Posthumanism and Language: Towards Another Summer

As implied before, posthumanism and language are in close relationship to one another.

The relation between posthumanism and language lies in the nature-culture connection.

Language, as a social construct, is a cultural construct. Although posthumanism brings forth alternative ways for self-expression and self-recognition other than a pure and definite human form and identity, posthuman characters are closely knitted to language through which they aim at being heard among people. In this sense, they are open to changes and various interrelations between different meanings.

Cary Wolfe, explaining posthumanism in its relation to information technology and animal studies³⁵, points out the change in the perception of the concept of human being in her What is Posthumanism? (2010); she highlights the idea that human and Homo sapiens do not have a “privileged position in relation to matters of meaning, information, and cognition” (2010: xii). What she points out for the relation between posthumanism and information technology is also true for the relation between posthumanism and animal and other condescended entities as well. That is, the

35 Cary Wolfe argues that human beings are human animals that have been prosthetically evolved through language and culture (2010: xv-xvi). That is, they are not pure when they enter into the domain of the Lacanian Symbolic order. For her, this prosthetically evolved human animal experiences the challenge to his/her humanity when he/she is decentred by means of the technological, informatic, medical, and economic networks (2010: xv-xvi). Namely, Wolfe explains what posthumanism is in its relation to the developments in technology and the animal. However, one should not forget that her posthumanism in relation to animals is different from Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism in relation to animals as Braidotti explains posthumanism in relation to animals by means of metaphorization.

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privileged position of human beings is shattered through technology, animal studies, feminism³⁶, postcolonialism³⁷, ecocriticism³⁸, and the like. These studies and theories

36 For Toril Moi, feminists “argue that it is masculine rationality that has always privileged reason, order, unity and lucidity, and that it has done so by silencing and excluding the irrationality, chaos and fragmentation that has come to represent femininity” (1985: 159-160). The masculine rationality that privileges the concepts stated is the Western masculine rationality, and what feminists aim is either to argue the equality between man and woman as do the first wave feminists, or the difference of the two sexes and even the differences between each woman as do the second wave feminists (Oliver and Walsh, 2004: 8). In this sense, feminism and posthumanism criticise the Western anthropocentric man.

37 As the fourth part of this chapter argues, there is a resemblance between postcolonialism and posthumanism in the sense that they both challenge the Western anthropocentrism.

38 Ecocriticism is a theory that comments on the relationship between human beings and ecology. Therefore, it argues that “human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it. Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature.

As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman.” (Glotfelty, 1996: xix) Instead of its focus on environment, ecocriticism deals with ecology because “in its connotations, enviro- is anthropocentric and dualistic, implying that we humans are at the center, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment. Eco-, in contrast, implies interdependent communities, integrated systems, and strong connections among constituent parts.” (xx) In this sense, it has a similarity with posthumanism in view of their criticism towards anthropocentrism.

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all pertain to defamiliarization which offers different angles to look at what a human being is to attain a different conception of human being that welcomes the others within human beings. To return to posthumanism and animal relation in view of language, Jacques Derrida and David Wills begin their criticism towards language as a meaning-making instrument by touching upon the Western humanist perception of what a human being is:

More precisely, he has created man in his likeness so that man will subject, tame, dominate, train, or domesticate the animals born before him and assert his authority over them. God destines the animals to an experience of the power of man, in order to see the power of man in action, in order to see the power of man at work, in order to see man take power over all the other living beings. (2002:

386)

That is, Derrida and Wills criticise the viewpoint of animals’ being defined as subordinate to human beings:

The animal, what a word!

The animal is a word, it is an appellation that men have instituted, a name they have given themselves the right and the authority to give to another living creature […]. (392)

As language is a human construct, the conceptions of human being and language as an instrument in meaning-making change through the posthumanist conception of human being that challenges the definite meaning or definition of human being. It is for this reason that language, unlike in humanism, does not offer a definite meaning in posthumanism. Instead, it is now a changing instrument that serves the appreciation of

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different identities that welcome the so-called condescended others. In posthumanism, there are no more binary oppositions or dualisms like:

self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man.³⁹ (Haraway, 1991: 177)

In posthumanism, these favoured signs on the left side of the dualisms merge with the ones in the right side. Therefore, they lose their favourable position to form alternative identities other than the identities defined by humanistic viewpoint. For Wolfe, it is at the moment when the human of the Western humanist discourse loses his/her superior position, “animal studies [become] a subset of the larger problematic of posthumanism”

(2010: 119)

Towards Another Summer, by Frame, exposes the relationship between posthumanism and language in the sense that definite human language is not enough for Grace to express herself, and therefore, she needs alternative ways or languages to be heard among people. Grace’s inability to express herself in the human identity can be exemplified when an American medical student and his friend, who have read her novel, visit her before her visit to the Thirkettle family in Relham:

There was always a flurry of it’s great to know you, then disappointment that the woman who wrote books had difficulty in speaking one coherent sentence; then silence, silence.

What else could you expect when you were not a human being? (Frame, 2009: 28)

39 These concepts on the left side of the dualisms can also be explained through particularism: for the West, they all pertain to the West; they are particular to the West.

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These utterances also reflect how Grace is not able to express herself in the Lacanian Symbolic Order. For Lacan, the Symbolic Order is the domain where a child enters into language and culture and obeys the expectations and norms of the society into which he enters later. For Lacan, each individual is expected to express himself in the Symbolic Order. However, it is difficult for Grace to express herself in this domain. That is, she cannot thoroughly express herself in English and in Britain she later emigrates to. In this sense, Britain represents for the Symbolic Order for Grace: both Britain and the Symbolic Order are the domains that are entered into later, and both indoctrinate Grace with their expectations, rules, and norms. Grace is expected to talk articulately;

however, she is not successful in expressing her mind in the human identity and form:

“[N]obody, by conversation, [can] ever reach Grace’s mind. Like the grave, it [is] a

‘private place’, and [cannot] be shared” (13). “She [is] so unused to conversation in the accepted sense that most of her spoken words [are] almost meaningless.” (208) She is, in this sense, alienated from the social world with regard to the expected or predetermined face-to-face communication and interactions.

Alienated from the social world with regard to face-to-face communication and interactions, Grace chooses to turn back to her inner world.

In the postcolonial text the problem of identity returns as a persistent questioning of the frame, the space of representation, where the image [...] is confronted with its difference, its Other. (Bhabha, 1994: 46)

The bird image, as the representation of the new identity Grace finds for herself, meets the Other and reflects Grace’s questioning the representation of human identity in definite human language. In this sense, the human language of the humanist discourse gains different meanings for Grace, who tries to make herself heard in other forms.

Then language serves different self-expressions in posthumanism.

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