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The Posthuman Junkie (or the post-junk human)

 

This is more a question that anything else, a proposed way of seeing which I would love your response to:

Despite the temporal sounding nature of the word `posthuman` we do not, I think, have to wait for the arrival of the beast, the posthuman is not a fantasy to be projected onto a dystopian or utopian future, but rather the posthuman is a tendency which expresses itself in many different scientific, social and artistic context in the material realities of ordinary lived experience. Not a dream or a dread so much as a complex issue in need of interrogation in our daily lives. All of us who have posted here have observed an example of the posthuman at play in our current context and I would like to add to the collection by suggesting that we see the drug addict as expressive of an (awry or partial) posthuman condition.

In William Burroughs Naked Lunch (as in much of his work) the junkie or drug addict is often described in a way that we might call subhuman. I use the prefix `sub` here because the mutated monstrous body of the junkie is described as insect like, primitive or single celled. The hierarchical ordering of a world of lower and higher (a deceptive pun) life forms is maintained and the junkie is relocated within that hierarchy. This is not the kind of reimagining of the human which we would associate with an ethical posthumanism rather it is a splitting off of certain human others(a making alien of) in some ways little different to any other act of internal othering our species is so fond of. It is easy to think of racial and gendered examples of the primitive not-quite-human.

Nonetheless  this kind of dehumanizing of the addict is very prevalent in our culture(s) and within todays context of concern about the role, agency and place of the human in relation to the non-human world of matter, technology or the animal, I wonder if the addict can be seen as expressive of some of those anxieties?  Perhaps we might also see the addict as Deleuze and Guattari suggested; as “knights of narcotics” (2013.p329)seeking to experience a posthuman state (my phrase) but doing so with “too violent an action” (2013. p187) and thereby risking death and botching the job?  At the very least the addict seems to me to be an extreme example of a human-thing relationship in which the vital materiality and affective power of the thing cannot be denied.

Burroughs, W.S. Naked Lunch. Grove Press. New York. 2001

Deleuze, G &Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. Bloomsbury. London, New York. 2013

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11 Comments on "The Posthuman Junkie (or the post-junk human)"

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Katrine Winther Kristensen
Member

Hey Anna! It’s a thrilling thought you share with us here.
I believe in the same way as you, that the word post in posthuman is misleading and that the phenomena is not restricted to the future, but also exist in our present and past. Likewise i follow your thoughts on how the drug-user in a way break down dualisms. When the drugs affects the user in some way transform to something different like the machine-man. It changes the person but also the view on him from the surroundings and makes us see how we react to otherness.

Florian Auerochs
Member
Florian Auerochs
Hi Anna! Thank you so much for raising this inspiring – and provoking – topic, especially because I recently came across a study in critical theory (maybe a reading tip) which declares: “The technology of drug design and its applications indicates how drugs are cultural materials with the power to push at the supposedly natural border between the human and the non-human and secure a part in the cultural mutation of anthropocentric modernity toward the posthuman.” (Dave Boothroyd: Culture on drugs: Narco-cultural studies of high modernity, Manchester/New York 2006, p. 15.) So you’re totally right (and not alone) in locating… Read more »
Florian Auerochs
Member
Florian Auerochs
Hey Anna, thanks for your reply! You’re right, with ‘hyper-embodiment’ I chose the wrong formulation, I rather meant a disembodiment (the ‘trip’), which leaves the constraints of matter behind. The opposite of the very material ‘self’-inflicted harm drug-use can be read as – what is quite the opposite of the corporeal ‘enhancement’, technocentric transhumanism is concerned with. “It strikes me that what most addicts are encouraged to aim for in recovery is a conservative version of identity- one based on establishing strong borders against the dangers of the vital non-human world.” – This thought is disturbing, challenging and seems to… Read more »
Florian Auerochs
Member
Florian Auerochs

Hey Anna, sorry for my late reply, I was busy with Lesson 2 …
I didn’t want “negative knowing” to sound somehow ‘big’. I just meant that the ‘shadow posthumanist’ might have an affirmative, productive knowledge about the darker territories of ‘becoming’ something ‘other’, which might entail death and self-shattering.
If I stumble upon interesting thinkers who discuss our topic I let you know! 🙂
Thanks for this exciting discussion!

Maria O'Connell
Member

Hi Anna,

Wonderfully thoughtful post. I think we can look at the “post” human in terms of how we have always already categorized others in society according to shades and scales of humanity. Our responses not only to addicts, but to criminals, the chronically ill (mentally or physically), even those out of the continuum of beauty standards, speak volumes about how humans can be shifted back and forth across the boundary of acceptable humanity, and how systems of disdain, shame, and punishment not only attempt control of behaviors but also determine what is considered acceptable treatment on all levels.

Eva Krarup
Editor
Eva Krarup
Hi Anna. It’s an interesting discussion you’ve started. I don’t know if it is relevant to your specific question about the drug addict, but I came to think of one of the readings for the third lesson, the one by Julian Savulescu. I don’t know if you’ve already read it, but in his text in the anthology The Posthuman Condition he raises som questions about the use of drugs as cognitive enhancers and he suggests that they could be used to correct natural inequality and give people a “fair go” (p. 191-192). It’s a rather thought-provoking article that I think… Read more »
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