The Posthuman
It can be said that we inhabit a post human world an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013) Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post human predicament one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non human no longer hold, the nature culture divide is destabilised, and man's privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post human future based on an affirmative politics, which 'combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects' (54) As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of 'Man' and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 'Post Humanism: Life Beyond the Self' charts the Humanist/anti humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49) Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a 'relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable' (49) By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head a post human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007) Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post human subjectivity in non dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across