人类的故事与后人类的挑战

The Story of Humanity and the Challenge of Posthumanity

当下后人类的科技前景挑战了我们过去对于历史的理解,但同时又激发我们以新的方式去认识历史。一方面,将后人类作为一个新的时代,表明时代转变的历史要求;另一方面,后人类假设一种新的、优于人类的主体将在这个新的时代诞生,由此消解了现代西方历史认知中的人类主体。本文试图以人类的故事为参照从而理解后人类,并考察在三个连续的阶段中作为历史中心主体的人类之命运:首先,探究古典历史哲学如何通过发明人类这一主体从而获得宏大历史叙事(亦即人类的故事)本身的完整性;第二,叙述近半个世纪的后殖民与性别研究是如何猛烈抨击这个中心主体的,而其批评针对的是人类故事的普世性;第三,分析后人类如何挑战人类的故事及后殖民与性别批评。后殖民与性别批评使史学变得碎片化,但保留了小范围内历史叙事的可能性。与此不同的是,后人类并不质疑人类故事的可行性,因其要求以优于人类的主体取代人类,所以必然会唤醒作为整体的"人类"。此外,作者认为后人类代表了对现代西方历史学现状和历史叙事可能性——小历史抑或大历史,碎片的抑或普世的——的根本挑战。

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand,it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other,by postulating the birth of a novel,better-than-human subject for this new era,it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article,I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first,by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second,by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century,targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third,by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives,posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead,it necessarily invokes humanity,if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that,it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives-small-scale or large-scale,fragmented or universal.