Reinterpreting human in the digital age: From anthropocentricism to posthumanism and transhumanism

Abstract

This paper builds its arguments on the (re)interpretation of ‘human’ and its entanglements with nonhumans in the digital age. Since the concept of humanness has prominently transformed into something innovative because of immense improvements in science and technology, and thereby society, terms such as human, nonhuman, posthuman, and transhuman including cyborgs, have emerged as concepts that require to be reinterpreted in the digital age. In a planet where cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, 5G technology, autonomous vehicles, quantum computers, genetic engineering, edge computing, microchips, green tech, and hydrogen fuel cells are commonly regarded as innovative inventions of the 21st century, the positions of humans are decentralized and displaced from centralized to more peripheric spheres. Beginning from anthropocentrism, broadly defined as a thought process that makes humans the primary measure of everything, this paper exposes the (trans)formation of humans from anthropocentricism to posthumanism and paradoxically from posthumanism to transhumanism by drawing upon the philosophical discussions of Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, Francesca Ferrando. By interrogating the socio-cultural existence of humans through epistemological and ontological viewpoints, this paper attempts to (re)define the place of humans in the digital age with a focus on the relationship between human and nonhuman beings and their entanglements.