Without Sex: An Appraisal of Žižek’s Posthumanism

Abstract

In this paper, I assess Žižek’s article “No Sex, Please, We’re Post-human!” as a provocative injunction to signal the posthuman ecstasy and deterrence. I seek to expose, rather than express, Žižek’s posthumanist perspective as a paradoxical intertwining of different aspects of perspectivizing a post-human being from the view of the end of sexuality – the background that informs a posthuman future. Žižek’s eluding the subject’s confrontation with the question of sexual difference to the apex of the genome project touches the delicate coalescing of the notions of ‘objectivity and subjectivity’ and ‘virtuality and reality’ in the fate of the body. Ultimately, he renders this inception of this tarrying as a traumatic encounter that informs us of the existential birthright of a true posthuman.