Wu Ming: Boundaries of Human and Posthuman Collaborations

Every time that someone asks me to explain what my research is about, I mumble and mumble without knowing where to start from. Are Wu Ming simply a ‘writing collective’? Wondering ‘what or who Wu Ming are’ inevitably calls for taking into consideration the multifaceted transmedia dimension of their activism and the role that on-line and off-line instruments, from their blog to the texts of their books, perform in it.

Well, it’s a mess. If you have a look at their about page, you will see how Wu Ming’s life is on-line and off-line, in constant interaction with technology – computers, social media, mikes, hiking equipment, (e-)books – and other human beings – readers, activists, other collectives. What role does technology play in all this? This role must not be underestimated or thought of as a mere mastering of a tool by a group of human beings. Wu Ming, as collective subject, as network of collaborative initiatives, would not exist without technology. It actively participates in the performances of the actions that constitute the collective as subject. From the perspective of Karen Barad’s theory of ‘posthuman performativity,’ the creative labour that Wu Ming members perform is the result of a synergy, an assemblage, between human and nonhuman forces. Wu Ming’s agency, no more a mere human attribute but an ongoing performance, as Barad explains, emerges as a negotiation between human and also on-line and off-line nonhuman actors.

What kind of posthuman monstrous thing are you talking about? A different kind of subjectivity, what Rosi Braidotti calls ‘a critical posthuman subject’ (49). Wu Ming are the members of the collective, but they also are more than that, they belong with multiple dimensions – social, political, cultural – on-line and off-line media, networks and experiences. In the twenty years of their activity, Wu Ming has become ‘a relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable.’ Wu Ming expresses both an embodied subjectivity – their members – and a network of relations embedded in a transmedia dimension. In this multiple existence, their posthuman subjectivity preserves their accountability, but found it ‘on a strong sense of collectivity, relationality and hence community building’ (49).

Well done, nice story, but why is it useful? The answer to the question ‘What Wu Ming are?’ is complex, but ethically meaningful. The posthuman answer that I give transforms Wu Ming and their activity in an experience of ethical reflection upon our relationship with the other, human and non-human. This reflection valorises difference, relationality and our being part of collective ensembles, networks of collaboration, human-non-human assemblages. It does not stem from a normative approach to ethics, but from a sense of openness to the human-non-human interaction and the unpredictable outcomes that no human agency can fully control.

References:

Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.

Braidotti, Rosy. The Posthuman. Cambridge, UK; Maiden, USA: Polity P, 2013.

Alessandro Caligaris, La città dei folli (2012)