This lecture is built on the assumption that we are currently situated in a posthuman convergence between the Fourth industrial Age and the Sixth Extinction, between and advanced knowledge economy, which perpetuates patterns of discrimination and exclusion, and the threat of climate change devastation for both human and non-human entities. This convergence calls for a posthuman critical intervention in the form of intersecting critiques of western humanism on the one hand and of anthropocentrism on the other. The lecture discusses the impact of this convergence upon three major areas: the constitution of our subjectivity; the general production of knowledge and the practice of the academic Humanities. It addresses directly the following questions: what are the implications of the fact that knowledge production is no longer the prerogative of academic or formal scientific institutions like the university ? What are we to make of the sudden growth of new trans-discipinary hubs that call themselves: the Environmental and Digital Humanities, the Medical, Neural and Bio-Humanities, and also the Public, Civic and Global Humanities and so on ?

The lecture offers both a genealogy of these Critical Posthumanities and a theoretical framework by which to assess them.

More information about Braidotti’s forthcoming book, Posthuman Knowledge can be found on the publisher’s website.