Cavarero, Braidotti, and the Feminist Foundations of the Posthuman

Abstract

In this paper I examine the philosophical ramifications for posthumanist thought at the intersection of Cavarero’s recuperation of the maternal symbolic and Rosi Braidotti’s concept of nomadic thinking. Specifically, I argue that the glossing over of sexual difference in posthumanist thought in its most common current formulations means that it is blind to the flaunting of one of its own theoretical tenets and thus conceals its dependence on humanist primacy of embrainment over embodiment, rather than contesting it. Cavarero, Braidotti, and materialist feminism bring to posthumanism a very necessary corrective, that is, their philosophies countenance both the sexed body and the body in multiple, not singular, temporalities.