Becoming Human in the Post-Human

A colleague told me recently that all their students are obsessed with post-human theory, object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, new materialism. They’re exploring ideas by Latour and Haraway and Barad. But something’s missing. “They’re forgetting,” my colleague said, “that it might be useful to become human first.” Learn the arts. Read literature. Study philosophy. Build the formation that makes you human before you try to decenter yourself.

I’ve been chewing on this for weeks now. Because, I’m one of those people. I cite Latour constantly. I’m fascinated by how we’re entangled with non-human actors, how agency distributes across assemblages, how we might think beyond the humanist subject. My whole Cultural Architecture framework draws heavily from this post-human turn. But my colleague’s critique landed. And I think it’s pointing to something crucial about how we engage with these ideas, especially in therapeutic, organizational, or cultural work.

What strikes me is that the post-human thinkers who actually land for me, Latour, Haraway, Barad, aren’t bypassing the human so much as relocating it. They’re asking us to develop a more sophisticated literacy about our entanglements, our attachments, our situated ways of knowing. That actually requires MORE formation, not less, but a different kind. Think about Latour’s method. Following actors through their associations. Tracing networks. Documenting controversies. This isn’t abstract theorizing from nowhere, it’s a narrative sensibility. It requires the patience to attend to detail, the humility to follow rather than impose frameworks, the aesthetic sense to notice what matters.

Consider Donna Haraway’s “staying with the trouble.” That’s not just a conceptual move, it’s a cultivated capacity to dwell in complexity, to resist the urge toward resolution, to practice what she calls “response-ability” in multispecies entanglements. You don’t get there by skipping over your own formation as a sensing, meaning-making creature. Karen Barad’s agential realism asks us to attend to how phenomena emerge through intra-actions, how measurement apparatuses participate in what they measure, how the observer is always already part of the observed. But to notice that kind of entanglement, you need training in attention itself.

When students (or therapists, or consultants, or anyone) jump straight to post-human frameworks without the humanistic formation that precedes them, something specific gets lost. The capacity for thick description, for one. You can’t trace networks if you haven’t learned to notice. The arts and literature train us in this, how to attend to texture, ambiguity, the grain of particular situations. Without that training, post-human theory becomes thin, abstractionist, disconnected from the very materialities it claims to honor. Situated literacy is another loss. Post-human thought isn’t asking us to escape our situatedness, it’s asking us to become more literate about it. To read the assemblages we’re already in. To notice how we’re being constituted even as we constitute. That’s a refined skill, cultivated through engagement with narrative, poetry, philosophy, art.

Comfort with complexity also suffers. Literature teaches us to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously. To sit with uncertainty. To recognize that meaning emerges rather than being imposed. These aren’t just nice-to-have sensibilities, they’re essential for actually doing post-human work rather than just performing it theoretically. And then there’s ethical formation. The humanities cultivate the willingness to remain in difficult questions, to refuse easy resolutions, to practice care in the face of complexity. Post-human ethics requires this, but you can’t shortcut your way to it.

So here’s what I’m thinking, without humanistic formation, post-human theory becomes just another way to float above the messiness rather than learning to dwell in it differently. It becomes a sophisticated form of dissociation, using theoretical complexity to avoid the harder work of actually being present to our entanglements, our vulnerabilities, our profound dependencies. It lets us perform criticality while remaining untouched by the implications. But when post-human thought is grounded in humanistic formation, when it emerges from people who know how to read closely, think carefully, attend patiently, it does something else entirely. It becomes a way of deepening our engagement with the world, not escaping it.

I’m thinking about this in relation to my own Cultural Architecture practice. The whole point is helping people and organizations navigate transitions, design emergent futures, work with uncertainty. Post-human frameworks are incredibly useful for this, they help us see how we’re entangled with technologies, institutions, narratives, material conditions. But if I’m honest, the clients who can actually use these frameworks most effectively are the ones who bring humanistic formation to them. They’ve read novels. They’ve studied philosophy. They’ve developed aesthetic sensibility. They know how to dwell in ambiguity. They’re using post-human theory not to escape their humanity but to relocate it more accurately, to see how their agency is distributed, their identity assembled, their futures co-constituted. That’s a different move entirely from using theory as an exit strategy from the messiness of being human.

What would it mean to “become human first” in preparation for post-human work? Not a return to humanist orthodoxy. Not privileging human exceptionalism or sovereignty. But rather cultivating attention, learning to notice, training the capacity for presence. This is what art teaches, how to attend to what’s actually happening rather than what we assume is happening. Developing relational literacy means reading widely, thinking across traditions, building the conceptual repertoire to recognize patterns, trace connections, hold complexity. You need vocabulary to notice what’s there. Practicing embodied knowing goes beyond just thinking about entanglement to feeling it. This is where contemplative practices, somatic work, creative expression matter. The post-human isn’t just a thought experiment, it’s about how we’re actually living. And building ethical capacity through engaging with philosophy, literature, art cultivates care, responsibility, the ability to respond thoughtfully to what emerges. Post-human ethics require formation, not just frameworks.

I’m still working this out. But I’m grateful to my colleague for the provocation. It’s made me reconsider what I’m asking of people when I bring post-human frameworks into therapeutic or organizational work. And it’s reminded me that the most radical thing we might do is actually become more fully present to how we’re already assembled, which requires exactly the kind of humanistic formation we’re tempted to skip.

Peace.

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