Disability, digital technologies and the ambivalent allure of posthumanist/transhumanist futures

Technologies, both simple and sophisticated, have always played a major role in the negotiation of a range of disabilities that are assumed to impede the expression of autonomous selfhood. Whether deployed as mechanical aides to ideally normalise physical differences, as organic-and often internal-supplements to bolster the performance of body and mind, or as digital enhancements that override the supposed shortcomings of neurodiversity, the widely accepted claim is that such technologies have a clear therapeutic value. It conjures the illusion of an unproblematised sequence of more complex technologies leading to increasingly enhanced function and the advent of superior selfhood. Those who identify as having disabilities, either physical or cognitive, are assured of a better future in which anomalies are sufficiently offset to the extent that they no longer attract disvalue.My paper offers a less conventional perspective that leaves behind the desire for individual autonomy and opens up the question of the transhuman and the posthuman. Rather than focusing on the bounded self at the centre of humanist thought, I ask what is at stake when human embodiment becomes intricately entangled with non-human materialities and digital coding. It is likely that the major developments in such 'prosthetic' technologies will strongly impact the field of disability. Beyond a merely functional usage, which is likely to dominate in the short term, urgent questions arise about the extent to which the category of the human can or should be sustained as the anchor of continuing life. In exploring the practical, philosophical and bioethical implications of newly emerging technologies, I distinguish between the motivation of transhumanism, which focuses on self-perfectibility and mastery, and a posthumanism that in seeking to radically decentre the very notion of human privilege and hierarchical distinctions offers an optimistic view of disability futures.