Reassembling the Human: Anthropology after the «Death of Man»

Abstract

The «death of Man» was proclaimed by Foucault in «The order of things» (1966) as both an outcome and a goal. This thesis is sometimes interpreted as already accomplished. An example of such an interpretation is the reception of this thesis in posthumanism. Posthumanism is a branch of contemporary philosophy that tries to construct a fundamentally new understanding of man by reсonsideration relationships between the human and his/her multiple others — nature and technology — in the light of the development of biological and information technologies, environmental, postcolonial and feminist studies. The article attempts to analyze posthumanism from the point of view of the archaeology of knowledge. The aim of this paper is to establish in which sense posthumanistic concepts represent thinking after the «death of Man». In the first part of the article, the thesis of «death of Man» is clarified through a description of the basic principles of the archaeology of knowledge. The article reveals the specifics of understanding man as an epistemic construct (modern episteme) and highlights the problematic nature of defining criteria for realization of «death of Man», one of which may be philosophy's rejection of transcendentalism. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of posthumanism (based on Rozi Braidotti’s conception) from an archaeological perspective. Posthumanism is fundamentally interpreted as inheriting the thesis of the «death of Man», as well as sharing with the archaeology of knowledge the position of the radical historicity of any conception of man. An attempt is made to identify empirical-transcendental duality within the framework of posthumanism. It makes possible to interpret the posthuman conception of man as a kind of philosophical transcendentalism. It is concluded that posthumanism belongs to the modern episteme. In the third part of the article, as an alternative way of interpreting Foucault's thesis, a neo-rationalistic program of overcoming man is outlined.