Introduction: Jan Kott and Posthumanist Entanglements

Abstract

In a world where humanism still sounds grandiloquent, where human exceptionalism functions as a norm in human and non-human relations, where anthropocentrism resides in human cultural DNA, a transformation of the human relationship to nature and its animate and inanimate occupants requires an urgent rethinking of these distinctions. The emergence and flourishing of “new humanities” or “posthumanities,” with its key discipline known as posthumanism—serves as an opportunity to rethink and refashion the concept of the humanist human (intentional, autonomous, conscious and therefore exceptional) as well as to reexaminethe doctrine that “man is the measure of all things.” By the late twentieth century posthumanities has come to embrace a set of research approaches and tendencies related to posthumanism, and humancentrism is the central target. In general, a humanist worldview is based on the assumption that humans are the main protagonists in a drama we call Reality, while everything else plays the role of background actors, then a posthumanist perspective suggests that our world’s stage is capacious enough to house both human and non-human actors, playing roles that are often interchangeable. In fact, humans are “merely players” in a history of the world, being outnumbered both as a species but also as an individual. The nonspeaking and non-singing extras in this production have always constituted the majority of beings/organisms/entities. Such realization allows for a radical extension of dramatis personae in the above mentioned play entitled Reality by adding all non-human personae to the list, since all personae (meaning all organic and nonorganic life) are co-dependent and none is devoid of agential capacities/ possibilities.