Philosophical posthumanism proposes a humanity defined by contaminations, hybridizations, and otherness. Moving beyond humanism would mean accepting the multi-identity of humanity , the fruit of a creative and undetermined process that constantly shifts its boundaries through exchanges and relationships. Multi-identity modifies the classical conception of the body, proposing the idea of ​​a "threshold" from which all relationships between the body's interior and exterior originate.

Every single encounter with the biological and the technological would determine, from this perspective, a transformation and a significant production of new identities. From this perspective, therefore, the figure of the cybernetic body is constituted in a problematic manner, since becoming a machine would involve the fusion of the human and the technological , which materializes in a new transversal composite, a new type of eco-philosophical unity, not unlike the symbiotic relationship between animals and their planetary habitat (G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, pp. 88-101).

To better understand the possible resolution of dualisms advocated by theories pertaining to posthumanism, it seemed useful to implement some elements of Asian artistic culture, specifically Japanese, into the reflection.

Index

Eastern art and philosophy: contemplation

Eastern art and philosophy are based primarily on observing our experiences with an open, gentle, and contemplative gaze . Contemplation, for most of us Westerners, is not easy to understand, as it is tied to philosophical concepts far removed from those we are accustomed to studying in school, which fundamentally involve a clear distinction between here and elsewhere.

The primary object of contemplation, emptiness, is essential to Eastern art, particularly Japanese art, which, unlike Western art, has not attributed negative connotations to it. For a Western painter, for example, the canvas of a painting had to be covered in color, the elements expertly distributed in space, respecting certain canons; in Far Eastern painting, however, emptiness corresponds to a generative principle, since everything potentially manifests from emptiness.

Ritual suicide in Japan
Phenomenology of Suicide: The Japanese Case

Often, the brushstroke is interrupted to leave room for the imagination, which suggests forms rather than delineates them: the work thus appears open to the gaze of the observer, experiencing it, and completing it. In a certain sense, speaking of emptiness in these terms already means conceiving and accepting its material non-essence.

Creative transmutation

It can therefore be stated that Japanese aesthetics avoids creating a space that is the projection of a single point of view, or organizing it symmetrically around a central fulcrum conceived as the only focal element (A. Berque 1982, pp. 119-124). Through artistic language , therefore, one can give voice to what was previously considered unspeakable , and leave space for the expression of every type of idea. On the basis of this, Duchamp himself stated that

The creative process takes on a completely different aspect when a spectator encounters the phenomenon of transmutation; with the transformation of inert matter into a work of art, a true transubstantiation has taken place, and the spectator's important role is to determine the work's weight on the aesthetic scale. In short, the artist is not the only one performing the act of creation, since the spectator establishes the work's contact with the outside world by deciphering and interpreting its profound qualities, and in this way adds his or her own contribution to the creative process (M. Calvesi 1975, p. 42).

The body as a cosmic landscape

These art forms, recurrent in the East, have been greatly influenced by Daoist doctrine , as well as by the anti-dualistic vision of the body as a cosmic landscape, a country and a symbolic universe (M. Raveri 2014, p. 278). Conceiving the body as a cosmic landscape is a fundamental postulate that determines the contents and initiatory visions of Daoist mediation. The "Daoist way" in fact affirms that the realization of wisdom lies in "non-action" – mui 無為 (Chinese wu wei), that is, an "action that adheres to nature" and not in opposition to it – an ideal that indicates the ability to identify with the laws of becoming, to attentively and consciously follow the profound harmony that underlies them (ibid., p. 292).

cyborg body woman posthumanism

However, this knowledge of the "way" does not become true wisdom unless it is put into practice. Confucianism, in particular, interprets this wisdom actively, seeing it mature through the process of sharing and social justice. By practicing virtue, man understands his own nature and experiences it in daily life, creating a continuous interaction between the pursuit of inner harmony and social concord, between personal growth and political responsibility, between self-knowledge and social action.

Do not act against nature

Contrary to what Christian tradition has accustomed us to, in Dao there is no claim to act “against” nature – seen as a hostile and apodictic environment – ​​but one lives in it and contemplates it as a flexible reality, in constant evolution (V. Bernabei 2012, p. 47).

Consequently, this approach does not contain the classic conflictual dichotomy of real and virtual, but rather a systemic vision of a single , intelligent environment that measures, reacts, and observes us (K. Hayles 1999 p. 27), which can be traversed in all its urban practicability. It is no coincidence that the invitation of the doctrine's greatest exponent, Laotzu, is not to move into a transcendent reality outside of identification with the self, but to be in two places at once, that is, to move as an ego in the world without being identified with it, and therefore, to be aware of the essential void that exists within this ego (G. Mancuso 2013, p. 111).

Posthumanism: the body-universe

Following this approach, the path of the adept of the Dao is to unite opposites , to be "wave and ocean, to be empty and to act in the world in a way that stems from the awareness of this emptiness and from non-identification" (M. Raveri 2014, p. 283). Laotzu calls it "non-action", but this "non-action" is not doing nothing, it is a doing that arises from a different point, a filling, an existential crasis (G. Mancuso 2013, p. 133).

What ultimately brings the Daoist metaphor of the body-universe to life is the essential idea of ​​the macrocosm and microcosm as symmetrical entities : the body—the microcosm—corresponds in every aspect to the external world. Man is not isolated from nature, but reflects the whole within himself. This means that man is not invested with any special power of dominion over nature, nor does he constitute an otherness placed to be compared to all things as if he were their fulcrum: he is simply a part of the harmonious structure of the cosmos. As Catherine Despeux observed,

Speaking of macrocosm and microcosm is correct, but we must reason and use these terms exactly as the Daoists intended them, that is, as if there were neither interiority nor exteriority, as if the body and the universe were one. […] The individual's perception of his own body no longer remains that of an interior world delimited by the skin, but evolves towards an identification with the universe itself. Even today, Daoist masters sometimes recommend imagining the body as large as the universe. The correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm becomes a support for the dynamics of being (1991, p. 97).

Artistic practices as sacred elements

In this regard, it is interesting to note, for example, how between the 14th and 15th centuries, the monks of the Zen temples of Kyoto and Kamamura developed gozan, an intense artistic activity focused primarily on the study of calligraphic techniques and the composition of poetry and prose. These profoundly influenced the aesthetic values ​​that developed during that period, so much so that they influenced all Japanese art to this day. Art became of fundamental importance because the methodology of the Zen spirit interpreted and reworked it in a unique way.

Practice, in arts such as ikebana, gardening, calligraphy, tea ceremonies, and martial arts, was understood as a religious experience of meditation and enlightenment, a path that guided the mind toward the absolute . The core of the experience is not solely the meaning of the representation itself—be it an ideogram or a sculpture—but rather the discipline of apprenticeship, the concentration to the point of forgetting oneself to unite with the cosmos, the movement of the instrument, be it a brush, a chisel, or the body itself.

Posthuman becoming, therefore, would involve a process of redefining the sense of connection to the shared world and the environment, be it urban, social, psychological, ecological, or planetary. According to Braidotti,

expresses multiple ecologies of belonging, while triggering the transformation of sensorial and perceptual coordinates, in order to recognize the collective nature and the openness towards the outside of what we still call the subject. This subject is in fact a mobile assemblage in a shared living space that it neither controls nor owns, but simply occupies, traverses, always in community, in a group, in a network. For posthuman theory, the subject is a transversal entity, fully immersed in and immanent in a network of non-human relations (animal, vegetal, viral) (2014 p. 202).

What connects art and the posthuman?

Following this approach, what ultimately connects art and the posthuman? First of all, contemporary culture (and art) is defined by a continuous "threshold shift," that is, critical acts of reflection and awareness that facilitate these hybridization processes with potential otherness. However, if the body, as an embodied entity that eliminates the dualisms of real/virtual and immanence/transcendence by blurring them, is situated in an increasingly digital ambience perceived almost as a veritable cosmos, art, understood as a reasoning process, itself becomes an ambience for the posthuman.

kintsugi
Kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of healing emotional wounds

To put it more precisely, posthuman art, abandoning exclusive and reductive definitions—art as language, as communication, as a tool—is defined as a set of opportunities through which individuals perceive the complex social, cultural, and moral conditions in which they find themselves, participate, and reason.

An art understood in this way would therefore allow for a shift from an egocentric idea of ​​human self-definition to an ecological idea of ​​posthuman self-definition , that is, an idea that envisions a non-conflictual, harmonious, and virtuous connection/overlap with the environment, in all its meanings. Ultimately, being posthuman does not mean being indifferent to humans or being dehumanized. On the contrary, it rather implies a new way of combining ethical values ​​with the well-being of a broader community, one that embraces everyone's territorial and environmental interconnections.

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Bibliography

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