Crimes of the Present Future. From Trans-humanism to the Post of Humanity and Society

Abstract

The debate on transhumanism has been going on for some decades now. Two positions have animated the debate for a long time, one in favor, the other against, but now both seem to be superseded by reality. Proof of this is the expanding market of biotechnology, the mass use of experimental drugs, the multiple technical implementations in the body, the radical transformation of fundamental anthropological aspects such as nutrition and sexuality, and so on. In this perspective, two major issues arise for critical thinking: 1) What exactly does the transhuman condition consist of? 2) What are the characteristics of transhumanity and of the social forms connected to them? To begin to answer these questions, a socio-cultural study perspective is adopted by examining Cronenberg’s recent film, Crimes of the Future (2022), as a work capable of putting such philosophical and sociological questions on an aesthetic level. On one hand, a point of critical attention is identified in the metamorphosis of corporeality and in the fundamental practices connected to basic human needs as nutrition, sexuality, sleep. On the other, in the background scenery we can glimpse forms of an alienated and nihilistic sociality/society represented in the artistic and performative sphere. The film seems to suggest that humans and society are involved in a process of unstoppable disappearance and represents the time preceding a complete transhumanism in which the human form will be definitively compromised – properly murdered – in its entire physical and psychic complex. Cronenberg highlights the decisive question that seems to escape widespread social perception. Far from being a horizon or a prospect to come, taking the prefix in an etymological sense, trans-humanism is a phenomenon of transit towards the post of humanity and society and it is already the condition of the present time: it is our present future.