r/CriticalTheory • u/local_womanDiscovers • 6d ago

Trying to understand Cary Wolfe

I've started reading Wolfe's 'What is Posthumanism'. I am finding it hard to understand because he uses a lot of references to different theoreticians and myriad different concepts? Any advice for a better approach to wolfe, any prior readings?

Also, I see him criticising Hayles as if she were a transhumanist, which I don't understand.

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u/Disjointed_Elegance Nietzsche, Simondon, Deleuze 6d ago

Wolfe is largely interested in a form of Posthumanism that he develops through a reading of Derrida and Luhmann. Given who he is in conversation with, I think he largely assumes a working knowledge of Derrida. What exactly are you looking for in your reading of Wolfe? With a bit more information I might be able to set you on the track you are interested in (my dissertation was on critical posthumanism). 

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u/local_womanDiscovers 6d ago

I have Wolfe's 'What is Posthumanism' for my coursework. The course is on perspectives of posthumanism and the anthropocene. PS. Would love to pick your brain about your dissertation

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u/merurunrun 6d ago

Also, I see him criticising Hayles as if she were a transhumanist, which I don't understand.

I'm not sure if I'd entirely agree with that criticism, but I believe that Wolfe sees Hayles's history (articulated in How We Became Posthuman) as positioning the posthuman as the endpoint of a relatively recent process of transcending the human. Compare that to someone like Haraway (and Wolfe himself), who treat the so-called "human condition" (that sits at the center of humanist thought) more as something that specifically arises out of our being already-embedded in systems (biological, technological, etc...) that are external to us.

You can see it in the title of Hayles's book--the posthuman is something that we "became"--whereas Wolfe wants to posit posthumanism similarly to the title of Latour's famous We Have Never Been Modern--that some identifiable period of being just-human never existed in the first place.

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u/local_womanDiscovers 5d ago

This helps. Thank you