Benjamin Haber, CUNY Graduate Center: The bounds of the human body are becoming undone. Joining feminist and queer theorists in this assessment are the world building materialities of well-financed technoscience. The flow of capital to epigenetics, nanotechnologies and in-vitro tissue engineering are profitably reconfiguring human phenomenologically based notions of cause and effect and symbiosis. New visualizing and measuring apparatuses tell us that 90% of the cells in the human body are nonhuman, and that chains of environmental influence stretch across generations. While the new queer assemblages called human offer resources for a politics of entangled life, they are more frequently called to affectivly engage a horror of beastial sociality. In this paper I look at the biopolitics of the nonhuman human body, and speculate on new ways to engage ethically with emergent populations of symbiotic humanity.

Ben–since I’m having trouble leaving a comment on the front end, I’m going through the back and leaving my comment this way. Here it is:

Ben, when I read your work I get so overwhelmed that I’ve taken a million things for granted. That’s why I’m so happy we like to collaborate. There’s so much that goes on before I even talk about animals and humans. I’m so thankful to you for bringing up all the things that you do!

-Chrissy