Jacob Vangeest

In this article, I work to develop ‘posthuman ethics’ by focusing on physiological embodiment and disconnection as means of bypassing human control and oversight in normative concerns. Critically building on prior scholarship in critical posthumanism, I advance posthuman ethics by challenging certain normative oversights that remain inherent. I offer two advances. First, building on prior accounts of ‘embodied ethics’, I suggest a focus on physiology that would centre the body. If the body determines thought, overcoming humanistic morality requires a shift in the physiological processes from which humanism and morality emerge. Second, I focus ‘disconnection’ as a means of removing an anthropocentric baseline: separating humanity from the nonhuman network entirely. I promote disconnection as a means for posthuman ethics to work without human oversight. Together, physiology and disconnection provide a starting point for something alien to humanistic morality. This could lead to positions at once undesirable, incoherent, incommensurable, and inhospitable to humanistic perspectives.