Posthumanism, memes, and the end of the real
Walter Benjamin called the twentieth century “the age of mechanical reproduction,” but his contemporaries were still capable of distinguishing between a celebrity’s real personality and her image. The twenty-first century is the age of digital reproduction, and it forces us to ask whether the general public still possesses the capacity to recognize such a distinction. Tyler Robinson’s text messages discuss Kirk’s murder with shocking callousness, but Robinson was no psychopath. It would be less frightening if he was. The truly scary prospect is that his blithe indifference to the value of human life is becoming typical. We appear to have entered the realm of the “posthuman.”
