ABSTRACT
Trans-Animal Narratives of the Post-Animal Celia Deane-Drummond
The Technologisation of the Human
The category of ‘human nature’ is not only extremely difficult to define but among some scholars, it is even denied existence. Such denial can come from some evolutionary discourses about ‘species’ reliant on modernist philosophy or through cultural resistance in postmodern discourse, where the idea of human nature or even any natural kind is regularly subject to semantic challenge. Where human nature is granted a hearing, the category is ambiguous and reflects broadly (a) attempts to define human uniqueness over against other animals, or (b) mapping a particular set of common behavioural characteristics that are for the most part found among human beings, that is, human universals, or (c) what might be termed the inner biological endowment of human nature or so-called ‘innate’ characteristics.1 All three meanings have variously been used by and at the same time challenged by different evolutionary and biological sciences, leading to a degree of philosophical confusion.
