Posthuman risks? Some thoughts on posthuman disability studies and ‘strategic humanism’

A growing number of Critical Disability Studies researchers call for new ontologies and ethics of interdependence and relationality (Goodley, Lawthom & Runswick-Cole, 2014; Kafer, 2013; Campbell, 2009; Davis, 2002). Drawing on works of New Materialist and feminist researchers (Braidotti, 2013), “assemblages“ of human and non-human actors should be acknowledged and valued (Goodley, Lawthom & Runswick-Cole, 2014, 352). By criticizing the roots of humanist thought that centres the male, white, and non-disabled subject, they argue that the category of “the human” is problematic in and of itself, leaky, and outdated – especially when considering human and animal relationships and the increasing embodiment of technologies (Goodley, Lawthom & Runswick-Cole, 2014, 343ff). Disabled people, being interconnected to animals, technology, objects and ecology, are seen as pioneers of a relational ethic that redistributes agency and rights.

While I very much appreciate the dismissal of powerful subject constructions of autonomy that are charged with notions of the male, rational and able “homo oeconomicus”, and while I welcome the call for a new relational ethics, I would like to point out some risks of questioning the human category as such and of redistributing agency and rights. In my contribution, I argue that we should be aware of the power relationships in which a redistribution of agency would be embedded and take into account the background of the current political climate. Also, I would like to show possible overlaps between posthuman ideas and bioethical thinking such as Peter Singer’s and highlight the danger of his logic.

Humanity has always been under duress. Besides the consistent duress of mere physical existence, the nature of constraints varies historically. What has been a duress once, is no longer, as the advances in medicine and in housing show. Meanwhile, human advances in the control of nature backfire on a large scale (today in form of a worldwide climate crises), as Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) have analysed and somehow predicted over seventy years ago. We live in contradictory times: While a global economy produces so much wealth that it could provide humanity as a whole with housing and food, a majority still lives in poverty or dies of treatable diseases. While there have never been times on earth with less wars or more treaties on international cooperation and human rights, thousands still die in armed conflicts and flee from violence and poverty.

The status of disabled people also remains contradictory. For instance, even though the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been passed by the UN in 2006, and although new technologies have improved our lives dramatically, we are facing a neoliberal economy, austerity politics, and ableist bioethical reasoning granting disabled bodies less value than non-disabled ones. At a time when all lives are increasingly judged by the standards of capitalist utility, disabled lives are even more threatened.

Even if humanism was once used as an ideology of justification for white male dominance, it has nevertheless been taken up for emancipatory projects, such as human rights, which current posthumanist thinkers do acknowledge (Braidotti, 2013, 16ff). Humanism‘s values were affirmed by pointing to the reason and agency of for instance of women and people of color. Also, that the lives of people with disabilities are essentially protected by rights today and that we are widely recognised as capable subjects is due to humanist interventions. Thus, a departure from humanism and the human category, in my view should, not be carried out lightheadedly.

Moreover, especially in times of “humanity under duress“, we should consider carefully, what a redistribution of agency and rights would mean for disabled people. Considerations should take into account hegemonic power relationships. A call for the redistribution and transfer of human power and agency to animals, technology, objects and the environment can imply taking away power and agency from disabled people. Constantly having to fight for keeping power and agency anyway, we might have to come to terms with restrictions, especially considering government policies of austerity. Granting agency or even “rights” to assistive devices such as wheelchairs, prosthetics or hearing aids could backfire when encountering policies of social cuts that intend to legitimately curtail the availability of resources. In addition, artificial intelligence technologies could not only extend but under certain circumstances also limit the autonomy of disabled people. Here, an argument that attributes additional agency to technology would be potentially dangerous for disabled people.

I think we have to take the meaning of agency and rights seriously: It means power and the ability to act. The disability rights movement has always demanded and defended power and the ability to act for disabled people. But this is precisely what politicians and bioethical philosophers keep trying to counteract. For decades, ethicists like Peter Singer work towards dismantling the human category – in order to advocate for animal rights, but also in order to question disabled people‘s right to live.

Peter Singer opposes disabled people’s unquestioned right to live. As a utilitarian, he argues for the “maximizing” of universal happiness, as he calls it, by the “prevention of suffering”. In good old-fashioned ableist manner, he equates a large part of disabled life with suffering. The roots of Singer’s logic lie in his commitment to animal rights and in the deconstruction of a fixed boundary between animals and humans. Singer doesn‘t differentiate between animals and humans, but between persons and non-persons. A person to him is an individual that is aware of her- or himself and that can make plans (1994, 180ff). Something that doesn‘t apply to people with severe cognitive disabilities, to people in a coma, or all newborns: all those individuals, according to Singer, don‘t count as persons. If then a baby is born with a disability, to Singer it is „better for everyone“ if the baby dies. A lot of animals, to the contrary, have self-awareness according to him and thus should be protected to a much greater extent than some human beings – protecting humans first would count as „speciecism“ to Singer, as he writes in his book “Animal Liberation” (note that I quote the revised edition from 2015):

“To avoid speciecism we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life – and mere membership in our own biological species cannot be a morally relevant criterion for this right. (…) We may legitimately hold that there are some features of certain beings that make their lives more valuable than those of other beings; but there will surely be some non-human animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans. A chimpanzee, dog, or pig, for instance, will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility. So if we base the right to live on these characteristics, we must grant animals a right to life as good as, or better than, such retarded or senile humans” (Singer, 2015, 52f).

To Singer, to be human is not enough to be granted the protection of a „moral status“; this should only apply to “persons“. Acknowledging this would give society a new ethical foundation on how to treat (disabled) humans: “(…) we now have a new vision of who we are, (…), the limited nature of the differences between us and other species, and the more or less accidental manner in which the boundary between ‚us‘ and ‚them‘ has been formed. Adopting this new vision will change forever the way in which we make ethical decisions about beings who are alive and belong to our species, but lack the capacities that some members of other species possess” (Singer, 1994, 182f).

I think that Singer‘s devaluation of disabled life is not an ableist byproduct of his theory, a lack of the recognition of justice, as critical animal and disability researchers suggest (Taylor, 2017, 57-81). Rather, it is an essential and necessary part of his logic. Yes, in the end, it is about societal practices: We will always have to answer the question on how to treat individuals that are not able to act or speak for themselves – be it animals, young children or unconscious adults. What matters most is the social and political background against which this question is posed. In a society that primarily asks for the utility and productivity of people, that discusses costs and benefits of human life and that is prone to right wing leadership of all kinds, the answer might be a very ableist one.

To counter this threat, I would suggest to strategically stick to the boundaries of the human category, even though it is blurry. Although humans are the only “animals” that can decide to refrain from eating animals – no other animal actually can take that decision about its diet – a clear boundary between animals and humans is hard to uphold. Thus, a humanism that I would argue for is a strategic one to uphold until a profound societal change is achieved, echoing ideas similar to the ones developed in debates on “strategic essentialism” (Spivak, 1990). I would argue that only in a society that no longer produces for economic profit but for everyone’s needs we could let go of the idea of human uniqueness – only then could the pressure to prove their humanity disappear on disabled people. However, especially at times when humanity is under duress, we as a community of disability studies researchers should be careful about dismantling the very category of the human and about our messages that can be taken up by policy makers.

References

Adorno, T.W. & Horkheimer, M. (1944) “Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosopical Fragments“, New York

Braidotti, R. (2013) “The Posthuman“, Cambridge

Campbell, F. K. (2009) “Contours of Ableism“, New York & London

Davis, L. (2002) “Bending over Backwards. Disability, Dismodernism & Other Difficult Positions“, New York

Goodley, D., Lawthom, R. & Runswick-Cole, K. (2014) “Posthuman Disability Studies“, Subjectivity, 7 (4), 342-361

Kafer, A. (2013) “Feminist Queer Crip“, Bloomington

Singer, P. (1995) “Rethinking Life & Death“, New York

Singer, P. (2015) “Animal Liberation. Updated Edition“, London

Spivak, G.C. (1990) “The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues”, New York

Taylor, S. (2017) „Beasts of Burden. Animal and Disability Liberation“, New York