In the Introduction to his magnum opus, Die Gesellschaft der
Gesellschaft, Niklas Luhmann makes the following programmatic
statement: "The inquiries that follow venture this transition to a
radically antihumanistic, radically anti-regional, and radically
constructivist concept of society." In my essay, I seek to unpack
the ramifications of this move from an anthropocentric social
paradigm to one that decenters the role of human beings in society
and social theory. I propose that, in line with Luhmann's
intentions, we read his theory of society as a radically
posthumanist venture. Two interpretations of Luhmann's work stand
out in particular, for both have advanced readings that seek to
flesh out this dimension, namely those of Hans-Georg Moeller and
Cary Wolfe. Through Moeller and Wolfe's posthumanist commentaries
on Luhmann, I also attempt to highlight what exactly we should
understand under the term "posthumanism" and what a posthuman
social thought might look like. Following Wolfe, I define
posthumanism as a mode of thinking that follows "after" the
exhaustion of human-centered ways of interpreting social phenomena.
Technological changes and social differentiation necessitate the
rejection of models that would imagine society as a mere aggregate
of human agents, or even social rules constructed and shaped by
humans. Neither can we any longer interpret society as a collection
of human actions or intersubjective relations. Society is more than
subjectivity, and cannot be reduced to a set of relations among
humans. Society is more than the sum of intersubjective spaces.
Posthumanism is a coherent strategy designed to integrate nonhuman
objects, materialities, relations and systems into social theory.
As a matter of fact, Luhmann actually places humans ("psychic
systems") within the environment, hence ejecting them altogether
from society! The radical nature of his sociology lies in his
reconceptualization of modern society as an assemblage of
functional systems that have grown independent of human
intentions.
Key words: autopoiesis; constructivism;
posthumanism; self-organization; sociology.