After Life

Introduction: Posthumanist subjectivities, or, coming after the subject …

“…Is there anything that connects these disparate modes and foci of inquiry? This question is most uncontroversially answered, it would seem, by speaking of 'technology' and of 'biomedia' (Thacker, 2004). If there is anything monolithic in the posthuman it is here, in this technological imperative to which posthumanism appears subject.…”

“…Posthumanism, as a condition determined through technocultural and biomediatic pervasion, renders the human an increasingly unstable category for reflection and opens onto posthumanism: as the study of that condition, of those practices, of that pervasion, and of that instability, and hence of the specific ideologies, (re)groupings and (re)statements, across diverse discourses and (re)commitments, which (re)form in reaction to the prospect of the technoculturally inured and biomediated subject, whose existence proceeds alongside 'bare life' (Agamben, 1998) and 'after life' (Thacker, 2010). In an unsettling simultaneity that weighs upon circumstancing and horizon, it plays the openness to the human's othering across, against and together with the prospect of humanity's closure.…”

On the edge of fluidity: international cooperation in turbulent times

“…(..) Our conclusion, to the contrary, is that the open can be inhabited precisely because, wherever life is going on, the interfacial separation (..) gives way to mutual permeability and binding." Thacker (2010) refers to these phenomena as the dual necessity of separation and inseparability. This constant tension, contradiction, excitement and dynamism is the topic of exploration of this thesis.…”

“…The necessity of separation (Thacker, 2010) relates the singular often to the dual. The 'one' or Self is constructed in relation to the 'other' and vice versa.…”

“…In this thesis I look at divisions such as inside-outside, donor-beneficiary, North-South, global-local, humannonhuman, nature-culture. Reflecting on these divisions, I pose the question of the dual necessity of separation and inseparability of things (Thacker, 2010).…”