Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Death: Death is the cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. It is the end of the life cycle._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Rosie Braidotti on Death - Dictionary of Arguments
Braidotti I 110 Death/Braidotti: I propose to look more closely at Thanatos, and to necro-politics, as a way of constructing an affirmative posthuman theory of death. I think that a conceptual shift towards ‘matter-realist’ vitalism, grounded in ontological monism, can assist us in this project of rethinking death and mortality in the contemporary bio-mediated context. Politically, we need to assess the advantages of the politics of vital affirmation. Ethically, we need to re-locate compassion and care of both human and non-human others in this new frame. >Dying/Braidotti. Braidotti I 130 What does posthuman death theory look like? It provides a fuller understanding of how bio-politics actually works in the contemporary context marked by the ‘new’ wars and by remote-controlled techno-thanatological weaponry. A necro-political approach produces a more accurate cartography of how contemporary embodied subjects are interacting and inter-killing. Braidotti I 131 In turn, this approach offers new analytical tools for an ethics that respects both the horror and the complexity of our times and attempts to deal with them affirmatively. >Necropolitics. Death is the inhuman conceptual excess: the unrepresentable, the unthinkable, and the unproductive black hole that we all fear. Yet, death is also a creative synthesis of flows, energies and perpetual becoming. Gilles Deleuze (1983(1), 1990b(2), 1995(3)) suggests that to make sense of death, we need an unconventional approach that rests on a preliminary and fundamental distinction between personal and impersonal death. The former is linked to the suppression of the individualized ego. The latter is beyond the ego: a death that is always ahead of me and marks the extreme threshold of my powers to become. In other words, in a posthuman perspective, the emphasis on the impersonality of life is echoed by an analogous reflection on death. Because humans are mortal, death, or the transience of life, is written at our core: it is the event that structures our time-lines and frames our timezones, not as a limit, but as a porous threshold. In so far as it is ever-present in our psychic and somatic landscapes, as the event that has always already happened (Blanchot, 2000)(4), death as a constitutive event is behind us; Braidotti I 132 it has already taken place as a virtual potential that constructs everything we are. This means that what we all fear the most, our being dead, the source of anguish, terror and fear, does not lie ahead but is already behind us; it has been. This death that pertains to a past that is forever present is not individual but impersonal; it is the precondition of our existence, of the future. 1. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. 2. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990b. The Logic of Sense. New York: Columbia University Press. 3. Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. L’immanence: une vie . . . . Philosophie, 47, 3–7. 4. Blanchot, Maurice. 2000. The Instant of My Death. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Braidotti I Rosie Braidotti The Posthuman Cambridge, UK: Polity Press 2013 |
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