SKETCH OF SUBJECT-DISORIENTED (POST)ANTHROPOLOGY: SEX

Abstract

The article proposes an outline of a subject-disoriented (post-)anthropology that extends the post-anthropological/posthumanist and ontological turn in contemporary philosophy. The central thesis of the study is an understanding of sex (sexuality) as a phenomenon of anthropological disorientation that both produces and constitutes the (disoriented) subject. Three embodiments of this subject – the subject of kinship, the subject of love, and the subject of jouissance – are examined in the article. It is argued that human desire has no fixed object and cannot be reduced to a biological reproductive function. Rather, it operates as a symbolically mediated structure connected with language, imagination, culture, sociality, and communication. Consequently, sexuality appears not as a natural given but as a space in which disoriented subjectivities are enacted and performed.

The article maintains that the subject of kinship is constituted through mechanisms of relatedness, as well as mythological and cultural practices that compensate for the openness and nomadic character of human desire. By contrast, love is understood as an event of encounter with radical otherness that overcomes the closure of individual or genealogical self-identity. Jouissance is interpreted, from the perspective of transgression, as an experience of excess that exceeds productivity, decenters the subject, and undermines its self-identity.

Particular attention is devoted to the impact of digital technologies on contemporary transformations of sexuality. Algorithmic platforms, artificial intelligence, virtual partners, cybersex, and digital pornography are examined as factors contributing to the further mediatization and disorientation of desire. Digital sexuality is defined as a post-biological and post-anthropic discrete mode of interaction in which human beings enter into relations not only with other humans but also with algorithms, interfaces, and neural networks. The article concludes that sexual disorientation is a fundamental characteristic of human existence that, under conditions of technological development, assumes new forms and opens new possibilities for rethinking the anthropological beyond the limits of classical subject-centered approaches.