The Body in the Posthumanist Perspective

Abstract

This essay explores the posthumanist reconfiguration of the body, contrasting it with the humanist paradigm rooted in somatic appropriation and compensatory technology. While the humanist model views the body as incomplete and in need of external support, the posthumanist approach proposes an ontology of Being-a-Body, grounded in virtuality, relationality, and ecological situatedness. Central to this view is the concept of ontopoiesis—the body’s becoming through continuous relational activity. The essay emphasizes a shift from exemption to exuberance: technology no longer compensates for bodily deficiency but expands its virtual potential. This technopoietic process entails a reorganization of somatic structures, opening the body to new possibilities of actualization. The resulting condition—characterized by instability, hybridity, and transformation—defines a “technological sublime,” where the body is decentralized from its anthropocentric core and immersed in a fluid network of meaning. This posthumanist vision challenges essentialist assumptions, offering a dynamic and open-ended understanding of corporeality in the age of technogenesis.

1. Premise

The term “posthumanism” does not imply a rejection of the human, nor does it deny the contribution that humanism has made to the history of philosophy. In fact, posthumanism aims to revise the vision of human ontology and to redefine it as plastic and relational by shifting the focus from our phylogenetic characteristics to our relational engagement with the world around us. The purpose of this article is to explore this aspect by bringing into focus the role of the body in relation to technology. In posthumanist philosophy, the problem of the body represents a central axis of reflection and a catalyst for conceptual displacements from the humanist paradigm [1]. Grounded in the principle of somatic appropriation (Having-a-Body), the latter inevitably produces a need to emancipate from the body [2]. In contrast, an ontology based on Being-a-Body situates the quest for meaning within immanence, compelling a confrontation with the properties of somatic transcendence—that is, the body’s inherent tendency to surpass itself through openness to the world and a capacity for renewal. In other words, this ontological stance must engage with the process of ontopoiesis: the continuous becoming of the body through relational activity [3]. Ontopoiesis rests on three fundamental qualities of corporeality: (1) its inherent virtuality, tied to an intrinsic redundancy that allows for multiple paths of actualization; (2) its active connectivity with the outside, understood not as a passive openness to being affected by the world, but as an actual copulative (i.e., relational) agency; and (3) its ecological character, that is, its capacity to occupy a specific situatedness in the world—a singular mode of taking place.

This virtual, relational, and connective vision of Being-a-Body clashes with the humanist conception, which is based on the inhabitative principle (Being-in-the-Body), the extensive reading of the body (res extensa), and the assumption of corporeal incompleteness [4]. The posthumanist proposal reconfigures these assumptions: (i) it opposes the existential principle to the inhabitative one; (ii) it affirms an intensive reading over the extensive interpretation; and (iii) the idea of redundancy replaces the notion of incompleteness. A posthumanist reading of the body is rooted in the relational assumption that the body is insofar as it is in continuous relation with the world and that it becomes within the very process of this relationality [5]. The body cannot be understood through internal recognition alone, as its being is constituted through an ongoing exchange with the outside, both synchronically and diachronically. Thus, the body always refers to something beyond itself—heteronomy—like a text that cannot be understood without its footnotes.

Reference to the external factor—often already implied by the body’s own constitution—differs fundamentally between humanism and posthumanism: (1) in the former, the body is perceived as inherently deficient; it requires a compensatory support that, being juxtaposed to the body, preserves the body’s supposed purity; and (2) in the latter, the body expresses redundancy, creating a virtual condition in which, rather than offering support, the external factor is a driver of actualization. One of the core aspects of this relational ontology—which precedes posthumanist thought and represents a sort of bridge in twentieth-century philosophy—is its challenge to the essentialist vision grounded in the self-sufficiency of identity’s predication [6]. The posthumanist approach thus offers an integrative vision of the external element, rejecting the ideal of bodily purity and the essentialist view of its predicates [7]. It emphasizes the importance of relational alterity but does not depict the body as a passive recipient of external influence. Rather, the body emerges as an active, copulative, and selective entity within a relational network.

In addition, the relation to technology sharply diverges between the two paradigms. In the humanist conception, the technical device is compensatory and thus remains external to the body [8]. In the posthumanist view the device hybridizes with the body; it actualizes and reorganizes it and is therefore considered internal to it. Studies on the influence of technology on somatic physiology [9,10,11,12] show that we can no longer consider technology a sort of exoskeleton but an entity that penetrates the body–hence, the concept of technophysiology [13]. The humanistic reading of téchne underlines the exonerative character of the tool: it is called to relieve the body from performing certain functions while also protecting it from the challenges of performance as well as the feeling of defeat due to its alleged inadequacy or deficiency. The ergonomic and compensatory idea, though, does not reflect the effect of disorientation and instability that every technopoiesis produces on human ontology.

This essay proposes a shift in how we conceive the function of technical apparatuses in relation to the body. Specifically, it suggests replacing: (1) the humanist concept of exemption, understood as compensation for adaptive deficiency or human incompleteness; (2) with the posthumanist concept of exuberance, understood as a process of expanding the body’s condition of virtuality and, consequently, enhancing its spaces of actualization.

The post-humanistic proposal considers the exuberance caused by every technopoiesis to be the outcome of a dissection of the body, a veritable reorganization of its parts–a plus of virtuality that evokes the body without organs [14]. This reorganization can release the body parts and therefore enhance their declinative paths. The technological dissection not only breaks the limitations implied by the correlation between the parts, but also initiates a virtual somatic condition, an epoché of the umwelt coordinates, thus opening up spaces of experimentation within a plurality of existential dimensions [15].

2. The Body as a Center of Relationship with the World

The body represents the place of the relationship with the world and the dimension that defines the subject’s manifestation based on: (i) Inherences—a priori or inherent contents that establish the space of available virtuality, thresholds of relationality with the outside, and the ecological position of the body; and (ii) References—external and specific interferences that actualize certain predicates and modify the field of virtuality. However, inherences and references should not be viewed in dualistic terms, as juxtaposed and unrelated factors, as we note in the disagreement between proponents of the prevalence of internal relationships versus those who give prevalence to external relationships [16]. In the process of becoming, what is initially a reference may, through incorporation, later become an inherence. Moreover, the body is an entity in continuous metamorphosis: (i) it lacks a defined alpha point, as it bears incorporative events prior to ontogenesis—a priori as phylogenetic a posteriori [17]; and (ii) it does not presuppose an omega point, since every point of arrival is not terminal, but rather a process of redefinition [18]. In the process of ontopoiesis, i.e., in the emergence of the human through its relations with the world, the subjective body is never passive. It possesses its own agency of incorporation, actively and selectively engaging with the world. This leads to a process of individuation [19] realized through both autopoiesis—existential self-affirmation—and heteropoiesis—a continuous dialogical relation with the outside.

Within the posthumanist framework, individuation results in singularity, and thus in the possibility of recognition in a hybrid identity [20]. However, it is not a static event that limits further becoming; rather, it sustains the dynamic openness of the body to ongoing transformation [21]. Unlike compensation, which functions by providing the missing parts, thereby reducing the body’s referential need and operating as a negative feedback mechanism, the process of hybridization increases the body’s referential tendency and functions as a positive feedback mechanism. It is the configuration of the body itself—its structural inclination to depend on external content (implicit intentionality), its virtual yet copulative nature—that renders its ontology fundamentally ontopoietic. Both inherences and references should not be construed as elements that make the body totally liquid or plastic: (i) inherences assume the presence of external entities as ontogenetic support (heteronomy), while (ii) references are not typically random, but emerge within an ecological field of probabilistic interference [22].

The starting point for understanding the ontological dimension is the body and its multilayered dialogs with the external world. These occur across the multiple thresholds of interface that define somatic existence. The body is generally situated within a well-defined referential space—ecological, social, or cultural. Accordingly, the process of actualization tends to follow a relatively uniform ontogenetic path. The uniformity of ontogenetic conditions led to the belief that the construction of the body was directed in a deterministic way by genetic information [23]. Today the advent of epigenetics has revealed the remarkable role exercised by the developmental environment in defining the type of ontogenetic translation [24]. In fact, the genome’s constitution already provides multiple options of phenotypic translation, a condition defined as polyphenism [25]. Yet the body’s virtuality remains open to unforeseen possibilities, which may lead to singular and divergent actualization processes. This is precisely the case with technological hybridization, which inaugurates new paths of actualization through a genuine reorganization of the body.

The condition of indefiniteness is interpreted in humanist thought either as a principle of self-determination, as in Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio de hominis dignitate, or as a state of lack, requiring compensatory cultural intervention, as in Arnold Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology. The posthumanist perspective instead sees virtuality as arising from the body’s redundancy. Moreover, the body’s capacity for enactment does not derive from disjunction or autonomous self-determination, but from its copulative activity, whereby the form it assumes depends on the references it actively interacts [26]. The individuation process may converge, if the referential space is relatively uniform—e.g., when determined by a pre-existing ecological or social niche—or diverge, if the body is exposed to events that: (i) enhance its virtuality, as with technopoietic effects; and ii) introduce it to unfamiliar referential elements.

This is where cultural anthropopoiesis begins: it is an opening toward new existential dimensions, triggered by unexpected relational events, or a surplus effect brought about by technological hybridization. It becomes evident that the humanist reading of technopoiesis—understood as a compensatory mechanism addressing a lack—fails to account for the destabilizing and reorganizing role played by technological hybridization. According to the humanistic tradition, each dissertation on the body tends to reflect and propose a one-dimensional image [27]. The somatization of the experience is thus transformed either into an immersion into pleasure and into the fulfillment of a physiological need or into the instrumental captivity of a set of organs that enable-but also limit-the expression of a transcendent subjectivity. This oversight becomes especially problematic when interpreted within a mechanistic framework that cancels any meaningful search for significance. Within the humanist paradigm, the body lacks relational capacity, leading to an essentialist and emanative interpretation of human predicates. A clear example is Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, where the human is depicted as capable of explaining its own qualities only through denudation, that is, by stripping away referential apparatuses.

This presumed somatic autonomy consists of both self-sufficiency and self-determination, It leads to the subject’s self-withdrawal, which transforms the finitude of the body not into an opening to meaning, but rather into its negation. This further leads to the subject’s attempts to escape the body, or to project its search for meaning beyond the body, culminating in ontological detachment. As a result, technopoiesis is either bound to obscure the search for meaning—becoming a kind of veil or obstacle to ontological expression—or acquires a soteriological role [8]. The body as a vegetative corpse, prison of the self and workshop of instruments, almost spontaneously leads to a dichotomy between the Epimethean and hedonistic dimension-stunned in an a priori determination that, however, does not allow individuals to get out of their bubble-and the Promethean dimension, whose tumultuous and continuous negotiation of meaning, makes it incapable of pursuing its path. Hence, it is destined to either accept nihilism or limit its task to the tautological will to power [28]. The humanistic body is placed on the histological slide only to reach the conclusion-already implicit in the premises-of a dead somaticity. Deprived of its multiple relational and referential levels, the body positions itself problematically at the intersection between the impropriety and the possibility, seemingly belonging to another dimension–one that demands transcendence.

To analyze the body on an autoreferential plane means to abandon the subject to solitude, offering a false notion of freedom that replaces participation and connection with arbitrariness and drift while simultaneously convincing the subject that autonomy is the highest expression of the self. The body thus becomes the center of existential despair. The body transformed into a husk before surrendering to death; it becomes a prison deprived of meaning. The technopoietic process also loses its somatically expressive character; it falls back into its secondary role of enhancement or compensation-always external and capable of expansion or discontinuity, yet unable to let new meanings emerge through somatic rearrangements across its multiple levels. Ultimately, the humanistic canon is unable to correctly read: (i) the intensive dimension of corporeality, its copulative protagonism in the process of ontopoietic becoming, translating it into a chemical-reactive, i.e., extensive concept [29]; and (ii) the meaning of technopoiesis, as it reduces it to the mere ergonomic creation of practices.

In my opinion, the great shift that the term posthumanism currently defines lies right here. It is a reconsideration of the predicative process through the overcoming of an autarkic-emanative concept of being. As a result, the two forcedly disjointed dimensions which we might call “Epimethean” and “Promethean” collapse onto one another. In doing so, however, they do not position themselves on one level-that is, on some sort of simple monism. They rather define a multiplicity of intentional levels of Dasein, each of which is not productive of meaning but revelatory of a meaning that does not concern bodies per se but their conjugative relationship. According to the post-humanistic proposal, the body represents the flywheel of the predicative redefinition, both in its hybrid and non-autarchic reading of its phenomenological expression and in the reconsideration of the somatopoietic meaning of téchne. This is no longer seen as a compensatory entity that is external to the body, but as a divergent and eccentric actualization factor. This causes a profound shift–which I consider paradigmatic–of the concept of human. Within humanism, instead, the human condition is considered a reflective and therefore autarchic, autopoietic, and essentially emanative expression.

Considering the human the result of an introjective relationship with otherness [26] marks a turning point in the shift from humanism to posthumanism: it entails that the predication does not arise from a process of purification of the contaminants but, on the contrary, from the connection with the world [30]. In other words, human predicates are always the result of a projection and an introjection through otherness [31,32]. The phenomenological manifestation of the body is the expression of multiple thresholds distributed across the somatic dimension. The process of ontopoiesis happens through these thresholds, which allow a twofold hybridization with otherness: (i) the ecstasy within otherness; and (ii) being possessed by otherness. In a posthumanist perspective, the body is the flywheel of the human. Thanks to its willingness to hybridize and its copulative vocation, it is the transitory and transient result of the predication [33]. Here, the human is considered a work in progress capable of taking on unpredictable connotations [34]. In other words, for posthumanism, the human cannot be inferred either from an internal recognition of Homo sapiens as a species or iuxta propria principia [35] nor from holding on to Descartes’ view of the body as res extensa.

According to a post-humanist approach, the human does not emerge from a disjunctive-purgative operation [36], as if in pursuit of an original purity, that leads the human to close in upon itself, upon its cogito, and to exclude the world. The human dimension emerges through an openness that welcomes otherness. Hence, the human is the result of hybridization, of being on the threshold, of a continuous translation of worlds. The human is neither the measure of the world nor of its own predicative dimension. By simplifying, we could even argue that the human is not even the measure of itself. In the posthumanist perspective, the human condition is neither realized through anthropo-centered gravitations nor by considering the anthropo-centered perspective as universal. It emerges by virtue of the body’s ability to bring the human being to an eccentric perspective [37]. The post-humanistic view marks a profound discontinuity within philosophical thought. Yet it would be wrong to consider it a form of anti-humanism, as this is only a non-anthropocentric redefinition of the humanist canon, based on some shifts related to: (1) the intentional nature of the body; and (2) the anthropopoietic meaning of téchne.

2.1. Intentional Nature of the Body

The body is not a set of mechanisms, a flesh-and-blood version of Jacques de Vaucanson’s automatisms, but a being that is: (i) evolutionary, as the body is continually renewing itself; and (ii) relational, as its functions are not based on autonomous mechanisms. The body exists as it always presupposes an external contribution and always refers to an external content, even just by considering its negentropic structure [38]. One can say that the body is an intentional entity in the phenomenological sense of referring to an external content [39], and is therefore the matrix of relationships with external elements, in a symbiotic condition to remove. The predicate emerges from these relationships. As previously observed, if it is isolated from its multiple relationships, the body loses its somatic vitality and suddenly becomes a corpse [40]. The liminality of the body should be understood as a relational threshold that continuously transcends its previous condition. By “relational threshold”, I do not refer merely to the exchange of elements-either stimuli or percepts-but to emergencies of meaning.

Subjectivity is a modal expression of the body in its plural reference to totality. The important philosophical frameworks on which this copulative vision of ontology has drawn include: (i) the concept of virtuality [6]; (ii) the principle of perceptual reciprocity [41]; and iii) the enactive conception of the mind [42]. “Being a body”-as opposed to “having a body”-means manifesting a plurality of relational levels as well as admitting the willingness of the somatic dimension to allow itself to be organized by something external (what I have previously referred to as heteropoiesis). This does not happen passively, but through active relationality. Arguably, the condition of the body is an amodal condition that presupposes intentionality–i.e., the possession of reference structures, connecting elements that actively and selectively bring somatic virtuality to actualize itself in forms endowed with predicates.

One could thus say that “being a body” means realizing one’s presence through moments of introjection that may lead to an ontopoietic implication-that is, the creation of a connection between the subject and the other. Therefore, one’s manifestation is never objective and disjointed, but always referred. Otherness is something that concerns me rather than a trivial other-than-myself [43]; it is never delineated as something separate, but is always represented as the script of an actor who, by making the text his or her own while bringing out its inherent singularity, must somehow decenter and disown themselves, project themselves outward, and accept being possessed by the other in order to fully inhabit the character.

What has been previously referred to as the body’s referential agency is grounded in a set of inherent qualities: (i) it exhibits selective relational thresholds—for instance, sensory organs that render it semi-permeable to external stimuli; (ii) it is endowed with copulative dispositions, such as emotions and motivations, which lead it to assign affective values to external entities; (iii) it is equipped with systems for processing the data it receives, translating them into information that shapes its expressive potential; (iv) it contains within itself multiple possibilities for structural and functional organization (polyphenism), enabling it to adapt to specific circumstances; (v) it develops through the effects it receives from the external world and through the exercise of its inherent faculties, thereby tending to reflect the context in which it is situated; (vi) it is already predisposed to be supported by specific external factors (heteronomy); (vii) it possesses systems for positional orientation in relation to the world, enabling it to locate itself [44]; and (viii) it is embedded within a specific ecological niche which conditions the likelihood of certain influences and modulates external fluctuations.

When we observe the body’s tendency to seek meaning through relationships and consider the referential principle as a logic of connection with the world rather than autonomy, we become aware of the ecological nature of ontology. Analyzing this principle-that is, the need for a non-immersive presence in the here-and-now as apprehended from the outside-effectively reverses the traditional ontological conception which, by contrast, entitled the subject to generate references to the external world. This is, in fact, a bidirectional process none of whose elements possesses referential centrality. The intentional thresholds of the body have different levels. However, they all refer to something external, just as the gills of a fish imply the oxygen dissolved in the water. This is what I mean when I say that a body can never be enucleated from its relationships, lest it turn into a mere corpse, thus losing its most important quality–what actually makes it a body: being alive.

The body engages with the world across multiple planes of referentiality. Let us consider, for example, the affective threshold, arguably the most defining characteristic of the animal dimension of somaticity [45]. Affectivity is marked by two fundamental conditions: (i) the desiring state, which predisposes the body toward action [46]; and (ii) the emotional state, which guides the body’s response [47]. The desiring condition is transcendental in that it precedes and enables the subject’s empirical act of desiring. In other words, it is a priori: it precedes the relation and causes that specific experience of relation with the world which we name desire. Being supported by specific innate motivations—such as the tendencies to gather, pursue, or explore—it is also copulative, yet it remains open to experience. To desire means to intersect the world through desire, thereby generating a desired-object, which is always the result of a particular relational experience of the subject. The desired-object is therefore not the cause of desire, but rather the consequence of the subject’s desiring condition. To consider the object of desire the missing link between the subject and the world is an a posteriori reading of the predicative process: it is a bias [48]. The desiring state is a relational threshold: it acts as an incentive to enter into an incorporative relation with the world via specific coordinates. The same applies to the emotional system, which confers value to the body’s conditions—emotions thus being aptly described as somatic markers [49].

The two affective systems–motivations and emotions–are interrelated. As previously noted, the desiring condition represents a proactive tendency, expressed through outward-directed verbal predicates (e.g., to pursue, to gather, to explore). When the body’s desiring tendency is restricted, its reactive emotional system—characterized by inward-directed predicates (e.g., fearing, becoming irritated, rejoicing)—is immediately activated to establish new relationships with the world and to foster self-affirmation [50]. One could argue that the various thresholds are related to each other through a matrix of conjugations that actualize their overall intentionality, reducing the virtuality that the single threshold would have in itself. As a copulative relational threshold, the affective system also possesses an implicit intentionality—that is, it tends to orient itself toward particular contents (for example, pursuing a moving entity, or becoming irritated by an obstacle), even if such contents are not entirely specified. The body’s involvement in its relationship with the world, enabled by the affective threshold, consistently exceeds merely physiological needs—whether proactive or reactive—and is not inhibited by the satisfaction of these needs.

Therefore, any event capable of disrupting the link between action and need inaugurates processes of functional repurposing, thereby opening new predicative trajectories [51]. For example, if the motivation to gather is no longer required for foraging—because society provides other means of acquiring food—this tendency may be redirected toward other modes of engaging with the world, such as collecting. Technology tends to encourage such processes of expressive exaptation by relieving the body of specific tasks, thereby making it available for new functions [52]. A first shift within the technopoietic process thus becomes visible. In humanism, technology preserves the purity of the body and merely potentiates the predicate, whereas in posthumanism it operates a kind of shift in somatic planes, enabling the body to recover virtual spaces to decline in new predications [53]. In other words, rather than resembling a probiotic bacterium, téchne is similar to a virus that can enter the cell–i.e., the body-and reprogram its functions by reorganizing the entire metabolome. The structure of the body defines certain bonds between the parts that any introjection can break in order to recover spaces of virtuality previously forbidden, and thus introduce new updates [54]. When subject to the action of téchne, the body undergoes a kind of reconfiguration among previously connected parts. As a result, each part can develop new predicative declinations. To understand the effects of this somatic dissection, however, it is necessary to abandon the notion of the body as a machine and return to the idea of multiple intentional levels.

2.2. Anthropo-Poiesis and Téchne

To grasp the posthumanist proposal of a téchne-driven exuberant effect, contrary to the compensatory and exonerative conception that has characterized the humanist paradigm, it is necessary to return to the virtual and copulative vision of the body [55]. First and foremost, virtuality does not mean lack but redundancy. Secondly, the acknowledgement of elective relational thresholds entails recognizing the animal body as an active agent within predicative relationships that unfold across multiple planes [56]. The alterities with which the body engages thereby acquire referential significance—significance that increases in proportion to the body’s virtual and copulative space. Understanding this dimension requires an evaluation of the body’s virtual and copulative potential and of the effect that téchne exerts upon that space.

The relationship between téchne and body is problematic, to say the least, and it cannot be reduced to the emanative synthesis that characterized the humanistic proposal. Technopoiesis is not only a productive act but also an immersive or dimensional practice, that is, no longer “expression of the human” but “production of the human” [57]. This is clearer than ever with today’s technospheric emergence—the outcome of the convergence of several technical and technological coordinates—in particular with the advent of digital emergency [58]. It is therefore necessary to profoundly reflect on the relationship between téchne and anthropo-poiesis, avoiding the humanist tautology that sees technology as nothing more than the outcome of human activity [59]. In my opinion, the questions to address are the following: What are the terms of this relationship? Is it possible to speak, even in this case, of a referential relationality? Is there a restriction in the anthropo-poietic process, or, conversely, is everything possible? and: What is human in technopoiesis, and what is the recursive character of the process?

Our phylogenetic legacy defines some ranges of virtuality: the human being cannot be transformed into just anything, nor transhumanized into something disconnected from what preceded it. As previously observed, each introjection of otherness changes the threshold of relationship with the world, so that becoming is not a negation of the legacy but rather a reorganization of it [60]. This aspect is crucial, as I have often heard it said that the predicates of the human fade within a purely referential conception, invoked in the name of a nonspecific state. This is not true. In fact, contrary to the classical humanistic view, I do not think that humans are lacking or deficient or at the mercy of a world that forges them by imposing its present coordinates. I strongly disagree with the transhumanist belief that the human being may be molded in just any possible way [61]. We are the outcome of a peculiar phylogenetic heritage that forged specific characteristics: humans have certain resiliencies, clear boundaries, and a range of possible declinations. Even a cursory examination of our body’s morpho-functional characteristics reveals that our species possesses clearly defined traits of adaptive specialization. Moreover, certain features of Homo sapiens—such as neonatal immaturity, a prolonged developmental period, neotenic features, increased encephalization, the complexity of parental care and social structures, a pronounced inclination towards tool use, and a strong mimetic motivation—render humans particularly subject to external influence.

Accordingly, it is wrong to believe that: (1) the technological support has only a probiotic, exonerative, ergonomic, disjunctive, and amniotic function, as in the humanist tradition, and that (2) it can be considered independently of the body that embraces it, thus reducing the human being to a condition totally divorced from humanity, as in transhumanism [62,63,64]. The support unveils new forms of humanity and introduces new predicative dimensions—yet always within a range of possibilities [65].

The main difference with the transhumanist movement—as can be deduced from the text of Ray Kurzweil [66]—is that while posthumanism values the somatic dimension of existence and starts from this to talk about an enrichment through technology, for transhumanism the body is an entity to be replaced through technology, so we can talk about a vision of techno-mediated transcendence. Posthumanism aims to interpret human existence in the light of technology, understood as an element that does not transcend the body, but simply modifies its qualities. Our body is not deficient, but redundant: that is, open to dialogical creativity, eager to conjugate with the world, much like a tree whose growth follows the organizational-directional coordinates of the light. The ergonomic and compensatory idea, pursued by the myth of incompleteness, does not account for the effect of disorientation and instability that every technology produces on human ontology. It is a condition of non-balance, excitement, yearning, as if each technopoietic act distanced us from a gravitational center of phylogenetic heritage. The greater the decentralization produced by technology the more the human reveals deficiencies that cannot be traced back to our phylogenetic legacy, but have resulted from new organizations of the body imposed by the support of téchne. No one felt the lack of mobile phones before these ones were invented; however, as soon as they entered the market, they created new needs. The compensatory idea of téchne does not hold. Furthermore, this explanation does not account for the fact that if téchne truly compensated for some ab origine lack, technopoiesis should decelerate rather than grow exponentially. On the contrary, the acceleration characteristic of technopoiesis can only be understood by acknowledging progressive expansion of human needs: téchne functions as a flywheel of connections and, therefore, as a stimulus for the emergence of new needs.

Téchne therefore fosters—instead of curbing—the process of exuberance, because it opens up new channels of connection to the world. The posthumanistic proposal considers this injection of exuberance an event that is a posteriori to every technological emergency: it is like falling in love; we become more powerful but also more vulnerable. Furthermore, it does not set a distinction between technopoiesis and ontopoiesis: téchne is one of our ontopoietic paths, as it is the inauguration of a new dialogical threshold. When technological support enters the body, it revolutionizes its internal organization. First of all, it dissects the body and opens up some areas of virtuality that the limiting systemic action between the parts would otherwise deny. As a consequence, it no longer plays an ancillary role, as in the humanist vision: téchne acquires a managerial role on the body. It is not ergonomic: it flexes the body to its needs. The outcome is connective: téchne does not make us more impermeable and self-sufficient but more connected to the world and in need of otherness. It is no longer a compensatory entity external to the body but a divergent and eccentric factor of actualization.

Therefore, technology does not produce protective amnios but creates new openings, new thresholds, and new exchanges of somatic exposure to the world. Whenever a technique or technology penetrates the body, it is always infiltrative, even when it seems to be external: it reorganizes the body’s virtual coordinates. The technological dissection not only breaks the limitations implied by the correlation between the parts but also initiates an exuberant somatic condition, thus opening up spaces of experimentation within the plurality of dimensions of being-a-body. Hence the feeling of instability—of anxiety and excitement, of power and vulnerability, of social uproar and solitude at once—that characterizes the contemporary world, so pervaded by technopoietic somatizations decentralizing humans from their phylogenetic core. This vertigo could be defined as a technological sublime that translates into a strong opening of the body, placed at the edge of chaos [67]. And the human emerges from its body’s vertigo, its yearning for the sublime, in its never-ending pilgrimage, in its need and endless quest to transcend itself and move beyond its own condition.