Conference Agenda

Through exploring prospectives hinted by sci-fi popular culture, but more so through a critical analysis of some transhumanist ideas, this paper aims to develop a critical reflection on a new ideal that I’ll call “deincarnation”. Deincarnation refers to the literal negation of one’s embodied lived experience or incarnate condition; it has meaning in opposition to it.

The fact that as of now we exist internally and interact externally with a body, through this body, may be challenged by technological progress, or at least such a challenge is presented as possible – and for some, desirable. Through the transhumanist discourse on the hope of one day being able to upload one’s consciousness into a machine (whether a digital network or a robot), there is the fantasy that technology may help us achieve immortality, and that such an achievement should come at the cost of having a flesh-and-bones body. Because our mortality is understood as stemming from our bodily condition, the body can and should be disregarded as being only the obsolete vessel for and even a limitation on our immortal consciousness – our soul.

The intimate relationship that one develops with their body through it being their lived experience is presented as essentially lesser than the possibility of a disincarnate, “purer” existence outside of it. In this sense, robots are often depicted as such a purer form of existence, by allowing the dematerialized human inside of it to have a body that is not bodily in any way: the blood is replaced by a blue or white fluid, clean cables replace gooey viscera, and female-presenting robots have no body hair. Anything that expresses a body’s flesh (smell, fluids, weight, age) is seen as undeserving of carrying a consciousness that must be of another nature, an ethereal numerical essence.

Perfection should come from rejecting the limitations on our hypothetically unlimited being that embodiment imposes on this being. But is our embodied existence so undeserving of our spiritual and rational one? Are not both the indissociable entirety of one’s self? This critical analysis of the idea that perfection resides in the negation of incarnate existence (i.e. existence itself) will underline the subtextual revival of a cartesian dualism through the prophetic ambitions of transhumanism as a discourse. It will also heavily rely on gender theory as well as phenomenology to discuss the rejection of our intimate bodily-experienced life that is the transhumanist proposal of deincarnation.

Bibliography:

- BOSTROM Nick, The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, 2005. Superintelligence, 2014.

- HARAWAY Donna, Cyborg Manifesto, 1984.

- CLARK Andy, Natural-Born Cyborgs, 2004.

- MERLEAU-PONTY Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945.

- FOUCAULT Michel, History of Sexuality, 1984.

- WACHOWSKI Lana and Lilly, The Matrix, 1999-2021.

- FARGEAT Coralie, The Substance, 2024.

The number of people experiencing homelessness is increasing in cities across the Western world (Lancet Public Health 2023), accompanied by high rates of mental illness (Fazel, Geddes, and Kushel 2014) and criminalization (Gaetz 2013). While the lack of affordable housing (Colburn and Page Aldern 2022) is widely recognized as the primary driver of this crisis, less attention has been paid to how individuals’ lives are increasingly enmeshed with technologies and how this may contribute to psychopathology or to criminalization.

This presentation examines how portable technologies shape the psychic life and social reintegration of individuals experiencing homelessness and mental illness. The analysis is based on a long-term ethnographic work in a shelter-based clinic in Montreal with Simon, a patient I followed as both a psychiatrist and an anthropologist. Over a one-year period, during which Simon transitioned from living in the shelter to securing an apartment, he was convicted for sending a series of text messages to his ex-girlfriend, in violation of a restraining order. He was also required to wear an ankle bracelet for almost a year, a condition that brought numerous challenges, including jeopardizing his part-time job as a funeral service provider, where he constantly risked crossing into restricted areas.

I employ a postphenomenological framework to analyze Simon’s interaction with a smartphone (Richardson 2020; Wellner 2015) and the proximity alert bracelet, the latter having been developed during the covid pandemic for contact tracing are now increasingly used in Canada (Griffiths 2023) and globally. The concept of “multistability” (Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015) helps illuminate the significant disconnect between the intended purpose of these technologies and Simon’s daily relations with them. I also draw on Robert Rosenberger’ (2017) work on “callous objects”, which explores how certain objects and technologies subtly limit access to public spaces for people experiencing homelessness.

I argue that Simon’s psychopathology and criminal behaviours are deeply entangled with these technologies, which calls for a nuanced understanding of their impact on marginalized population. In addition to having broad implications for informing public policy, this presentation also shows how postphenomenology has untapped and much needed potential for advancing the fields of psychiatry and psychiatric anthropology.

References

Colburn, Gregg, and Clayton Page Aldern. 2022. Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns. University of California Press.

Fazel, Seena, John R Geddes, and Margot Kushel. 2014. “The Health of Homeless People in High-Income Countries: Descriptive Epidemiology, Health Consequences, and Clinical and Policy Recommendations.” The Lancet 384 (9953): 1529–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61132-6.

Gaetz, Stephen. 2013. “The Criminalization of Homelessness: A Canadian Perspective.” European Journal of Homelessness, 357–62.

Griffiths, Nathan. 2023. “Use of Electronic Monitoring Bracelets Has Surged in B.C. Here’s How They Work.” Vancouver Sun, 2023, Nov 14 edition.

Richardson, Ingrid. 2020. “Postphenomenology, Ethnography, and the Sensory Intimacy of Mobile Media.” In Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing

Ihde, edited by Glen Miller and Ashley Shew, 159–74. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35967-6_10.

Rosenberger, Robert, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. 2015. “A Field Guide to Postphenomenology.” In Postphenomenological Investigations : Essays on Human-Technology Relations, edited by Robert Rosenberger and Peter-Paul Verbeek. Lanham: Lexington books.

Rosenberger, Robert. 2017. Callous Objects: Designs against the Homeless. University of Minnesota Press.

The Lancet Public Health. 2023. “Homelessness in Europe: Time to Act.” The Lancet Public Health 8 (10): e743. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(23)00224-4.

Wellner, Galit P. 2015. A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Geneaologies, Meanings, and Becoming. Lanham: Lexington Books.