Towards Post-humanism with the Digital: Embracing the Dark Side

Transhumanism, post-humanism, and the virtual

Before moving on to the consequences of thinking about the past and the digital, I will start with a brief, more philosophical, argument on post-humanism beyond its archaeological use and discuss the difference between transhumanism and post-humanism. Transhumanists, to start, believe that the human-cyborg will be a new and improved human species and predict a world in which digital, cybernetic, genetic, and biomedical technologies become the instruments of the next phase of human evolution whereby Homo sapiens will transform into Homo cyberneticus or Techno sapiens (Hayles, Reference Hayles1999, Reference Hayles2017; Kurzweil, Reference Kurzweil2005). Pragmatically, transhumanism is approached at the level of techno-eugenics, a territory whose aim is to liberate the human race from its biological constraints and create a new transhuman ruling class (Riggio, Reference Riggio2015: 5–9).

Transhumanism, therefore, is a direct continuation and updated version of traditional humanism in the belief that humans are cognitively, evolutionarily, and morally distinct from other species. Hence, despite appearing similar, transhumanism and post-humanism could not be further apart in their essences. Post-humanism is conceived in numerous ways, but in all these it is directly opposed to the idea that humans are an exceptional species (Bostrom, Reference Bostrom, Gordijn and Chadwick2008: 107–37; MacFarlane, Reference MacFarlane2014: 52–56). The most common currently held definition of what post-human is or how it should be encountered is the strand of ‘critical post-humanism’. This refutes humanism and transhumanism and argues fiercely against a general anthropocentrism and the categories it has created. The ultimate aim is the disappearance of the boundaries between the human, the animal, and the machine and the abolition of human subjectivity and individuality (Hayles, Reference Hayles1999; Badmington, Reference Badmington2000, Reference Badmington2003; Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2013; Nayar, Reference Nayar2014; Grusin, Reference Grusin2015). Post-humanism and transhumanism, alike in this respect, take a human perspective as their vantage point. For this reason, but also for the general problematic continuation of ‘human’ in post-human, Haraway suggested employing the term ‘companion species’ instead (Haraway, Reference Haraway2003, Reference Haraway2008). David Roden proposes a different form of post-humanism, which he calls speculative post-humanism, to overcome this. Speculative post-humanism embraces the ‘weird’ in the sense that it hopes, like critical post-humanism, to challenge the hold anthropocentrism has had on the way we think about possible manifestations of cognition. Yet, unlike traditional post-humanism, speculative post-humanism does not stop at criticism but seeks to imagine, to the extent in which this is possible, what non-anthropocentric forms of phenomenology, moral reasoning, and cognition may actually look like (Roden, Reference Roden2015: 21). Although on an academic level Roden's philosophical argument is important, an anti-humanist perspective should not be dismissed. Until we have actual post-humans, a critical anti-humanistic and companion-species perspective is vital to create a more inclusive and diverse perspective on the past and the present. The reason for this is because the current framework we call ‘human’ is based on a Western, white, male framework in which many people do not feel a 100 per cent human (see Ahmed, Reference Ahmed2006; Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2013). Before moving to anything post-human, therefore, the standard that humanism has shaped for being human needs to change first. We cannot fully move away from our anthropocentric perspectives, and this is also not desirable. It is not about losing our human framework; it is about expanding it and creating room for alternatives.

However, even following the futuristic transhumanists’ own internal logic, cyborgs already exist. Self-proclaimed cyborg and activist Neil Harbisson, founder of the Cyborg Foundation, was born with a condition that made him able to see only in greyscale. In order to perceive colours, he took a creative and very bold step: through experimental surgery, an antenna was connected to his skull bone and this device enabled him to translate colours into sound-sensations, something his brain could perceive. Harbisson can now hear colour, including colours most humans cannot see, such as infrared and ultraviolet. This, and the fact that he perceives colours in every animate and inanimate sound (see Figure 1), completely changed his sense of human reality. With his cyborg foundation, Harbisson wants to encourage extending the senses further and stimulate the creation of new senses and perceptions by applying technology to the human body (Harbisson, Reference Harbisson2012). What fascinates me in this story is that Harbisson claims his technological mutation never gave him the idea that he is a ‘better’ human; on the contrary, it gave him an increased awareness of the non-human, beyond his own species.

Figure 1. (a) The colour of Mozart's Queen of the Night; (b) the colour of Amy Winehouse's Rehab by Neil Harbisson. Reproduced by permission of Neil Harbisson.

Clearly, the philosophy of this cyborg stands in stark contrast to the many theoretical pro-cyborg transhumanists. Harbisson provides a great example of speculative post-humanism because, through his alternate state of being, he became aware that no species is better than another, and it was precisely the non-human way of perception he acquired that made him conclude this. This single example should not be taken to promulgate a cyborg utopia, as it is an isolated and much-idealized case, which does not take account of the risks of such technical developments in a society dominated by a capitalist and neoliberal system. Through this example, I want to show that this post-human existence makes transhumanism quite obsolete as a philosophical perspective; it also illustrates where critical and speculative post-humanism meet. Whereas transhumanism is precarious and anthropocentric, Harbisson shows that feeling ‘not 100 percent human’ could also potentially provide fuel for an expanded view and renewed understanding of other species and counter the claim that humans are the most developed species on earth.

The Isis Sanctuary in Rome: Real Virtualities

The sanctuary of the Iseum Campense is only virtually present since no architectural remains are visible and excavations hardly gave any insight on its structure beside some minor and fragmentary information (Lanciani, Reference Lanciani1883: 33–60; Gatti, Reference Gatti1943–44: 117–63; Ensoli, Reference Ensoli, Bonacasa, Naro, Portale and Tullio1998: 407–38; Ten, Reference Ten2017: 273–77). A first temple was built on the Campus Martius in the first century bc, then destroyed and probably rebuilt by the emperor Caligula. This second temple burnt down in the Great Fire of ad 80, and it was the lavish renovation undertaken under Domitian (ad 81–96) which made the temple into the largest sanctuary of the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis in the Roman world. The complex was still used or at least known as a temple until the fifth century, when it probably fell out of use, gradually deteriorated or was demolished (Lembke, Reference Lembke1994). Today the structure has completely vanished from the urban texture; however, a couple of structural remains (columns) and sculptures (ranging from marble statues, Egyptian imports, to obelisks) still exist, some in the Capitoline museums, others scattered around the original location of the sanctuary and further afield in the city (Müskens, Reference Müskens2017).

In order to explore issues of the material and digital, and connected epistemological concepts of the real and virtual, reconstructions of this absent object were analysed in 2016–17 (Mol, Reference Mol, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018: 339–62). The study provided insights into representations and interpretations of the past, but it also informed us more generally on perception, imagination, on the creative process of representing objects and materials, and on their power to legitimate the real and influence the concept of Egypt in Rome.

All the known representations of the sanctuary were analysed in the respective social, cultural, visual, and material lifeworlds in which they were conceived in order to answer how they relate to the ‘real’ and what their virtual qualities consisted of. The three renderings of the same sanctuary in the images illustrated in Figure 2 show how strikingly they differ from each other. The virtual Iseum displayed on a brass coin (sestertius) from the Vespasian period (Figure 2a) was contemporary with the real temple and shows how the Romans—either in the actual design or in the representation on the coin—linked the construction of this temple to Egyptian-Alexandrian design. This can be observed mainly in the Alexandrian hemispherical pedimented roof. It is markedly different from conventional Graeco-Roman sacred architecture and the choice of Alexandrian style seems to relate to Isis’ origin and the contemporary idea of what Egyptian architecture looked like. The second image (Figure 2b) is a seventeenth-century reconstruction drawn by the Jesuit scholar Athenasius Kircher. A close analysis of the image reveals that he never aimed to represent or include anything that was materially known about the temple (such as the sculptures Kircher knew were connected to the sanctuary), but rather represented a personal spiritual ideal of Egyptian religion in his reconstruction drawing (Mol, Reference Mol, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018: 347–50). Whereas the temple itself seems to have been based on contemporary images of architecture in Jerusalem present in Roman churches, the sculptures shown in the drawing relate to parallels found in Kircher's study of hieroglyphs and to what he thought would spiritually ‘fit’ in a temple. The last reconstruction (Figure 2c) consists of a nineteenth-century drawing made by Guiseppe Gatteschi, and shows a Pharaonic-Egyptian inspired design reflecting contemporary Italian-European ideas on Egypt generated through colonialism, travel, and early photography (see Mol, Reference Mol, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018 for a detailed discussion).

Figure 2 Virtual sanctuaries of the Iseum Campense in Rome. (a) a Roman coin; (b) a seventeenth-century reconstruction by Athenasius Kircher; and (c) a late nineteenth-century reconstruction by Giuseppe Gatteschi (after Mol, Reference Mol, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018). Reproduced by permission of Quasar publications and editors (Versluys/Bulow-Clausen/Capriotti-Vitozzi).

All renderings as imaginaries show that their makers were influenced by specifically contemporary Egyptian or non-Western concepts when they had to (re)create a temple for the Roman goddess Isis. The intricate process of imagination illustrates how the virtual also clearly related to a complex sense of real-world ontological experiences that formed an inspiration for the images.

In order to discuss the effects on the experience of reality, an extended idea of virtuality appeared to be vital for a better understanding of representation outside the humanistic framework, especially the way ‘virtual’ is conceived by Bergson (and Deleuze influenced by Bergson). Conceiving these objects as virtual moves them from an ‘actual’ representation referring to the past existence of the Iseum to traces that inform us on contemporary imaginations and lifeworlds. These virtualities are different from the material traces, as non-present forms or imaginations that have no material reality; they are not the same as representations of the past, but are an attribute of that reality (Deleuze, Reference Deleuze, Deleuze, Parnet and Albert2002: 148–52; Domanska, Reference Domanska2005: 389–413; Shanks, Reference Shanks2012: 134). The opposite of the virtual, therefore, is not what is real but that which is concrete (Pearson, Reference Pearson2002; Shield, Reference Shield2002: 24). If we follow Bergson, an important characteristic is that the virtual is not opposed to the real: the virtual should be conceived as real in essence, but not in form (Deleuze, Reference Deleuze1991, Reference Deleuze and Patton1994: 208; Massumi, Reference Massumi2002; Berthier, Reference Berthier2004; Bergson, Reference Bergson2007: 233–98). The virtual is ‘real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, and symbolic without being fictional’ (Proust in Deleuze, Reference Deleuze and Patton1994: 208). As mentioned, the essence without form applies to so many more virtual objects than 3D models: they range from letters in a book, memories, dreams, to someone's reflection in the mirror. The text we read in books, for instance, may be real in space; but, to the extent that it is comprehensible to us, it also exists in a state of virtuality.

One of the significant outcomes of this research on a broader level, therefore, is related to knowledge concerning the virtuality of our actual existence, and how we draw knowledge from virtual presence and absent objects which challenge empirical epistemologies. Empiricism has shaped a rigid division between the materialism of empirical reality and the idealism of abstract thought by simplifying the ontological in two categories: existing versus non-existing. In this, the virtual became conflated with the abstract and unreal, and models were made to match reality, relying on Euclidian measurements. The representation on the Roman coin and the drawing made by Kircher were never created with this intention, and their potential value as a representation to learn about the past has, therefore, not been fully seized. The analysis of these images teaches us that virtual objects cannot be purely immaterial. They have significant influence on perception; although the virtual is not actual, it is real and they are real objects because they cannot be disconnected from the assemblages of which they form part.

Isis in Rome: Virtual Realities

Therefore, if we combine the virtual real with thinking about virtuality, we can create a wider historical frame of analysis, and explore other pasts and temporalities. Before the modern age, the virtual (such as memories and dreams) was considered an important way of gaining knowledge and considered as accepted part of reality. Virtuality, therefore, is also about other ontologies (Shield, Reference Shield2002: 37–8). Thus, conceiving virtuality in this way, on a post-human level, adds much to our understanding of Roman cult practices, objects, and religion. Post-humanism as a perspective has great potential for the study of Roman religion in this respect because of its re-evaluation of the concept of subjectivity, viewing it as a transversal domain which includes the human, the non-human, the spiritual, and the world as a whole (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2013: 87). We should be even more radical by including Harvey's and Domanska's takes on new animism as a potential fruitful ontology and as a way of understanding human and non-human differently, since they can be equally ‘alive’ (Harvey, Reference Harvey2017: 481–97; Domanska, Reference Domanska2018: 23).

While it might be useful in general to ‘treat animism as a general theoretical “shifter” in the paradigm change’ (Domanska, Reference Domanska2018: 31), I would argue that to get a better grip on some of the complexities in Roman religion such a view is even a prerequisite. We are aware that in Roman religion certain spiritual realities and truths were approached through the virtual, in rituals that offered a transformative, embodied, and sensory form of knowledge. The study of Roman religion in particular has suffered from a neoclassicist and Western empiricist view, often treating sanctuaries as museums and objects as mere artistic or decorative items. As argued by Elsner and Hunt, amongst others, the post-enlightenment tendency to rationalize Roman culture has had a restricting effect on the understanding of Roman religion and religious experience (Elsner, Reference Elsner2007; Hunt, Reference Hunt2016).

For instance, the hermeneutic umbrella of orthopraxy has largely ignored animism as a continuing ontological aspect of Roman religion. Animism is often regarded mainly in an evolutionary perspective as an earlier, less developed stage leading to a more sophisticated (Greek) anthropomorphic worship. However, some stones remained alive in the Roman past. Statues in cult settings throughout Roman history were sometimes conceived as animated and spirited beings instead of mere objects (Stewart, Reference Stewart, Osborne and Tanner2007: 158–78; Bussels, Reference Bussels2012: 137–60). Traces of this are present in archaeology, through the myriad aniconic objects of worship in ritual contexts (such as the ‘rock’ representing the goddess Cybele, brought from Pessinus in Anatolia to Rome in 204 bc, or Roman ancestor portrait-spirits). Countless literary descriptions of spirits in natural landscape features exist, mentioning creatures, humans, and non-humans. Ovid describes a grove on the Aventine with ‘a spirit within’ (‘Numen inest’: Ovid, Fasti (Reference Boyle and Woodard2000): iii, 296–97). Demons had bodies (Smith, Reference Smith2008: 479–512). Pausanias speaks about how to evoke statue/spirits at the altars at the Altis in Olympia (Pausanias, Description of Greece (Reference Jones and Ormerod1918): 5.14).

Taking animism more seriously in the study of Roman cults in a post-human framework means making a connection to a less uniform, rational way of practising religion and to a fuller appreciation of cult ‘objects’ at the margins of humanness. It could lead to a different, virtual reconception of spaces and objects, oriented around flows and synergies of being and becoming. It means taking into account the sacredness of a sanctuary: the space as a whole took on spiritual power and created a state of in-betweenness that was both embodied and temporal. We know that, in Roman religion, existing versus non-existing was different, illustrated abundantly by occurring metamorphoses (human-to-animal and human-to-spirit), hybrids, otherness, monsters, and the intense and complex relation between the divine and the human. Our understanding of ancestor worship, of landscapes, and of household spirits such as the lares, penates, and ianua, can be significantly deepened by a post-human, animistic view.

For the Iseum, the humanistic approach has had major impact not only on how we interpret the objects related to the monument and its area and on our knowledge of ritual practices, but also on how these objects, spaces, and rituals could change the Roman idea of cult practices, of the self and the other, and of Egypt. The temple site yielded quite a few statues (see Figure 3; Lembke, Reference Lembke1994 provides a complete list of objects ascribed to the sanctuary). They consisted of a variety of animals: sphinxes, lions, baboons, and falcons. The statues are discussed in terms of their provenance, whether they are genuinely Egyptian or Roman ‘copies’ (as shown in Figure 3), which is far removed from how they formed part of a spiritual context. Moreover, it is often argued that the Romans usually did not or could not worship ‘animals’ (Smelik & Hemelrijk, Reference Smelik, Hemelrijk and Haase1984: 1852–2000; Brenk, Reference Brenk, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018: 113–27), which led to these particular objects being frequently interpreted as decorative pieces, to create a luxurious and exotic atmosphere or occasionally even an ‘exotic cultural theme park’ (Bommas, Reference Bommas, Bommas, Harrison and Roy2012: 177–212). Brenk (Reference Brenk, Versluys, Bülow Clausen and Capriotti Vittozzi2018: 125) argues that animal worship in Egypt was a very complicated phenomenon directed not at the animal, but at the god. Even if the Pharaonic-religious perception of these statues was different from the Roman one, and even though statues may be Roman-made, the idea that their iconographic and material qualities could have been conceived as between (non)-human and divine should not be disregarded. We know from both Roman and Roman-Egyptian religion that spirits inhabited such statues. Plutarch, for instance, describes how priests should prepare bodily to encounter such spirits (Plutarch, De Iside e Osiride (Reference Gwyn Griffiths1970): 4; see also Bussels, Reference Bussels2012: 139). Even though the idea that spirits inhabited objects may seem speculative as an interpretation of some objects, it is worth considering, for it creates space for past ontologies in which people did not distinguish strictly between object/subject or material/spiritual.

Figure 3. Green porphyry sphinx statue, first century ad, probably from the Iseum Campense (after Roullet, Reference Roullet1972; Lembke, Reference Lembke1994: 242, pl. 34,1). Reproduced by permission of Verlag Archäologie und Geschichte, Heidelberg.

Towards a Post-humanist Framework in Roman Heritage: Not Feeling 100 Per Cent Human

Returning to the digital world and the past, it is clear that, within whatever endeavour and capacity we as archaeologists interact with digital methods, both real life and virtual reality are part of the lifeworld. Virtual reality is, therefore, both real as an appositive presence and part of real life (Ihde, Reference Ihde2002: 5). In this sense, we should not extend what is real but incorporate the digital into the virtual parts of reality. Combining virtual reality and archaeological reconstructions is of course not new, and lately there have been an increasing number of attempts at pulling archaeological reconstructions out of their static fields, instead embracing more fully their dynamics, analytical potential, and value for engagement (e.g. Morgan, Reference Morgan2009; Beale & Reilly, Reference Beale and Reilly2017; Eve, Reference Eve2017). Archaeological reconstructions have also become the subject of discussions concerning their reality and authenticity (Stanley-Price, Reference Stanley-Price, Richmond and Bracker2009, 32–46; Morgan, Reference Morgan2018, 136–51). The terms ‘digital realism’ and ‘virtual reality’ are often used by designers and companies who wish to create a human-realistic experience, and archaeologists have been mainly worried about accuracy and historical authenticity, with academics favouring a pared-down version of reconstructions so as not to ‘mislead’ the viewer (e.g. Favro, Reference Favro, Haselberger and Humphrey2006: 325–31 for visualizations of Roman architecture).

However, as the previous sections showed, realistic or intentionally sober recreations ignore how we draw knowledge from the virtual and is, therefore, not taking full advantage of the dark phenomenological opportunity that it can afford. It also neglects how agency depends on structures that are shared by non-human systems that may lack the capacities associated with human agency or possess powers that humans do not enjoy (Ihde, Reference Ihde1993, Reference Ihde2002: 5; Roden, Reference Roden2015, 45). Even a so-called ‘multisensorial’ virtual environment should not be aimed to create a real human experience (as Dong et al. (Reference Dong, Webb, Harvey, Debattista, Chalmers, Schreck, Weyrich, Sablatnig and Stular2017: 1) suggest for their rendering of medieval Coventry), although including multisensorial experiences is considered valuable. The challenge lies in how to include multisensoriality in a VR environment that has been developed with the goal of human (de)corporeal experience and aimed almost exclusively at the visual. These are two problems, one more challenging than the other.

Regarding the corporeal aspect, this should not be an issue unless we think the body is a bounded concept instead of one in constant flow. The senses, as Hamilakis (Reference Hamilakis2013: 116) argues, are not necessary for the organic body to operate, despite their functional role. The issue of the visual is less easy to solve, as this is still the main way of accessing both VR and the past despite being a notoriously modern appreciated sense. Breaking through the emphasis on visuality is, however, extremely important, and attempts can be made through VR by exposing the paucity of visual epistemologies, as well as by engaging with more senses and sensorial interactions through the incorporation of sensually defined landscapes or ‘synaesthscapes’ (Frieman & Gillings, Reference Frieman and Gillings2007: 11).

Studies and experiments involving the use of immersive, multisensory virtual reality, 3D-printed objects, and haptic interactions through virtual or augmented reality have demonstrated that these have an effect on how the past and ancient artefacts are experienced by people, therefore establishing them as a potentially fruitful venue for experimenting with the post-human and the past (Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco et al., Reference Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco, Camporesi, Galeazzi and Kallmann2015, Reference Di Giuseppantonio di Franco, Matthews and Matlock2016; Eve, Reference Eve2017, Reference Eve2018). Here, I argue that a possible entry lies in incorporating virtuality more broadly and using the affective agency of digital methods to create post-human environments and non-anthropocentric perceptions (see Figure 4). Experiments with post-humanism and virtual environments are already being conducted sporadically, for instance in gaming and in exciting studies of digitally complemented zoomorphism (Appleöff Lyons & Brown Jaloza, Reference Appleöff Lyons and Brown Jaloza2016), or in the study of the digital sensoriality of artefacts to emphasize multi-sensorial and embodied interactions (Papadopoulos et al., Reference Papadopoulos, Hamilakis, Kyparissi-Apostolika and Díaz-Guardaminoin press). Some contemporary gaming initiatives have shifted focus from hand-eye coordination to a full-body immersive experience, and experiments are being conducted concerning their empathetic capacity as they foreground the affective experience of others rather than focusing solely on the construction of the self (Swink, Reference Swink2009; Veale, Reference Veale2015). The post-human body is diffracted into multiple post-humanities, multiple realities, and multiple pasts, thereby changing the humanist into a range of possibilities that are also non-human. The virtual can release the constraint placed on embodiment and challenge humanist ideology, allowing the post-human body ‘to roam free and join with other beings, animate and inanimate’ (Seaman, Reference Seaman2007: 248).

Figure 4. Making fun of anthropocentric perceptions. Cartoon by Ellis Rosen published in The New Yorker, 31 July 2017. Reproduced by permission of The New Yorker.