Thirtieth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

The posthuman is a condition marks a qualitative shift in our thinking about how human is now viewed. The impetus for this shift is a growing awareness of how human lives are imbricated with other inhabitants of the planet and because of the human’s entanglement with advanced technologies. Rosi Braidotti argues that this condition is characterised by what she terms a ‘post-human predicament’, which relates on the one hand to a historical moment in which global society finds itself, where the human has become a geological force capable of affecting all life on Planet Earth, giving rise to the Anthropocene. On the other hand, the predicament relates to the fact that advanced technologies produced by humans might have capabilities of destroying all life on the planet. In other words, the predicament relates to how one adopts the positive dimension of the (post)human condition by embracing all of life and its interconnectedness, and, at the same time, how one resists the potential negative effects of advanced technologies (robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, biological warfare, commodification of the human body). In this paper we critically discuss what it might mean to learn in the posthuman condition, how we might learn in intra-action with the more/other-than-human world including advanced technologies. The methodological approach is philosophical and generates new ways of thinking about learning in higher education.