodern anomaly that
can be seen as a kind of theoretical dissident73 towards pathology. At the same time,
it is a pathology that can be understood as a celebration of hybrids; a hybrid based
on a relationship of virulent promiscuity and prophylactic proximity. Postmodern
hyperreal pathology is not a merger into sameness; a recognition of the absence of
otherness, a melding and inversion of the parasite and the host, and a confusion of
medium and message. In McLuhan’s terms (2001:36), the current inversion of the
global village can be seen as a cooling of hot media and the heating of cold media.

73
Dissident refers to postmodern misidentification with historical context and the shock of the new. Dissident is also a
play on the concepts of descent and dissent.

79
David Fincher74 is a contemporary film director whose work effectively represents
Baudrillard’s appropriation of McLuhan’s ideas. Fincher’s films depict the
schizophrenic, suicidal and hyperreal state of the global village, emphasising the
current state of spectacular society during late capitalism. Fight club (1999) is
probably the most relevant film in Fincher’s oeuvre in relation to the posthuman
aspects of Baudrillard’s theory. Fight club is a Neo-Marxist film adapted from the
novel written by Chuck Palahniuk (2003), and is a parody of the culture of
consumerism, tourism, and terrorism in western late capitalist, disillusioned society. It
depicts the escapist and voyeuristic aspects of the global village – a global spectacle
that has developed into a virtual singularity. Fight club is a play on the indulgence of
schizophrenic perversions within western, capitalistic, commodity fetishism.

The main character in Fight club is quite literally schizophrenic; he is an unnamed

character (usually referred to as ‘the Narrator’), played by Edward Norton, who
possesses various alter egos that allow him to gain access to certain pathologically
restricted areas and events, such as a testicular cancer support group meeting, and
Alcoholics Anonymous. Ironically, the Narrator75 needs these events, founded on
illness and disease, to cure his own ailments of labour induced insomnia, obsessive
compulsive shopping, addiction to the media, and suicidal depression. Each one of
his guises is burdened by a pseudo-illness; made-up diseases that help gain access
to the support groups that sustain his sanity. The Narrator’s imagined entities feed off
the suffering shared at events such as Alcoholics Anonymous and testicular cancer
meetings. Chief amongst the Narrators multiple personalities is Tyler Durden, played
by Brad Pitt, who accompanies him on a series of Situationist-like76 anarchic acts
(Figure 18, below). Outside of these subversive activities, the Narrator seems to live
the life of an average citizen – the archetypal pleb who goes to work so that he can
earn enough money to buy stuff that he does not need. Ironically, in his attempts for
sanity, the Narrator is quite insane and neurotic. The Narrator is also an image junky
whose voyeurism verges on a kind of parasitism, gaining catharsis from the
emotional energy of sick and dying people; akin to the pathology of postmodernism.
The Narrator purges himself of his depression by taking solace in people who are
even more ‘pathetic’ than he is, thus emphasising his vanity and self-indulgence. The
Narrator’s actions can be interpreted as an escape from his uncontrollable penchant

74
Fincher’s cinematic oeuvre includes Fight club (1999), Alien 3 (1992), and Seven (1997)
75
The Narrator can be connected to the observer-turned-spectator, and the posthumous author.
76
The Situationists were a subversive artistic movement during the 1950s and 60s. Key participants were: Pierre
Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Pinot Gallizio, Asger Jorn, and Guy Debord.

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for image – watching the shopping channel all night and buying a plethora of useless
material things. By frequenting gatherings for the terminally ill and subverting the
system, he forgets his sterile and mundane, slave-like, consumer existence.

Figure 18 (above): Fight club. A Scene where the Narrator and Tyler are on the rampage performing anarchistic acts
th
of vandalism (20 Century Fox Home Entertainment).

As the film progresses, the Narrator’s schizophrenia turns into a vaccine for his
terminal existence, personified by Tyler Durden. After realizing that Tyler is a figment
of his imagination, the Narrator is awakened to his situation as the leader of a
subversive terrorist group called ‘Fight club’, compelling him to attempt suicide near
the end of the film. Fight club is thus a parody of the simultaneous enlightenment and
alienation of postmodern existence. As Bukatman (2002:97) states: “In becoming a
consumer and acquiring a commodity, the subject fixes the lack, repairs appearance,
and becomes an image”. Hayles (1999:168) reinforces this notion when she states:
“Once objects are imbued with exchange value, they seem to absorb into themselves
the vitality of the human relations that created them as commodities”. Word, body,
virus and machine correlate under the singularity of the global village, and the
auspices of Baudrillard’s chimeric pathology. The global village is thus populated by
commoditized and objectified cellular automata.

The concept of prophylaxis and virulence is a tool that Baudrillard uses to describe
the pastiche of the global village, and how this pastiche makes schizophrenia

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possible through the loss of the real. Fight club also communicates the proximity of
estrangement to enlightenment, and the promiscuity of this trend across the globe,
throughout western history, using western media and capitalistic structures – the
shock of the new.

Baudrillard understands that the shock of the new has resulted in an awareness of
the ‘now’; a period where the connections between the body and its extensions are
inverted and ambiguous. McLuhan can be seen in this sense as a humanist, because
his ideas have mutated in the same fashion as the media he investigated. Thus
Baudrillard’s rereading of McLuhan subverts and replaces notions of acceleration
and amputation with singularity and augmentation. Bukatman (1993:98) elaborates
on this pathological approach when he states: “image, reality, hallucination, and
psychosis become indissolubly melded”. Neither the cure (prophylaxis) nor the
poison (virulence) can be situated in a specific way. The most understandable
perspective is that posthumanism is an indefinable discourse that reveals virulence
as the vaccine that counters the vacuum-sealed and bleached-out sterility of western
prophylaxis.77 As Baudrillard (2003:21) states:

Only something which has a purpose comes to an end, since once that purpose is
achieved, all that remains is for it to disappear. The human species has survived
only because it had no final purpose. Those who have tried to give it one have
generally sent it hurtling to its destruction. And it is perhaps out of some survival
instinct that groups and individuals are gradually abandoning any precise purpose,
abandoning meaning, reason and Enlightenment to retain only the untutored,
intuitive understanding of an imprecise situation.

From Baudrillard’s perspective the global village is the culmination, in the form of vast
global networks, of the human need for purpose and truth – a desire to penetrate the
image, which has culminated in the haunting death of the author/god. This has
caused a period of reversal, inversion, and dissolution that we seem to indulge in, as
Baudrillard (2003b:7) states: “To come here is to dream of a possible end of all things
– and of thought. But we confirm here that the world’s only extremity is the extremity
of endless circulation. Wherever you are, you are hostage to the global network. It is
impossible to cut the umbilical cord. You are yourself an extreme phenomenon, gone
beyond your own end”. This is a theoretical form of suicide that, once achieved,

77
From a Deconstructive viewpoint, and following Baudrillard’s views, humanist indifference towards difference has
changed into indifference in difference. Baudrillard’s pitting of Evil against Evil might just as well be a pitting of Good
against Good in this context.

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places us in the virtual arena of posthumanism, which can be described as an
alternative, or rather ulterior, to the relationship between society, media and history.

Figure 19 (above): Damien Hirst, A thousand years, 1990, steel, glass, flies, maggots, MDF, insect-o-cutor, cow’s head,
sugar, water, 213 x 427 x 213 cm. Saatchi collection (Rosenthal:1997).

In an artwork titled A thousand years (Figure 19, above), Hirst adheres to this suicidal
understanding of spectacular society. The artwork is a huge, compartmentalised,
steel-framed, glass box consisting of two sections. In many ways, Hirst’s use of these
steel and glass structures symbolise the singular containment of the global village,
and the split personality of the society of the spectacle. One section contains
thousands of gestating maggots, and the other section contains an insect-o-cutor,
used to kill roaming flies. On the floor in the same section as the fly-killing
mechanism, is a decapitated cow’s head. Hirst made holes in the partition that
separates the two sections, allowing the matured flies to access the rotting flesh.
Ironically, the flies do not choose to attack the life-sustaining viscera, but rather move
mindlessly towards the insect-o-cutor, into certain death. Essentially, by giving the
newly born flies a choice between death (insect-o-cutor/machine) and life
(flesh/sustenance), and proving that the flies are oblivious to the facility they have to
choose, Hirst makes a satirical comment on the ecstasy we extract from our
alienation in a media dominated world – an analogy that relates to the death of the
author and suicide.78

78
The Matrix trilogy is another example of this type of commentary, where people prefer to be oblivious in a decadent
and harsh hyperreality, rather than face the meaninglessness of their existence in the ‘real world’.

83
Spectacular society has moved ‘beyond’ the death of the author into a wake of
simulacra, media and information – a posthumous networked, integrated and virtual
space. Hirst’s work elaborates on the fact that this conceptual space is a Darwinian-
like instinctual instance of the global village. Freud (2003) came to the conclusion
that humans have not one but two primary instincts. From Freud’s perspective the
life-favoring instinct is Eros and the death instinct is Thanatos.79 The two
compartments in A thousand years can signify the Freudian convergence of
traditionally opposing pairs. A thousand years is indicative of Baudrillard’s views on
prophylaxis and virulence, schizophrenia, neurosis and death. Both Hirst and
Baudrillard subscribe to the notion that the poison is the cure – the notion that
progress can lead to suicide – and that the distinction between promiscuity and
proximity in a schizophrenic hyperreal world is a frivolous one. As Baudrillard
(1988:26) states:

If hysteria was the pathology of the exasperated staging of the subject – of the
theatrical and operational conversion of the body – and if paranoia was the
pathology of organisation – of the structuring of a rigid and jealous world – then
today we have entered into a new form of schizophrenia – with the emergence of an
immanent promiscuity and the perpetual interconnection of all information and
communication networks. No more hysteria, or projective paranoia as such, but a
state of terror which is characteristic of the schizophrenic, an over-proximity of all
things, a foul promiscuity of all things which beleaguer and penetrate him, meeting
with no resistance, and no halo, no aura, not even the aura of his own body protects
him…. The schizophrenic is not, as generally claimed, characterised by his loss of
touch with reality, but by the absolute proximity to and total instantaneousness with
things, this overexposure to the transparency of the world. Stripped of a stage and
crossed over without the least obstacle, the schizophrenic cannot produce the limits
of his very being, he can no longer produce himself as a mirror. He becomes pure
screen, a pure absorption and resorption surface of the influent networks.

The flipside to this suicidal conceptualisation is the penetration of the image, where
the body is incorporated into the media that it once made and controlled. The
augmentation of vestigial limbs thus facilitates an evolution from the current body
without organs into a cyborg aberration. As Baudrillard (In Bukatman, 1993:200)

79
Freud did not directly refer to the term ‘Thanatos’, he only subscribed to using the phrases death drive or death
instinct. However, given Freud’s use of the term Eros to signify the will to life, most theorists have referred to the
death drive as ‘Thanatos’. This is so because in Greek mythology Eros (life/sexual drive) and Thanatos
(death/suicide drive) are opposing deities. Freud’s use of Eros and Thanatos can also be compared to Nietzsche’s
understanding of the Apollonian and Dionysian. Other than life and death, Hirst’s work also confuses polemics such
as alienation and enlightenment, romantic and classic, good and evil, inside and outside, prophylaxis and virulence,
et cetera.

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states: “The cool80 universe of digitality absorbs the world of metaphor and of
metonymy, and the principle of simulation thus triumphs over both the reality principle
and the pleasure principle”. 81 In a posthuman era the body is a random informational
pattern, as Baudrillard (1988:23) states: “Ecstasy is all functions abolished into one
dimension, the dimension of communication. All events, all spaces, all memories, are
abolished in the sole dimension of information…”. To use the jargon of Baudrillard,
Bukatman and McLuhan: we are in orbit around a globe (Baudrillard, 2004:3) that is
situated within a posthuman solar system (Bukatmann, 200:98) that forms part of an
imploded galaxy (Baudrillard, 2004:82) surrounded by a reversed hot/cool universe
(McLuhan, 2001:24). This imploded galaxy is the direct result of the death of man,
hyperreality, the loss of affect, and the birth of the cyborg. Baudrillard (1999:20)
envisages the implosion of the postmodern limbo when he states:

Suspense and slow-motion are our current tragic forms, since acceleration has
become our banal condition. Time is no longer evident in its normal passing, since it
has been distended, enlarged to the floating dimension of reality. It is no longer
illuminated by will. Nor is space illuminated any longer by movement. Since their
destination has been lost, some kind of predestination would have to intervene to
give them back a tragic effect. We can read this predestination in suspense and
slow-motion, that which so suspends the development of the form that the meaning
no longer crystallizes. Or else beneath this discourse of meaning another flows
slowly and implodes under it. So slow that it could curl up on itself and even stop
totally in its progression, light could lead to a total suspension of the universe.

3.3) The imploded galaxy

After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical

technologies, the Western world is imploding… After three thousand years of
specialist explosion and of increasing specialism and alienation in the technological
extensions of our bodies, our world has become compressional by dramatic reversal
(McLuhan, 2001:3-5).

Three thousand years in show business and I never stand still for such a routine as
this (Burroughs, 1992b:44).

80
In Understanding Media (2001:25) McLuhan often refers to hot and cold media, which are dependant on the
amount of participation required on behalf of the subject; an exchange of dominance between subject and object.
81
The reality principle and the pleasure principle are concepts that Freud mentions in Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(2003).

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One of McLuhan’s most popular publications is titled The Gutenberg galaxy (1962).
In this book McLuhan focuses on the development of the media from the
Renaissance, and the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, to the onset of the
global village and the development of electronic media. Essentially The Gutenberg
galaxy denotes the gradual miniaturisation of the globe through the periodic
introduction of more efficient forms of communication. Baudrillard (1988:17) has
already suggested that this gradual miniaturisation has reached a point of critical
mass; an implosion of the media that destroys the agent of its creation, thereby
constructing an ulterior reality in its wake. Thus, in order to make McLuhan’s title
more suitable to a contemporary setting, it can now be referred to as the imploded
galaxy. As McLuhan (2001:48) states: “It could well be that the successive
mechanisations of the various physical organs since the invention of printing have
made too violent and superstimulated a social experience for the central nervous
system to endure”. The global village can be seen as the exteriorization of the
nervous system, resulting in a collapse into the infinite speeds and zero distances of
the digital medium. The imploded galaxy is a continuance of this notion; it is a
construct based on the suicide of man and the birth of the cyborg. In metaphorical
terms, Plato’s cave has caved-in, and the importance of the imploded galaxy here is
that it can be seen as a fusion of the ideas of both McLuhan and Baudrillard. The
imploded galaxy incorporates the society of the spectacle and the global village into a
analogy-based-context.

This is a cosmos composed of cybersex, Ad-On packages, fast-food supersize meal

options, plug-in software patches, preservatives and additives. Everything is
simulacra, a processed by-product of a synthesised analogy, and can thus be
supplemented (imported and exported) or hybridised allowing information to change
mediums at the click of a button. So too, the citizen of the global village needs to be
just as mobile and connected, constantly changing fashions, acquiring new trends,
and requiring new technology to keep up with the pace of a promiscuous hyperreality
that is completely indifferent to any concept of proximity. In this world space, is only
useful to store information. It is a place of simultaneous censorship, surveillance,
instant access, and over-stimulation. There is no body to perform with, and the stage
that man once acted upon has withered into nothingness, leaving our masks to decay
in the desert of the real. The stage is now a virtual arena where identities can be
created as easily as digital mediums can transfer information. As Bukatman
(Badmington, 2000:99) states: “…we’re at a time now where we have to start
redesigning the human body to match the technology we’ve created… [we] are

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confronted by the end of the human form as we know it”. In this way we have to
become cyborgs; in both a literal and figurative sense, we have become hubs for the
various media that sustains us and allows us to access the information we need to
survive. As Hayles (1999: 84) states: “…cybernetic systems are constituted by flows
of information”. The body is an information construct; transferable, changeable,
malleable and expendable.

The imploded galaxy defines human existence in an artificial and synthesised world
like the global village – the aftermath of our suicidal movement stemming from the
appropriation of the Other, to the plastic surgery of the Other, to the production of the
Other, to the death of the author, and finally the simulation of the author and
construction of the cyborg. This is a process of transference into cyberspace, which
has been witnessed from the introduction of television, and the influence electronic
media has had in the construction of spectacular culture. As McLuhan (2001:58)
demonstrates, “Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the
film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming and in the
form of the thing or the documentary novel”. McLuhan (2001:58) extends this
analysis to the influence of television over the art making processes of artists:

It is the poets and painters who react instantly to a new medium like radio or TV.
Radio and gramophone and tape recorder gave us back the poet’s voice as an
important dimension of the poetic experience, words became a kind of painting with
light, again. But TV, with its deep-participation mode, caused young poets suddenly
to present their poems in cafés, in public parks, anywhere. After TV, they suddenly
felt the need for personal contact with their public… In our age artists are able to mix
their media diet as easily as their book diet.

Television is a symbol for the gradual movement towards abstraction in the human
theatre, which has ironically become a reality in the global, communicative,
instantaneity of millions of glowing and flickering screens. This kind of mass
communication altered human perspectives with statements like “BIG BROTHER IS
WATCHING YOU” (Orwell, 2003:3), thereby increasing the anxiety and paranoia that
is synonymous with the medium. Rachel Whiteread makes a parody of this process
in Room 101 (Figure 20, below). The artwork is a cast of the room that George
Orwell used to broadcast his talk show at the BBC during World War 2. In this way
Whiteread constructs a memorial to an author who was influential in our
understanding of the society of the spectacle, particularly towards its politics and its

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media. In many ways, Room 101 is a dual, figurative, and literal homage to dead
authors, and this is proven through Whiteread’s inclusion of masterpieces by master
artists, such as Michelangelo’s David, in her installation. The cast is also a fill of the
negative space that comprised the actual room 101, thereby suggesting inversion,
absence, simulation, and implosion. Bukatman (1993:26) sums up the implosive
influence of an electronic medium such as television when he states: “The pervasive
domination of, and addiction to, the image might be regarded as a primary symptom
of terminal identity… the spectacular world of television dominates and defines
existence, becoming more ‘real’… than physical reality itself”. Thus the cyborg can
be seen as either a literal or figurative hybridisation of man and machine.

Figure 20 (above): Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Room 101), 2003, mixed media, 300 x 500 x 643 cm (Townsend:2004).

The imploded village is the end of Foucault’s Panopticon (Baudrillard, 1991:201),

because the gaze has become simultaneously total and vestigial. As Baudrillard
(2004:29) states:

The eye of TV is no longer the source of absolute gaze, and the ideal of control is no
longer that of transparency. This still presupposes an objective space (that of the
Renaissance) and the omnipotence of the despotic gaze. It is still, if not a system of

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 confinement, at least a system of mapping. More subtly, but always externally,
playing on the opposition of seeing and being seen, even if the panoptic focal point
may be blind.

Figure 21 (Above): Andy Warhol. Silver disaster. 1963. Acrylic and Silkscreen on canvas. 203 X 203 cm. Zurich, Galerie Bruno
Bischofberger (Walther:2000).

Although blindness towards the supplement can be seen as a humanist trait,

posthumanism does possess an inverted and mediated version of this attitude. As Debord
(In Bukatman, 1993:53) states: “the spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social
relation among people, mediated by images”. Andy Warhol can be said to focus on this
aspect in his work, especially in Silver disaster (Figure 21, above), which depicts repeated
images of an electric chair. Usually, the image of an electric chair would instil strong
emotions of morbidity, fear, and death in the viewer. However, by serialising the image
through fragmentation, distortion, and repetition, Warhol still reminds the viewer of death,
but the viewer is indifferent to it. It is also reminiscent of the panoptical influence of
censorship, surveillance, control and power. In this way, analogy and supplementation are
complimentary terms; both follow from something else as metaphor or facsimile.
Baudrillard (1999:26) describes this as a relationship between anomie and anomaly;82 a

82
This is perhaps the key reason why exo-colonialism has developed into endo-colonialism, but it can also be
connected to Derrida’s supplement; only now, the context has changed to the inverted supplement – retro-futures.
Deconstruction often focuses on the ‘in-between’ in the relationship between absence and presence. The in-between
is the before and after, and the before and after have imploded in on each other; all in the context of a information
society that has seemingly lost any single sense of context. This is a society that lives in a plethora of contexts,

89
level of entropic decay that confuses issues of proximity and promiscuity, prophylaxis and
virulence.

McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy is based on the communication of objects in an ever-

changing technological environment. The imploded galaxy, however, is a space
where bodies can connect almost without end, and modernist momentum has
developed into postmodern inertia. Posthumanism is the formulation of this imploded
galaxy, describing in bits and pieces a cyborg existence, where the distinction
between man and machine is mute. This is a media analogy to the Narcissus myth,
where simulacra, mirrors of the nervous system, have numbed human perception,
making man the “servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image”
(McLuhan, 2001:45). McLuhan (2001:48) goes on to describe the global village in a
surprisingly postmodern way when he states:

For if Narcissus is numbed by his self-amputated image, there is a very good reason
for the numbness. There is a close parallel of response between patterns of physical
and psychic trauma or shock … Shock induces a generalised numbness or an
increased threshold to all types of perception. The victim seems immune to pain or
sense… The selection of a single sense for intense stimulus, or of a single extended,
isolated, or “amputated” sense in technology, is in part the reason for the numbing
effect that technology as such has on its makers and users. For the central nervous
system rallies a response of general numbness to the challenge of specialized
irritation.

The hindrance of any distinction between prophylaxis and virulence prompts a

transition from the utopia of modernism to the postmodern sublime, as McLuhan
(2001:51) states: “It is this continuous embrace of our own technology in daily use
that puts us in the Narcissus role of subliminal awareness and numbness in relation
to these images of ourselves”. Baudrillard (2001:45) finds common ground with
McLuhan over the fact that technology is always disruptive and distractive; this is the
reason for our self-imposed narcosis. Burroughs’s oeuvre connects such ideas to
junk, viruses, addiction, control, and surrender. In his idiom the image is part of the
virus and “junk is concentrated image” (Burroughs, 1992:50). Narcosis is bred
through infection, and the imploded galaxy is what remains in the aftermath of such
an infection – hyperreality is an infection that has turned into the status quo, as
Burroughs (1992:49) states:

existing in a network of media. But, communication has also become total, and networks advance at such speeds
that a temporal-spatial lapse, or rather collapse, occurs. Exo- morphs into Endo-.

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 Our virus infects the human and creates our image in him … it was found that the
image material was not dead matter, but exhibited the same life cycle as the virus.
This virus released upon the world would infect the entire population and turn them
into our replicas.

Burroughs’s prose can be said to describe the episteme of the cyborg body, and this
is certainly a topic emphasised by the postmodern sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1982).
However, as Haraway (2000:83) suggests, the cyborg does not actually have an
origin story, like its human predecessor: “A cyborg is not innocent; it was not born in
a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms
without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted”. Thus, like the
alteration of McLuhan’s notions (global village vs. imploded galaxy), Foucault’s body
politics must also be changed to fit an alternative form, evident in cyborg politics.
That is to say, the imploded galaxy simulates body politics, but is not necessarily
subject to it. Haraway continues: “The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and
reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self”.

The irony that cyborg takes for granted can be found in the absence of any
perspective on power relations in McLuhan’s ideas. Nietzsche’s (1989:78)
perspective on power becomes important here because it relates the ironic path that
human technological progress has taken: “It is not too much to say that even partial
diminution of utility, an atrophying and degeneration, a loss of meaning and
purposiveness – in short, death – is among the conditions of an actual progressus,
which is always as it appears in the shape of a will and way to greater power…”.
Haraway can be said to describe a similar premise to that of Nietzsche in the Cyborg
Manifesto; only she introduces McLuhan’s notions as a template for her feminist
approach to the media – the shift from body politics to cyborg politics. Thus alteration
of the global village into the imploded galaxy can be seen as a Dionysian affirmation
of a “posthuman solar system” (Bukatman, 2000:98). Foucault’s body politics
envisaged that the body was a site for various cultural, social, political, and economic
power relations – the body is a locality for domination and resistance; the target of
the gaze. All this changes, however, under the terms and conditions of cyborg
politics. The cyborg is a revelation from the confines of the body, for it defines the
loss of affect and terminal flesh, as Bukatman (1993:20) states:

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 ... “Terminal flesh” narrates technology’s penetration into the human… The body is
often the site for deformation and disappearance, the subject is dissolved, simulated,
retooled, genetically engineered, evolved and de-evolved… The cyborg is a cut-up
with multiple meanings… the cyborg represents the embodiment of media culture…
There is an uneasy but consistent sense of human obsolescence, and at stake is the
very definition of the human… This proliferation of definitions reveals the absence of
definition, our ontology is adrift.

Figure 22 (above): Stelarc, Evolusion, 1982, performance using a mechanical third hand (Gržinić:2002).

Stelarc’s performances are indicative of cyborg politics. In a performance titled

Evolution (figure 22, above), Stelarc demonstrates how augmentation, in the form of
a third robotic hand, can enhance bodily functions. It is important to note how
dependant the artist is on the third hand to achieve his desired task. Stelarc writes
the word ‘evolution’ as part of the performance in an effort to communicate the
encroachments of the global village on the body, specifically in terms of cyborg
politics. Stelarc turns himself into a cyborg by systematically experimenting with
various prosthesis and augmentations in his performances, and he digitises his body
to make it adhere to the networks of multiple media. From this perspective, the body
is merely an organic template on which various media can attach themselves; a hub
from whence information can flow from one context to another – a multi-media
conduit. Stelarc’s performances prove that the body must change to suit an updated
virtual environment. Thus Stelarc makes a thoroughly ambiguous announcement

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about the relationship between the body and its extensions. As Haraway (2000:82)
states: “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human
and machine”.

The global village has been described in terms of singularity; a convergence point
where the momentum of our will to power, or death drive, reverts into the wake of
postmodern existence. This can also be described as a subversion of the linear
progression of history into a situation that can be described as our presence in the
future – a ‘retro-future’ of sorts. As John Clute (In Bukatman, 1993:2) states: “We no
longer feel that we penetrate futures; futures penetrate us”. This understanding adds
another dimension to the notion of the imploded galaxy because it also describes
history, along with the body, as inverted. This is a perspective that no longer
represents a compelling momentum towards the future(s); but rather, it is a situation
where the future(s) moves uninhibitedly in a reversed direction. In a state where
everything is backwards and inverted, multiple histories are rehashed and revived,
and a plethora of futures are exhumed. As Baudrillard (2003:32) states: “The idea
that the world of networks and artificial memories, everyone should remember
everything – and everything remembers you – is monstrous”. This posthuman
spatial-temporal reversion can be described as the loss of affect.

The imploded galaxy portrays the melding of the global village, the society of the
spectacle and hyperreality, which can be converted into the fact that globalisation
and the loss of affect dictates a kind of ‘blip culture’. As Bukatman (1993:33) states:
“The blip subject exists only within this system, becoming a sign of an increasingly
imploded culture”. Alvin Toffler (In Bukatman, 1993:32) relates to the flickering and
random structure of blip culture when he writes that the media assault on spectacular
society is made up of “short modular blips of information”, which can be related to
advertisements, news items, music videos, spam, e-mails, marketed wars and
playstation educations.

The imploded galaxy further suggests that citizens have been transformed into
replicas of these blips, much like the future imagined in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner,
which is set in a world where clones, called replicants, are slaves to society, used by
corporations to mine on ‘off-world colonies’. These replicants have laws enforced on
them to ensure that they do not try to resist their makers. These laws are enforced by
individuals called ‘Blade Runners’. Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, is a Blade
Runner who is trying to find a replicant suspected of murder (Figure 23, below).

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Throughout his investigation, Deckard struggles with his manufactured surroundings
and synthesised world, only to find out by the end of the film that he is a replicant
himself. The city in Blade Runner also represents the image of the global village,
mentioned earlier.

Figure 23 (above): Blade Runner. A scene where Deckard has just killed a fleeing suspect replicant (1982.
[Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

Simulation and the commerce of information has become the primary occupation in a
digitised blip culture. The imploded galaxy is a society composed of cellular automata
labouring in the name of information, where the augmentation of new technologies
function as surrogate skills, replacing tactile experiential reality. This surrogate space
is the reason why analogy, which is the basis of simulation, replaces ontology and
epistemology, which is based on difference, in a world that is constituted on image.
Our addiction to the media has made us posthumous junkies in lieu of the inversion
of our extensions. As Baudrillard (2003:33) states: “We are all living victims of
unconscious flows, which simply come together in us. The dead part pulls the living
along, like those worms where one part of the body wriggles forward and drags all
the rest along”. Thus blip culture identifies the emergence of an alternative subject
after the death of the author and the penetration of the image; an information-based
citizen, one that is dependant on, and constituted by, the media. The blip conveys the
schizophrenic singularity of the cyborg. Roy Batty’s sentiment in Blade Runner
conveys this notion in a poetic manner: “All those… moments will be lost… in

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time…like tears… in the rain. Time to die”. These are the last words of Roy Batty, the
chief villain and replicant, whom Deckard hunts down at the end of Blade Runner.
Blip culture is implied by the loss of affect, which has resulted in the emergence of
the cyborg. The cyborg is a transitory symbol for the fragmentation of the body into
blips of information. Hayles (1999:29) has described this transitory form as an
informational pattern; an antibody of sorts. Our antibodies, and all our attempts to
synthesise them, have resulted in our conversion and inversion into ‘anti-bodies’.83
Foucault’s body politics, or ‘biopolitics’ (1998), was designed around the fact that we
understand our anatomy as destiny, but the media now dictate our fate. The body
has become vestigial, a remnant of itself, it has mutated into a virtual mechanism of
viral onslaught, which has been assimilated into a culture of the blip. Blip culture is a
circumstance that has gotten over the spectacle, flickering in the virtual space of the
screen.84 As Hayles (1999:XIV) states: “As you gaze at the flickering signifiers
scrolling down the computer screens, no matter what identifications you assign to the
embodied entities that you cannot see, you have already become posthuman”.

Blip culture is evident everywhere; in the image of celebrities that compel us to

aesthetically alter ourselves through plastic surgery, in fashions that age more
quickly than the manufacturing processes that produce them, fake trees used to
disguise intermittent cell phone communication towers, McDonalds fast food
franchises on every street corner, and Disney World surroundings in every shopping
mall.85 The candy store-like assortment of identities available to the blip citizen is
almost infinite, as long as you have access to the correct passwords.

Even though the imploded galaxy conveys a message that Plato’s cave has caved-in,
it still adheres to the structure of Baudrillard’s simulacra. Thus, in keeping with the
already established notions of schizophrenia and pastiche, prophylaxis and virulence;
the imploded galaxy relates to the production of the cyborg, which has developed
from a need to survive in a future that no longer needs us. As Jameson (1993:18)
states:

Cultural production has been driven back inside the mind, within the monadic
subject: it can no longer look directly out of its eyes at the real world for the referent
but must, as in Plato’s cave, trace its mental images of the world on its confining

83
This is strongly connected to Baudrillard’s prophylaxis and virulence and Hayles’s theories on the hyphen and
splice.
84
This relates to the evolution of Lacan’s “floating signifiers” into Hayles’s “Flickering signifiers”.
85
Baudrillard (2004:12) equates Disney World to the notion of the imploded galaxy.

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 walls. If there is any realism left here, it is a ‘realism’ which springs from the shock of
grasping that confinement and of realising that, for whatever peculiar reasons, we
seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and
stereotypes about the past, which itself remains forever out of reach.

3.4) Posthuman futures

The sub-title to Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (2003) is aptly named a “prelude
to a philosophy of the future”. Posthumanism can be regarded as a postscript to this
philosophy of the future - a prospective fiction of sorts. Posthumanism is thus very
much a part of an awakening, or enlightening, period within the current postmodern
wake. For example, the fictitious technologies made-up for many science fiction
narratives often tend to be invented in reality, such as the flat screens of 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968), plastic surgery in Logan’s Run (1976),86 or the Tricorders
(Figure 24, below) in the original Star Trek television series (1966) that look a lot like
cell phones or PDA’s.87

Figure 24 (above): An example of how a simulation can become a reality. On the top left are two tricorders from the
original Star Trek series, on the right is the contemporary equivalent, a Palm PDA.

In this way, posthumanism can be said to ‘exist’ before it actually exists. That is to
say, discourses seem to be created before any tangible evidence can be established.
McLuhan (2001:54) realised this fact when he wrote: “Now, this is especially true of
our media. They are put out long before they are thought out. In fact, their being put
outside us tends to cancel the possibility of their being thought at all”. In a
postmodern sense, the distinction between man and machine becomes transparent,

86
Although plastic surgery was invented before this time, Logan’s Run is probably one of the earliest pictorial
manifestations of it in popular culture.
87
PDA is an abbreviation for Personal Digital Assistant.

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and can be equated with the clashing of the present and the future, the imploded
galaxy, and Baudrillard’s notion of prophylaxis and virulence. As Bukatman (1993:6)
states: “We have annexed the future into our own present”. In reference to science
fiction narratives, Bruce Sterling (In Bukatman, 1993:6), who is a leading member of
the cyberpunk movement, states: “We live science fiction…. We have annexed the
future into our own present…. We are already living out the existences predicted by
earlier generations of SF authors…. The future was now”.

Figure 25 (above): Damien Hirst, The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living, 1991, Tiger shark, glass,
steel, 5% formaldehyde solution, 213 x 518 x 213 cm, Saatchi collection (Rosenthal:1997).

This ‘existence’ can be seen as an allegory to the death of the author, because his
demise has been theorised for over a century, and in reality it is a plausible idea, but
is has not literally happened yet. Hirst encloses this idea in The physical impossibility
of death in the mind of someone living (Figure 25, above). In this work a shark
carcass is used as a ubiquitous analogy for death; in so doing, Hirst emphasises the
dogmatic fascination and narcissistic fear that man has about his own ‘self-imposed
death’. Hirst encloses such allegories to death, externalisation and the path of
progress in a vitrine, thereby contextualising and re-contextualising death as an ironic
and neurotic idealism. Hirst proposes that the body and sex have already become
part of the spectacle, and now even the certainty of death is simulated and made into
an analogy. Hirst finds closure in the concept of the loss of affect by making the

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visual statement that everything is analogy, including his artwork, himself as an
author, and most notably the idea of death. Bukatman (1993:73) describes this
situation best when he states: “All power to act has been transformed into the power
to appear… media are no longer the extensions of man; man has instead become
the extensions of them”. Other than suggest a shift from representation into
simulation, the loss of affect also presupposes the succession of Haraway’s cyborg
politics (2000:70) over Foucault’s body politics.88 As Haraway (2000:70) suggests: “I
am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily
reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings.
Michel Foucault’s biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open
field”.

Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (2000) is a transpolitical89 recommendation for the

episteme of the posthuman future(s). The evidence that Bukatman details in Terminal
Identity (1993) can be said to break down this episteme into its constituent parts, and
document the bogus genealogy of posthumanism. Bukatman has summarized this
posthuman episteme in a basic five-point pseudo-chronological structure,90 which
includes: terminal image, terminal space, terminal penetration, terminal flesh, and
terminal resistance/cyborg acceptance. This episteme can be paralleled with
Baudrillard’s (2004:6) four successive phases of the image:

It is the refection of a profound reality;

It masks and denatures a profound reality;
It masks the absence of a profound reality;
It has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

Burroughs (1992:13) states in Nova Express: “The entire planet is being developed
into terminal Identity and complete surrender”. The terminal era has arrived and it is a
concept that is at the heart of the posthuman inquiry. In this way Baudrillard’s
(2004:6) four phases of the image can be seen as a mutation of Plato’s (O’Doherty,
1999:11) description of the image – point, line, surface, solid, simulacra:

88
Body politics is a generalized term, Foucault (1998:139) usually used the term “biopower” (1998:140) or
“biopolitics”. Foucault uses both terms to describe the political objectification of the body in society. With body
politics, Foucault ironically improves on Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power by referring to the will to knowledge.
89
Baudrillard (1999:25) uses the term transpolitics to relate postmodern politics to hyperreality. With transpolitics
Baudrillard describes the imploded galaxy, the destructuring of the global village and the end of history in terms of
transparency and simulation. Transpolitics is often used alongside terms (2002b) such as: Transaesthetics,
Transexuality, Transeconomics, and to a certain extent Transhumanism.
90
The five main chapters of Terminal Identity (1993) are titled according to this chronology.

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 In the first case, the image is a good appearance – representation is of the
sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance – it is of the order of
maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance – it is of the order of
sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation.

Another description of the terminal era and the posthuman future(s) can be found in
Hayles’s (1999:16) theories on cybernetics, where she has allocated three
overlapping stages in our development towards posthumanism. These stages
describe a gradual motion from homeostasis, to reflexivity and finally virtuality. These
three stages can also be linked with McLuhan’s notions on acceleration. For
example, homeostasis is a process of amputation and counter-irritation, reflexivity is
the development of prosthetics and synthetics, and virtuality can be defined as total
augmentation – cyborg integration.

Thus the posthuman future(s) that these theorists suggest is caused by the confusion
of time and space in the instantaneous and imploded space of hyperreality and
cyborg politics. As Baudrillard (2002:11) advocates: “We no longer have the time to
seek out an identity in the historical record, in memory, in a past, nor indeed in a
project or a future. We have to have an instant memory which we can plug into
immediately – a kind of promotional identity which can be verified at every moment”.

In keeping with the characteristics of the imploded galaxy, cyborg politics exists in a
pseudo-era bereft of the annexes suggested by the constructed body. Hayles
(1999:92) has equated this breach, or paradigm shift, with the fact that everything is
analogy, proposing the metamorphosis of the visceral body into informational
simulacra. Hayles further suggests that, if the body were a linguistic and discursive
construct, the cyborg is certainly a random informational pattern. The cyborg is a
Xeroxed Frankenstein-like entity that bridges the gap between the simulation of the
real and virtuality. Perhaps, even more so, the cyborg is the antithesis of Deleuze
and Guattari’s body without organs (2004:166) – a breach from its limits:

At any rate, you have one (or several). It is not so much that it pre-exists or comes
ready-made, although in certain respects it is pre-existent. At any rate. you make
one, you can’t desire without making one. And it awaits you; it is an inevitable
exercise or experimentation, already accomplished the moment you undertake it,
unaccomplished as long as you don’t. This is not reassuring because you can botch
it. Or it can be terrifying, and lead you to your death. It is nondesire as well as desire.

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 It is not at all a notion or a concept but a practice, a set of practices. You never reach
the body without organs, you can’t reach it, you are forever attaining it is a limit.

The cyborg is the realisation of Burroughs’s phrase “program empty body” (1992:73).
The cyborg is a virtual body without organs, an object of total augmentation, the
subject of terminal flesh, and an amalgamation of prophylaxis and virulence. Hayles
(1999:25) describes this as a paradoxical move from a world founded on the dualism
between absence and presence, to an informational play between randomness and
pattern. The cyborg is not restricted to the limitations of the body, but can connect
and interpolate its values and contents to other mediums and contexts. As Hayles
(1999: 93) states: “The flipside of drawing analogies is constructing boundaries.
Analogy as a figure draws its force from the boundaries it leapfrogs across”. Hayles
(1999: 98) continues this debate later when she states:

Border crossings accomplished through analogy include the separation between

flesh and world (sense perception), the transition between one discipline and
another (for example, moving from the psychology of living organisms to the
electrical engineering of a cybernetic machine), and the transformation of embodied
experience, noisy with error, into the clean abstractions of mathematical pattern.

Hayles (1999:113) has taken her ideas on analogy further, and has found a key
connection between postmodern limbo and the posthuman breach, to describe the
“cybernetic syntax in limbo”. Hayles (1999:115) suggests that the allegorical
ambiguity of the present and the future in the imploded galaxy can be described in
terms of the hyphen (polarity) and splice (circuit) concept.91 The notion of the hyphen
and splice suggests the mediation of two kinds of posthumanism: posthumanism and
post-humanism.92 Each type of posthumanism mediates the other. Posthumanism is
founded on an analogy-based present, and can be seen a figurative understanding of
the present. Post-humanism focuses on the “archaeology of the future” (Jameson
2005), and can be perceived as a literal depiction of the future. For example, a sci-fi
film such as The Matrix (1999) depicts the literal end of mankind at the hands of his
technology, and can thus be regarded as post-human. However, The Matrix can also
be seen as an analogy to the current global political, economic, religious and social
climate, thereby making it a figurative portrayal of global anxieties, and thus

91
William Burroughs relates to pastiche, the body without organs, and the Hyphen and Splice, through the cut-up
process he used in his writing method. He relates closely to the splice and its erasure of the hyphen, the hyphen and
its mediation of the splice: supplement and trace.
92
Post-humanism, with a hyphen, has sometimes been regarded as transhumanism.

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posthuman. Ambiguities pertaining to cyborg bodies are also a feature in The Matrix,
continually questioning the cybernetic-organism (hyphen) against the cyborg (splice).

Figure 26 (above): Spiderman battling against Venom, who used to be one of Spiderman’s alter-egos (Marvel
Comics).

Another example of the hyphen and splice can be found in superhero comics, such
as Spiderman, where there is always a superhuman heroic figure, both feared and
loved by the populace. Comics like The Hulk always suggest a fear of the monstrous
and forthcoming posthuman hidden beneath the human skin. Other comics such as
X-Men suggest two factions of posthumans: an anti-human posthuman race that
wishes to destroy and succeed humanity, and a pro-human posthuman team that
protects humanity from the anti-humans fuelled by a want to live in harmony with the
populace. These comics play with and invert traditional humanist mythologies and
archetypes, such as good and evil, and villain and saviour, but they always seem to

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introduce an element of the posthuman – the overman or successor to man– thereby
adding elements of ambiguity and dissolution. There is always an alter-ego, or super-
ego, that supplements the fatigued human identity, and a schizophrenic relationship
between these two personalities within the main character. An example of this
schizophrenic situation is illustrated in the fusion and separation of Spiderman and
Venom (Figure 26, above). Superheroes like Spiderman have seemingly human
attributes and hide their posthuman ‘monstrosity’ from the public eye, thereby
enforcing the limitations of humanism. In this way, specifically in the Marvel93
universe, comics are both a literal and figurative interpretation of the posthuman. Like
The Matrix, these comics have become efficient at skipping media and hopping
disciplines,94 thereby making them analogues to the current understanding of the
body, media and information in imploded galaxy.

In a posthuman paradigm there is no longer the question of an opposition between

bodies because the cyborg stands as an icon to the idea that the body is not a clear-
cut concept. The cyborg is a symbol for the empting-out and continuing
immobilisation of the body to the point that it needs synthetic alterations and aids. It
is also a realisation of the homogenisation of all bodies. Thus the cyborg is a species
suited to the singularity, submitting to the vestiges of the global village, and an
alternative form that can be replaced, repaired, improved, distributed and exchanged
virtually. As Baudrillard (In Bukatman, 1993:246) states, “The body is no longer
metaphor or symbol; nothing lurks below the flesh. The body is now an infinite set of
surfaces – a fractal subject – an object among objects”. The cyborg is a figure born
from analogy, a supplement to the body, void of dualistic notions. The cyborg is an
absent figure that presents itself as an epitaph to the fact that analogy has replaced
difference, and simulation now succeeds representation. As Bukatman (1993:247)
states: “The body must become a cyborg to retain its presence in the world,
resituated in technological space and refigured in technological terms. Whether this
represents a constitution, a sacrifice, a transcendence, or a surrender of the subject
is not certain”.

The hyphen and splice theory can also be applied to the films discussed earlier in
this paper. Fight club and Vanilla sky can be seen as posthuman because they are
both figurative interpretations of the present. The Matrix and Gattaca can be called

93
The Marvel universe refers to the environment inhabited by all the charters depicted in Marvel comic books. Marvel
is the publisher for comics such as Spiderman, X-men, Hulk, and Fantastic Four.
94
There are movies, games, clothes, toys, and other media dedicated to the themes of these texts.

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post-human because they are literal interpretations of the future. Both types of
posthuman continually refer to each other. However, the allocation of the hyphen or
the splice can just as easily be reversed; this depends on whether, depicted in the
text, the present exists in the future, or the future penetrates the present. The key
connection between the hyphen and splice is the subjugation of absence and
presence with randomness and pattern. The development of such posthuman
future(s) and cyborg politics can thus be regarded as the final formulation of
McLuhan’s ideas in Baudrillard’s theories.

The influence of posthumanism on postmodern narratives exemplifies Baudrillard’s

fourth stage of the image, where the image is no longer coherent with an unmediated
reality, where the likelihood for distress and panic, in the wake of such a realisation,
is critical and terminal, especially when it leads to regression and nostalgia. As
Authur Kroker (In Bukatman, 2002:99) states: “The postmodern state is a panic site,
just for the fun of it”. Bukatman (2002:99) goes on to say that this is “an era of crises
for [our] own sake, where the injunction of crises now ironically covers over the abyss
of nonmeaning”. This ‘nonmeaning’ reiterates the message broadcast by the
implosive galaxy and the loss of affect. Baudrillard (1999:10) connects this
understanding to art when he states:

Yet this is precisely how and where today’s art seeks to go beyond itself, to deny
itself, and the more it seeks to fulfill itself in this way, the more hyperreal it becomes
and the more it transcends towards its empty essence… Nothing did more to stupefy
the creative act, to make it shine resplendent in its pure and insane form, than
suddenly to exhibit, as Duchamp did, a bottle rack in an art gallery. The ecstasy of a
common object at the same time pushes the pictorial act to its ecstatic form –
without an object, it will spin about itself and in some sense disappear, but not
without exerting on us a definitive fascination. Today art no longer creates anything
but the magic of its disappearance.

The loss of affect can thus be paralleled to our presence in the future, and the
hyphen and splice. Furthermore, the fusion of these ideas can be understood as a
key feature of the posthuman influence on postmodern art. As Bukatman (2002:228)
states, “The disembodying spaces of the terminal era exist independently of human
experience or control, and thus our presence in the future has initiated a seemingly
inexhaustible period of mega-nostalgia, an obsessive recycling of yesteryear. Even
futures past are exhumed and aired, their quaint fantasies simultaneously mocked

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and yearned for”. The hyphen and splice is thus a posthuman conception of
postmodern schizophrenia and pastiche.

Figure 27 (above): Rachel Whiteread, Ghost, 1990, plaster on steel frame, 269 x 356 x 318 cm (Townsend: 2004).

Jameson (In Bukatman, 1993:18) has referred to this exhumed ‘future-now’ as the
“supplement of spatiality”. Whiteread’s art can be compared to Jamson’s approach
here because she too places emphasis on the vestiges of space and time, enforcing
a nostalgic and ambiguous approach to the absence and presence of bodies and
histories. Whiteread’s work can be seen as posthuman (splice), specifically in Ghost
(Figure 27, above), because she reminds the viewer of the supplementation of
space, which is symbolised in the work as an annexed cast simile of an entire room.
Ghost is thus an inverted facsimile that signifies the trace or spectral aura of a once
lively space. From a posthuman perspective, Ghost is a memorial to the loss of
affect, consistent in space, but continually reminding one of its historical purpose in
the future.

Our presence in the future can also be said to have changed from what Foucault
(2002b) called The Archaeology of Knowledge into what Jameson (2005) describes
as Archaeologies of the Future, where the potential for the hyphen and splice is
created. Furthermore, Jameson (2005) makes a connection between two types of
utopia in this regard: a “need to distinguish between the Utopian form and the

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Utopian wish”. Jameson’s approach can be seen in contemporary sci-fi cinema such
as The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003) and Artificial Intelligence (A.I. 2002), which proves
that posthumanism has entered the space of popular culture. As Bukatman (1993:6)
states: “There is simply no overstating the importance of science fiction to the
present cultural moment, a moment that sees itself as science fiction”. In relation to
Bukatman’s point, Niran Abbas (1999:1) emphasises postmodern neurosis by saying:
“In the late 20th century with the millennium upon us, the distinction between human
beings and machines is blurred. Popular culture seems to confirm Jean Baudrillard's
contention that it is no longer necessary to write science-fiction since we now live it”.

3.5) Futures-present in postmodern sci-fi cinema

A hyphen and splice reading of the loss of affect to describe posthumanism can be
seen in The Matrix trilogy of films, which comprises of The Matrix (1999), Matrix
Reloaded (2001), and Matrix Revolutions (2003). In these films, society is literally
composed of bits of information. The Matrix franchise crosses a variety of media and
disciplines, and also cross-breeds many value systems, perspectives and
epistemologies. The Matrix symbolises an oedipal inversion of the machine and man,
playing off the literal realisation of the utopian form with the figurative interpretation of
utopian wish.

From the beginning of the trilogy, in the first Matrix film, the viewer is confronted with
signs and symbols. This is supposed to be a kind of underlying ‘Hyper-Platonic’ code
that structures all worldly experience in the Matrix (Figure 28, below). Digits and
characters fall, flicker, and glow on the screen until finally the effect of actually
penetrating the screen is simulated; and the passive observer is introduced to the
Matrix, where a revolution is about to break out. This revolution is based on a
resistance being plotted against the machines that have taken over Earth, and have
turned humanity into the equivalent of a Hirst-like herd of cattle. The Matrix is an
intricate program that the machines developed, meant to simulate human experiential
reality, in order to keep the source of their power – human body energy –
undisruptive and passive. To give humans the illusion of unity, the machines also
introduced a proxy to universal humanity in the form of a virtual global village,
stipulated by the image of the city. The irony of this program is that it is a digital
construct, a simulation based on analogy. The central code of the Matrix is structured
as a surrogate to the empty western moralisms that lead it to the demise of humanity

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in the first place; a fatal feedback loop that is reiterated throughout the trilogy. Thus
reality is substituted and supplemented by the Matrix. In this way, the Matrix makes a
metaphorical account of the alteration that the fragmented postmodern body
undergoes to become a cyborg.

Figure 28 (above): The Matrix. Opening scene (1999. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

The subjects living in the supplemented, virtual space of the Matrix are oblivious to
their situation inside and outside of the Matrix. This can be viewed as analogous to
the loss of affect, as Derrida (1997:149) states: “blindness to the supplement is law”.
However, Neo, the main character played by Keanu Reeves, seems to be unique in
this respect. After following the ‘trace’ of a fellow hacker named Morpheus, Neo is
shocked into awareness and enters the ‘real world’, where he unconsciously
prepares for his death at the end of the trilogy. A parallel to postmodern ways of
seeing can be made here; because Neo’s new perspective on the supposed ‘real
world’ becomes an ironic embracement of the end. Morpheus soon becomes Neo’s
mentor, and refers to the space of the ‘real world’ as the “desert of the real”, following
from Baudrillard’s (2004:1) oft quoted statement. Baudrillard (2003:39) elaborates on
this space when he states: “…to bring a real world into being is in itself to produce
that world, and the real has only ever been a form of simulation. We may admittedly
cause a reality-effect, a truth-effect or an objectivity-effect to exist, but in itself the
real does not exist”.

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Figure 29 (above): The Matrix. Neo is peeking through the doorway of his apartment, which has the same number as
Orwell’s broadcasting room (1999. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

There are many types of bodies in The Matrix, but two key bodies are noticeably
apparent: the virtual avatar ‘inside’ the Matrix, and the motionless flesh ‘outside’,
existing as an infinitesimal ‘battery’ in the Matrix’s ‘power plant’. In this way, Neo is
truly a cyborg, because he lives in a virtual-world where the real is a programmed
simulation and he is a pleb amongst many, working to make the world function
properly. He also exists in a ‘real world’ where meaning is also produced and
constructed by the machines, for which Neo is merely a power source.

It is certainly not ironic that Baudrillard and Orwell feature prominently in The Matrix.
Neo has the same apartment number as Orwell’s broadcast room: room 101 (Figure
29, above). Neo is a hacker who sells information to software junkies; he hides his
stash in a hollowed-out copy of Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra (2004),
ironically marked at the beginning of the chapter On Nihilism. The Matrix takes
Baudrillard’s proclamation that “total prophylaxis is death” to its literal end. Humans
are described as a virus by agent Smith, who is actually a program developed to
dispose of ‘anomalies’ like Neo. Viruses kill software, and the Matrix, along with its
sentinel programs, is essentially software. At the beginning of the trilogy, Neo and his
group of ‘prophets’ are considered viruses, but by the end of the trilogy agent Smith,
who was originally programmed to purge the Matrix of viruses, becomes a virus
himself. Ironically, Neo seems to have infected agent Smith with the virus, and Neo is

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the only One who can remedy this virus.95 Smith’s behaviour after his first encounter
with Neo is also reminiscent of Burroughs’s (1992:73) views on virus:

What does virus do wherever it can dissolve a hole and find traction? – It starts
eating – And what does it do with what it eats? – It makes exact copies of itself that
start eating to make more copies that start eating to make more copies and so forth
to the virus power the fear hate virus slowly replaces the host with virus copies –
Program empty body…

Schopenhauer’s confused dream, Descartes’ dream within a dream, and Plato’s cave
all seem to coalesce within The Matrix trilogy, and connect the dated concept of the
human with the notion of the virus. This is evident when Neo asks another
hacker/junky: “Have you ever woken up and didn’t know whether you were really
awake… or still dreaming”. When these seemingly humanist narratives are placed
within the context of Baudrillard’s hyperreality they formulate into a posthuman
testimonial that describes the penetration of the image and the exhumed ‘future-now’.
Thus The Matrix is a post-human mediation of the posthuman. It depicts a ‘neo-
messianic’ scenario placed within an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ dimension.96

Schizophrenia is not only portrayed in The Matrix through the hybridisation of the real
and the virtual, natural and synthetic, but also in Neo’s ‘real-life’ alias called Thomas
Anderson. Ironically, as Neo, Anderson is a hacker who spends most of his time
‘inside’ computers, and as himself he is a seemingly ordinary computer programmer
with a day-job. Both aliases are manipulators of software within a software program
that manipulates them. This representation of schizophrenia is not dissimilar to the
schizophrenia communicated in Fight club, because the citizens in Fight club are just
as much a part of the ideological system that they are attempting to subvert. The
citizens in the Matrix can also be compared to the figures whose shadows drop
against the walls of Plato’s cave. Only, in the Matrix, the shadows are flickering and
transparent. The digital avatars inside the Matrix are vacuous, binary facsimiles,
whereas the physical bodies outside (Figure 30, below), contained and sustained by
the power plant,97 are literally clones. Both the avatar and the clone can be related to
as blips, minute and binary bits of information that contribute to the efficiency of the

95
Neo is an anagram for One. It is also a play on the ambiguity of Baudrillard’s prophylaxis and virulence. It can also
be connected to Burroughs’s concepts on image, word and virus.
96
Just before Neo reaches for his contraband software he reads a message from Morpheus stating, “follow the white
rabbit”, which can be connected to Alice in Wonderland. Whilst tracing Neo’s signal in order to emancipate him from
the Matrix, Morpheus also asks him: “I imagine that you feel a bit like Alice… tumbling down the rabbit hole”?
97
It is ironic that the power station acts as a surrogate mother to the human body. This relates to McLuhan’s
statement: “humans become… the sex organs of the machine world”.

108
Matrix. Schizophrenia is also evident in the temporal shift between the inside and the
outside of the Matrix. Inside the Matrix there is the illusion of a late 20th century post-
industrial society, and outside the Matrix is the hubris of a 23rd century post-
apocalyptic world. This can be said to relate to the penetration of the image and the
future, and Agent Smith98 also emphasises this point whilst interrogating Morpheus:
“The future is our world… The future is our time”.

Figure 30 (above): The Matrix. Scene depicting Neo when he wakes up from his narcissistic existence inside the
Matrix, and realises his cellular blip-like existence as a human battery (1999. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

Suicide and the notion of the death drive feature prominently in The Matrix and the
Animatrix (2003). It was the death drive of technological progress and economic
greed that lead to the demise of the human society in The Matrix, and Neo commits
suicide at the end of the trilogy by offering himself to the machines in order to restore
balance to the Matrix.99 The hyphen and splice is reiterated here, because current
postmodern anxieties seem to predict this situation, where man needs to die in order
for humanity to survive. As Hayles (1999:105) states: “…cranking up its death
engine… the dominance of the machine presupposes a society in the last stages of
entropy, where probability is negligible and where statistical differences among
individuals are nil”.

98
Agent Smith is a program, a simulation made by and for the machines.
99
Once again, this has very strong religious and messianic connotations. Smith is the agent that causes this
imbalance. Thus an inverted understanding of reflexivity comes into play here, because the Matrix’s programming is
turning against it.

109
The Matrix also takes advantage of the fact that human history possesses many
representations of monstrous and grotesque mythological figures, such as vampires,
werewolves, sentinels, and demons, which are implied by the introduction of certain
programs in the films narrative, such as the Architect,100 the Merovingian and his
body guards, and the Sentinels.101 It is also interesting to note that most conceptions
of the post-human in postmodern sci-fi cinema are rather frightening and monstrous,
such as the Terminator (1984) or the Fly (1986). However, the Matrix does not seem
to adhere as strictly to these rules, preferring to represent its monsters in human form
within the Matrix program, and only instilling a horrific element in the sentinels
outside the Matrix in the real world. This can be equated with the shift in perception
about the erased Other – changing from an unknown and fear concept, to a much
needed and lost entity. As Baudrillard (1999:198) states: “We are already beyond the
end. Everything that was metaphor has already materialised, caved into reality. This
is our destiny: the end of the end. We are in a transfinite universe”.

The Matrix depicts the relationship between postmodernism and posthumanism,

specifically in the final film, Revolutions (2003), where Neo is trapped in a train
station called Mobil Ave. After an almost fatal encounter with sentinels, Neo finds
himself stuck somewhere in between the Matrix and the real world. This can be seen
as an analogy to the limbo of postmodern existence, and limbo is, off course, an
anagram for Mobil. It can also be said that Neo’s transitory prison, in Mobil Ave., also
makes reference to neo-capitalism.

The city is also a symbol for the global village in The Matrix. The machine city outside
the Matrix can be seen as an almost archetypal depiction of the expansive global
village, the antithesis of a modernist utopia. The virtual city within the Matrix can be
seen as the imploded galaxy: a vestigial and virtual city within a cold dark and
isolated real city. The singularity is made apparent by the fact that both cities, real
and simulated, exist in and around the Matrix, which is essentially an abstract
construct.

100
The architect is mentioned by Plato in the Timaeus as a reference to the creator or god, and can also be
compared to Descarte’s (1997:147) demon or deceiver from the Meditations on the First Philosophy.
101
In certain mythologies, sentinels are ‘meta-humans’ with superhuman mental abilities and can manipulate time.
Sentinels often have specialties in certain fields, such as scanning, suggestion, precognition, and so forth. Sentinels
are also known as gatekeepers or guards.

110
In the last sequence of the first Matrix film, in a fight sequence between Neo and
Smith, inversion and implosion are secured as the status quo when Neo reverses
Smith’s powers, after reanimating himself from death, infiltrating and destroying
Smith’s body from the inside-out. Later, this proves to be problematic because Neo
has somehow infected Smith and turned him into a virus. The Smith virus reaches a
point of critical mass, inhabiting all the blips of the Matrix by the third film,
Revolutions (2003). In a life-ending martyr-like act to restore order to the Matrix, Neo
makes Smith reach his critical mass in a final battle, resulting in Smith re-infecting
Neo. This results in the implosion and rejuvenation of the Matrix.

The blip citizens of the Matrix are all chimeras – part man, part machine – that form
the pataphysics102 of the screen and terminal identity. The Matrix thus serves as a
parody to postmodern existence. Neo epitomises this parody in the Matrix, whether
he is sitting in his cubical, within an open-plan office staring at his computer screen,
or whether he is trying desperately to disconnect the machine-umbilical cord that
sustains him and connects him to the power plant. In the Matrix, both the virtual and
the real, although placed in different contexts, are melded and confused. Most of the
notions, mythological and truthful, discussed thus far about humanism are
interrogated in The Matrix from a definite posthuman perspective. Along with many
other philosophical and religious connotations,103 there are certainly Cartesian
mind/body confusions, and ambiguous messianic undertones set throughout The
Matrix trilogy, not to mention the relationship between Neo and Trinity. All these sub-
plots can be misconstrued as a humanist approach, however, The Matrix is a
posthuman artwork simply because it emphasises the hyphen and splice – the body
existing simultaneously outside and inside, in the present and the future. The
intertextuality of concepts such as inside and outside, literal and figurative, man and
machine, present and future, creates a supplement104 to human narcissism that
separates The Matrix from humanist discourse. Thus The Matrix is one of the most
effective examples of cyborg politics and blip culture to be produced from
postmodern popular discourse.

102
Pataphsics is a term used by Baudrillard (2002) to describe the fusion of the physical and the metaphysical, and to
a certain extent the technological and the biological, within a hyperreal society.
103
To write about all these connotations would far exceed the limits of this paper. For example, Neo’s love interest in
The Matrix is called Trinity. This has a specific reference to the christain holy trinity – practically a lifetime worth of
writing and research.
104
Neo is also blinded near the end of the trilogy, before the final showdown with Smith. Smith is a supplement of
sorts, because he is a program dedicated to the deletion of anomalies, and he is a virus; making him an anomaly
(prophylaxis and virulence). Neo’s ability to fight Smith blind can suggest Derrida’s notion that blindness towards the
supplement is law.

111
Figure 31 (above): Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). David realises his construction as an android, and his objectification as
a proposed commodity (2002. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

Steven Spielberg also uses cyborg politics and blip culture to describe the
posthuman future(s) in his futuristic tragedy Artificial Intelligence (A.I. 2002). Not only
can the film be viewed as an allegory to Pinocchio, a story that can ironically be seen
as a metaphor for the human condition, but it is also interspersed with a plethora of
posthuman analogies, most importantly the ‘young’ cyborg boy105 named David.
Transference is portrayed in a figurative sense by Professor Rabbie, David’s creator,
who sees David as a kind of supplement to the emotional void caused by the death
of his son. Externally, David is an exact clone/copy of Rabbie’s diseased son, but
internally he is a machine that is emotionally void. The human element of love is
missing within David and Rabbie tries to simulate this by programming David to love
and places him in the care of a mock human family as an experiment in human
psychology.106 Soon after being abandoned by his surrogate mother, David tries to
realise the purpose of his existence, and goes on a series of explorations to find his
maker, eventually leading him back to Rabbie’s laboratory. It is in the laboratory
where David finally acknowledges his fate: love as home entertainment (Figure 28,
above). David existence is an analogy to postmodern perspectives, because he has
trouble accepting his proposed objectification as a commodity. He is an android who
thinks he is a human, a figurative cyborg, and once he sees the truth of his purpose
first hand, in the shape of multiple packaged Davids, he seemingly loses his mind.
105
In actual fact, David is not even a boy, because cyborgs do not have, nor do they need, genders.
106
A shift from the traditional nuclear family and the great family of man to the family of the future or ‘cyborg family’
can be witnessed here.

112
 Figure 32 (above): Artificial Intelligence. A scene where David awakens from his two thousand year long frozen
slumber to meet the evolved machines (2002. [Video/DVD]. Warner Home Video).

By the end of A.I., two thousand years have passed, humans have long since
become extinct and machines have evolved into sentient beings with transparent,
streamlined, organic-looking bodies (Figure 32, above).107 Like Neo in The Matrix,
David awakens to a future that displaces his sense of space and time. In Artificial
Intelligence, from a posthuman perspective, the hyphen can be allocated to the direct
end of human society, and the splice can be found in the similarities that the
machines have with their human ‘ancestors’. The demise of humanity is a literal
transference from man to machine, and the sentience of machines can be seen as a
figurative ascension from their slave-like primordial existence under human control –
man lives on in his extentions. Also, the fact that these evolved machines have an
interest in archaeology and can transfer information wirelessly and instantly supports
the loss of affect, the interchange of the medium and the message and the
transparency of borders. The machines seem to have lost most of their memory
about human beings, which has spurred on an archaeological obsession over human
society and nature. This is evidenced by the interest that the machines have in David

107
This can be seen as an allegory or inversion of the notion of the human mask. The faces of the evolved machines
are also screens, thereby further emphasizing an inversion of the mask.

113
and the desire they have to understand the mysteries of their extinct human
predecessors. Ironically, David is an android, and not a cyborg or a human, but the
machines think that he is the last trace of tangible proof that they have of man’s
existence and spirit; referring to him as an ‘original’. In this way A.I. is an interesting
play on the mediation of the posthuman through the post-human and vice-versa,
because the post-humans, in the form of the evolved machines, are intrigued by the
posthuman; David.

The hyphen and splice message that films such as The Matrix and A.I. send seems
to conceptualise the notion of human beings in postmodern society. In this way,
technology can be said to have invented the concept of what it means to be human,
as Jean-Francois Lyotard (1991:12) states: “…technology wasn’t invented by us
humans. Rather the other way around”. The cellular automata nature of the blip
citizen only made us start considering what it means to be human when technologies
began to encroach on life and the option of being human became superfluous. This is
when the presence of machines and the absence of humans becomes an issue. So
far we have been lucky, because machines do not yet have the ability to understand
their status in the global village. As Hayles (1999:105) states: “The great weakness
of the machine – the weakness that saves us so far from being dominated by it – is
that it cannot yet take into account the vast range of probability that characterises the
human situation”.

Figure 33 (above): The Terminator. An anthropomorphic machine terminator in a post-apocalyptic world (1984.
[Video/DVD]. MGM Home Entertainment )

114
Films like The Matrix and The Terminator (1984. Figure 33, below) certainly prove
this point, confusing the boundaries that we have constructed around the future and
the present, man and machine, and ultimately suggesting a distinction between the
posthuman and the post-human. Our extensions were born in a real world by real
people to make life easier and lower the amount of pain, suffering, disease and
sorrow in our lived lives. Bukatman’s fifth stage of terminal identity reveals a
culmination and end to this belief; the cyborg is the zenith of man’s homeostatic
attempts to control his environment – the end to all his suffering by totally replacing
him. The machine/media refigures the agent of its existence by closing the chapter of
man in the history of humanity. However, this does not lead to a hopeless situation,
as Baudrillard (2002:3) relates: “Now, it is precisely there in that absolutely spotless
space, that we are seeing mysterious, anomalous, viral diseases emerging. For
viruses survive and proliferate as soon as room is made for them… In a world
cleansed of all its old infections, in an ‘ideal’ clinical world, an intangible, implacable
pathology unfurls, a pathology born of disinfection itself”.

115
Chapter 4
Conclusion

116
4) Conclusion – overture over Man:

Late twentieth century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference
between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally-
designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and
machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert
(Haraway, 2000:102).

It is clear that the global village is changing at a pace that has never been
experienced before. For humanity to survive in this simultaneous singularity-based
and schizophrenic space, a situation of inverted expansion, society needs to adhere
to the requirements of the machine spectacle. Unfortunately, for humanist institutions
and traditional power structures, this means the end; bodies and texts need to be
altered. Hence, the depictions of much postmodern art can be seen as a eulogy108 in
memory of the diseased author/god – a posthumous statement at best. As
Badmington (2000:9) states: “Humanism never manages to constitute itself; it forever
rewrites itself as posthumanism”. In response to this paradigm shift, many
postmodern narratives have severed affiliations with such limiting humanist aspects
as identity, authority and autonomy, and this has created an anonymous, neutral and
vacuous space for posthumanism to thrive. The influence of posthumanism on
postmodern art is an exploitation of this posthumous niche, especially with regard to
postmodern commentaries on the imploded galaxy, the singularity of the global
village, the depiction of the fragmented body, and the conceptualisation of the
cyborg. In many ways the posthuman can be regarded as the eventual surrender of
postmodern narratives to the demise of modernism and humanism. As Haraway
(2000:84) proclaims: “The cyborg can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in
which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves”.

Posthuman art takes advantage of postmodern obsessions and characteristics, such

as pastiche and schizophrenia, anxiety and suicide, alienation and monstrosity,
prophylaxis and virulence, ambiguity and ubiquity, chimeras and hybrids. Other than
being a latent philosophy about the dissolution of the future(s) and the present,
posthumanism can be understood as an aesthetic ideal within the current
postmodern paradigm, which emphasises the hyphen and splice. Thus the eventual
surrender of modernist meta-narratives in the latter half of the postmodern era can be
connected to the splice, because the ‘post-‘ and ‘human’ are beginning to be
108
One of the qualities of postmodernism is its nostalgic approach, and its appropriation from the past.

117
accepted as hybridised concepts. The succession of the posthuman future(s) can be
related to the hyphen. This trend is evident in all the texts discussed in this paper,
heralded by the intrusions of simulacra and technological augmentation. Previously,
this influence went largely unnoticed by postmodern narratives, but, as this paper
argues, posthumanism is currently becoming a staple discursive influence in many
postmodern perspectives, specifically in the fields of philosophy, art, and cinema.
These aesthetic shifts and technological appeasements can no longer be ignored or
brushed aside simply because of a lagging modernist anxiety or fear of the unknown
and the alien. The anonymous is embraced in a world that has been robbed of
difference due to the actions of man, resulting in sometimes dangerous, and
sometimes exciting, inhuman concoctions.

As the hyphen and splice might suggest, posthumanism is not necessarily a direct
break from, nor is it a negation of humanism, although there are clear shifts that can
now be verified. Postmodern art attests to this link as a monument to the memory of
the future. As a result, the inversion of the global village into the imploded galaxy can
be seen as a shift from the dualism between absence and presence to the
relationship between randomness and pattern; a theme that the hyphen and splice
approach takes for granted. As a terminal aesthetic, posthuman influence on
postmodern art reveals the irony of the human myth, historically grounded as it is on
representation, analogy and ultimately simulation. As McLuhan (2004:27-28) states:
“For myth is the instant vision of a complex process that ordinarily extends over a
long period. Myth is a contraction or implosion of any process, and the instant speed
of electricity confers the mythic dimension on ordinary and social action today. We
live mythically but continue to think fragmentarily and on single planes”. In this way,
posthumanism is an incidental alternative to, and inversion of, humanism in the form
of postmodernism – a two-fold inversion of humanism, not a binary opposite to
humanism.

As one of the fathers of humanism, it is ironic that Plato’s ideas, although inverted
today, are still relevant in a posthuman context. That is to say, there is an almost
Nietzschean link between humanism and posthumanism that threads Plato’s ideas
across the landscape of the desert of the real. In this way, postmodernism is an era
on the threshold of a tragic rebirth.109 As Nietzsche (1999: 95) states:

109
Nietzsche (1999) described the death and rebirth of tragedy as a reversal to a saturation point for Socrates’
dialectics, instigating a reversal into a Dionysian tragic affirmation, where humanist dialectics no longer matter. This
can be regarded as a return to a time before the birth of tragedy, only now it exits in a technological space. Nietzsche
also relates to this to a form of ecstatic nihilism.

118
 For that we, standing as we do at the watershed of two different forms of existence,
should still find something of inestimable value in the example of the Greeks is a
consequence of the fact that their example contains the very same transitions and
struggles in classically instructed form; the difference is that we are experiencing, by
analogy, the main epochs of the Hellenistic age in reverse order, as it were, so that
now, for example, we appear to be moving back from the Alexandrian age and
towards a period of tragedy… And when was our need of these supreme teachers
greater than now, as we are experiencing the rebirth of tragedy and yet are in
danger of not knowing whence it comes, nor of being able to discern where it wants
to go?

Posthumanism is a global phenomenon, but it takes irony for granted and it must not
be forgotten that it is a western construct. The death of man is written in the language
of man. It is all too easy to generalise and debate about the universal transformation
of the human into the posthuman, but ‘we’ must remember that this narrative only
directly affects a small percentage of the world’s population. However, posthumanism
must not be seen as just another form of cultural tourism. Posthumanism makes us
realise the threat inherent in ‘our’ language and how this virus has been passed on to
our extensions. This virus infects everybody, from the poor Indonesian rubber tree
farmer labouring to harvest his product, to the rich New York broker driving a car with
tires made from rubber harvested in Indonesia, to the synthetic alternatives to rubber
that might keep that Indonesian framer out of work and starving. The media are
everywhere, influencing our lives; they are the progeny of language. As Heidegger
(In Fukuyama, 2002:1) states:

The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal
machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat afflicted man in his
essence. The rule of enframing (Gestell) threatens man with the possibility that it
could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to
experience the call of a more primal truth.

Otherness and difference are scarce commodities in this spectacular westernised

world, and if humans are to survive and evolve after the tragic acts of man, which
brought the homogenisation of the globe, and the singularity of technology, then
responsibility must be taken in its wake. Art is one of the spaces from which this
message can be expressed. Posthumanism has made artists aware of the
responsibility needed in relation to much of the totalising media available today.

119
Thus, art still has a pivotal and didactic role to play in the realisation of this
posthuman path; a path that will hopefully lead to a harmony between humans,
nature and machines.

There can be very little distinction between posthuman and late-postmodern art, and
it should be easy to sift out the posthuman influence in any postmodern artwork.
However, if there is a noticeable rift between postmodernism and posthumanism it
would be that posthumanism is situated in a virtual space ‘beyond’110 morality, which
transcends petty notions of politics and religion. In this way posthumanism is not
separate or other-than humanism, but it is a passive and pragmatic ulterior or
alternative. Thus posthumanism inherits postmodernism’s acknowledgment of its
pathological circumstances – narcosis, schizophrenia and paranoia – and the
simultaneous reversal and implosion of the global village that destabilises this
situation, but it is also a criticism of postmodernism and its hesitance to accept the
inequities and inadequacies of modernism. As Barthes (2000:102) concludes: “I
rather fear that the final justification of all this Adamism is to give the immobility of the
world the alibi of ‘wisdom’ and a ‘lyricism’ which only make the gestures of man look
eternal the better to defuse them”.

A conservative reading of posthumanism would place it within the monstrous or

horrific. But the true horror can be found in the cannibalism of the Other and the
cancer of history, not to mention the processing and production of the body through
the fetishism of the gaze, and our addiction to the image. If this is horror, it is
definitely self-imposed and indulged upon. The boundaries that once existed
between the inside and the outside are now transparent, marking a shift that breaks
the shackles of human dualism. However, this has not yet eradicated imperialism and
the ideology of the west, which is the true horror. This is the final barrier to overcome,
so that posthumanism can become a posthumous proclaimation. The only way
posthumanism can be seen as horrific is if ideology once again imposes its influence,
and, as Delueze and Guattari suggest (2004:166), responsibility is not taken in the
processes and development of seemingly posthuman technologies, such as cloning,
artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, cyberspace and cybernetics.

110
There are many issues with the term ‘beyond’, but when related to Nietzsche and his ideas on moralism and
ethics, the use of the term seems acceptable. Derrida’s perspectives also make the term seem viable in a posthuman
context, especially in relation to words like Hymen, which Derrida uses to explain a kind of penetration of barriers.

120
Falling back on the hyphen and splice, we are still to learn where this “program
empty body” (Burroughs, 1992:73) will take us, but at least the Eurocentric trace of
humanism has been revealed and hopefully quarantined, allowing humanity and the
various disciplines and traditions of art around the world to thrive without recourse to
a foreign authority. Even though the future is theoretically moving towards us, there is
no doubt, much potential for the production of art in a posthuman paradigm.

121
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