Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism
This paper outlines the main tenets of feminism after the posthuman turn. The four theses are: that feminism is not (only) a humanism; that anthropocentrism has been displaced and Anthropos is now off-centre; that non-human life or Zoe is the ruling principle and that sexuality is a force beyond gender. The paper will explore these four theses in the context of a critical cartography of advanced capitalism, read with Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and feminist theory. It will especially analyse the implications of the posthuman turn for theories and practices of feminist subject-formation, political praxis and ethical relations in a technologically linked but profoundly fractured globalised world. The main argument is that the posthuman is neither post-political, nor outside power relations and that it does not mark the end of political agency, but a re-casting of it in the direction of a nomadic relational ontology.
Women and Gender Studies Institute