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  • Essay / Unrealized Democracy and Posthumanist Art - 702

    One of the significant messages that Iain Chambers puts forward in his article Unrealized Democracy and Posthumanist Art, is the existence of a constant disruption in language, history and culture of the West. world caused by its own mechanisms of globalization, homogenization and modernity. The difference that cultural diversity brings to the Western world, through migration, challenges ideas of equality and acceptance in the Western historical view of democracy. What is at stake is how identity is continually altered and influenced, through inclusion and exclusion, depending on its level of disruption within the current system. Chambers emphasizes that modernity was built on a framework of “inequality” and that the West's resistance to difference, but its insistence on equality, are contradictory (Chambers 169). I think part of what Chambers calls "Unrealized Democracy" in the title of the article is the feeling that the idea of ​​democracy does not mean equality (which it should) and that a feeling Citizenship should include a person's freedom to shape their own future while being able to support themselves. This means that equality and opportunities for all should exist and be recognized, but seem to disappear in cases of phenomena such as increasing poverty in an unbalanced economic system. This is seen in the current global economic situation, where certain groups of citizens are so affected that they no longer live and are only surviving. These are consequences that affect identity, change how a person positions themselves in the worldview, and maintain equality at a controllable distance from difference. In his book, Migration, Culture, Identity, Iain Chambers discusses...... middle of paper ...... modern world and its resistance to any break from its long-standing identity framework, and the fact that the hybrid culture and globalization are its opposing forces. The inevitable arrival of a seemingly smaller and smaller world, I believe, brings us ever closer to posthumanist ways of thinking, and art in a posthumanist world is a tool that can be used to show how differences must be considered as qualities that form each of our identities, as opposed to signifiers that dictate exclusion. Works Cited1) Chambers, Iain. “An impossible return home.” Migration, Culture, Identity. London: Routledge, 1994.1-13. Print.2) Haraway, Donna J, “Situated Knowledge” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women. Routledge, New York: 19913) Herbrechter, Stefan. “A Genealogy of Posthumanism.” Posthumanism: a critical analysis. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 39. Print.