Paper short abstract:

This work attempts a critical interpretation of the analytical tools of the post-human critical theory. This theory provides a political analysis of the conditions by which the human is inserted into a system of commodification; these conditions are neither post-power nor post-class nor post-gender.

Paper long abstract:

In the 'Order of Things' (1966), Michel Foucault explains how a category of thought emerges at the moment of its disappearance, which means that there is a correlation between becoming thinkable on the one hand and entering a state of crisis on the other. In the end of his book, the French philosopher announces the death of man, declaring as such the crisis of humanism. At this exact moment of advanced capitalism however, which is characterized by a hyper individualistic consumption of mass-produced quantitative goods and by a techno-scientific structure, the notion of human also emerges as a question. In this regard, this paper aims to explore alternative ways of conceptualizing the 'human' on the one hand and the 'gender' (-sex) on the other. In particular, this work wishes to focus on the post-human critical theory, as it has been articulated by Rosi Braidotti and by feminist theories in the vein of Donna Haraway's critique. In this framework, the post-human condition derives from the anti-humanist ideas (the critique of the humanist ideal of man as the universal representative of the human) and from the post-anthropocentric concepts (the critique of the species hierarchy). The purpose of this presentation is to explore the analytical tools that the post-human critical theory has to offer to the field of gender studies and, more significantly, to examine how this theory contributes to our understanding of actual sex-gender configurations.