What Is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe

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KVulfe, Cary.
KVhat is pusthurnanismP I Cary KVulf~..
p. cm. — (Posthum a n i t ics scrics; v. 8}
lncludes bibliographical references (p, ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-6614-0 (hc: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-6615-7 (pb: alk, paper)
1 . Humani sm . 2. A e sthetics — Philosophy . 3. D e construc ti on . I. T i tle.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRoDUcTIoN W h a t I s Poslhu m a n i s m? Kl
I. THEORI ES, DI S C I P LI MES, ETHI CS
1. Meaningand Event; or, Systems Theory and

"The Reconstruction of Deconstruction"
2. Language,Representation, and Species 3x

Cognitive Science versus Deconstruction
3. Flesh and Finitude 49

Bioethics and the Philosophy of the Living
4. "Animal Studies," Disciplinarity, and the (Post)Humanities
5. Learningf rom Temple Grandin t27

Anirnal St.udies, Disability Studies, and Who Comes
after the Subject
II . M EDIA, CULTURE, PRACTICES
6. From Dead Meat to Glow in the D-ark -Bu-nnies ?45

The Animal Question in Contemporary Art
7. When You 'Can't Believe Your Eyes (or Voice) r6cj

Danccr in the Dark
8. Lose the Building zo3
Form and System in Contemporary Architecture
9. Emerson's Romanticism, Cavell's Skepticism,

Luhmann'sModernity z 3g
10. The Idea of Observation at Key West 265

Systems Theory, Poetry, and Form beyond Formalism
11. The Digital, the Analog, and the Spectral

Echographicsfrom My Lifc in thc Bush of Ghosts
Notes 30I
Publication Idistory
Index 34g
Acknowledgments
IT wotTt.D az euTtz.s to try to list all the friends, colleagues, and even
total strangers whose input and feedback helped inspire and shape this
book along the way. I would therefore like to provide what I hope is
a more reliable list — those who deserve thanks for inviting me to pre-
s ent this work i n a v ariety of settings, either live or i n p r i n t : Joseph
Tabbi, Eduardo Kac, Dana Medoro, Alison Calder, Bruce Clarke, Trace
Reddell, Manuela Rossini, Christian Hubert, Sid Dobrin, Sean Morey,
Anat. Pick, WendyWheeler, IvanKreilkamp, Cate Mortimer-Sandilands,
Joan Landes, Paula Lee, Robert Brown, Marianne DeKoven„ M ark
Hansen, Saul Ostrow, Totn Tyler, Neil Badmington,Jodey Castricano,
David Wood, Tim Campbell, Paola Cavalieri, Wendy Lochner, Salah
el Moncef bin Khalifa, Chris Danta, Patricia Yeager, Susan McHugh,
Jan Ritsema, Andrew McMur ry, Bojana Cvejic, Aaron Jaffe, Simon
Glendinn i ng , Al f Siewers, Susan Pearson, An drew Stauffer, Lauren
Corman, Wolfgang Natter, Carla Freccero, Donna Haraway, Citlalli
Reyes-Kipp, Maya Ratnam, Austin Sarat, Adarn Sitze, Ann W a l t n er,
Dan Philippon, Bruce Braun, Emily Clark, and Sara Guyer.
P ortions of t hi s w ork w ere presented in th e foll o w in g i n stit u-
tional settings, and I would like to acknowledge their support ofboth
the intellectual and monetary kind: the Warhaft Foundation and the
Centre for the Study of Applied Ethics at the University of M anitoba;
the English department at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the
M useurn of M o d er n A r t a n d t h e Van A l e n I n stit ut e i n N e w Y o r k ;
the Scientia program at Rice University; the Fifth Annual Surnmer
Academy at K u n stlerhaus Mousonturrn i n F r ank f u rt , Gerrnany; the
Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford; the Society
f or L it erature, Science, and th e A r t s (U.S. and European chapters);
t -.he Twentieth-Centur y L i t e r at ur e Co n f erence at th e U n i v ersity o f
Louisville; the Harry Ransom H um anities Research Center at the Uni-
versity of Texas; the Forum for European Philosophy at the London
A C K N O Vf LE D G M E N T S
School of Economics; the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at

the University of A m sterdam; th e H u m a n ities Institute at Buckne]1
U niversity; the A l ice Kaplan Institute for t h e H u m a n ities at N o r t h -
western University; the Society for Textual Scholarship, the An i m al s
a nd Society I n st i t u te, t h e Facult y o f E n v i r o n m e ntal St u dies, t h e
Division of H u m a n i t i es, and the Canadian Centre for G errnan and
E uropean St u dies at Y or k U n i v ersit.y i n T o r o n to ; t h e C e nter f o r
Cultural Studies and the History of Consciousness department at the
University of California, Santa Cruz; the ASPECT program at Virgini a
Tech; the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt
University; the Department of Anthropology at The Johns Hopkins
University; the Institute for Advanced Study and the Quadrant pro-
gram at the University of M i n n esota; the Center for the H u m a n i t i es
at the Un i v ersity o f W i s consin; and th e I n stit ut e fo r t h e A r t s an d
Humanities and the Rock Fthics Institute at Penn State.
I also acknow l edge the gr aduate students w it h w h o m I h a v e
worked in seminars at both SUNY — Albany and Rice University; our
conversations helped shape my i.hinking about, this work over the past.
several years. Helena Michie, chair of the English department at Rice,
deserves credit for enabling an internal leave in 2007 that helped im-
mensely in allowing rne to finish this project, as does Marcia Carter for
her help with the department's aid in various subventions and research
costs that the book required. Bruce Clarke and Donna Idaraway read
the project for the University of Mi nnesota Press, and I benefited from
ruminating over their incisive and nuanced editorial advice, based on
a sure grasp of what this book is up to, and why. For this book and for
the Posthumanities series, I owe a special debt of gratitude to the won-
derful staff at the University of Minnesota Press (you know who you
are) and, especially, to Press director Doug Armato for his boundless
intellectual enthusiasm and editorial support.
Finally and most of all, I thank my lucky stars for Allison: artist.
and soul mate.
I nt r o d u c t i o n What I S POSthLimanISm7
I T I S P E R H A P S A N A P P R O PR I A T E L Y P O ST H U M A N I S T G E ST UR E l a b e g l n
this book with the results of a Google search. As I write (in sumrner of
2008), if you Google "humanisrn," you'll be rewarded with 3,840,000
hits; "posthurnanisrn" yields a mere 60,200. (Apparently hurnanisrn is
alive and well, despite reports of its demise.) You will n otice at a cur-
sory glance that despite the discrepancy in numbers there appears to
be rnuch more unanirnity about humanism than posthumanism. Most
definitions of humanisrn look sornething like the following one frorn
Wikipedia:
Humanism i s a braad categary of ethical philasophies that affirm t h e
dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right
and wrong by appeal to u n iversal human qualities — particularly ra-
tionality. It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical
systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought.
Humanism entails a commitment ta the search for truth and morality
through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on
the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of
transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without
reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists
endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human
canditian, suggesting that solutions to human sacial and cultural prob-
lems cannot be parochial.
Posthumanism, on the other hand, generates different and even irrec-

oncilable definitions. The Web site www.posthumanism.com provides
a gloss on the term that most of the philosophers and scholars narned
on Wikipedia's page for "posthumanism" M i c hel Foucault, Judith
B utler, Br un o L at o ur, and D o n n a H ar away, arnong ot h er s w o u l d
not just refine but for the most part oppose. For the purposes of thi s
book, I choose to see in t hi s confusion not a cautionary t ale but an
opport.unity.
IN T R O D U C T IO N
The terrn "posthumanism" itself seems to have worked its way

into contemporary critical discourse in the humanities and social sci-
ences during the mid-l990s, though its roots go back, in one genealogy,
at least to the 1960s and pronouncements of the sort made famous by
Foucault in the closing paragraph of The Order of Things: An Archaeology
of theHuman Sciences, where he writes that the historical appearance of
this thing called "man" was not
the transition into lum i nous consciousness of an age-old concern, the

entry into objectiv ity of something that had long remained trapped
w it hi n beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in th e
fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our
thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one per-
haps nearing its end.
If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some
event of w h ich w e can at th e m o m ent do n o m o r e t han sense the
possibility — without know ing either what its form w i l l be ar what it,
promises — were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical
thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can cer-
tainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the
edge of the sea.'
By way of another well-known genealogy o n e also directly relevant

to this book po s t h urnanism rnay be traced to the Macy conferences
on cybernetics from 1946 to 1953 and the invention of systerns the-
ory involving Gregory Bateson, Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener,
John von Neumann, and many other figures from a range of fields who
converged on a new theoretical model for biological, mechanical, and
communicational processes that, removed the human and Homo sayi
ens from any particularly privileged position in relation to rnatters of
meaning, information, and cognition.
More recently, the term has begun to emerge with different and
sometimes competing meanings. The first time I used it (hyphenated,
no less) was in an essay from 199$, called "In Search of Post-humanist
Theory," on the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela
in a special double issue of Cultural Critique called "The Politics of
Systems and Fnvironments" that I coedited with W i l l iam Rasch.' That
project. included a roundtable conversation with N i k las Luhmann and
Katherine Hayles; Ilayles picked up the term (with a rather differ-
ent valence, as we will see in a rnoment) in her bookzlow We gecame

Posthuman (1999). Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, critics such as
Neil Badrnington and Elaine Graham gravitated toward the terrn, with
Badrnington's edited collection Posthumanism (2000) being a notable at-
t.empt, at consolidation.' That, body of work in the UK (as sug~ested b
the title of Badmington's subsequent bookAlien Chic: Posthumanism and
the Other Within, and by Graham's Representations of the Past/Human:
Monsters, Aliens, and Others in Popular Culture) tended toward a sense
afpasthumanism perhaps best glassed (as Badmingran rightly notes)
in what is probably its locus classicus in recent critical writing: Donna
Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (198$), which, as the title suggests,
engages science-fictional thematics ofhybridity, perversity, and iron
( er terms) that are, you might say, radically ambivalent in their rejec-
tion ofboth utopian and dystopian visions of a cyborg future.'
Arguably the best-known i nheritor of the "cyborg" strand of
posthurnanism is what is now being called "transhurnanism" — a rnove-
ment that is dedicated, as the journalist and writer Joel Garreau puts
rc
it, to t h e enhancement of human intellectual, physical, and ernotional
capabilities, the elimination of disease and unnecessary suffering, and
t e d r am atic extension of l if e span. W hat t h i s netw ork has in com-
mon, C arreau continues, "'is a belief in the engineered evolution of
PP
C
post-humans,' defined as beings 'whose basic capacities so radicall
exceed those of present hurnans as to no longer be unambiguousl
urnan by our curr ent standards.' "'Transhuman,'" he concludes, "is
their descriptian of t hase wha are in t he process afb e cami ng post.-
human."' As one of the central figures associated with transhuman-
ism, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrorn, makes clear, this sense of
p osthurnanism derives directly frorn ideals of hurnan perfectibilit ,
1'
rationality, and agency inherited from Renaissance hurnanisrn and the
Enlightenment. (And in this, it has little in comrnon with Harawa 's
playful, ironic, and ambivalent sensibility in "A Cyborg Manifesto,"
which is suspicious t o p ur. it rnildl y of t h e capacity of reason to
steer, much less optim i ze, what it hath w r o ught.) As Bostrom puts it
• CC
in A H i story of Transhumanist Thought," transhumanism combines

Renaissance humanisrn "w it h the influence of Isaac Newton, Th om as
Hobbes, John Locke, Irnmanuel Kant, the Marquis de Condorcet, and
others to form the basis for rational humanism, which ernphasizes
X111
ernpirical science and critical reason r a t h er than revelation and re-

ligious authority — as ways of learning about th e natural w a rl d and
our place within it, and of providing a grounding for morality. Trans-
humanisrn has its roors in rational hurnanism."
To help make his point, Bostrom invokes Kant's farnous essay of
1784, "What Is Enlightenment?": "Enlightenrnent is man's leaving his
self-caused irnmaturity. Imm at u r ity is the incapacity ro use one's own
understanding without the guidance of another. . . . The motto of en-
lightenment is therefare Sapcre uudc.i Have caurage to use your own in-
telligence!"' Here, however, it is useful to recall Foucault's suggestion
from his essay of1984 by the sarne title: that ifw e cornmit to "aperrna-
nent critique of ourselves," then we must "avoid the always too facile
confusions between humanism and I'.nlightenment," because "the hu-
manistic thernatic is in itself too supple, too diverse, too inconsistent
to serve as an axis for reflection." Indeed, as Foucault notes, "it is a fact
t-.hat, at least since the seventeenth century w h at is called hurnanism
has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man bor-
rowed fram r eligi an, science, or politics. Hurnanisrn serves to color
and to justify the conceptions ofrnan to which it is, after all, obliged to
take recourse."" What Foucault draws our attention to (aside from the
sheer heterogeneity of the historical varieties of "humanisrn," several
of which he enurnerates) is that hum anisrn is, in so rnany w o rds, its
own dogma, replete with its own prejudices and assumptions — what
Etienne Balibar calls "anthropological universals," which are thern-
selves a farrn af t h e " superstition" f r a m w h i c h t.he Enlig hi enrnent.
sought to break free. For example, in social Darwinism (and this ex-
arnple has particular resonance for transhurnanism, as its critics would
be the first to point out), we find, as Balibar notes, "the paradoxical fig-
ure of an evalution which has ta extract hurnanity properly so-called
(that is, culture, the technological rnastery of nature i n c luding the
mastery of hurnan nature: eugenics) from animality, but to do so by
rneans which characterized animality (the 'survival of the fittest ) or,
in other words, by an 'anirnal' competition between the different de-
grees of hurnanity."'
Against this background, I emphasize two crucial points regarding
rny sense ofposthurnanisrn in this book. The first has to do with perhaps
the fundamental anthropological dogrna associated with humanisrn and
invoked by Balibar's reference to the humanity/animality dichotomy:

narnely, that "the hurnan" is achieved by escaping or repressing nat
just its animal origins in nature, the biological, and the evolutionary,
but rnore generally by transcending the bonds of materiality and em-
bodiment altogether. In this respect, my sense of posthumanism is the
opposite of transhurnanisrn, and in this light, transhumanism should
be seen as an intcnsifrcation of humanism. Indeed, one well-knawn fig-
ure associated with transhumanism, Hans Moravec, draws I — Iayles's ire
for precisely this reason. "W hen M oravec irnagines 'you' choosing to
download yourselfinto a cornputer, thereby obtaining through techno-
logical rnastery the ultirnate privilege of imrnortality," Hayles writes,
"he is not abandoning the autonomous liberal subject but is expanding
its prerogatives into the realrn of the posthuman."'" Hayles is no doubt
right, and though she is quick to add that "the posthurnan need not
be recuperated back into liberal humanisrn, nor need it be construed
as anti-human," the net effect and crit-.ical ground tane of her book, as
r nany have noted, are to associate the posthurnan with a kind of trium -
phant disembadirnent." H ayles's use of the term, in other words, tends
to oppose embodirnent and the posthurnan, whereas the sense in which
I am using the term here insists on exactly the opposite: posthurnanisrn
in my sense isn't posthuman at all i n t h e sense ofbeing "after" our
embodiment has been transcended b u t i s only posthumanisr, in the
sense that it opposes the fantasies of disembodiment and autonorny,
inherited frorn humanisrn itself, that Hayles rightly criticizes.
My sense af pasthurnanisrn is thus analagaus t.o Jean-Franq-.ais
Lyotard's paradoxical rendering of the postmodern: it comes both be-
fore and after hurnanism: before in the sense that it names rhe ernbodi-
ment and ernbeddedness of the hurnan being in not just its biological but
also its technalogical warld, the prosthetic coevolution of the hum an
anirnal with the technicity of tools and external archival mechanisms
(such as language and culture) of which Bernard Stiegler probably re-
mains our rnost cornpelling and ambitious theorist a n d all of which
comes before that historically specific thing called "the hurnan" that
Foucault's archaeology excavates.'-' But it comes after in the sense that
posthumanisrn narnes a historical rnornent in w h ich the decentering
of the human by its irnbrication in rechnical, medical, informatic, and
economic networks is increasingly impossible to ignore, a historical
development that points toward the necessity of new theoretical para-

digms (but also thrusts them on us), a new mode of thought that comes
after the cultural repressions and fantasies, the philosophical protocols
and evasions, ofhumanism as a historically specific phenomenon.
I-Iere we would do well to recall Foucault's insistence on the dif-
ference between humanism and Enlightenrnent thought — namely,
that humanism's "anthropological universals" underwrite a dogma for
which the Enlightenment, if w e are true to its spirit, should have no
patience. As Foucault puts it, "In rhis connection I believe that this the-
rnatic which so often recurs and which always depends on humanism
can be opposed by the principle of a critique and a perrnanent creation
of ourselves in our autonomy: that is a principle that is at the heart of
the historical consciousness that the Fnlightenment has of itself. I.rom
t-.his standpoint I am inclined to see Enlightenment-. and humanism in a
state of tension rather than identity."'- It is precisely at this juncture that
I want to locate a fundamental intervention t-.hat this book attempts to
make: namely, that even if we admire humanisrn's suspicion toward
" revelation and religi ous author i ty " ( w h ose stakes are all th e m o r e
pitched at the current geopolitical moment),' 4 and even if we take the
additional posthumanist step of rejecting the various anthropological,
political„and scientific dogmas of the hurnan that Foucault insists are
in tension wit h F n l ightenrnent per se, we must take yet another step,
another post-, and realize that the nature of thought itself must change
if it is to be posthumanist.
What this means is thar. when we talk about posthumanism, we
are not just talking about a thernatics of the decentering of the human
in relation to either evolutionary, ecological, or technological coordi-
nates (though that is where the conversation usually begins and, all
too often, ends); rather, I will insist that. we are also talking about how
think ing confronts that thematics, what thought has to become in the
face of those challenges. Here the spirit of my i ntervention is akin to
Foucault's in "W h at Is Enlightenment~"; the point is not to reject hu-
manism tout court — indeed, there are many values and aspirarions to
admire in humanism b u t r ather to show how those aspirations are
undercut by the philosophical and ethical frarneworks used to concep-
tualize thern. To take only tw o exarnples that I discuss later in this
book, rnost of us would probably agree that cruelty toward animals is
XV1
a bad thing, or that people with disabilities deserve to be treated with

respect and equality. But as we will see, the philosophical and theo-
retical frameworks used by humanism to try to make good on those
commit m ents reproduce the very k i n d of n o r m ative subjectivit y a
specific concept of the hurnan — that grounds discrimination against
nonhuman anirnals and the disabled in the first place.
Similar limitations may be identified not just in the post.- of trans-
humanism but also in some who rightly criticize it. As R. L. Rutsky
points out with regard to Hayles's governing theoretical model, "The
posthuman cannot simply be identified as a culture or age that cornes
'after' the human, for the very idea of such a passage, however mea-
sured or qualified it may be, continues to rely upon a humanist narra-
tive ofhistorical change. . . . If, however, the posthuman truly involves
a fundamental change or mutation in the concept of the human, this
would seem to irnply that history and cult ure cannot continue to be
figured in reference to t-.his concept."" I n o t her w o r ds, there are hu-
manist ways of criticizing the extension of hum anism that we find in
transhumanism (or " b ad" p o sthum anism). Rutsky locates a central
syrnptom of this fact in I —
layles's use of the concept of mutation in How
We Becumc Posthumun, where mutation is rendered, Rutsky writes, as "a
pre-existing, external force that introduces change into a stable pattern
(or code), and into the rnaterial world or body as well." But rnutation,
Rutsky points out, by definition "cannot be seen as external randorn-
ness that imposes itself upon the biological or material world — nor, for
that matter, on the realrn of culture. Rather, mutation names that. ran-
domness which is always already immanent in the processes by which
both material bodies and cultural patterns replicate themselves.""
From this vantage, the problem is that there is nothing in Idayles's
theoretical rnodel of historical progression (which is derived from a
specific set of humanist conventions and protocols of historiography
whose problematic nature Foucault hirnself u nd e r the infl uence of
Canguilhem, among others" s o u ght to expose) that takes this fact
into account. M oreover, her notion of m u t ation as an external force
points, as Bruce Clarke has recently put it, toward "a radical distinc-
tion between matter and inform ation, substance and form," one that
remains "in a realrn of dialectical antithesis, which observes that the
concept of the hurnan has lost its balance and/or its foundations, and
XV11
that responds either with lament or delight."" But what is needed here,
as Rutsky rightly points out, is the recognition that "any notion of the
posthuman that is to be more than rnerely an extension of the human,
t hat is to m ov e beyond th e dialectic of cont rol and lack of cont r o l ,
superhuman and inhuman, must be premised upon a mutation that is
ongoing and immanent," and this rneans that to become posthuman
means to participate in — and find a mode of thought adequare to-
"processes which can never be entirely reduced to patterns or stan-
dards, codes or inforrnation.""
In this light, it is worth recalling Clarke's suggestion that the dia-
lectical antithesis of rnatter and inform ation corresponds to the first-
order cybernetics of rnidcentury,'" while the rnutational, as Rutsky
rightly understands it, points toward the necessity of a different logic,
one consonant, as Clarke has pointed out by quoting Gregory Bateson's
suggestion three decades ago that "the whole of logic would have to
be reconstructed for recursiveness": a logic that is fundatnental to the
second-order systems theory that will be articulated in these pages.
From this perspective, I want to underscore what will be a rnajor point
of emphasis in this book: that systems theory in its second-order incar-
nation, far from eluding or narratologically tnastering the tnutational
processes just discussed, rather subjects itself to them t r a ces or tracks
them, as Derrida might say (for reasons that will becorne clear later)
in just the way Bateson calls for. As Dirk Baecker puts it, second-order
systems theory "may well be read as an attempt to do away wit h any
usual notion of system, the theory in a way being the deconstruction
ofits central terrn."" M o r eover, it is also worth remembering Derrida's
suggestion in his late essay "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More
to Follow)" that perhaps the deepest logic of his investigation of "the
question of the anirnal" is in fact "viral," in the specific sense of a muta-
tional logic of the trace structure of any notational form, any semiotic
system, that exceeds and encornpasses the boundary not just between
human and animal but also between the living or organic and the me-
chanical or technical — a contention I take up in some detail in chapters I
and 2." A n d i t i s p r ecisely at t h i s j u n c t ur e t hat t h i s b ook w e aves
together th e t w o d i f f erent senses of posthurnanism t hat r em ained
separate in my previous two bo oks, Criticul Environmcnts and Animal
Rites: posthurnanisrn as a mode of thought in the first book (explored
XV111
there on the parallel terrains of pragrnatisrn, systems theory, and post-

structuralisrn) and, in the second, posthurnanism as engaging directly
the problern of anthropocentrism and speciesism and how practices of
thinking and reading rnust change in light of their critique.
It is worth arnplifying for a moment the disciplinary, institu-
tional, ethical, and political stakes of this mutational, viral, or parasitic
farm of thinking. As David Wills notes (in terrns quite resonant. with
Rutsky's insistence on taking seriously the force of the mutational), it is
deconstructian's "constitutive dehiscence, its originary rupt ure or self-
division, that defines it as a disturbance, displacernent, or disruption of
the status quo." Such a rnode of thought. "'has enormous potential for
resisting the self-'assurance of any hegemonic discourse or practice,"
because it infects and mutates through the very structures, privileged
terrns, and discursive nodes of power on which it is parasitical (think
here of Derrida's method of reading). "With the force and effect of
a virus," W i l ls remarks, it " has its invasive parasitic irnpact precisely
there where the border lines are drawn between and arnong nations,
religions, systems of thinking, disciplines, within and between the on-
tological pretension of an is and the thetic possibility of an in.""
I explore the force of rhis point for w hat we m i ght. call the ide-
ology of a certain mode of contemporary historicism in literary and
cultural studies in chapter 4, but for now I w ant to note that W i l l s's
articulation of the viral activity of th ought " w i t h i n and between the
ontological pretension of an is and the thetic possibility of an in" might
well be taken as a shorthand definitian af the fundamental distinction
that is central to Luhm ann's systerns theory: the system/envir on m ent
relation. That, relation is not "an ontological pretension of an is" but
a functional distinction, a ternporally dynamic, recursive loop of sys-
temic code and environrnental complexity that is itself infecred by the
virus of paradoxical self-reference, a "thetic in" (to use Wills's terrns)
that will always constitute a "blind spot" and generate an "'outside" for
its own (or any) observation. For this reason, which I articulate in de-
tail in chapter 1, "reality," in Luhmann's words, "is what one does not
perceive when one perceives it."
It is here that we rnay locate the decisive turn of a thin k ing that
is genuinely posthumanist, and it is also here that we may distinguish
the work of Derrida and Luhrnann frorn that of sorne illustrious fellow
X1X
travelers in posthumanist thought. There is the Lacanian version ar-

ticulated most recently by Slavoj Z i z ek, according to w h ich th e self-
referential attempts of the dornain of the Sytnbolic to give meaning to
or "gentrify" the domain of the "presyrnbolic Real" only generate, as
a precipitate or "remainder" of that process, the very "outside" of the
Real (now understood paradoxically as both pre- and post-Syrnbolic)
t hey att.empt to rnaster." T h e r e i s the nearly Z e n-lik e assertion of
Gilles Deleuze that " I a m a n em p i r i cist, that is, a pluralist," hi s at-
ternpt (with Felix Guattari) "to arrive at i.he tnagic fortnula we all seek,
PLURALIsM = MoNIsM, by passing through all the dualisrns which are
the enemy, the altogei.her necessary enemy."" T h ere is Bruno Latour's
well-known assertion that "we have never been rnodern," his insistence
that the fundamental mechanism of m odernity " creates two entirely
distinct ontological zones: that ofhuman beings on the one hand; that
of nonhumans on the other," even as it proliferates "hybrids of nature
a nd culture." ' A n d t h ere is Foucault's archaeology of h u m anism t o
which I have already alluded.
B ut the first lesson of both D e r r ida and L u h m an n (and in t h i s
they go beyond Foucault's genealogical method, and beyond dia-
lectical and historical accounts of the sort w e fin d i n H a yles) is that
Enlightenment rationality is not, as it were, rational enough, because
it stops short of applying its own protocols and comm i t m ents to itseff
This is, of course, the entire point of Derrida's deconstruction of Inany
of the major concepts, texts, and figures in the Western philosophical
t.radit.ion. And it. is also i.he point of Luhm ann's at.tention t.o the formal
dynarnics of meaning that arise from the unavoidably paradoxical self-
reference of any observation — a problem that is, for hirn, a historical
phenomenon created by rnodernity as a form of "functional differen-
tiat.ion" of social systerns. Long before the historical onset. of cyborg
technologies that now so obviously inject the post- into the posthuman
in ways that fascinate the tr anshumanists, functional differentiation
itself determines the posthutnanist form of rneaning, reason, and corn-
m unication by u n t e t h er ing i t f r o m i t s m o o r i n gs in th e i n d i v i d u al ,
subjectivity, and consciousness. Meaning now becotnes a specifically
rnodern form of self referential recursivity that is used by both psychic
systems (consciousness) and social systems (cotnmunication) to handle
overwhelming environmental complexity. In this sense, Luhmann takes
the Kantian commi t m ent to the autonorny of reason seriously but then
subrnits that autonomy ta the unavoidable problern of paradoxical self-
reference a nd in that sense he takes reason rnore seriously than Kant
himself did, or at least takes it to require a rnore cornplex theoretical
apparatus because of the increased complexity associated with moder-
nity as functional differentiation." As Luhmann puts it in Observations
on Modcrnity, "The history af Eurapean rationality can be described
as the history of th e dissolution of a rationality continuurn that had
connected the observer in th e w o rld w i t h rh e w a rld."-'"- Ta call such
a shift historical is not, however, to fall back into the narrative histo-
riographic method I (and Foucault) have just criticized, since this new
lo~ic itself virally infects (or deconstructs, if you like) any possible his-
torical account a f a ct that (paradoxically, if you like) makes such an
account historically representative; that is to say (in Luhrnann's terrns),
it rnakes it modern."
Thus what D er r ida and L u h rnann in sist on rnare t han any o f
the thinkers just noted is a think ing that does not turn away frorn the
c omplexities and paradoxes of self r eferential autopoiesis; quite t h e
contrary, it finds there precisely the means to articulate what I will call
the principle of "openness frorn closure," which may itselfbe seen as
the successor to the "order frorn noise" principle associated with first-
order systerns theory and inherited by successors such as complexity
theory.'" I-lere the ernphasis falls, as it did not in these earlier theories,
on the paradoxical fact theorized by both Luhmann and Derrida t he
very thing that. separates us frarn the warld connccts us ta the world,
and self-referential, autopoietic closure, far from indicating a kind of
solipsistic neo-Kantian idealism, actually is generative of openness to
the environment. As Luhmann succinctlyputs it, self-referential closure
"does not contradict the systern's opcnncss to tbc cnvironmcnt In s tea.d,
in the self-referential rnode of operation, closure is a form ofbroaden-
ingpossible environrnental contacts; closure increases, by constituting
elernents rnore capable ofbeing determined, the cornplexity of the en-
vironm ent that is possible for the system."" I n D e r r i da's terms, "The
living present springs forth out. of its nonidentity with itself and frorn
the possibility of a retentional trace," which constitutes "the intim ate
relation of the living present to its outside, the opening to exteriority
in general."'-'
XX1
I NT RQB IJC TIQ N
It is cxucial, as we shall see in the fallowing chapters, that the

dynamics descxibed hexe are xiot, for Luhmann ar far Derrida, limited
ta the domain of the human. It is thus also in this pxecise sense — the
sense in which the viral logic articulated here must be extended, as
*'
Derrida insists, ta the entire field of the living, or rrxtlter to tke life /'derxtk
relation"" — that "the animal question" is part of the largex question af
pasthumaxiism. Indeed, for Derrida, these dyxiamics farm the basis far
deconstructing the variaus vrays in v/hich we have presumedI ta mastex
or apprapriate the hnitude vre share with nonhuman animals in ways
presuxnably barred to tlhem (as in the ability to k naw th e w orld "as
such" through oux possession of language that is barred ta animals,
accoxding to Heideggex). It is on the strength of that decanstruction
that the question of' aur ethical relatian ta animals is apened anew
and, as it were, kept open. Ixi this cannection, my use of Derrida and
Luhmann here canstitutes an extensian and refxnement af my deploy-
ment of the work of Huxnberta Maturana and Francisco Varela in "In
the Shadow of Wittgenstein's Lion,'" vrhere the emphasis falls an tlheir
contention that "every art of knawing brings forth vrorld." On the ane
hand, tlhey paint aut that for us as "languaging" beings, "every reflec-
tian, including ane on the faundation afhuman knawledge, invariably
takes place in language, which is oux distinctive vray af being human
and being humanly active'" in the vrorld." On the othex hand, language
arises as it does in Luhxnann's account of"meaning" versus language
prapex — fram fundamentally ahuman evolutianary pracesses of third-
order structural cauplings and recursive ca-antagenies linked in cam-
plex faxms af sacial behavior and comxnunicatian amang sa-called
higher animals, which have thexnselves emerged fxam specific farms
of embodiment and neurophysiological arganization.
Indeed, as we vrill see in chapter 1, thexe axe at least three differ-
ent levels here that must be disarticulated: first, the self-xeferential au-
tapaiesis af a bialagical system s xnatexial substrate (its conservatioxi
of adaptatian" thraugh autapaietic clasure, oxi the basis af vrhich — and
only an the basis of vrhich — it can engage in variaus farms of "structural
coupling"); second, the self-referential formal dynamics af xneaning
(vrhat Maturana and Varela v/ill call, in the arena ofliving systems, the
emergence of "linguistic damains") that same (but not all) autapoietic
systexxis use ta reduce environmental camplexity andI intexface v/ith the
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INT RQDIJC TIa N
warld; and third, the self-reference aflanguage praper as a secand-arder

phenomenan and a speci6c mediuxxx (what Luhmann calls a "symbeli-
cally generalized cexnmunicatians medium") that is used by same (but
not all) autopoietic systexns that use meaning. None of these levels is
reducible ta the others; each has its own dynamics, its own evalution-
ary histary, its own canstraints and protocols. But this irreducibility,
fax frem fxustrating aur attempts at explanatian, actually gxeatly en-
Ihaxxces tlhem by necessitating what Matuxana calls a "nanreductianist
relatien between the plhenamenan ta be explained and the mechanism
that generates it.'" As Maturana explains, "tlhe actual result of a pracess,
and the eperations in the pracess that give rise to it in a generatxve xela-
tion, intrinsically take Ixlace irt irxdeyettdent rxttdfxoftitttersectixtg pkextomefxal
domaixxs. This situation is the reverse of reductioxxism." And this "'per-
mits us te see," he continues, ' *particularly in the demain ef b i alogy,
that tlhere are phenaxnena Iike language, mind, ar consciausness that
require an interplay ofbodies as a generative structure but do not take
place in any ef them"" — what we will shertly see ILulhmann theorxzing
in chapter 1 as the dij IIerefxce between consciousness and cemmunica-
tian, psychic systems and sacial systems, whiclh may nevertheless be
caupled structurally through xnedia such as language.
This view has pxafound implications, af couxse, fox haw we think
abaut the human in xelation to tlhe animal, about the body and em-
bodiment. To begin w ith, it means that we can no longer talk of the
body ox even, for tlh.at mattex, of rx body in the traditional sense. We
take for gxanted, in othex words, Bruna Lataur's assertian that: "tlhe
Ihumaxx ferxxa is as unknawxx ta us as the nonhuman. . . . I t is better te
speak of ('x)-morI/hism instead of becaming indignant when Ihumans
are treated as nonlhumans or vice versa."" Rather, "tlhe body" is now
seen as a kind of virtxxolity, lbut one that is, precisely for that reasen, all
the mare real. If we believe, as I think we must, the contention that,
neuraphysialogically, different autapaietic life-faxms "bxing farth a
warld" in what Maturana andI Vaxela call their ""exnbedied enactian' *-
and if, in daing sa, the envixanment is thus dlifferent, indeed sometimes
radically different, for different life-forms — then the environment, and
with it "the body," lbecomes unavaidably a virtual, multidimensional
space produced and stabilized by the xecursive enactiens and struc-
tural couplings af autopeietic beings who slh.are wlhat Matuxaxxa axxd
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I NT RQB IJC TIQ N
Varela call a "consexxsual doxnain." "First" there is noise, multiplicity,

caxxxplexity, and the hetexageneity of the environment, of whatis (I put
"first" in xluatatian marks to underscore the fact that such a statexnent
could anly arise, after all, as the observation of an autopoietic system:
Ihence "6rst" here also means, because of the inescapable fact of the
self-reference of such an abservation, '*Iast"; it is the environment ef
the system, not nature ar any ather given anteriarityli.x7 Secand, there
axe the autapoietic systems that, if they are to cantinue theix existence,
respond ta this averv/helming complexity by reducing it in terms af
the selectivity af a self =referential selectivity or code; andI this means,
thxxd, that the v/orld is an ongoing, differentiated construction and
creatxon of a shared environment, sometimes canverging in a cansen-
sual domain, sametimes nat, by autapaietic entities that have tlheir
own temparalities, chronicities, perceptual madalities, and sa an-
in shart, their avrn faxms of embadixnent. Faurth, the warld is thus
a virtuality and a multiplicity; it is both vrhat one does in embodied
enaction and v/hat the self-reference of that enaction excludes. Again,
Luhmann: "Reality is what one does not percexve when one perceives
it." Crucially, then, "virtual" daes nat mean "not real"; on the can-
*
trary, given the ' openness fram clasure" prixxciple, the more virtual the
warld is, the more real it is, because the buildup of intexnal camplexity
made possible by autopoietic closure actually iftcrexxses the complexity
of the enviranment tlhat is possible for any system. In that sense, it in-
creases the system's connection and sensitivity to, and dependence an,
the enviranment.
Rethinking emlbodiment in tlhis way, ane might be tempted to
invoke Deleuze and Guattari's well-known idea af tlhe Ibody vrithaut
organs, along the lines usefully glossed by Brian Massumi: "Since the
body is an open system, an infolding af impulses from an aleatory out-
side, all its potential singular states are determined by a fractal attrac-
tax. Call tlhat strange attractar the bady's plane af cansistency. It is a
subset of the warld's plaxie af cansistency, a segment af its infinite frac-
tal attractor. It is the bady as pure potential, pure virtuality. " But taking
seriously the mncept of autopoiesis — that systems, includingbodies, are
both open /xfxd closed as the very mndition of possibility for their exis-
tence (apen on the level of stxucture ta energy flows, environmental per-
turbations, and the like, but closed on the level of self-referential argaxxi-
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INT RQDIJC TIa N
zatian, as Maturana and Varela put it); and taking seriously Maturana's
assertion that a dlescriptioxx in language and the genexative phenamena
ta be described take place in "independlent and nanintersecting phe-
nomenal damains,'" there can be na talk of the Ibody's plane of consis-
tency being a subset of the warld's plane of consistency. And tlhere can
be no talk of purity. Everything v/e know (scientifically, thearetically)
and say (linguistically or in other farms of semiatic natatian) abaut the
bady takes place witlhin same contingent, xadically nonnatural (that
is, constructed and technical) schema af knavrledge. Tlhe language (ar
meaning, more strictly speaking) that describes is of a different phe-
nomenal order from tlhat which is described. Paradaxically, that lan-
guage is fundamental ta our embodied enactian, aur bringing foxth a
warld, as humans. And yet it is dead. Rather, as Derrida puts it quite
precisely, it exceeds and encampasses the life/death xelation. That fact
daesn t prevent in the least its effectivity, since effectivity (as Latoux,
among athers, has show n) is nat a matter of philosophical or theoreti-
cal representationalism."
To return, then, to the question af posthuxnanism, the perspec-
tive I attempt ta farmulate here — far from surpassing or rejecting the
humaxx — actually enables us ta descxilbe the human and its chaxacter-
istic xnades af cammunicatian, interaction, meaxxing, sacial signifxca-
tions, and affective investments with greater specificity once we have
xemoved meaning from the ontalogically closed domain of conscious-
ness, reason, reflection, and sa on. lt forces us to rethxnk our taken-for-
gxanted mades afIhuxnan experience, including the narmal perceptual
xnodes and affective states of Homo sxxI/iefxsitself; by xecantextualizing
them in terms of the entire sensarium of othex living beings and their
own autopoietic vrays of "b r i n g ing forth a w o r ld" — ways that are,
since we ourselves are Ihuman animals, part of the evolutionaxy histary
and behavxoral and psycholagical xepertoixe of the human itself. But it
also insists that vre attend ta the specifxcity of the human — its ways af
being in the v/arld, its w ays of knaw ing, abserving, and describing — Iby
(paxadaxically, fox huxnanism) acknawledging that it is fundamentally
a pxosthetic creature that Ihas coevalved with various foxms af tech-
nicity and materiality, forms that aze radically "not =human" and yet
have nevertheless made the Ihuman what it is. (For Derrida, of couxse,
this includes the mast fundaxxmntal prostheticity af all: language in the
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F LESH A N D FIN IT UDE
then the first thing we are bound to notice is this: hurnan and (at least
sorne) nonhuman animals may be, in a phenamenological or ontologi-
cal sense, more or less equally subjected to the exteriority and mate-
riality of the trace in a way that only "the living" can be; that is what
it rneans to be '"rnortal," to be "fellow creatures," to be subjected B.ut
what is not at all shared equally, even if this is the case, is the rnaterial
dispasition af that fact in practices and institutians whose effects bear
very differently on human and nonhuman animals — effects Derrida
himself is, of course, well aware of." ' T o put. it another way, humans
and anirnals may share a fundarnental "non-power at the heart of
power," may share a vulnerability and passivity wi t hout limit as fellaw
living beings, but what they do nor share equally is the power to ma-
terialize their mi srecognition of their situation and to reproduce that
materialization in institutions of exploitation and oppression whose
effects are far frorn symrnetrical in species terrns. From this vantage,
the issue is not only "w hat should we do? t h e question of justice that
Derrida would have us confront anew i n each iteration, w i t h out r e-
course to "'calculation" and ethical form ulae — but also "what wiII we
do'?" in the face of such challenges.
As David W ood puts it in hi s searching discussion of D er r ida's
interview "Eating Well," "there is a place for argument, proof, and dem-
onstration in philosophy," but "w hat this critical function opens onto
are rnore or less rnotivated possibihries of resJionse" and , with regard to
deconstruction specifically, the ability "to respond to what has not been
adequat.ely schernatized, forrnulated, etc."'"' In Waod's view, thase pos-
sibilities are evacuated — eviscerated, we might say — by Derrida in two
ways in "Eating Well," where he explicitly rejects vegetarianisrn as a
more ethically responsible answer to the question "I-Iow should one
eat'?" First, Derrida frames the question in such a way "as to incorpo-
rate and interiorize the actual eating of animals inside the syrnbolic
eating of anything by anyone" (30), so that the specific practice of eating
anirnals becornes sirnply one rnore version of the larger syrnbolic struc-
ture by which "Man" in the Wesrern philosophical tradition secures
its transcendence through rnastery of nature, repression of the body
everything that D errida associates with the terrn "carnophallagocen-
trism" (30). In so doing, Derrida evacuates the difference t h e material
alterity — between different sacrificial structures and practices. And the
F LESH A ND FI NI TU DE
result of this "assimilation," as Wood puts it, is "to the extent that in this
culture sacrifice in the broad (symbolic) sense seems unavoidable, there
would seem to be little rnotivation for practical transformations of our
engagement in sacrificial behavior" (31).
Second, what he calls "Derrida's ambivalence toward vegetarian-
ism" seems to be consonant wit h deconstruction's idea of ethics as "a
practice of eternal vi gilance," one that cannot " b ecome some sort of
alternative ethical seal of approval" for vegetarianisrn or anything else.
But the problern here is that "the avoidance of that w i dening path of
resistance to violence that is vegetarianisrn could end up preserving-
against the temptations ofprogressive practical engagernent — the kind
of good conscience that too closely resembles a 'beautiful soul'" (32).
In other words, the "eternal vigilance" of deconstructive ethics, which
depends on always attendin , w i t hout the aid of predetermined judg-
ments and form u lae, to the specific iteration of event and r u le, here
t-.hreatens to flip-flop into the opposite of vigilance, one whose "good
conscience" resid.es in the security of its knowledge that there is no
such thing as a good conscience.
To put it slightly otherwise, Wood would force on Derrida the
same distinction drawn earlier by Diamond: "Is Derrida (merely) an ani-
mal welfarist'?" In the end, do we find in Derrida's work on ethics and
t he anirnal a reproductio n t o q u ote Diarnond once again of " a ki n d
of pitilessness at the heart of welfarisrn, a willingness to go ahead with
what we do to the vulnerable, a willi ngness to go on subjecting them
to our power because we can, because it suits us to do so," a willingness
that "is inseparable frorn the 'cornpassion' we express in welfarisrn."'"
What, such a vantage point discloses is an essential tension in Derrida's
work on ethics between his insistence that we pay vigilant attention
to the particular instance of decision, of justice, in all its thickness and
heterogeneity, without letting forrnulae and maxirns do the work for
us, and a general law or econorny of iterability that would render such
decisions nonuniversalizable, decisions whose foundations are local
only (while what is not local is the unavailability of such foundations
from which to universalize).
This is not to say that Derrida's position is without ethical force-
quite the contrary. Regarding iterns six and seven in Conrcmpomry Issucs
iu Bioethics with which I began this chapter (biornedical research and
F LESH A N D FIN IT UDE
eugenics), Derrida forcefully rivets our attention a s no one else in

poststruct u r alist philosophy has done — on the "inf ern al" and "mo n-
strous" conditions created for animals in product testin~ and factory
farrning by "more and more audacious manipulations of the genome"
and other "genetic farms of knowledge" and the "techniquesof interven-
tion" related to thern that have reduced the animal to a mere vehicle
for products and commodities.'"' Moreover (as I noted in the opening
pages), he would call our attention to the process of "codification" in
bioethics, whereby the overdeterm i n ing m aterial, political, and eco-
nomic relations between those in bioethics who formulate the rules
and norrns and those who legislate and enforce t.hern are laid bare '"'
But Derrida's position bears on the pragmatics of contemporary
bioethics wit h w h i ch I began this chapter only at the extremes (the
"pragmatic" instance of judging particular cases, on the one hand,
and the "ordeal of the undecidable" that attends such judgment and
in principle makes universalization impossible), while current bio-
ethics as a brand of policy studies and the edifice of law it takes for
g ranted operate precisely in the m i d dle zone abandoned by D er r i d a
(the maintenance or rnodification of generic, universalizable norms in
and through particular cases, and the legal model of "personhood,"
with all its philosophical underpinnings, that underwrites the process).
Derrida would have us pay attention ro the specific instance of decision
in a way foreclosed by the generality and logic of the law itself, since
the force of such specific instances for D err ida is, in p r i nciple, their
ability to revolut.ionize or exceed t.he law it.self, i.heir call for us i.o real-
ize that what is legal may not be just (and vice versa). (Here one might
readily t.hink not just. of issues regarding our treatrnent of animals such
as xenotransplantation but also of issues such as assisted suicide, the
case of Terri Schiavo, and the like a l l of which would seem to depend
on pragmatic particulars that obtain, as it were, "beneath" the level of
the law and often create a jarring contradiction between what is legal
and our sense of what is just.)
At the orher extreme, Derrida's general economy of iterability
would prevent the generalization of such decisions, taken in aggregate,
into a larger edifice or structur e a n e w l egal doctrine, if you l i k e-
and would highlight, the differences and even the abyss between the
intentionality that would attempt unilaterally to deploy such structures
L OSE T H E B U I L D I N G
sorne undesigned wasteland in the middle of the city, but a park built
now and not a hundred years ago. As we will see later in the chaprer,
the concept of form is crucial here, and in it "t wo requirements must
be fulfilled and inscribed into perception: the form must have a bound-
ary, and there must be an 'unmarked space' excluded by this boundary"
(45). This is obvious enough in works enclosed with a beginning and
end (as in narrative fiction), a srage (as in drama), or a framing de-
vice. But "sculpture or architecture presents an entirely different case,"
Luhmann argues.
Here, the boundary does not draw the viewer's artention inward but
instead directs it outward. The work permits no view into its depths,
no penetration of its surface, (wharever the surface may betray of the
work's mass, volume, or material). The imaginary space is projected
outward in the form of distinctions suggestedby the work itself. Here,
too, space is work-specific space, visible so long as the focus is on the
work and disappearing from view when the focus shifts to surrounding
objects — to the weeds in the castle garden. (4$-46)
It would be tempting at this juncture to invoke the well-known

distinction betw een the "r h i zornatic" and "arborescent" in D e leuze
and Guattari a r eading suggested by what the jury report calls the
"mesh" of connections cast over the surrounding area by Tree City.
Indeed, one tnight very w ell view t.he project, wit h it.s one thousand
paths and what Bob Somol has characterized as its "viral" or "cancer-
ous" infection of t,he surrounding suburbs, as an attempt to transform
the arborescent (Tree) into the rhizornatic (Tree City) in a perversely
humorous literalization w hose primary message is "Hey, trees are as
close to architecture as you're going to get in this project!" Indeed, what
is immediately most strik ing about the Koolhaas and Mau proposal is
precisely its negativity, its posture of refusal, its repeated insistence on
what it has opted not to do as much as what it does — in making "the ul-
timate sacrifice" of not doing architecture, its refusal to spend money,
and so on. And once this fundamental displacement is made, it is as if
everything in the proposal must now be read in quotation marks; it is
a kind of antiproposal or, better still, the kind of tnintittg that Derrida as-
sociates with dissemination, which is not an achievement of represen-
tationalism and rnimesis but precisely its displacement and erosion."
This makes Tree City, in the end, a quite contemporary interven-
2I2
tion, one very different frorn an earlier rnoment of the postmodern in

architecture, in which "quatation" and the like atternpts, as Luhrnann
puts it, "to copy a differentiated and diverse environment into the art-
work," which in turn only raises the further problern of "whether, and
in what way, the work can claim unity, and whether it can assert itself
against its own (!) 'requisite variety.'"" " H o w," Luhrnann asks, "can
the arr. systern reflect an its own di fferentiation, not only in the form
of theory, but also in individual works of art'?" In this light, we might
well view the rnade af negarivity and refusal, af rnirning, in the pra-
posal of Koolhaas and Mau as a kind of effort to displace any materi-
alization af a cornmitrnent rhat rnight. temporally constrain and chain
their project to a struct u ral representation that ceases to be relevant
t he moment it cornes into being. And in t h i s t o r e ach back now t o
Heidegger, with whom we began t h e "unhandsorneness" ofTree City
(to use Stanley Cavell's phrase) is exactly what is rnost fetching about
it; it refuses to grasp and fix the present-. for us, and in so doingi t irnag-
ines the future — or at least, let's say a bit rnore modestly, a future.
Diller + Scofidio's Blur
The kinds of forrnal innovations we find in Tree City, what and how
t.hey signify, haw they mabilize an uncanny dematerialization af the
architectural rnediurn as part of a radical formal statement, how they
engage in an ingenious conceptual displacernent, of t.he problern af cam-
position: these forrn the fundarnental concerns as well, in my view, of
Ricardo Scofidio and Flizabeth Diller's audacious Blur project. The Blur
building a m anufactured cloud with an embedded viewing deck, hov-
ering over the Lake of N euchatel in Switzerland s e ems to have en-
joyed nearly universal acclaim from the rnoment it opened to the public
in October 2002 as part of Media Fxpo '02. The reasons for this are not
far to seek; t.hey range from what. a Swiss newspaper reviewer char-
acterized as the liberating effect of the zany cloud on "the crotchety
Swiss" — "What a crazy, idiosyncratic thing! How d eliciously w i t h out
purpose!" he exclairned — to Diller + Scofidio's knowing deployment of
the relat.ionship between public architecture, the history and function
of the exposition as a social forrn, and the manufacture and use of spec-
tacle in relarion to both "
color, affinity or antipathy to other visitors on the basis of a preferences

questionnaire filled out upon entry to the cloud (209 —51).
As even this brief list suggests, the project went through many
p ermutations. In the end — not least for reasons of rnoney w h at we
are left with in Blur is the manufactured cloud with the Angel Deck
(now not a water bar but a viewing deck) nestled at its crest. For rea-
sons I will try to explain by way of conremporary systems theory, the
fact that these permutations and sideline enhancernents were not real-
ized in the end is not entirely a bad thing, because it rivets our atten-
tion not only on what has captivated most viewers from the beginning
but also on w hat rnakes the project a paradigmatic instance of ho w
contemporary architecture responds to the complexities of its broader
social envi r o n rnent in t e rm s of its specific mediu m an d t h at is, as
Diller + Scofidio put it, "the radicality of an absent building" (15),
the rernarkable, audacious comm i t m ent to a building that was not a
building at all but a manufactured cloud: "the making," as they put it,
"of nothing." This fundamental commitment was sounded by Diller
+ Scofidio early and often; at, the core of the project, as it were, was
no core at all but a comrnitment to sornething "featureless, depthless,
scaleless, spaceless, rnassless, surfaceless, and contextless" (162). And
this overriding concern was reiterated at the end of the design phase,
about a year before the expo opened, in an i m p o r t ant cornrnunique
from Diller, in which she writes:
B/UK is n,at a building, BI.UK is pure atmosphere, water particles sus-

pended in mid-air. The fag is a dynamic, phantom mass, which changes
form constantly. . . . In contradiction ta the tradition of Expa pavilians
whose exhibitions entertain and educate, BLUR erases informa tion.
Expos are usually competition grounds for bigger and better technologi-
cal spectacles. BLUR is a spectacle with nothing to see. Within BI UR, vi-
sion is put aut-af'-facus sa that aur dependence on vision can became the
focus of the pavilion.
She adds in boldface type: "The media project must be liberated from
all imrnediate and obvious rnetaphoric associations such as clouds, god,
angels, ascension, drearns, Greek rnythology, or any other kitsch rela-
tionships. Rather, BLUR offers a blank interprerive surface" (325).
Not quite blank, as it turns out. In fact, on the conceptual side of
2I $
E M E R S O N S R O M A N T I C I SM
romanticisrn, so the story goes, constitutes a finally flawed and even

fanciful respanse, one whose contaurs we have already g]irnpsed in
the fundamentally ironic structure of the Kantian transcendentalism
and its settlernent with skepticisrn. For Habermas, in The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity, secularization means that thought "can and will
n o longer borrow t h e cr iteria by w h ich it t akes its orientation fr o m
models supplied by another epach; it. has ro create its normativity aut
of itself"; for Foucault — and here we return to K ant once rnore — it is
that thought m ust put it s "aw n r eason to use, wit hour. subjecting it-
self to any authority."" If the upside of the philosophical situation of
rnodernity is, as Jay puts it, that "the present represents an exit or a
way out of subordination to traditional sources and rnodes authority"
(28), then the downside, already traced in Kantian transcendentalisrn,
is that the ungrounding of reason invites the various forms of ideal-
isrn that have been attributed to r ornanticisrn in th e all-too-familiar
n arratives of secularization, where M i nd , Spirit, Irnagination, or t h e
equivalent comes to take the place of self-generated knowledge and its
authority previously reserved far God.
Now we might irnagine any number of responses to this as a stan-
dard characterization of Fm erson's work. To begin w i t h , one mi ght
well argue that such a position too rapidly assimilates Emerson's later
work p a r ticularly the second series of essays andThe Conduct ofLife
to the principles articulated in the early essay Nature Cave.ll, for ex-
arnple, argues that the. I=.merson of Nature and its adjacent early essays
is nat jusr. superficially different. bur fundamentally different. frarn the
later work:
I am at prcsent amang those wha f ind Nature, granted the wander-

ful passages in it, not yet to constitute the Emersonian philosophical
voice, but to be the place from w h i ch, in the several follow ing years,
that voice departs, in "The American Scholar,- "The Div i n ity School
Address," and "Self-Reliance." I would characterize the difference by
saying that in Natu>>.Emerson is taking the issue skepticism as solvable
or controllable where thereafter he takes its unsolvability to the heart
of his thinking "
I t is precisely this unsalvabilit y t h at generates what Ri chard Rort y

characterizes as an increasingly — and increasingly demanding — anti-
representationalist mode of philosophical practice. As Rorty explains it,

the prablem with philosophical representatianalism is the assumptian
that "'making true' and 'representing' are reciprocal relations," as if
"the nonlinguistic item w h ich makes S true is the one represented by
S."" For philasophical idealisrn, that "item" will be something in the
changeless character of the subject; for realisrn, it will be sornething in
the nature of the object t.hat. "has a cantext of its awn, a conrexr. which
is privileged by virtue of being the object's rather than the inquir-
er's" (96). In either case, what representatianalism fails to see is that
"'determinacy' is not w hat is in question — that neither does thought
determ ine reality nor, in the sense intended by the realist, does real-
ity determine thought" (5). Both positions, as Cavell might say, find
themselves unduly, even preeningly, h andsome" — hence the strange,
insistent movement of Emerson's prose, which takes for granted, as it
were, Rorty's contention that " w o rds take their meaning from o t h er
w ords rather t han by v i r t u e of t h ei r r epresentative character" an d
their "transparency to the real,""" that "'grasping the thing itself' is not
s ornething that precedes contextualization." '
For these reasons, as Rorty has lucidly explained, leveling the
charge of "relativism" at antirepresentationalisrn is an empty gesture.
"Relativism certainly is self-refuting," he writes, "but there is a differ-
ence between saying that every comm u n ity is as good as every other
and saying that we have to work out. from the networks [where] we
are." The idea, he continues, that every tr adition or belief or idea or
community "is as rational ar as maral as every other could be held anly
by a god... . Such a being would have escaped from history and conver-
sation into contemplation and metanarrative. To accuse postmodern-
ism of relativism is to try to put a metanarrative in the postmodernist's
mouth" (202). It is precisely this kind of embeddedness, of course, that
is everywhere under inten.se scrutiny in essays of Emerson's such as
"Fate." And so ro r e t ur n now to Cavell t o t a k e the unsolvability of
skepticisrn to heart is not just, at the sarne stroke, to abandon the rep-
resentationalist philosophical project; it is also to change our view of
the relationship of thinking and language that I have already discussed
in some detail i n t h e f i rst half of t hi s book. W h a t K ant conf r o nt ed
as "rnerely" a problem of thaught, Emersan grappled with under the
additional rigors of writing and language — of philosophy as a writing
practic e s o t h at the "stipulations or terrns under wh ich we can say

anything at all to one another" will themselves be subjected to endless,
and endlessly unfinalized, scrutiny."
As Cavell puts it, in Emerson
I find the Critique of Pure Keason turned upon itself: notions oflim i tation
and of condition are as determining in the essay "Fate" as they are in
Kant, but it is as if these terms are themselves subjected to transcenden-
tal deduction, as if not just twelve categories but any and every word
in our language stands under the necessity of deduction, or say deriva-
tion. . . . F m erson is commonly felt to play fast and loose with some-
thing like contradiction in hi s w r i ti ng; but I am speaking of a sense
in which contradiction, the countering of diction, is the genesis of his
writing of philosophy. (113)
What this means is that when we corne upon such apparently full-
bore idealist statements in Emerson as the follow i ng, frorn the essay
"Fate" — "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a rnan thinks, he is free" — "this
apparently genteel thought," Cavell w r i t es, " now t u r n s ou t t o m e a n
that . . . our antagonism to fate, to which we are fated, and in which
our freedorn resides, is as a struggle with the language we emit, of our
character with itself."-"
One stri k i n g exarnple of t h i s new p h i l osophical practice that
C avell f i n d s in E m erso n t h i s t i m e i n r e l ation no t t o K a n t bu t t o
Descartes — occurs in "Self-Reliance," w hen F tnerson w r i t es, "Man
is timi d and apologetic; he is no l onger upright.; he dares not. say 'I
think ,' 'I arn,' but q u otes some saint or sage." If th e central feature
of the Cartesian subject is, as Cavell w r i tes, that the " discovery that
rny existence requires, hence permits, proof (you might say authen-
tication) . . . r e quires that if I arn to exist. I must. name my existence,
acknowledge it," then the real rigor of Ernerson's confrontation with
these "terms" is that it "goes the whole way w it h D escartes' insight."
It insists on the proof of selfhood i n c luding its proof in and through
the "terrns" of thinking — without providing a fixed, a priori subject on
which such a proof could rely and of which it could be, as it were, the
representation — "as if there were nothing t o r ely on," Cavell w r i tes,
"but reliance itself."" T h e b e auty" of Ernerson's answer to Descartes,
Cavell write s,
siding with the next or future self, which means siding against my at-
rained perfection (or conformity), sidings which require the recogni-
t ion of an other t h e acknowledgement of a relationship in w h i ch
this sign is rnanifest." '
Emersonian perfectionisrn may thus be conceived as a kind of
ongoing act of radical negative capability that provides the foundation
(though that is eventually not. the word we would want, of course) for
democratic relations wit h o t hers, wit h t h ose other selves I have not
yet been but. who also — and this is the engine of Emerson's constant
polemical project — need to surpass themselves, in an ongoing process
of democracy conceived as otherness always yet to be achieved, or i f
already achieved, only achieved in the present by the other and not by
rne. As difficult as it is to see, Cavell is right that this idea ofperfection-
ism is "projected in contrast to the idea of 'one's own nature'";-" and
all of Frnerson's talk a n d a considerable arnount of talk it is o f "self-
recovery" both early and late in his work directs us to not-. an originary,
fixed self-substance but toward a power and a process: not toward the
past but toward the future, or rather toward fut u r it y itself, conceived
as a horizon, where, paradoxically, the only '"self" to "recover" is a
self that one has not yet been, for the self only exists in its becoming."
Indeed, frorn this vantage, we tnight read "recovery" very differently
as a "re-covering," as burying and covering over once rnore the past
self, that casualty of what Cavell calls Emerson's "onwardness."
It is in th e context and th e services of these fut ur e selves and
against what. Emerson calls "conform i ty " t h at. we are to u nderstand
the political involvement of the Emersonian self in the sense insisted
on al. the end of "Experience," where Ernerson writes that "the true ro-
mance which the world exists to realize will be the transforrnation of
genius into practical power" (213). As Cavell writes, when Ernerson's
critics read the line "self-reliance is the aversion of conformity," they
"take this to mean roughly that he is disgusted with society and wants
no more to do with it."" But if we understand the Emersonian self as
movement toward fut ur ity and not a being, then instead of conversion
to a truth we already know and to a being we already are, aversion
rneans "that his writing and his society incessantly recoil from, or tur n
away from one another; but since l.his is incessant, the picture is at. the
same tirne of each incessantly turning toward the other."" This process
TH E DI GI T A L , TH E A N A L O G , A N D T H E SP E C T R A L
the mistake ofleaving it on and pointing at the sky for four days, which
completely fried the tube. But after that, he says, "it produced the most
magical results" and "responded to light and colour in a way no other
camera" did."
Similarly, the discovery of his signature video format came about
by serendipity. After he got the carnera, he didn't have a tripod, so he
laid it on it.s side on the wi ndow sill w it h the lens point.ed out. t.oward
t he Manhattan skyline, which meant he also had to turn the TV o nt o
its side to read the im age. The result, he recounts, was "an absolute
breakthrough," because suddenly the screen looked not like television
but like painting. And this was important for tw o reasons: first, "you
lose the reference to theatre and cinerna" associated with the television
surface and form at, and this is import ant because in the proscenium
format you expect narrative, which entails, among other things, an
entire formatting (indeed, "calculation," to use Derrida's term) of tim e
and event. And second, as Eno realized years later when he attempted
the same thing with digital TVs, the distortion on the television screen
Brian Eno, still frorn Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan, 1 980-8 1 ,
?9z
TH E D I G I T A L , T H E A N A L O G , A N D TH E SP E C T R A L
Brian Eno, stil'I from Thursday Afternoon, 1984.
created by the horizontal scanlines enabled, with the screen turned on

its side, a unique rainfall effect, turning mere analog static into valu-
able atmosphere, as it were."
Eno's perceptive comments underscore an irnportant fact: what
undoes the calculated formatting of narrative and time is the interplay
of form (and the cultural expectations elicited and reproduced by it, as
in the proscenium or screen format), with what Gregory Bateson calls
the "real rnagnitudes" of analog media; it depends for its effects on the
specific, ernbodied positionality and movement of its components (for
exarnple, the proximity of the video carnera to the television screen on
which it creates feedback and distortion).'" This means that analog is
spooky or spectral for the regime of rendering because, among other
things, it depends on the interplay of rnaterial forces and bodies, in-
cluding even things like the w'eather; it is not wholly subsumable or
predictable by programs and schemata, sirnply because the interplay of
real magnitudes in space-time is fundamentally and even inexhaustibly
T H E D I G I T A L ) T H E A N A L O G , A N D T H E SP E C T R A L
contingent, creating a reservoir of complexity and contingency that is,

in principle, bottomless.
That is not to say, however, that the analogis the opposite or the
"real" other of the digital that it haunts. Rather, the structure of any
"discretization," any diacritical system, is that of a trace in Derrida's
sense — the iterability in and through which it can function, and only
can function, as a medium and archive (hence my earlier emphasis
on "interplay"). As Derrida puts it, in a passage I have invoked rnore
than once in t h i s study, "this pure difference, which constitutes the
self-presence of the living present, introduces into self-presence frorn
the beginning all the impurity putatively excluded from it." And what
this means, in turn, is that "the trace is the intim ate relation of the liv-
ing present to its outside, the opening to exteriority in general."'" Such
is the "corrupting" and contaminating" work b u t also the haunting
or spectral character, if you wil l of it e r ability, which thus "entails the
necessity of thi n k ing at oncc bot-.h the rule and the event, concept and
singularity," that m arks the essential and ideal limit of all pure ideali-
zation," but not as "the concept of nonideality," as ideality's pure other.
In this sense, as Derrida puts, it r emains hetemgeneous" to, rather than
s'mply opposed to, the order of the ideal and the calculable — that is to
say, to the realm of grammaticalization and discretization." The ana-
log, in short, does not exist as a presence, a substance, an "as such" or
the "the" of "the body."
What this means, as I suggested in chapter 3, is that, in Derrida's
words, "t.ele-technology" (and finally tckhnc generally) p r o h ibits us
more than ever . . . from opposing presence to its representation, 'real
time' to 'deferred time,' effectivity to irs sirnulacrum, the living to the
non-living, in short, the living to the living-dead of its ghosts."'-' This
u nmappable difference impels us, in tur n , " beyond present lif e . . .
its empirical or ontological actuality: not toward death but toward a
hving-an (sur vie), nam-ely, a trace, of which life and death would thern-
selves be but traces.. . a survival whose possibility in advance cornes
to disjoin or dis-adjust the identity to itself of the living present."'-' The
"living present," in other words, is haunted by the ghosts or specters
of what will have been once any kind of archive, analog or digital
or the most fundamental archive of all, language itself (in the broad-
est sense of a dynarnic serniosis that, as we saw in chapters 3 and 4,
N OTE S T O CH A PT E R 3
in the context of the rise ofbiopower and the entire edifice of "health" under
modernity, as Foucault has. But, from Derrida's vantage, Foucault.'s histori-
cism, although it focuses on the production of the subjectby external agencies,
is not sufficiently aware of the production and nontransparency of his o?vn
discourse. To put it another way — and this has direct relevance for the prac-
tice of ethics — what is at stake is not only the entanglement of'the subject in
the means of her own sociohistorical production but the fact that the process
remains for Foucault "accountable" (to use Derrida's phrase), hence leading
Derrida to repeat in Liinited Inc a charge he makes elsewhere: that Foucault's
archaeology shares "the metaphysical premises ofthe Anglo-Saxon — and fun-
damentally moralistic — theory of the performative, of speech acts or discur-
sive events" (33). See also in this connection Derrida's engagement of Searle's
comment in a newspaper article that " M i chel Foucault once characterized
Derrida's prose style to me as obsc'uranti~me terroriste "' Lim.ited Inc, 158n12.
88. I discuss this problem in detail, and with regard to Rorty specifically,
?11Cr?t?cal Env?ron?nents: Postmodern TI?eory and ti?e Plagmat?cs of tl?e Outs?de
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 20 —22, 140 —41, 144 —45.
89.Jacques Derrida, "'Ea?.ing Well,' or The Calculation of?.he Subject: An
Interview with Jacques Derrida," in WI?o Comcs after the Subject 'ed. E.duardo
Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991),
116 —17.
90. Diamond, "lnjustice and Animals," 134 (italics mine).
91.Jacques Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context," in Limited Inc, 15. See also
in this connection pp. 128 —29.
92. Derrida, Lin?ited Inc, 70.
93. "Violence against Animals," in For Wkat Tomorro?v... : A Dialogue,by
Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2004), 63 (italics mine).
94. Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality," 10.
9 5. For a bril l i ant exploration of the technicity and mechanicity o f l a n -
guage in relation to prosthetics and the question of technology, see David
Wills's Dorsality: TI?inking Back through Technology and Politics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008), and his earlier volume Prosthesis (Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995).
96. Roland Barthes, Camera Luc?rla: Reflections on Pkotograpl?y, trans. Rich-
ard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 76, 81. Cited in Jacques Derrida
and Bernard Stiegler, Ecl?ograpl?ies of Television, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 2002), 113.
97. Derrida, Fchog>aph?es foTelevision, 115.
98. Quotedin Di amond, "The Difficulty of'Reality," 10.
3x8
27. Niklas Luhmann, "The Paradoxy of Observing Systems," Cultural Cri

tique 31 (Fall 1995): 44, 46.
28. Kac, Telepresence and Bio Art, 202 — .3
29. Dan Collins, "Tracking Chimeras," in Tlte Eighth Day, 99. For Kac's re-
sistance, see the section "Alternatives to Alterity" in his essay "GFP Bunny,"
in Telepresence and Bio Art, 273 —5.7
30. W. J. T. Mitchell, "The Work of Art. in thc Agc of Biocybcrnctic Rcpra-
duction," in What Do Pictures Want? 328.
31. This is directly related not only to the general point that Kac's work is
to be viewed against the background that immediately precedes it (namely,
conceptual art), as Mitchell notes (What Do Pictures Want, 328), but also to
Luhmann's insistence that the meaning of any work of art cannot be refer-
enced, much less reduced, ta its phenamenolagical or perceptual substrate.
32. Peter Brunette and David Will s, "The Spatial Arts: An Interview with
Jacques Derrida," trans. Lauri Volpe, in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, ed.
Peter Brunette and David W i l l s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 24.
33.I'ricd, Art and Objecthood, 42.
34. Coe, Dcad A'Ieat7,2.
7. When You Can'tBelieve Your Eyes (or Voice)
1. Brian D.Johnsan, "Singin' in the Brain: Bjark I-Iits an I=.thcrcal Note as

a Day-Dreaming Martyr," Maclcan's, October 16, 2000, 74.
2. Peter Travers, Rolling Stone, October 12, 2000, 99; Johnson, "Singin' in
the Brain," 74.
3. Stuart K l aw an s, "A One and a Two," Nation, October 5, 2000, 34; Jona-
than Romney, New Statesman, September 18, 2000, 44.
4. David Ansen, "Light and Dark," Newsweek, September 25„2000, 66.
5. Stanley Cavell, In Quest of tlte Ordinary (Chicago: I Jniversity of Chicago
Press, 1988), 30.
6. Ibid., 31 —32.
7. Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Pbilosophy: Autobiograpbical Exercises (Cam-
bridge, Ivlass.: I-Iarvard University Press, 1994), xv.
8. Ibid., 132.
9. Stanle> Cavell, "The Thoughts of M ovies," in Tl temes Out of School:
Effects and Causes (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), 13.
10. Cavell, A Pitch of Pbilosophy, 136, 137.
11. Cavell, ThemesOut of Scbool, 174.
12. Stanley Cavcll, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film, en-
larged ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press„1979), 22.
NO T E S TO C H A P T E R 7
13. Cavcll, The World Viewed, 23.

14. Ibid., 18
15. Kaja Sih rerman, The Acoustic A'Iirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis
and Cinesna (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 42.
16. Douglas Kahn, Noise, Water, A'leat: A History ofSound in tlte Arts (Cam-
bridj,e, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999). Kahn's chapter, "Drawing the Line: Music,
Noise, and Phonography" is particularly instructive in this conncction.
17. Cavell, A Pitch ofPItilosophy, 137.
18. Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to facques Lacan through
Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 163. Cavell himselfma kes
the connection, in his way, in his analysis of Fmerson's rewriting of Descartes's
proof of the self in In Quest of the Ordinary (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), 109. Emerson, of course, is Cavell's preeminent philosopher of
the democratic promise. See also Cavell's contention, immediately after the
passage just cited, that "a Cartesian Intuition of the absolute metaphysical dif-
f 'erence between mind and body . .. appears to describe conditions of the pos-
sibility of opera" — a contention that, unfortunately, Cavcll leaves telegraphic
at best (A Pitch of I'hiIosophv, 138).
19. Silverman, TlteAcoustic AIirror, 16.
20. Cavell, A Pitch ofPhilosophy, 132.
21. Ibid., 151. Though I cannot pursue the matter here, it should be pointed
out that this is taken up rather explicitly by Cavell on pp. 145 —1,5where he
discusses Clcmcnt's debt to (and waning interest in) Lacan and — cvcn more
importantly — attempts to use the Freudian distinction between "prim i t ive"
orality and "sophisticated" vocality.
22. Cited in Silverman, The Acoustic iVIirror, 50.
23. Ibid., 67. As I suggest near the end of this study, Judith Butler's theori-
zation of "the lesbian phallus" in Rodies That A'latter would be very much to
the point here, in light of which BJOrk's tongue performatively signifies the
"phallic" rejection of the Symbolic, of marriage and the need of a husband, et
cetera — all that is thematized by Selma's assertion that "I've seen all I need
to see."
24. Slavoj Zizek, The Plague foFantasies (London: Verso, 1997), 135 — 63.
25. Ibid., 142 —43.
26. Lacan is quoted in Stephen Melville, "In the Light of the Other," White-
wall~ 23 (Fall 1989): 18 —20.
27. Zizek, The Plague ofFantasies, 141.
28. Laura R. Oswald, "Cinema-Graphia: Eisenstein, Derrida, and the Sign
of Cinema," in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media, Architecture, ed.
Pcter Brunette and David W i l l s (Cambridge: Carnbridge University Press,
1994), 261.
29. Peter Brunette and David Wi lls, " The Spatial Arts: An Interview w i t h
Jacques Derrida," in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, 24. All of which might
be said to find its therne song in the film's penultimate musical scene, "107
Steps," where the abyssal endlessness of space, here figured as the unnavigable
walk to the gallows (a journey of 107 steps), can be fathomed by Selma only
by counting her footsteps, an organization and regularization of space that is
immediately countcred by what can only be called an aria to sheer seriality,
as the only lyrics contained in the song are randomly selected numbers, her
voice rising to the crescendo of "seventy-nine!, eighty-two, eighty-sixI"
30. Oswald, "Cinema-Graphia," 261.
31. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf( N e w York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1991), 26$.
32. Slavoj Zizek, Enjoy Your Symytom! jacques Lacan in Ilollywood and Out
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 154. Zizek's most detailed and "scandalous" ex-
planation of this thesis takes place in the chapter "Otto Weininger, or Woman
Doesn't Exist," in The Aletastases foEnjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), 137-64.
33. And "gift" here should be taken precisely in the radically ethical sense
invoked by Derrida, as that which, like the act. as feminine and the f'eminine
as the truth of the phallus, is "unaccountable," which undermines any closed
symbolic economy. See Zizek's discussion of this moment in Derrida in The
A'letastases of Enjoyment,194 —9$.
34. David Wills, Prosthesis (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 199$),
43, 44.
35. Zizek, Thc Afctastascs o
f Enjoyment, 11$.
36. Ibid., 1$6.
37. Zizek, Enjoy Your Symp'tom, 1.
38. Ibid., 2. See also in this connection Zizek's discussion of "A Voice That
Skins the Body" in David Lynch's films (The Metastases o
f Enjoyment 116).
39. Cavell, A Pitch ofPhilosophy, 79.
40. Zizek, The Mctastases o fEnjoyment, 19$ —6.9
41. One might well turn aside here to explore the more strictly theoretical
question of whether this relationship is essentially dialectical (as in Zizek) or
not. Suf'fice it to say that the very idea of '"invagination" would constitute a
resounding "no," as would Deleuze's related cancept af the fald.
42. Here an interesting point of cantact between Zizek and Derrida with
regard to the prosthetic nature of the "ordinary'" emerges in their shared
antipathy t ow ard John Searle. Derrida's polemic against Searle in Lim ited
Inc is well-known, of course, but of similar interest are Zizek's remarks in
The Plague of Fantasies on Searle's polemics against artificial intelligence, in
which his famaus Chinese Raom experiment "praves" that machines cannat
This page i~>tentionallv left blank
Publication Histor y
A version of chapter 1 was published as "Meaning as Fvent-Machine, or

Systems Theory and the 'Reconstruction of Deconstruction,'" in Fmergence
and Embodiment: New Essays in Second Ord-er Systems Tlteory, ed. Bruce Clarke
and Mark Hansen (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009).
A version of chapter 2 was published as "Cognitive Science, Deconstruction,

and the (Post)Humanist (Non)H um ans,"' in "DerridAn im als," ed. Neil Bad-
mington, special issue, Oxford Literary Review 29 (2007): 103 —$;2reprinted as
"Think ing O t her-Wise: Cognitive Science, Deconstruction, and the (Non)
Speaking (Non)Human Animal Subject," in Animal Subjects: An Fthical Reader,
ed. Jodey Castricano (Toronto: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 12$ —44.
Reprinted with permission from Edinburgh University Press.
Portions of chapter 3 appeared as "Fxposures," in PI<ilosoplty and Animal Life,

ed. Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, and Cary
Wolfe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 1 —41; as "Bioethics and
the Posthumanist Imperative," in Signs ofLife: Bio Art and Beyond, ed. Eduardo
Kac (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), 9$ — 114; and as "Flesh and Finitude:
Think ing Animals in (Post)Humanist Philosophy," in "The Political Animal,"
ed. Chris Danta and Dimi t ris Vardoulakas, special issue, Substance 117, no. 33
(2008): 8 —
36; copyright 2008 by the Board of Regents of the University of
Wisconsin System; reprinted courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Press.
A shorter version of chapter 4 appeared as "The Changing Profession: 'Animal

Studies,' Disciplinarity, and the Posthumanities," PMLA 124, no. 2 (March
2009): $64 —7$.
A version of chapter $ was published as "Animal Studies and Disability Stud-

ies; or, Learning from Temple Grandin," in " Earthographies: Ecocriticism
and Culture," ed. Wendy Wheeler and Hugh Dunkerley, special issue, New
Formations 64 (2008): 110 —32.
Chapter 6 was published as "From Dead t4'Ieat to Glow in the Dark Bunnies:
Seeing'The Animal g uestion' in Contemporary Art," in "Animal Beings," ed.
Tom Tyler, special issue, Parallax 38 (January — March 2006): 9$ —09;
1 reprinted
P U B L I C A T I O N H I ST O R Y
in Fcosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature, ed. Sid Dobrin and Sean Morey, 129 — 51(Al-
bany: SUNY Press, 2009).
A version o f c h apter 7 appeared in Fl ectronic Book Review, h t t p : / / w w w

.electronicbookreview.com; original post on September 1, 2001. Chapter 7
was also published as "When You Can't Believe Your E >i es: The Prosthetics of
Subjectivity and the Ethical Force of the Feminine in Dancer in the Dark," in
"Posthuman Conditions," ed. Neil Badmington, special double issue, Subject
A'Iatters 4, no. I (Fall 2007): 113 — 4.
Portions of chapter 8 were published in "Shifting Ground: The Downsview

Park Competition," in BeyondFor,m: Architectureand Art in the SpaceofMedia, ed.
Peter Dorsey, Christine Calderon, and Omar Calderon (New York: Lusitania
Press, 2004), 82 —
92; and "Lose the Building: Systerns Theor >i , Arch i tect u r e ,
and Diller + Scofidio's Blur, Po"stmodern Culture 16, no. 3 (May 2006), http://
muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern c u l t u r e / toc/ pmc16.3.html.
Chapter 10 was previously published as "The Idea of Observation at Key West:

Systems Theory, Poetry, and Form beyond Formalism," New Literary History
39, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 259-76.
Chapter 11 was published as "The Digital, the Analogue, and the Spectral:
Echographies from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Ang"elaki: Iournal of the Theo
retical Hurnanities 13, no. 1 (2008): 8$-94.
348
Adorno, Theodor, 110, 121, 266 influence on Nussbaum, xxvii, 62,
Agamben, Giorgio, 100, 243 64 — 68; on plot, 170
Althusser, Louis, 3, 107, 117, 207, 266 Austin, J. L., 13, 70, 197 —98
animal rights, 25, 45 —46, 57 —61, autism, xx ix , 128 — 30, 134 —36, 173;
73-79, 81-82, 124, 137, 164 embodiment and, xxix —xxx,
animals (nonhuman), xiv — xv; xvi; 133 -3$, 140-41; trans-species
bioethics and, 56 —61; commu- cmpathy and, 129 — 30, 135 —36
nication in, xxv ii, xxv i ii , 6, 24, autopoiesis. Sce Mat,urana, Hum-
25 —26, 31 —34, 37, 40 — 43, 46 — 47, berto; systems theory; Varela,
89 —
91, 118- 19, 123, 309n1, 310n11; Francisco
D erridaon, xviii,2$,39— 44,46—47,
62 —63, 80 — 84, 88 —98, 119, 126, 137, Badmington, Neil, xiii, 121
139 —40, 142, 14$, 147 —48, 157, 160, Baecker, Dirk, xviii, 6, 110
16$; embodiment and, xxiii — xxiv, Baker, Steve, 160
xxvii, xxix — xxx, 62, 66, 68 — 69, 72, Balibar, Etienne, xiv —xv
74-75, 77, 79- 80, 81 — 83, 84-86, Barthes, Roland, 92, 178, 297
94 —9$, 129 —30, 133 —34, 162 — 63; in Bateson, Gregory, x, xviii, 22, 35,
telligence in, xxvii, 31 —34, 36 —41, 207, 29Z
44 —
47, 309nl, 310nll ; m o ral stand- Bauman, Zygmunt, 141 —42
in g of, xxvii, 33 —34, 44 —47, 57 —61, Beardsworth, Richard, 83 —84, 298
62-69, 72-82, 84- 88, 94-98, 137, Bentham, Jeremy, xxviii, 46, 63, 81,
14$, 219; posthumanisrn and, xxii, 84, 140, 146
90 —
92, 94 —95, 99; subjectivity and, Bhabha, Homi, 104, 105
xvii, 33 — 34, 36 —
41, 44 —47, 309nl, bioethics, 49 —61; biopowcr and,
310nll, 315n41; transgenic, 1$8 —60, 53, 96 98; vs.—
$1 — et hics, $1, $3 — 61;
164 —6$; viral and, xviii, xxii law and, $4 —5$, 96 —98; policy
animal studies: cultural studies and, studies and, xxvii, 96 —98; species
xxix, 122 — 26, 127, disciplinarity difference and, 56-61
and, xxviii, 11$ — 26; humanist vs. Bjork, xx xi , 170, 184 —85, 196, 296
posth u m a n i st , x x i x , 99 — 100„ Bostrom, Nick, xiii — xiv
118 —26 Braudel, Fernand, 106, 320n12
Aristotle: on anim als, 42, 46, 63, Browvn, Lee Rust, 251 — $2
65-66, 68, 81, 314n34, 326n16; Brown and Storey, 20$, 207
349
I N D EX
Butler,Judith, xi, xxxi, 100, 201 —

2 Coctzcc, J. M. xxviii, 68 —69, 7$, 87, 142,
Byrne, David, xxxiv, 283 —8$, 288 —90, 16$. See also Coslello, Elizabcth
296-98 cogIlll:lvc scicIlcc. Cartcslanlsn'I aIld,
32, 34 —
40, 42 —4$, 116, 309nl ; on
Cadava, Eduardo, 262 humans vs. animals, xxvii, 31,
Cage, John, 229 —30, 271 36 —
41, 43 —47; theory of language
Camcron, Sharon, 2$0 in, xxv ii , 31 —39, 309nl, 310n11
Caplan, Arthur, $7 —61 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2$0, 2$1,
Cartesianism, xxvii; Cavell on, 172, 268, 274
246-47, 338n23; cognitive science conlm Llnication' .vs. conscioosness,
a nd, 32, 34-40, 42- 45, 116, 309nl ; 6, 8, 10, 19 — 22, 2$, 3$, 231 —34,
critique of, in deconstruction, 267, 270 —
71, 274, 280 — 82; in non-
39 —
40, 42 —44, 46 — 47, 70, 81; Lacan human animals, xxvii, xxviii, 6,
and, 39 —40, 42 —44, 46 —47; Silver- 24, 25 —26, 31 —34, 37, 40 — 43, 46 —47,
n'lan ol'I, 183; Zlzck on , 180 89 —91, 118 —19, 123, 309nl, 310nl l
Casti, John, 20$ Corner and Allen, 207, 208
Cavalicri, Paola, $8 —60, 61, 63, 86, 138 Cosrello, I=.lizabcth (Coctzcc charac-
Cavcll, Stanlcy, xxi, 73, 80, 90, 213' tcr), xxv i ii , 69, 71, 72, 82, 84, 91,
Diamond and, xxviii, 70 —71, 76; 93, 165
on Emerson, 239 —42, 244 —49, 251, Crane, Stephen, 148 —$1
2$2, 255, 263; on fi lm , 171, 174 —78, cultural studies: animal studies and,
1 79 —
81 183 188 19 0 1 9 9 2 0 2 xxix , 122-26; disciplinarity and,
on I-Icidcggcr, 204, 241, 316n$$; 103 —7, 116 —17
hum a n i sm o f , x x x i , 93, 179 — 80, cybernelics. See systems Lheory
182, 188, 199 — 200; on opera, 171,
173 —76, 181, 183, 196; on skepti- Davis, Lennard, 139 —40
C1S1Tl, XX X 1, XX X 1 1, XX X 1 11, 70 — 71, Deacon, Terrence, 32, 309nl
171 —
73, 174, 176, 177, 180, 187, 199, dcconstru ct1011: on allalog vs. cllgl-
240 — 42, 24$ —46, 249; system s tal, xxxiv, 9 — 10, 284 —85, 286 — 88,
theory and, 249 —$0, 261 —62; view 291 293 — 96, 299; on "biological
of philosophy in, 70 —71, 171 —73 contin u i sm, ' 82 — 83, 317n79; on
Chandler,James, 109, 122 —23 carnophallogocenrrisrn, 1$0,
Chion, Michel, 183 1$7-58, 164, 167; critique of
Chomsky, Noam, 37, 40 autoaffection and self-presence,
Christo, 22$ xxvi, 6, 9, 20 —21, 23, 43 —44, 89 —90,
Cixous, Helene, 104 184, 196 — 99; critique of psycho-
Clarke, Bruce, xvii — xviii, 15 —16 analysis in, xxviii, 25 —26, 39 —40,
Clcment, Catherine, xxxi, 173 — 74 42 — 44, 46 —47, 200 —202; discipli-
Coe, Sue, xxx, 146 — 47, 148, 150 —$8, narity and, 118 -19, 126; on double
166 —67 finitude, xxvi ii , 11 —12, 83 —8$,
I N D EX
87 —
92, 118 —19, 123, 126, 139, 157; digital vs. analog, 203; Bateson on,
ethics and, xix, xx v i , 2$, 81 —8$, 292' d econs tr u c t i o n o n , x x x i v ,
88 —92, 93 —98, 141 —42, 147, 298 — 99; 9 —10, 284 —85, 286 —88, 291 293 — 96,
on geschlecht, 203 — 4316n55,
, 334n8; 299; Diller + Scofrdio on, 216, 220;
on invaglnatron, 191-92, 199-202, the hand and, 203 — 4, 20$; Stiegler
332n41; on iterability, xxvii, xxviii, on, 284, 286 — 88, 295 —96
6, 11 —13, 16 —17, 20, 22 — 23, 25 —26, Diller I- Scofidio, xxxii, 164, 210,
42 —43, 80 — 81, 88 —9$, 118 —19, 122, 213 —17, 219 —20, 224, 227 — 28, 231,
151, 155, 157, 201 —
2, 293 —94, 295; on 233 —37, 276
the life/death relation, xviii, xxii, disability, xvii; animal studies and,
xxv, xxv i i i , 6, 90- 95, 123, 293-95, xxix, 127-28; liberalism and, xxx,
297 —
99; on miming, 212, 334n13; 127, 136 — 42; and prostheticity,
on nonhuman animals, xviii, 25, 18$ —
87, 202. See also autism
39-44, 46-47, 62-63, 80-84, 88-98, Ducharnp, Marcel, 229 —30, 271
119, 126, 137, 139 — 40, 142, 145,
147 —
48, 157, 160, 16$; politics of, 12, Eakins, Thomas, 148, 1$1, 153-55
27 —
29, 51, 95 — 98, 285 —86, 343n 5; Fdelman, Gerald, 37, 310n11
prostheticity and, xxv —xxvi, 34 —36, Elliott, Carl, 54 —$7
119, 186-87, 191, 194, 199-202, embodirnent, 303n36; analog and,
293 2 9$; on spectrality, xxxiv, ll , 292 — 93; animal and, xxiii — xxiv,
91 —
95, 176 —77, 178, 284 — 86, 288, xxvii, xxix — xxx, 62, 66, 68 —69, 72„
293 —
95, 297 —99; systems theory 74 —
75, 77, 79- 80, 81- 83, 84- 86,
and, xviii — xxii, 6 —10, 12 —14, 16 —17, 94 —
9$, 133 —34, 162 —63; disability
22 —29, 118 —21, 232 — 33, 239, 308n42; and, xxix — xxx, 133 —3$, 140 —41;
on temporality, xxxiv, 7, 9 —10, human and, xv, xxv, 72, 83 — 84,
16 —17, 2$$, 29$, 298 —99; viral and, 88 —89, 95 120 — 21, 133 —4,3162 — 63;
xviii - x ix, xxi, xxii; on the voice, meaning and, xxi i „ 120 — 21,
196-99, 296-97, 298-99 162-63; posthumanism and, xv,
Dcleuze, Gilles, xx, xxiv, 126, 147„ xxv, 120 — 21; prostheticity and,
212 2$$, 29$ 294 —9$; Lranshumanism and, xv;
Dennett, D an i el, xx v ii , 31 —32, 33 —46, as virtual, xxiii — xxiv; voice and,
34 —
40, 42 —4$, 129. See also cogni- 180 —85
tive science Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 70; anti-
Derrida, Jacques. See dcconstruction representationalist philosophy
Descartes, Rene. Sce Cartesianism and, 244 —47; democratic per-
Diamond, Cora, 142; moral standing fectionism and, 247 —49, 261 —63;
of animals in, 62, 64, 72 —83; the- politics and, 242 —43, 247 —49,
ory of l u stice in, xxviii, 73-80, 93, 262 — 63, 337n13; skepticism and,
96; v iew ofp h i l osophy in, xxviii, xxxi i - x x x i i i , 71, 172, 187, 240-42,
69 —
71, 72 —76, 80 — 81, 91, 116 245 —
46, 249; and systems theory
35>
I N D EX
on obscrvation, xxxii — xxxiii, Frcud, Sigmund, 130, 150, 181, 187.

2$0 —$1, 2$2 —63, 274 —7$ See aiso psychoanalysis
empiricism: Derrida and, 26, 28 —29; Fried, Michael, xxx, 148 —
54, 161, 166
historicism and, 28; systems
theory and, 28-29 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, 140
j=.no, Brian, xxxiv, 283 — 8$, 288 —92, Garreau, Joel, xiii
296—99 Gclpi, Albcrt, 268 —70
Esposito, Roberto, 100 Gonnaud, Maurice, 2$0 —$1, 259
Gran~sci, Antonio, 117
factory farm i ng, xxv i ii, 97 in Dead Grandin, Temple, xxix, 47, 128 —32,
Meat (Coe), xxx; in The i ive.sof 134-36, 139- 40, 173
Anintals (Coctzcc), 68 — 69, 146 —74, Grcc.nblatt, Stc.phcn, 103
1$0 —$1, 1$$ —$8, 166 — 67 Grossman, Jay, 242, 337n13
Ferry, Luc, 126, 136 Guattari, Felix. See Deleuze, Gilles
film: deconstruction and, 190 —92, Gunther, Gotthard, 122
293-95;as medium, xxxi, 92-93,
171, 174 —
78, 179 — 81, 183, 188, 190, Habcrmas, Jiirgen, 126, 244
199, 202; photography and, 92 —93, l lansen, Mark, 231, 233
176 —77, 179 —80; psychoanalysis Harav ay, Donna, xi, xiii, 3, 40 —41,
and, 180 —90 126, 136, 284
Foerster, Heinz von, 5, 110, 234 Harpham, Geoffrey, 67 —68, 79
Foreign Office, 208, 211 Hassell, Jon, 284
fo rm: architecture and, xxxii, 207 —13, Hauscr, Marc, 37, 41
217 —
20, 224 — 28, 231, 23$ —37; mean- Hayes, Isaac, 283
in g and, xxxiii — xxxiv, 17, 161 —67, Hayles, N. Katherine, xii — xiii, xv,
207 —8, 223 —35, 237, 265 — 68, 272 —74, xvii — xviii, xx, 120, 121
27$ —
82; New Formalism and, H egel, G.W. F., 110 —
11, 222 —23, 258 —59,
102 —
3, 10$ —7, 26$ —66; poetry and, 268,275. See also romanticism
xxxiii — xxxiv, 17, 26$ —68, 272 —74, Heidcggcr, Martin, 70, 71, 72, 73; ani-
27$ —82; the sublime and, 217 —20, mal and, xxii, 41 —42; on thc bro-
223 —24; visuality and, 161 —67 ken tool, 175; Derrida and, xxviii,
Foucault, Michel, xi — xii, xx, 8, 41 —
42, 46, 81, 83 — 85, 241, 316n55;
218; on biopower, xxxvii, $1-$3, Foucault and, 108; language and,
100, 12$ —
26; vs. Dcrr i da, 317n87; xxii, 41 —
42; on technology, 204,
on disciplinarity, 107 —9, 111, 213 334n8
113, 118, 119, 121, 302n17; on. histor i ci sm , 4, 5, 100 — 108, 119 —20,
Enlightenment, xiv, xvi, 244 o n 265 —
66, 320n12; animal studies
humanism, xiv, xv-xvi, xvii; vs. and, xxviii — xxvix, 126; decon-
Luhmann, 320n16; on panopti- struction and, 26 -29, 87, 110, 126;
cism, 130 empiricism and, 28, 87, 106 —7;
I N D EX
I'oucault and, 108 —

9, 115; I-laylcs 217 —19; human ism of , 218 — 19;
and, xvii, xx; ideology and, xxix, moral standing of animals in„219;
102, 104 —7; Marxism and, 106 — 7, r omanticism and, xxxii, xxxii i ,
266 110, 172 —
73, 244, 2$0, 2$2, 260 — 61,
Hobbes, Thomas, xiii 266, 268; skepticism and, xxxii, 70,
Halzer, Jenny, 214 171 —73, 176, 240, 244, 249, 260 — 61;
I lughcs, Tcd, 72, 78, 87, 91, 93 —94 the sublimc and, 217 —
19, 222
humanism, xvi — xvii; American stud- Kaplan, Cora, 138
ies and, 242 —
43, 337n13; animal Kav rara, On, 233, 271
studies and, xxix, 99, 123 —26; art Kittler, Friedrich, 35
and, xxx, 14$ —
46; carnophallogo- Koolhaas, Rem, xxxi, 206, 208-13, 224
centrism and, 150, 157 —58, 164,
167; Cavell and, xxxi, 179 —80, 182, Lacan,Jacques, 8, 11, 125, 180, 182,
188, 199 — 200; definition of, xi; 1 84, 217; Cartesianism in, xx v i i ,
Diamond and, 83 — 91; disability 39 —
40, 42 —44, 46 —47, 81; critique
studies and, 127-28, 136 —42; dis- o f, Ill deconstl u c t i on, xxvii, xxvi l i ,
ciplinarity and, 117 —26, 242 —43, 2$ —26, 39 — 40, 42 — 44, 46 — 47,
337n13; thc face and, 147 —48; 200 —
202; an human vs. animal,
Foucault on, xiv, xv — xvi; Nuss- xxvii, 39 — 40, 42 —44, 46 — 47, 90; an
baum and, 62, 66 —68, 78 —80; the the phallus, 18$ —86, 200 —201. Sec
phallus and, 18$-86; romanticism also psychoanalysis; Zizek, Slavoj
a nd, 171-73; transhum a n ism and , language: autism and, 129; bioethics
xv; visuality and, xxx, 130 —31, and, 54 — 57; in cagnitivc science,
145 —
46, 162 — 67, 169; voice and, xxvii, 31 —
39, 309nl, 310n11; philasa-
196 —200; Zizek and, xxxi, 124 — 25, phy and, 73, 76 —77, 80 —81, 87 —91; as
126, 202, 324n$4 prosthesis, 34 —36, 118 —19, 199 —202,
Husserl, Edmund, 7, 13, 197, 223, 259, 293 295'species difference and,
xxvii, xxv i ii, 6, 24, 2$ -26, 31 —34, 37,
40-43 46 — 47 63-64 89 - 9 1 118-19
Jacob, Francais, 7 —8 120 —
21, 123, 12$, 309n.1, 310n11; in
Jakobson, Roman, 277 systems theory, xxiii, 20 —
24, 25, 29,
Jameson, Fredric, 188,266 231, 307n37
Jay, Paul, 242, 243 —44 Latour, Bru no, xi, xx, xxi ii , 122, 126
Levinas,F.mmanuel, 42, 46, 147—48
Kac, Eduarda, xxx, 152, 158 —67 Levinson, Marjorie, 103, 106, 120,
Kahn, Douglas, 179 26$ —66
Kant, I m m a n u el , x i i i , x x i , 42, 124, Linton, Sirni, 139 —40
235, 245- 46; concept of the subject Liu, Alan, 100, 101
in, $$, 6$, 127, 180, 218 —19, 261; Locke, John, xiii
Enlightcnment and, xiv, 172 —73, Lucie-Smith, Fdward, 165
353
I N D EX
Luhmann, Niklas. See systems theory Moorc, Marianne, 268

Luke, Tim, 203 Moravec, Hans, xv, 121
Lynch, David, 195, 199 Moretti, Franco, 106, 120, 320n12
Lyotard, Jean-prancois, xv, 8, 121, Mouffe, Chantal,243
217- 18 Muller, Harro, 2$3-$4, 262 —63
Machado, Arlindo, 158 —60 Nicholas of Cusa, 226, 253

Macherey, Pierre, 266 Nicolaus Cusanus. See Nicholas of
Mc G ann, Jerome, 103 Cusa
McMullen, Ken, 92 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 142, 218
Manovich, Lev, 284 Nozic, Robert, 59, 86
Marx, Karl, 100, 266. See also M arxisrn Nussbaum, M a r t h a, 71, 88, 124, 136;
M arxism: andhi sloricism, 106 — 7, "capabililies" approach lo ani-
265-66 m als, xxvii — xxviii, 62 —
68, 78 —80
Massumi, Brian, xxiv, 295 —96
Matur ana, H u m b e r t o , xii, 5, 21, 110, observation: in systems theory, xix,
111, 126, 161, 20$; on cmbodi- xxiv, xx x i i , 1$ — 17, 28, 112 —13,
II1CIll, XXlil — XXV; oll l a n g u a ge a ild 121 —22, 131, 161 — 62, 220 — 24,
11Ilglli s l l c d o m a l i l s , x x i i , x x v , 37, 226-27, 236-37, 2$0, 252-61, 270,
120 —
21; on nonreductionist scien- 274 —
76, 280 — 82, 303n29, 339n37
tific explanation, xx i II, xxv, 114 Ogier, Pascale, 92-93
Mau, Bruce, xxxi, 206, 208 -13, 224 openness from closure principle, xxi,
Mead, Gcorgc I-Icrhcrt, 227, 229 xxiv, 15 — 17, 19, ll l — 15, 117 —18,
meaning: ilerabilil,y in deconslruclion 221 —22, 256 — 57
and, xxv i i , x x v i i i , 6, l l — 13, 16 —17, opera: Cavell on, 171 —76, 179 —80,
20, 22 —23, 25 —26, 42 — 43, 80 — 81, 181 —82; gender and, 173 — 7$,
8 8 9 $ 1 1 8 1 9 12 2 1 5 1 1 $ $ 1 $ 7 180 —82; vs. Hollywood musical,
201 —
2, 293 —94, 295; vs. language as 170-71
mcdium , xxi ii, 20 —24, 2$, 29, 231, Oswald, Laura, 190 —91
267 —
68, 272 —74, 307n37; in systems
t heory, xx, xxii — xxiii, xxvi, xxxii , Pease, Donald, 243
13, 16 —23, 25, 29, 113 — 14, 121 —22, Pfau, Thomas, 101 —2, 104, 106, 109,
2 20 -23, 25$-59, 267- 68, 280- 8 2 , 110, 118
307n33 Prince-Hughes, Dawn, 128
Mil.chell, W. J. T., xxxi, 157, 164 prosthcticity: dcconstruction and,
modernity: as functional differentia- xxv — xxvi, 34 —36, 119, 186 — 87, 191,
t10n, Kx — xx1, xxx11, xxx111, 109) 194, 199 —
202, 293 295; embodi-
208 -10, 220 — 21, 230-31, 253 — 5$, lYlent and, 294 — 95; psychoanalysls
262 —63 and, 186, 188, 189, 191, 194, 199-202
Moeller, I Ians Gcorg, 110 —11 psychoanalysis: critique of, in decon-
I N D EX
and, xv i i i — xxii, 6 — 10, 121 —22, 210-11, 221, 227-29, 255'-$6, 280;
232— 33,239, 308n42; disciplinar- on w r i t i n g , 23 — 24, 236
ity and, 109 —19, 121 —22, 322n40;
empiricism and, 28; first-order vs. Talking Heads, 283, 290
second-order, xviii, xix, 13, 15-16, Teubner, Gunther, 8, 12, 26-28
109 —
13, 121 —22, 206 — 7; on form , transhumanism, xiii — xiv, xx; human-
xxxii — xxxiii, 161 — 62, 208 —13, ism and, XV
224 — 31, 234, 265 — 68, 272 —74, Trier, Lars vnn, xxi, 169
27$ —82; on the individual, xx, Tshcurni, Bernard, 203, 204, 20$,
115, 119, 261, 263; on language as 208, 211
medium, xxiii, 20-24, 2$, 29, 231,
267 —
68, 272 —74, 307n37; on mass Varela, Francisco, xii, 5, 110, 111,
media, 234 — 37; on meaning, xx, 1 26, 161, 20$; on em b o d i m e n t ,
xxii — xxiii, xxvi, xxxii, 13, 16 —23, xxiii — xxv; on language and
25, 29, 113 —14, 121 —22, 220 — 23, linguistic domains, xxii, xxv, 37,
255-59, 267- 68, 280- 82, 307n 33; 120 —21
on modernity as functional dif- Va t tiI 0 , G 18 n n1, 104
fercntiation, xx —
xxi, xxxii, xxxiii, Virilio, Paul, 294
109, 208-10, 220-21, 230-31, 253-$5, visuality: in animals, 129 — 30; autism
262 —
63; on observation, xix, xxiv, and, 129 — 30, 131 —32; deconstruc-
xxxii , 15 — 17, 28, 112 —13, 121 —22, tion on, xxxiv, 132, 142, 155, 166 —67,
131, 161 —62, 220 -24, 226 — 27, 188-89, 190- 91, 286- 87, 294-95,
236 —37, 250, 252 — 61„270, 274 — 76, 296, 298—99; form in art and,
280 — 82 303>29 339>37 162 —
67; Fried on, 148 — 54; human-
openness from closure, xxi, xxiv, is m and, xxx, 130, 132 —34, 145 —46,
15 —17, 19, lll — 15, 117 —18, 221 —22, 166 —
67; inattentional blindness
256—57;on poetry, xxxiii,266 — 68, and, 131, 325n10; mass media and,
270 —
74, 276 —78, 281 —82; on psy- 215-17, 23$-37; noise and, 195;
chic vs. social systcms, xx, xxiii, psychoanalysis and, 187 — 90, 202;
xxvi, xx x ii , 6, 8, 10, 19 —22, 25, 35, spectacle and, 164 —66, 215 231;
231 —34, 267, 270 — 71, 274, 280 — 82; voice and, 175, 177 —80, 202;
romant i cism and, xxxii — xxxiii, voice: Cavell on, 171 — 74, 177, 179,
110, 222 —23, 242, 252 — 54, 257--59, 179 —82, 195 —96, 196 —200; Cavell
2 62—63, 265,270, 272—75, 278;th e vs. Derrida on, 196-200; decon-
sublime and, 222 — 24, 2$7, 275 —76, struc t io n a n , 196 — 200, 296 — 97;
278; on system/env i r o nm ent the feminine and, 173 —7$, 180 —85,
relation, xxxi , 14 — 15, 112 —
13, 206, 195, 196, 202; vs. sound, 169,
211, 220 -22, 254-58, 306n24; on 177 —82, 195 —96; visuality and,
temporality in , 10, 18, 207 —8, 175, 177-80, 202
I N D EX
W allerstein, Immanuel, 114 — 1$ Wolfson, Susan, 102, 106, 26$

Weil, Sirnone, 73, 7$ Wood, David, 95 —96
Whicher, Stephen, 2$0
Whitehead, Alfred North, 227, 229 Zii ek , Slavoj, xx, 14$ —46, 180, 182,
Wieczorek, Marek, 161-62 217; critique of deconstruction
Wiener, Norbert, 7-8, 110, 207 i n, 199 —
202; on the f eminine
Wil li ams, Raymond, 262 xxxi, 184 — 86, 192 —94, 199 —202;
Wil li ams, William Carlos, 268 —69 hurnanism of, xxxi , 124 — 2$, 126,
Wills, David, xix, xxvi, 3$ —36, 191, 202, 324n54; on noise, 19$; on the
194, 294 —95 phallus, 18$ —86, 192 —93, 199 —202;
VUimsatt „ W . K ., 267 on the split subject, 180, 182, 189;
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 49, 56, 60, 70, on voice, 196, 198 —99. See also
71, 73, 74, 88, 108, 197 —98 Lacan, Jacques; psychoanalysis
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I. THEORI ES, DI S C I P LI MES, ETHI CS

1. Meaningand Event; or, Systems Theory and

2. Language,Representation, and Species 3x

3. Flesh and Finitude 49

4. "Animal Studies," Disciplinarity, and the (Post)Humanities

5. Learningf rom Temple Grandin t27

II . M EDIA, CULTURE, PRACTICES

6. From Dead Meat to Glow in the D-ark -Bu-nnies ?45

7. When You 'Can't Believe Your Eyes (or Voice) r6cj

9. Emerson's Romanticism, Cavell's Skepticism,

10. The Idea of Observation at Key West 265

11. The Digital, the Analog, and the Spectral

School of Economics; the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at

Posthumanism, on the other hand, generates different and even irrec-

The terrn "posthumanism" itself seems to have worked its way

the transition into lum i nous consciousness of an age-old concern, the

By way of another well-known genealogy o n e also directly relevant

ent valence, as we will see in a rnoment) in her bookzlow We gecame

in A H i story of Transhumanist Thought," transhumanism combines

ernpirical science and critical reason r a t h er than revelation and re-

invoked by Balibar's reference to the humanity/animality dichotomy:

development that points toward the necessity of new theoretical para-

a bad thing, or that people with disabilities deserve to be treated with

there on the parallel terrains of pragrnatisrn, systems theory, and post-

travelers in posthumanist thought. There is the Lacanian version ar-

It is cxucial, as we shall see in the fallowing chapters, that the

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism?.

warld; and third, the self-reference aflanguage praper as a secand-arder

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism?.

Varela call a "consexxsual doxnain." "First" there is noise, multiplicity,

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism?.

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism?.

eugenics), Derrida forcefully rivets our attention a s no one else in

It would be tempting at this juncture to invoke the well-known

tion, one very different frorn an earlier rnoment of the postmodern in

Diller + Scofidio's Blur

color, affinity or antipathy to other visitors on the basis of a preferences

B/UK is n,at a building, BI.UK is pure atmosphere, water particles sus-

romanticisrn, so the story goes, constitutes a finally flawed and even

I am at prcsent amang those wha f ind Nature, granted the wander-

I t is precisely this unsalvabilit y t h at generates what Ri chard Rort y

representationalist mode of philosophical practice. As Rorty explains it,

practic e s o t h at the "stipulations or terrns under wh ich we can say

Brian Eno, still frorn Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan, 1 980-8 1 ,

Brian Eno, stil'I from Thursday Afternoon, 1984.

created by the horizontal scanlines enabled, with the screen turned on

contingent, creating a reservoir of complexity and contingency that is,

27. Niklas Luhmann, "The Paradoxy of Observing Systems," Cultural Cri

7. When You Can'tBelieve Your Eyes (or Voice)

1. Brian D.Johnsan, "Singin' in the Brain: Bjark I-Iits an I=.thcrcal Note as

13. Cavcll, The World Viewed, 23.

A version of chapter 1 was published as "Meaning as Fvent-Machine, or

A version of chapter 2 was published as "Cognitive Science, Deconstruction,

Portions of chapter 3 appeared as "Fxposures," in PI<ilosoplty and Animal Life,

A shorter version of chapter 4 appeared as "The Changing Profession: 'Animal