Abstract

This article questions the logic of human self-transcendence and enhancement that underlies all forms of humanism, including transhumanism, as well as the role technology is supposed to play in »improving« human nature and overcoming aggression, violence and self-destruction. It argues, instead, that a critical posthumanist stance has to undertake the deconstruction of the very notion of perfectibility as well as the purely instrumental understanding of technology that usually underlie discussions of human enhancement or »improvement«. Humanism with its inevitable anthropocentrism is unable to address the problem of violence (against humans) as long as it represses the issue of violence against nonhumans animals. The true challenge for a posthumanist politics (and ethics) that seeks to move closer towards the horizon of nonviolence and inter- and intraspecies justice, is to effectuate a fundamental change in attitude towards »our« animality.