Rosi Braidotti > Quotes

“Making friends with the impersonal necessity of death is an ethical way of installing oneself in life as a transient, slightly wounded visitor.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“The crisis of Humanism means that the structural others of the modern humanistic subject re-emerge with a vengeance in postmodernity (Braidotti, 2002). It is a historical fact that the great emancipatory movements of postmodernity are driven and fuelled by the resurgent ‘others’: the women’s rights movement; the anti-racism and de-colonization movements; the anti-nuclear and pro-environment movements are the voices of the structural Others of modernity. They inevitably mark the crisis of the former humanist ‘centre’ or dominant subject-position and are not merely anti-humanist, but move beyond it to an altogether novel, posthuman project.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“The polyglot is a linguistic nomad.”
― Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects

“In my view, posthuman ethics urges us to endure the principle of not-One at the in-depth structures of our subjectivity by acknowledging the ties that bind us to the multiple ‘others’ in a vital web of complex interrelations. This ethical principle breaks up the fantasy of unity, totality and one-ness, but also the master narratives of primordial loss, incommensurable lack and irreparable separation. What I want to emphasize instead, in a more affirmative vein, is the priority of the relation and the awareness that one is the effect of irrepressible flows of encounters, interactions, affectivity and desire, which one is not in charge of.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“The post-anthropocentric shift away from the hierarchical relations that had privileged ‘Man’ requires a form of estrangement and a radical repositioning on the part of the subject. The best method to accomplish this is through the strategy of de-familiarization or critical distance from the dominant vision of the subject. Dis-identification involves the loss of familiar habits of thought and representation in order to pave the way for creative alternatives. Deleuze would call it an active ‘deterritorialization’. Race and post-colonial theories have also made important contributions to the methodology and the political strategy of de-familiarization (Gilroy, 2005).”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“Life is desire which essentially aims at expressing itself and consequently runs on entropic energy: it reaches its aim and then dissolves, like salmon swimming upstream to procreate and then die. The wish to die can consequently be seen as the counterpart and as another expression of the desire to live intensely. The corollary is more cheerful: not only is there no dialectical tension between Eros and Thanatos, but these two entities are really just one life-force that aims to reach its own fulfilment. Posthuman vital materialism displaces the boundaries between living and dying.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“The emphasis on empathy accomplishes several significant goals in view of a posthuman theory of subjectivity. Firstly, it reappraises communication as an evolutionary tool. Secondly, it identifies in emotions, rather than in reason, the key to consciousness.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“Once the centrality of anthropos is challenged, a number of boundaries between ‘Man’ and his others go tumbling down, in a cascade effect that opens up unexpected perspectives. Thus, if the crisis of Humanism inaugurates the posthuman by empowering the sexualized and racialized human ‘others’ to emancipate themselves from the dialectics of master–slave relations, the crisis of anthropos relinquishes the demonic forces of the naturalized others. Animals, insects, plants and the environment, in fact the planet and the cosmos as a”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“El panorama es tan apasionante como deprimente. La sensación de desposeimiento es aguda, con tanta información, conocimiento y capacidad de pensamiento como se produce ahora y que además están situados fuera de su recipiente tradicional… el cual solía ser la mente humana, encarnada en su armazón antropomórfico. ¿Qué ocurre cuando ese pensar, razonar, valorar riegos y oportunidades se desempeña, en cambio, a través de redes computacionales guiadas por algoritmos? ¿Y cuando tantas cosas de la vida y de los procesos vitales de división y formación celular se ejecutan sintéticamente a través de la investigación de las células madre? ¿Bebés probeta? ¿Carne artificial? En los tiempos en los que la Inteligencia Artificial y la industria robótica están clonando los sistemas neuronales y sensoriales de otras especies —de los perros por su olfato, de los delfines por su sónar, de los murciélagos por el radar, etc.—, el cuerpo humano nos parece más bien una anticuada máquina antropomórfica, no exactamente adecuada para contener la inteligencia de rápida evolución de nuestras tecnologías. Éste no es un problema «nuevo» en sí mismo, pero cada vez está ganando más velocidad e impulso. Es obvio que la imagen del recipiente neural humano es inadecuada y debe actualizarse y sustituirse por flujos y procesos distribuidos.”
― Rosi Braidotti, El conocimiento posthumano (CLA-DE-MA / Filosofía nº 302680)

“If the new belligerent discourses about the alleged superiority of the West are expressed in terms of the legacy of secular Humanism, while the most vehement opposition to them takes the form of post-secular practices of politicized religion, where can an anti-humanist position rest? To be simply secular would be complicitous with neo-colonial Western supremacist positions, while rejecting the Enlightenment legacy would be inherently contradictory for any critical project. The vicious circle is stifling.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“recent issue of the weekly magazine The Economist (2 June 2012) on ‘Morals and the machine’ raises some pertinent issues about the degree of autonomy reached by robots and calls for society to develop new rules to manage them.”
― Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

“Olennaista ei enää ole se, keitä olemme, vaan millaisiksi tahdomme tulla.”
― Rosi Braidotti