Foucault's Critique in a Posthuman World

Foucault provides us with tools, specifically critique, to reevaluate our subject position. Foucault maintains that questioning our assumptions and uncovering power relations in discourse will lead those engaged in such a practice to interrogate the arbitrariness of laws. Subsequently, critique will offer an argument for alternative ways of governing ourselves. For these reasons, Foucault offers the primary definition of critique as “the art of not being governed quite so much.”[i] It allows us to unveil how our society has imposed techniques of self-formation, also known as subjectivation, that have transformed us into suitable subjects for the state, often advancing the state’s political interest and power. Consequently, critique may contribute to our desubjugation, or rejection of assigned subject positions. Foucault’s use of critique is also valuable for posthumanist scholars since it advances their rejection of established ideas of what it means to be human.

Posthumanist scholars suggest that human identity is not as fixed as many would suppose. Additionally, they use case studies of dehumanization to illustrate how human categorization does not depend on biological existence alone. One’s treatment as human often depends on what one is “doing” rather than one’s “being” human. In Western epistemological terms, human identity is typically determined by whether someone is a subject, with agency, rather than an object, without agency. Similarly, Foucault’s discussions on biopolitics further elaborate on the ambiguity of human identity. Accordingly, the Enlightenment shifted power dynamics to the extent that they became more interconnected with knowledge and gave way to modern power structures, such as the dominant regime of biopower.[ii] Biopower and biopolitics reflect biological existence merely in terms of political existence. As long as someone is a productive subject of the state, their status as human is elevated. When people refuse a state-assigned subject position, their nature is interrogated, their treatment is regulated, and they are often dehumanized. However, people’s identities within the subject-object binary are not fixed. Many civil rights movements showcase how people constantly renegotiate their identities and eventually earn recognition as subjects with agency. Summarily, Foucault and posthumanist scholars alike emphasize the vagueness of what it means to be human.

Furthermore, due to the recent invention of man and its indefinite historical precedent, Foucault argued that the notion of man could easily cease to exist in the event of a possible critique.[iii] I suggest that posthumanism has offered such a critique. Specifically, its cultural concern with technology has emphasized technological reconstructions that are changing what it means to be human. Moreover, it has raised posthuman ethical queries and possibilities.

For example, Katherine Hayles argues that human and technical cognition are becoming increasingly interconnected.[iv] Hayles illustrates this concept through the cognitive assemblage, which has multiple sites of entry and fluctuating boundaries, to display how cognition is contiguously connecting human and technical functionality. Digital assistants provide us with an example of how this interconnectedness works. VIV, a digital assistant in the works, interacts with the real world to produce user-specific suggestions[v], such as the best route home that allows you to pass your favorite store. Hayles suggests that VIV and the user compose their own cognitive assemblage because VIV learns from the user continuously, and subsequently updates its database of information about the user.[vi] Simultaneously, the user changes his assumptions about the world as he increasingly relies on a digital assistant to perform tasks. Consequently, VIV will cause the natural abilities of the user, such as his sense of direction, to diminish as he depends more on his digital assistant. Thus, humans are progressively becoming the “objects” of technical cognition, while technology is transforming into a “subject” with agency. While society has not depicted technology as an ethical subject yet, it is at least an object with ethical significance that we must consider.

Since many people have concerns about their supposed agency, “humans” should understand the extent to which technology is increasingly influencing our decisions. In Foucaultian terms, technology is becoming another means of subjectivation. Without critique, technological networks may produce new systems of power to subjugate individuals and restrict their agency. Scholars need to consider the ways technology may not only liberate us but construct us into a new kind of subject. For these reasons, scholars, as well as society at large, must utilize Foucault’s critique to carefully determine how much power we want technology to have in the future. Moreover, we must think about what it will mean to be human in a posthuman world and whether we will derive such a definition from one’s capacity for agency.

[i] Michel Foucault, “What Is Critique?” in *“What Is Critique?” and “The Culture of the Self”*, ed. Henri-Paul Fruchaud, Daniele Lorenzini, and Arnold I. Davidson, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2024), 24.

[ii] Michel Foucault, “Right of Death and Power over Life,” in *The Foucault Reader*, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 264.

[iii] Michel Foucault, *The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences* (New York: Pantheon, 1971), 387.

[iv] Hayles, N. Katherine. “Cognitive Assemblages: Technical Agency and Human Interactions,” *Critical Inquiry* 43, no. 1 (2016): 33.

[v] Hayles, N. Katherine. “Cognitive Assemblages: Technical Agency and Human Interactions,” *Critical Inquiry* 43, no. 1 (2016): 39.

[vi] Hayles, N. Katherine. “Cognitive Assemblages: Technical Agency and Human Interactions,” *Critical Inquiry* 43, no. 1 (2016): 39.