Punks vs Profiteers: A Framework for Engaging Transhumanisms Today

In his 2022 article, Jacob Boss examined contemporary biohacking and transhumanist initiatives in light of underlying motivation and ethos. Based on extensive fieldwork with the grinder community, the resulting analysis offers a helpful model in the contrasting of “punk” transhumanists with “profiteers”. Punk is oriented toward the aesthetic, “seeking to exceed the normative”, while the profiteers look to commodify enhancement through incorporating it into the mainstream. Boss further elaborated on the model in a paper presentation in this program unit at the 2022 AAR annual meeting (“Kill the Law, Save the World”), aligning profiteering transhumanists with the abandonment of the world as they transcend it, and punk alternatives with a destruction of norms that is ultimately “world-renewing”.

This roundtable session will explore the productivity of Boss’ punks/profiteers distinction for engaging contemporary transhumanisms. The terminology around transhumanism (self-identified or imposed) is contentious and often obfuscating; part of the panel’s objective is to acknowledge this reality and consider how transhumanism scholarship can benefit from lexical clarification and expansion.

The panel will offer a critique of contemporary narratives of transhumanism that focus exclusively on elite academic and/or commercial iterations (e.g. approaches designated as “corporate medical futurism” by Boss). Very recent publications on transhumanism still recount a distorted history, or outline taxonomies that overlook more diverse forms of transhumanism.[1] The panel will highlight examples of neglected strands of transhumanism which are given more visibility via Boss’ punks/profiteers framework.

As a panel we represent broad expertise engaging topics including transhumanism, human augmentation, and artificial intelligence from religious studies, anthropological, philosophical and theological perspectives. A track record of collaboration among panel members and of scholarship within the purview of this program unit ensures our ability to facilitate a coherent discussion.[2]

Some indicative questions that will guide our discussion include:

How does the punks/profiteers typology challenge or expand the way we understand contemporary transhumanisms?
How has each panelist engaged the model in their own research and/or teaching practice?
Which aspects of transhumanism would we like to see receive more attention? Which elements enjoy too much time in the spotlight already?
How can other fields or disciplines contribute to transhumanism scholarship? Does punks/profiteers help us bring these insights into our discussions?
How might the model be developed further?

This is a critical conversation for the present moment. With augmentation and AI technologies undergoing accelerated development and coming to market, we must ensure that the cosmovisioning around such technologies (i.e. the conception of the physical, biological, socioeconomic and spiritual context in which they are situated) is not monopolised by a single movement laying claim to the moniker “transhumanism”. The AAR theme for this conference is “the work of our hands”, and arguably nothing is impacting the way we think about the purpose and future of work so much as AI and technological augmentation. Boss’ scholarly intervention into the underlying commitments that drive divergent transhumanist communities of practice points to alternative futures with these technologies, foregrounding the expansion of sensory capacities, reproductive choice, kinship and other social forms in pursuit of a more beautiful world.

[1] E.g. Philips (2024). “A Philosophical History of Transhumanism”, Philosophy Now, https://philosophynow.org/issues/160/A_Philosophical_History_of_Transhum...
[2] See the special issue on Religion and Algorithms in American Religion, Fall 2023, https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/50993