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A different, immanent, embodied, and relational conception of imitation (mimesis) is currently informing the posthuman turn. Emerging from an ERC-funded project titled Homo Mimeticus, this lecture argues that mimesis, understood as an unconscious tendency to mimic others (be they human or nonhuman) provides an important and still missing genealogical link to account for the capacity of (post)humans to become other—for both good and ill. Turning to contemporary simulations that are not simply illusory or hyperreal but spellbinding and hypermimetic—from conspiracy theories to (new) fascist injunctions to algorithmic bubbles—the lecture questions the ideal of a volitional, autonomous, and fully rational subject to cast light on some of the ethical and political challenges homo mimeticus faces in the present and will continue to face in the future.
In the recent decades, transhumanism as a philosophical and social movement has been on the rise, and has propelled research in many technological solutions whose aim is to improve the human life. At the same time, though, it has been accused of anti-humanism that in the end will lead to human extinction. In many publications on the subject it has been characterized as a contemporary mythology (Hauskeller 2016), a dangerous ideology (Fukuyama 2004), and a biotechnological utopia, giving rise to a new concept in utopian studies (evantropia; Bugajska 2019, Misseri 2016). In my paper I would like to evaluate these characterizations, with the view to the fact that each of the proposed terms is very complex and that the correct understanding of what transhumanism constitutes in impacts the paths taken in research and in the establishment of legal frameworks for the proposed technological solutions, as well as social attitudes shaped by the chosen perspective.
