SEEING LIKE A CYBORG? THE INNOCENCE OF POSTHUMAN KNOWLEDGE

This presentation examines the widespread view of the current epoch as a ‘posthuman’ age; a notion that tends to be anchored in a view of contemporary technological developments as the basis for a fundamental transformation of existential experience. I argue that theories of posthumanism tend to neglect both entrenched global divisions in access to the rewards and exposure to the perils that recent technological advancements imply, along with the continuity of historical structures of inequality this entails. In this context I propose recalling the peculiar conditions from which our conceptions of digital experience are forged, namely contemporary regimes of intellectual property.

Paul Rekret is Associate Professor of Politics at Richmond University, American International University in London. He is author of Down With Childhood: Popular Music and the Crisis of Innocence (Repeater 2017) and Philosophy, Politics, and Polemics: On Derrida and Foucault (Rowan & Littlefield 2018) and has published widely in contemporary political and social theory.