While I agree that we all seem to have the feeling that we, as a species, are on the threshold of some kind of significant change, the question does arise as to whether that which comes “beyond” the human is still human or is it something else? What I think I hear Marco saying (and what I also believe) is that that “whatever” is still, in essence, human. Whether we like it or not, the prefix “post-” has something of a separative feel about it even though we don’t quite know how to linguistically express something changing while simultaneously remaining what it is. (This is, by the way, how Henri Bortoft defines life in his The Wholeness of Nature, which we collectively read and discussed in a series of Cafés back in 2021).
Generally speaking, it would seem that we moderns are plagued by two conflicting general understandings of how and where we are as a species. One of these understandings is underpinned by the untenable notion of “progress” in which we today are a more highly evolved form of the species, relegating our forbears to the status of ignorant, barbaric children: we started out as brutes and evolved into civilized creatures and are therefore qualitatively “better” than those who came before us. The other is that in principle (if not in fact) we are really no different today than any who have come before: humans are humans and have always simply been humans, whereby the unspoken assumption is that it’s homo sapiens are the species being referred to, as if the other species of the genus homo can simply be ignored. Both of these “understandings” are, of course, extremely limiting and therefore problematic. It would seem that the truth of the matter is a bit more complex than we might like, but certainly no where near as complicated as we are wont to make it.
(Ferrando, I might add, is perhaps attempting to deal with this situation in her own way. Her first book, Philosophical Posthumanism was written for a reading audience that is still strongly influenced by the progress-based perspective of evolution, whereas the general reading public, to whom I believe The Art of Being Posthuman is addressed, is probably more representative of the other just-stated view of where we are as a species. Without some kind of contextual framework to help us keep the (apparent) contradictions sorted, it is easy to become very confused very quickly.)
One thinker who has provided a useful and manageable framework for such considerations is Jean Gebser. His magnum opus, the Ever-present Origin, which we also communally read and discussed on this platform back in 2016, describes how this change-of-consciousness (that is, our ways of apperceiving the world, or reality, if you will) may have played out over time. He identifies five phases, or structures, as he terms them, of consciousness which have had significant influence on how we understand the world and our place in it.
Gebser’s text is anything but a light read, but as a manner of highly condensed summary of some of the key features of his framework, I can offer what many have found to be something of a helpful introduction to his work (originally composed in response to a couple of sessions I moderated on Gebser at CIIS back in 1996):
Mahood_2020b_SynRes_WP2.01_GebserIntro.pdf (268.9 KB)
This brings me directly to something Alexandros wrote:
Of course, this “oppositional complementarity” is anything but true, but it can also be well understood as a outcome, or expression, of what Gebser calls the Rational structure of consciousness, the current phase of the unfoldment of consciousness we are going through at the moment. It is marked, in large part, by its insistent attempts to reduce analog polarities to binary oppositions, and it does so by the same means that Alexander the Great famously undid the Gordian Knot, namely by hewing them in two, as if this solved (or re-solved) anything. It did nothing of the kind. This structure is the deficient mode of what he terms the Mental structure of consciousness; that is, the linear, perspectival way of experiencing Reality dominant at the current moment. It is certainly arguable that a reasonable degree of logical coherency and consistency, together with accurate analysis and abstraction can result in astute evolutionary advantages, but, around the Renaissance these advantages were absolutized (via a kind of reductio ad absurdum) as the only legitimate way of accessing Reality. We’ve unfortunately spent the better part of the last half-millennium trying to purge the other, necessary, dimensions of consciousness but this has only brought us to the current apparent dead-end in which we find ourselves. It is becoming patently obvious that we’re somehow “stuck”, but are having tremendous difficulty describing what might come next.
This (faulty) kind of (post)modern reasoning is exceedingly widespread and can be found in many (if not most) contemporary “disciplines”/subject-matter fields, asserting that if you’re not one thing, you are automatically and irrevocably its opposite: in economics, for example, it expresses itself as if-you’re-not-a-capitalist-you’re-a-communist (or socialist, perhaps); in politics as if-you’re-not-a-democrat-you’re-an-authoritarian; in philosophy, if-you’re-not-a-realist-you’re-an-idealist; in science, if-you’re-not-a-materialist-you’re-a-new-ager (or the like); in foreign affairs, if-you-think-the-Palestinians-are-getting-a-raw-deal-you’re-anti-Israel, similar to George Bush who famously fell prey to this type of reasoning in his “justification” for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 by relying on an if-you’re-not-with-us-you’re-against-us line of argumentation.
This is quite obviously a logical short-circuit. However, it is not a way to thinking that is limited to the subject of gender or identity but rather a more general shortcoming of human consciousness which is particularly dominant at the historical juncture at which we currently find ourselves. Gebser further postulates though that we humans find ourselves on the threshold of yet another “mutation” of consciousness (as he terms it), a mutation to the Integral structure, superseding (German: überwinden) this deficient mode in favor of one characterized by more geneally applicable “both-and” (German: sowohl als auch) logics. Such a move would, of course, overcome the erroneous “oppositional complementarity” of which you write, as it would concretize (i.e., bring into manifestation) the dynamic balance inherent in such polarities; that is, not a static “balancing (or, worse, canceling) out” but rather an intensification of functional understanding along all polar continuua. At the same time, though, it is not necessary to postulate a “post-” anything as it is simply an additional facet of our already existant human consciousness … different, but still human (whereby I suspect that certain aspects of non-human consciousness could well be addressed or described in similar ways).
Just a thought.