Philosophies

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.

Here I develop an account of what makes something a part of the body. The account presented is not an analysis of parthood generally, but an analysis of parthood specifically for what we are inclined to call a “body,” including but not limited to the bodies of human and nonhuman organisms. Drawing on influential accounts of parthood in the philosophical literature, with an emphasis on the core idea that something is a part in virtue of its contribution to the whole, I develop an analysis of bodily parthood that identifies what contribution to a body is necessary and sufficient for being a part of that body.

In the original publication [...]