Posthuman Aesthetics: A Postscript on Decadent Naturalism

Posthumanism does not exist as a human reality at any tangible level whatsoever, except insofar as there are some very elementary robotic and self-regulatory applications of that technology in the real world, such as in interactive robotic scenarios of offices and restaurants or Robotic Cafes of Tokyo city. Thus, posthumanism remains an imagined terminology, based on cybernetic theorizing with no directly available experiences, nor repercussions, of that imagination in the technosphere. The originary meaning of a cultural posthumanism must be traced to Ihab Hassan’s script for the University of Wisconsin skit, which was designed essentially as an explicatory, parodic drama on the figure of Prometheus as a symbol of ‘humanism.’ Unfortunately, the current literature on posthuman aesthetics has not denounced neoliberal variations of the concept of body and the Self. What are the prototypes on which posthumanism might evolve in the global South? If an erroneous version of posthumanism is discarded, other values of primitive human naturalism may be sought in the new art.