Transhuman Identities. Rewiring the Domestic Subject

Abstract

This essay offers an insight to the contemporary inhabitant’s relationship to technology as a key to the transition toward a Post-Domestic realm. It does this by contemplating Transhumanism as a model for what I have termed the Trans-Domestic interior, positing that a Postdomesticity does not yet exist. To do this I consider discourses beyond design and domestic environments that have shaped the understanding of the inhabiting self. Using evidence derived from Christian teaching, evolutionary biology, historical fiction and contemporary film, I explore how deviations from traditional socio-spatial arrangements produce other modes of domestic life. Notably, it is Transhuman inhabitants, who are shaped by technologies of connectivity, enhancement and surveillance, that will edge us toward an unknowable realm – the Post-Domestic interior.

Keywords

• interior
• domestic
• transhuman
• posthuman
• subjectivity