"Being Subjects. New Ontologies in Posthuman Thinking"
In this paper I will try to explore how far a subjectivistic approach can still be useful to understand the role of other-than-human beings in a non-discriminative social environment. Are we compelled to acknowledge always new forms of subjectivities in order to be able to assign rights to non-human beings (animal, plants, para-organic systems, machines)? Or, along the same line of thought, do border figures like non-binary sexual entities (transexuals, homosexuals, queer people, intersexuals etc.) need to define them into a fixed subjectivity or identity to see their claims acknowledged by the rest of society? And even if we talk about hybrid figures like cyborgs or organic hybrids (human-animal, human-plant symbionts and so on), are we facilitated or rather damaged in adopting a subjectivistic approach to understand this kind of “relational” entities? One may be tempted to say that to remain anchored to the form of “modern” subjectivity (conceived of as the holder of rights, duties, mental abilities and a proper bodily space) could have always been the problem rather than the solution. And that, in following some French philosophical authors who speak in favor of a radical “overcoming” of subjectivity to give Otherness and Difference their proper sense (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida), a real post-anthropocentric world could be shaped only bypassing the very issue of subjectivity as the philosophical core of political control, social discrimination and environmental exploitation.
Andrea Le Moli (1973) is Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Philosophy and Director of M.A. Graduate Studies Programme in Philosophical and Historical Sciences at Palermo University (Italy). His research interests span from the reception of ancient thought in contemporary continental philosophy to Global Philosophy and Cultural Studies, with particular focus on the issue of subjectivity. Among his publications: Heidegger e Platone. Essere, Relazione, Differenza (Milan 2002); Heidegger: soggettività e differenza (Milan 2011), Reformations of Metaphysics (“Giornale di Metafisica”, 1/2016), Platonismo e antiplatonismo da Nietzsche a Derrida (Rome 2018).