Where We Might Go in Lieu of Posthumanism: Building Indigenous and Decolonial Epistemologies

A few days ago, I presented “Where We Might Go in Lieu of Posthumanism: Building Indigenous and Decolonial Epistemologies” at Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Journey Week 2024 conference. The session was recorded and will be available for the next six months. If you would like to watch the recording, you can do so here. This was the first time I formalized my thinking in these areas, and I have some ideas about changes I’ll make in my next iteration of the presentation—which I am looking forward to creating, as and when I get the time and opportunity. Until then, if this is of interest, please enjoy the recording.

Presentation Abstract:
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The genealogy of posthumanism as a philosophy permits us to see its links to colonial/imperial projects and warfare. This presentation will invite us to consider where we might go in lieu of posthumanism. Locating technology as a premise of making that arises out of the entanglement of body-mind-soul-spirit with Earth allows us to question the inevitability of exploitative technology predicated on environmental destruction (such as AI research). Equally, it allows us to rise above a naïve faith that technological innovations that have their origin in the military industrial complex have benevolent aims.
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Instead, the presentation will attend to the elemental conversation with the Earth that is seeking to make itself known. What futures can emerge when we awaken to our inner capacity for relationship with(in) a multi-species world—and co-create with the same—instead of superseding the responsibility of relationship to algorithmic processes that have been pre-programmed? Through the indigenous and decolonial epistemologies of imagination, story, poetry, prayer, and play, we will realign ourselves with the deeper story that emerges as the riverbed of our knowing, watered with multiple streams comprising mythic and ancestral intelligence together with the multiple intelligences that form our planetary consciousness. Casting our awareness back to the seven generations past and forward to the seven generations to come—through psychospiritual modalities making possible embodied and inspirited critique, revelation, and empowerment—we will seed renewed understandings of human consciousness, spirit, and evolutionary communal care.