1. Philosophy of the Human and the Posthuman
Class 5

2. Last class - Class 4: Today: Triumph and decline of humanism;
Michel Foucault: “death of man”;
Meanings of the posthuman

3. Michel Foucault (1926-1984): “death of man”

4. Panopticon

5. Foucault – Key themes: Power and Knowledge Technology (cf Heidegger)
Discipline and Punishment
Panopticon, panopticism and surveillance
History of Madness
Sexuality and Biopower

6. The posthuman (See Notes on Classes 4 – 7)
Contesting the boundaries (of human/non-human)
Interrogating the values of humanism– individualism, rationality etc.,
What is excluded? Being ‘other’

7. The posthuman (See Notes on Classes 4 – 7)
Contesting the boundaries (of human/non-human)

11. The posthuman
Interrogating the values – individualism, rationality etc.,

12. Humanism Values Individualism; Separateness Independence; autonomy
Reason; rationality
Freedom, liberty
Universalism
Hierarchical
Binary
Exclusionary

14. The posthuman
What is excluded (from the Enlightenment vision of ‘the human’)? Being ‘other’

15. The Other…
women
the ‘bad’
the ‘mad’
the ‘deviant’
the foreigner

16. (= constructing an image of the other; stereotyping)
representation
(= constructing an image of the other; stereotyping)
objectification
(= using the subject as a means to an end, not as an end in itself)

19. Edward W. Said: Orientalism (1978)

20. The (Enlightenment vision of) the ‘Human’
The politics of exclusion
How to respond/ interrogate/ subvert the dominant ways of thinking? What are the possibilities for action/ redress?