Winter School on the Posthuman
Turin is freezing, but the days we spent immersed in the Posthuman were warm, fluid, and full of exchange.
How can we decentre our gaze? How can we collectively unsettle the scala naturae and reconsider the privilege and power historically associated with being human?
From 26 to 29 November, we took part in the first Winter School on the Posthuman held in Italy, organized by the University of Turin and the CIRSDe Research Centre. Curated by a diverse group of scholars, the programme adopted transfeminist and decolonial approaches, cutting through established frameworks and revealing a fertile and deeply unsettling dialogue between philosophy, biology, and literature.
Knowledge circulated freely among the human and more-than-human bodies inhabiting the space, completely deconstructing the hierarchies that separate professors, students, and precarious researchers, but also those that divide human animals, more-than-human beings, and technologies. The result was the emergence of new visions and possible forms of collaboration inspired by what our bacterial and archaeal symbionts teach us through the work of Lynn Margulis.
“If we look closely at the human being, there is very little that is actually human.” We conspire with mitochondria, and what remains of the individual is merely a residue: a trace left behind by a relational process.
It is all political practice.
A collective gaze cannot help but look at the pregnant sperm whale that, swimming through the Mediterranean alongside her companion species, carries within her both a future sperm whale and far too much plastic. Nor can it ignore how the scala naturae has been built upon an exclusionary right to life, one that marginalizes and imposes visible forms of oppression, reproductive injustice, and the effects of ongoing genocidal processes upon both human and more-than-human bodies.
What strategies do we have? What alternatives exist to war—that supposedly natural logic of competition and struggle that dominant scientific narratives and capitalism have taught us to accept?
We are nomadic subjectivities, environmental bodies, and this gathering offered a valuable opportunity to remember that.
Suggested Reading
Balzano, A. (2024). Eva virale. La vita oltre i confini di genere, specie e nazione. Meltemi Editore.
Ferrando, F. (2023). The Art of Being Posthuman: Who Are We in the 21st Century? Polity Press.
Specchio, A. – Reflections on posthuman narrative approaches in the works of Murata Sayaka.
Forgione, D. – An introduction to Afrofuturism.
