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Marx and the Future of the Human
Abstract
This paper was prepared for the Birkbeck College Seminar Series on 'Marx, Individuals & Society' on 26th October 2000. It argues that transhumanists have avoided certain developments in contemporary society that indicate that humans are already transhuman to the extent that they are becoming 'human capital'. In this account, human capital is the capitalisation of humanity; the processes involved in humans becoming a form of capital, capital within the human. Thus, the notion of 'human capital' is far more horrific than any techno-scientific transformation of the human body.
... 1. This section draws heavily from a paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference 2000, 'Messing with the Explosive Commodity: School Improvement, Educational Research and Labour-Power in the Era of Global Capitalism' (Rikowski, 2000c), and also from Marx and the Future of the Human (Rikowski, 2000e). 2. As Burford (2000) notes, this point has far-reaching implications for theorising social class. ...
A paper for the Symposium on: 'If We Aren't Pursuing Improvement, What Are We Doing?', Convened by Joanna Swann.
Appearing between two historical touchstones - the alleged end of communism and the 100th anniversary of Nietzsche's death - this book offers a provocative hypothesis about the philosopher's afterlife and the fate of leftist thought and culture. At issue is the relation of the dead Nietzsche (corpse) and his written work (corpus) to subsequent living Nietzscheanism across the political spectrum, but primarily among a leftist corps that has been programmed and manipulated by concealed dimensions of the philosopher's thought. If anyone is responsible for what Geoff Waite maintains is the illusory death of communism, it is Nietzsche, the man and concept.Waite advances his argument by bringing Marxist - especially Gramscian and Althusserian - theories to bear on the concept of Nietzsche/anism. But he also goes beyond ideological convictions to explore the vast Nietzschean influence that proliferates throughout the marketplace of contemporary philosophy, political and literary theory, and cultural and technocultural criticism. In light of a philological reconstruction of Nietzsche's published and unpublished texts, "Nietzsche's Corps/e" shuttles between philosophy and everyday popular culture and shows them to be equally significant in their having been influenced by NietzscheNin however distorted a form and in a way that compromises all of our best interests.Controversial in its 'decelebration' of Nietzsche, this remarkable study asks whether the post-contemporary age already upon us will continue to be dominated and oriented by the haunting spectre of "Nietzsche's corps/e". Philosophers, intellectual historians, literary theorists, and those interested in western Marxism, popular culture, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the intersection of French and German thought will find this book both appealing and challenging.
