The term “transhumanism” was coined by Julian Huxley and it first appeared in his monograph “New Bottles for New Wine” from 1957.  Huxley stressed “the need of human beings to transcend themselves by means of the usage of science and technology” (Deretić, 14).  "We need a name for this new belief.  Perhaps transhumanism will serve; man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature"(Huxley, 15).  Contemporary concepts of transhumanism include the Iranian futurist Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, better known as FM-2030, who wrote the “Upwingers Manifesto” (1973) and the book “Are You a Transhuman?”(1989), and the British philosopher Max More, who wrote the essay “Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy” (1990). 

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According to Raulerson (2013), a “transhuman” is a person in transition to a posthuman state, while transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated ‘H+’) refers to a movement organized – in one form or another, since the 1970s – around the pursuit of technological interventions that will directly facilitate the transformation of humans into posthumans (31).

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Transhumanist views often juxtapose with postmodernist notions of disrupted identity and objectivity.  The identity of the modern subject problematised by the human-technology relationship is challenged by performative critiques developed from psychoanalysis, feminism and post-colonialism.  For example, the postmodern feminist theorist Judith Butler employs the notion of performative subjectivity to disrupt the traditionally ascribed gender stereotypes.  In Donna Haraway’s influential essay A Cyborg Manifesto, she optimistically embraces the technological development as a liberation from the sexism of modern culture.   “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism: in short, we are cyborgs.  The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics” (Haraway, 150).  The cyborg politics rejects the attempts to totalize identity or human experience.  Thus, she urges us to seek pleasure in seeking a way out of the dualist traditions, such as in the man-female, subject-object and man-nature relationships, long established in the male-dominated hierarchy.  

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Works cited:

Deretić, Irina, and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, eds. From Humanism to Meta-, Post, and Transhumanism?. Peter Lang, 2016.

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Haraway, Donna. "A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late 20th century." The international handbook of virtual learning environments. Springer, Dordrecht, 2006. 117-158.

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Huxley, Julian (1957). "Transhumanism", in Ethics in Progress. Vol.6 (2015). No.12-16. 

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Raulerson, Joshua. Singularities: Technoculture, Transhumanism, and Science Fiction in the Twenty-first Century. Vol. 45. Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Youtube and webpage front image:

“Transhumanism – Transhuman Technologies Explained.” Youtube, uploaded by Info Recap, 25 Feb 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpXl8ta3-3I.

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Other images:

ITorbjörn Sassersson.  “Transhumanismen och Life Science etablerar sig utan debatt om etik och konsekvenser.” 30 Dec 2013,  found humanismkunskap.org/2013/12/30/transhumanismen-och-life-science-etablerar-sig-utan-debatt-om-etik-och-konsekvenser/.

 

Frost and Sullivan.  “Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity.” Forbes, 20 Nov 2017.  found, www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2017/11/20/transhumanism-and-the-future-of-humanity-seven-ways-the-world-will-change-by-2030/#7f4643ca7d79.

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