I'm a little surprised by the emphasis on the church as building since it does not seem essential at all to ritual (think of the early Christians who met wherever they could). I'm wondering if you could have emphasized more the repetitive practices of ritual (ex. prayer, fasting, feasting, that follow cyclical time).

Is it the repetitive nature of this act that constitutes ritual? It's not completely clear to me what characterizes ritual...

An example of X as well?

I think your use of posthumanism's terms to describe rituals as semiotic-material practices works beautifully. I also really appreciate the point about the 'feeling rightness' of ritual practices.

This reminds me of a great science fiction book I just finished - The Children of Time - in which a species of evolved spiders develops on a planet created by a human scientist. The spiders pass knowledge down from one generation to the next in exactly these kinds of 'neatly wrapped packages'.

expression vs. meaning?

What role does meaning play in plant communication? is there some equivalent? or is meaning-making exclusive to humans?

You could link this to your interspecies relations as well.

Maybe an image of mycorrhizal networks instead of the human?

I love your comparison to a multiversity that moves beyond the institution. It also reminds me of Rousseau's idea that patterns can be best learnt by observing nature.

This got me thinking about James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis - the atmosphere as X, collapsing the global and the microscopic because of bacteria's role in creating X

Fire as necessary to health of ecosystems - how does X become in this case part of the life-death continuum? Not a metaphysical force but a physical one.

This makes me think that the section on humans should have touched less on the the presence of the metaphysical and more on the way we have constructed an understanding of greater forces (God, fate, destiny).

My grandfather, a Dutch farmer who immigrated to Sarnia, ON, always used to say that cows were the best indicator of rain.

Hmm, what role does matter play in these kami halls? something must be in them (not a vacuum, right?)

Maybe an example from religious naturalism? Indigenous cosmologies?

Was there a reason you didn't chose bacteria to discuss Ultimate Perfection? I was hoping for a section on gut flora!

maybe something about how this would be the plant version of human self-development, a kind of becoming autonomous?

But isn't the point of ultimate perfection that it remains unattainable? Maybe the evolutionary version would be that the 'perfect' mammal or reptile species remains an unattainable ideal... So what we call classes are the (failed?) bifurcations on the path towards those perfect beings.

I really like your choice of Buddhism to explain Ultimate Perfection since it allows you to address both a more individualistic path and a more collective one (and to discuss differences within a single religion on what constitues the path towards an ultimate state of being).

So many of the words on this page like 'perfection' made me think of the dangers of humanist thought we discussed in class like colonisation in the name of progress, or self-betterment at the expense of community-building. I wonder if you could have included a couple of annotations (or comments at the bottom of the page) that bring a posthumanist or antihumanist critique to bear on these ideas.

your visualization is quite incredible! you have managed to fully deploy Scalar's functionality for creating networks, placing humans alongside of plants, animals, bacteria instead of above them (although the individual pages for each requirement still place the human at the top... - I should have had a look at all the requirements before making that last comment. There are some pages on which the human doesn't come first... do you explain why?)

Could you have included something about 'posthuman' on this page as well?

• It was a lot of fun reading through your 'choose your own adventure' story, even if I only had two choices (and it was quite clear which was the 'good' choice :-). Actually, I ended up reading them all!
• This said, I'm not completely sure what the objectives were of your creative piece. Could you have included comments along the way (your own annotations or comments on the bottom of the page)? Was the point to create a more posthumanist version of Detroit: Become human? If so, there needed to be a little more development of how this creature, AFHI combines the 'best' of bacteria, plant, animal, human, machine... (maybe think Butler's Dawn here?) I'm also not clear on why a human is still the first person narrator if you are working to counter anthropocentrism. Including the intent behind the different choices and moments in the story would have been really helpful.
• General comments on the project - Your choice of a video game was clearly appropriate, and I appreciate the amount of time it must have taken to play and record different scenes in the game. Part of the problem, though, was the narrative driven objective of the game that centres on the problem of 'machine becoming human' but doesn't really address many of the other questions raised in class with respect to posthumanism. You point to the need for a feminist critique, biopolitical and necropolitical reading of the game but you do not really develop these yourself. I wonder if you could have organized your project differently, actually, to be able to dig deeper into the humanist/transhumanist, anti-humanist (feminist, race studies), and posthumanist threads in the game. These could have been the three main components of the project rather than using Cara, Connor, Markus from the game. I think you could have made quite a few more connections to class discussions, reading, material if you had chosen a different organization for the project.
• Evaluation - 1) how your chosen topic engages with the complexities of posthumanism - 6/8 ; 2) how you situate and critically analyse the posthuman lens used in the project - 4/6; 3) how you integrate SCALAR's functionalities - 3/6 TOTAL = 13/20

Again, a few video clips would have been great (rather than just still photos). Why do you think the game includes these android animals? Is it trying to make a point about species extinction, like raise awareness? or is this simply part of the reality of our planet's future?

Haraway addresses this issue, arguing that replication might be one way of removing the burden of species reproduction from women.

Reference to a source? Proven by which authors? Braidotti speaks of a difference that is not one but still remains quite bound to feminist thinking about female subjugation (not yet 'post-gender'). You could have quoted Haraway's cyborg manifesto...

In what sense is the decision to protect Alice an example of her 'badass' character?

This scene needs to be analysed - the female begging the disembodied male voice for her life (him calling her 'honey'!), the use of European languages (come back to humanism's roots), etc. etc.

Not exactly. It's not that posthumanism would approve or disapprove of the comparison to concentration camps. But it would work through the bio- and necro-politics of control, surveillance, disposable bodies that we discussed in class.

You could have brought in a few feminist critiques of gendering in video games here.

I would have loved a few clips of these creatures from the game!

I'm glad you are bringing some feminist, eco, animal studies critique in here. But you could also have used these lenses to analyse some of the scenes from the game - ex. Connor as white, male authority figure...

See my comment on the 'title' page.

Since I don't know the game, these questions do not actually give me a sense of the connections you are making to class material and discussions.

This question gets taken up in quite a few sci-fi movies - states of dream or sleep while users are experiencing virtual realities for example.

Short summaries of sources to explain their connection to your project, how they informed your thinking?

No, not exactly. For Descartes, animals are automated machines whereas humans are thinking, rational beings with souls.

Why would an animal's intelligence be called 'artificial'?

Internal state means 'biological' to me when talking about emotions. In this case, do you mean an internal 'mechanical' state? Again, I'm not sure how you are using internal and external - more in the sense of self-deciding vs. social influence?

Turing

A Cartesian, humanist android who believes in souls...

What exactly does 'free' mean here? how does the game play on our liberal humanist notion of freedom as an ultimate value?

Some really insightful reflections in this paragraph that need to be explained more clearly.

You could make a connection to Bladerunner here, in particular the scene of Rachel being tested that we analyzed in class. The question of empathetic machines is extremely common in scifi lit. And it intersects with the gender critique we did of this scene in class.

This seems like a place to bring in the question of animal emotions. Are there any animals in the video game?

A direct quote would have helped here. I don't know this book and don't really get a sense of its main argument from this paraphrase.

I'm still not clear on this differentiation. Emotional responses are internal states and results of external, social interactions, no? They are both biological and cultural as far as I understand them.

'external social'... 'internal social'? Coud you explain these terms? And where they come from?

Connection to Bladerunner here? The trope of the tracker/detective trained to kill deviant replicants.

This page needs an introduction to the project, its objectives, its connections to the larger questions of posthumanism; ex. I read the game was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's predictions about the Singularity. We have discussed transhumanism in class and Kurzweil is one of the most vocal proponents of transhumanism.

You are missing the colon in the game's name. It's an important grammatical element if you want to discuss the possible overall humanist, anti-humanist, posthumanist meanings of the game - Detroit can be seen as place so emphasis on a non-human element; and the 'become human' that follows the colon would be a kind of command possibly directed at the city or coming from the city.

General comments: Your choice of topic for the project was excellent and lent itself extremely well to an analysis of humanist, anti-humanist and post-humanist ways of thinking. It struck me that you spent the most time developing the post-colonial and feminist critiques of genetic testing. It's true that anti-humanist critiques are key to moving towards posthumanism so it was important to work through some of these complexities. But these questions could have served as an excellent transition to your analysis of the movie Gattaca; ex. the video clip clearly shows the mother as subject to the state's biomedical complex. I was also a little disappointed that you did not end up writing from the perspective of a gene that is being tested in order to experiment with a less anthropocentric perspective. I realize you may have run out of time and I will make sure students begin working on their projects sooner the next time I teach this course. Evaluation - 1) how your chosen topic engages with the complexities of posthumanism - 6/8 ; 2) how you situate and critically analyse the posthuman lens used in the project - 4/6; 3) how you integrate SCALAR's functionalities - 4/6 TOTAL = 14/20

You've pointed to the humanist and anti-humanist threads in the movie - good! But I'm still waiting for your answer to the question in your title. The movie clearly has elements of transhumanism - the desire to eliminate death, disease and suffering but how could you bring in some of the key questions of posthumanism? ex. posthuman subjectivities that link bodies to environments; or anti-anthropocentrism in respect shown to non-human others; or the desire to integrate death in a life continuum; etc.

Were you planning on adding another page to the posthumanism section with a creative piece? It feels like something is missing here.

This work of critiquing stereotypes is extremely important but what's the connection to genetic testing?

This problem is what needs to be unpacked further.

I thought TallBear's main critique was about the creation of a fixed identity through DNA testing, which leads to exclusionary practices of who is 'allowed' to be Native American and who is not (but in the end it's the medical community who creates these parameters and not indigenous groups).

But also as a tool for control and surveillance - the more you know about yourself, the more Facebook, Google, etc. do as well...

Include a link to the book online somewhere?

An excellent point! You could have included a link to Mbembe's work here.

Could you have used this lens to analyse Debra's experience on the 'humanist' page? Some of the critiques raised in class about the biopolitics of digital afterlives or about self-monitoring health gadgets (fitbits, etc.) would also apply to ancestry genetic testing.

possibly add an annotation to the video so the user can just watch the most relevant part?

This is a perfect illustration of the 'anti-humanist subject', a concept we discussed quite a bit in class; ie. choice is not 'free will' or 'self-autonomy', instead it is a question of navigating already pre-established social paths.

You could link this to TallBear's critique of the 'greater good' argument.

I'm wondering if you could link these examples back to the work and politics of anti-humanism as we discussed in class. How do these studies illustrate the extent to which social discourses control and determine who we (think) we are? ie. the anti-humanist subject.

This video is hilarious but what's the link?

But this expression usually refers to kinds of killing...

I'm really impressed with some of the responses you got from the survey. Could you have commented on some of them?

You might want to add something about cancer stats (1 in 2 Canadians).

I'm confused. Who was diagnosed?

Again, a clearer transition/explanation is needed here. Who is the 'I' speaking? How does this change the stakes of the ethical question?

Could you explain this better? At first, I thought this was a transcript of what Debra says in the video.

Your story does an excellent job of pointing to humanism's notion of identity as biologically fixed, a foundation upon which cultural practices are chosen according to one's preferences. The idea of religion as being chosen and then grounded in biology is quite fascinating. It echoes some of the work of evolutionary psychologists who have been trying to explain religion as an evolutionary trait.

There still quite a few grammatical, spelling errors in this text.

Great use of internal and external links here.

What about medical genetic testing, why has it increased so rapidly as well since 2016?

This graph is quite remarkable. I wonder if you could have found some stats on the amount of money that is involved in this huge increase.

This is how Sam set up her project but did you need it as well? what are 'requirements' for genetic testing? or are these requirements for understanding the complexities of this testing?

It would have been great to have an explanation of this image somewhere - as an annotation? or a comment on the bottom that would appear when the user clicked somewhere on the page (like the staircase with a note about DNA structures),etc.

General comments - Your reflections begin the hard work of asking how human waste is part of larger webs of life and I'm thrilled you were able to integrate some of Bennett's thinking. But there are still quite a few components missing from your project - the creative piece we discussed, the much more complex web of plastic (and yoghurt as well!) before it becomes waste, etc. It feels like you needed a few more weeks to really develop your ideas Evaluation - 1) how your chosen topic engages with the complexities of posthumanism - 5/8 ; 2) how you situate and critically analyse the posthuman lens used in the project - 4/6; 3) how you integrate SCALAR's functionalities - 3/6 TOTAL = 12/20

This project deals with plastic after it's been thrown out and not with the pre-production or consumption problem.

Does it demonize them? or does it reduce their power to effectuate change because they, too, are just matter in various stages of transformation?

You need a bibliographic reference here.

Simondon (spelling!) This model is quite complex with a long philosophical history that has debated whether matter is the same as form - ex. ice, water, steam I'm not sure you do the theory justice here...

This has got me thinking - how is vitality both productive and destructive (see Braidotti's comments about zoe's destructive force?0

There seems to be a problem with this second visualization.

These connections feel quite superficial (placing the container outside amongst other rejected things). Could you have looked a little deeper by researching where the plastic comes from in these containers? The connections to other matter would have multiplied exponentially if you had tried to reproduce the 'full life' of the product (before and after consumption).

It's great how you embrace vital materialism in this part of the project and your glossary of three terms gets to the heart of this philosophy/politics without overwhelming the user. But there are some steps missing in the thinking here - Bennett's quotes asks about acting differently whereas you speak of 'imagining' differently. How does the imagination inform (political) action?

Your web is still quite simple...

Do you mean 'a sense of relationality'?

This page is quite 'lite' on content. I'm thinking about Adele's warm-up discussion on food and the connections you could have made to some of the insightful points she made about food consumption.

Including Katy Perry's song lyrics is quite funny. But could you have integrated it a little better in the analysis of 'stuff'?

was something supposed to appear here?

I love the title of this page! But I'm wondering if you could start with an introductory paragraph to orient your user. The issue of posthumanism's flaws feels like it needs to come elsewhere, after you've explained what you are doing. As I mentioned in my comments on your presentation, your point about the process - trial and error - was an important part of the self-reflective component of the project. I'm not sure calling this 'becoming-learned' feels posthumanist, though... maybe 'becoming-machine'?

ewewr

Could you make the title more representative of this page's content?