Is Posthumanism a Primitivism? Networks, Fetishes, and Race

This essay considers the possibility that prominent theories of the posthuman may draw problematic forms of inspiration from ideas about the "primitive" human. This would complicate how the post in posthuman is defined by current scholarship. It would also suggest that there are potentially concerning racial politics, hitherto unnoticed, embedded within certain modes of posthuman theorizing. In assessing these concerns, the essay develops an analysis of the unexpected racializing and fetishistic dimensions commonly at work in the idea of networks, and looks at the ways networks and new animistic ontologies may in certain ways perpetuate the same Eurocentric humanist biases that they aim to critique.