Lecture by Rosi Braidotti

The anthropocentric view which has been the underlying principle of European humanist culture in the last few centuries is progressively being dismantled. First, feminist and postcolonial theories ousted the white man as the key focus for understanding the world and now, in recent years, science has been revealing our genetic closeness to animals while also developing forms of artificial intelligence that are more powerful than human intelligence. Although humans are the species which has left the most obvious mark on Earth, Rosi Braidotti describes a not too far distant future in which the human species will cease to be the measure of all things. In this post-human world one of the biggest questions we will have to face will be what has been, and what will be our link with different forms of old and new, pre-existent and created human otherness. Braidotti believes that this is an essential moment for reconsidering our relationship with what has been the quintessential Other: the animal.