Post-humanism accuses humanism of inventing a human subject who is domineering and destructive. As a remedy, it redefines the human as a being informed by passivity and finitude and bound by ontological vulnerability. In so doing, it undermines the creative and transformative power of human agency and obliterates politics and history as shaped by human actions. Noting how this intensifies the experience of alienation and de-humanisation, the essay looks to Marxist and socialist humanism to resuscitate the idea of humans as (...) agents of history. Humans are not a problem to be overcome; rather, they are the means through which a more viable world can be achieved, for humans and non-humans alike. (shrink)

Somewhere between use and mere whim there is a place for the expressivity of affect as a concept. This paper raises the question of how the concept of affect might be mobilized without reducing its expressions to the logic of work. We suggest that the very attempt to put affect to work in order to solve pressing problems may be symptomatic of an anxiety to master the events of the world. With this in mind, we make a case for the (...) importance of Georges Bataille's critique of an instrumentalist form of thinking, which reduces events to objects of human sensemaking. Bataille's “general economy” opens onto all that the restricted economy of use negates; namely, that which exceeds our efforts as humans to make sense of, and thus appropriate, events. Ultimately, Bataille's antihumanist thought limits the potential of the gift economy, by rendering it the negative of the social order. We argue that a more posthumanist thought can realize the immanent potential of affect and apprehend its gift to thinking. (shrink)

Clearly in contrast to the sociosymbolic approaches that underlie the positions of Butler or Derrida, this article delves into a materialist and machinic reading of the ontology of Deleuze and Guattari. This ontology is the basis of a posthumanist conception that allows to join political philosophy, technology and biology understood as complex rhizomatic systems. From this point of view, we propose to construct an antagonistic posthumanist politics that is an alternative to the pluriversal ethics defended by Braidotti. We believe that (...) the latter maintains an excessively liberal position that prioritizes inclusion as a new form of consensus in the face of conflict. (shrink)