I cannot see why there should be any confusion about what I say about trans- as opposed to posthumanism. As to the ‘transgression’, I think that transhumanism from its basic assumptions relies on the mind/body dualism, at least inasmuch as its reductionist conceptions rely on it. That is not to say that you have to reject e.g. neuroscientific approaches (mind that there is also a reductionism between the dualist poles in favour of mind or spirit).

As far as my vague impression of Young’s work goes (I only had a peek at his blog and some other ressources on the web) it seems to me, though, that on the systems level ‘cultural’ phenomena indeed get reduced to functions on a more reactive level.

Nothing against functionalism, but maybe we should think more about system properties that do not e.g. model cognition as recognition, but rather inquire corporeal and interactional preconditions. One reference point for me is Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory, another the work done in cognitive and social neuroscience by persons as Michael A. Arbib (”Crusoe’s Brain” and “Towards a Neuroscience of the Person”, In: Russell, Murphy, Meyering, Arbib: Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).

Also, there is much confusion about a cybernetic, as well as a Deleuzian, notion of machine. Putting the difference to transhumanism in sketchy terms might amount to this: I try to investigate the human condition as it might have been for some time already. Ideas in the context of distributed cognition, cognitive artifacts, materiality, corporeality, affect, or an other which forms one point in an action–perception loop try to find out about something that would not depend on an actual ‘cyborgisation’, and that maybe got lost due to the cartesian tradition, information theory, and digitisation. Ideas like processuality, ‘real’ movement etc. also connect here. As far as I understand, transhumanism is based on the very idea of a mind–body dualism, a reductionist notion of both the body and mind, as well as a state of subjectivity enclosed in itself (so that it might as a complete whole be transferred to a robotic body).

Also, the ‘post-human’ is used as a term by transhumanists. However, there is some info out there on the difference, as well as this book of which I’ve only read three chapters so far, which I would recommend however: Catherine N. Hayles, How we became posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, University of Chicago Press, 1999.

What I was thinking about did not mean that the feeling of being touched is nothing but the feeling of touching oneself.

This aspect of the thought rather implies the following: if you caress someone, what actually counts would not be how the other person touches you, but how *your* touching the other person feels to you and vice versa.

Mind that it’s also not about whether or not you feel it when someone caresses you, but about *how* it feels, how the other person makes it feel, and whether the other person does it in a way that is for *you* or in a way that is for him/herself.

thanks a lot for your comments. I think they really help specifying the fields or concept(ion)s giving us clues for what we are talking about here.

Still, after this first round of discussion I would like to ask you to try and re-relate your reflections to the post.

I think that, although there are lots of questions occuring, there still are connections between the reflections and between the reflections and the post that deserve some more attention.

If you could take some time to check this out and tell what you think we have and what we haven’t by now that would make me very happy!

Following from the inadequacy of the signifier- and signified-series, the floating (hovering? - flottierend) signifier occupies a yet unassigned field, opening this field up to be affected (in this context, I think the relation to affection is important!). This field is subject to the posing of a question or problem and makes the event possible. Deleuze calls this the “mode of art” - wouldn’t we need a new term here? Or is the realization of an event the same in “art” and “non-art”? But how and why does this even happen? It seems the event is only possible in areas/times, in which there is no assigned signified, or in which this assignment is dissolved.

Now is this to be thought in spatial or temporal terms? Sure, the event is a-chronological and a Nicht-Ort. But what could give us reference? I think what’s necessary is to actually think time as a-chronological, as virtual. This is why, I would argue, repetition does not even exist (“A rose is a rose is a rose..”). In what way is (re-)cognition always already (or only) transitive? Our bodies are material, but can we think about the event as purely material? Given these questions, what would this mean about our concept of culture/nature?

In reference to the question whether subjectivity - or objectivity, as cramo argued - is necessarily relational, I think we can find hints for the problem of space. Perhaps the only spatial concept we can use for a practice of event (practical event) is this inbetween. Certainty doesn’t allow for the event, which is always dynamic! In this sense, apart from the general discomfort of this assessment, subjectivity isn’t broken up (see:“Dissoziation des Ichs”), but rather transformed. That’s my take on counter-actualization.

Lots of questions, none of which are rhetorical.

(Structure-event: G.Deleuze - Logik des Sinns / Woran erkennt man den Strukturalismus? //
C. Levi-Strauss: Einleitung in das Werk von Marcel Mauss //
R. Jakobson/J. Tynjanov: Strukturalistisches Manifest)