By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
DESCRIBING how human identities are set to be destroyed in an oncoming technoscientific world order premised on the logics of anti-Christ, Poxon (2001) says: “If identity and the order of God are mutually constitutive constructs, and both are opposed to the affirmative, creative force of the body without organs . . . conversely, the BwO (body without organs) not only undoes the divine order but also opens onto the order of the anti-Christ, an order in which personal identity has no foundation because the self-identical nature of God and the divine judgement that expresses and authorises it have been cancelled out.
This anti-divine order, then, is characterised by the death of God, the destruction of the world, the dissolution of the person, the disintegration of bodies. . . . It is an order in which the identity of the self has fractured beyond recognition, and the body-as-organism — object and product of divine judgement, foundation of divine order — gives way to the powerful nonorganic or machinic vitality of the body without organs.
Within the order of the anti-Christ, personal identity is replaced by ‘pre-individual and impersonal singularities and the identity of the self is lost.” . . . The order of the anti-Christ, in other words, is the order of the “affective, intensive, anarchist” body without organs.
Proceeding to explain on the techno-scientific experiments that are set to destroy human identity, notions of self and personhood, and set humans on a course of post-biological evolution (Cirkovic 2018; Dick 2003; Brien 2022), Poxon (2001, p. 49) adds that: “Of course, Deleuze is not unaware of the dangers entailed in an anti-theology that is (un)grounded in the disintegration of the body-as-organism and the dissolution of the self, and he warns his readers to experiment cautiously as they assemble the set of practices that constitute the BwO. . . . Within the order of God, creation has one historical moment, recorded in Genesis; thenceforth, because divine judgement operates according to its own eternal and transcendental values, imposing personal identity and bodily integrity on its creatures, nothing new may emerge to challenge those values and that order.
Freed from the judgement of God, on the other hand, the body without organs traverses a different order.”
The quotations underscore the fact that the emergent post-ownership world will be one in which sections of humanity will not own and control their land and other natural resources which are already being grabbed by global capitalists.
They will not own even their own bodies which are being destroyed in the ongoing techno-scientific transhumanist and post-humanist experiments.
They will not own personal identities which are already being destroyed through transhumanist experiments with synthetic biology, biohacking, technological implants and insertions, and so on.
They will not own their personhood which is already being destroyed using techno-scientific experiments, and they will not own their minds which are already being scanned and transferred to the metaverse or virtual world.
The emergent world is described by proponents of the ongoing experiments as a post-ownership society for some sections of humanity.
And, of course, the emergent post-ownership society is being ushered in at the back of transhumanist and post-humanist interventions in One Health, Planetary Health, One Earth, Pandemic Treaty, Harmony with Nature, Internet of Medical Things, Internet of Health Things, Internet of Everything, Internet of Battlefield Things, and so on.
Once connected wirelessly on the internet, humanity loses privacy, autonomy, selfhood, personhood, personal identities, and so on — and their bodies become cyborgs in the sense of becoming biology-technology hybrids.
It is a dispossession operation once again, but the dispossession appears in the guise of human techno-scientific enhancements and augmentations.
The scanning of human minds using nanobots and the transference of the human minds from the biological bodies to the metaverse or virtual world is meant to prepare the groundwork for the oncoming resource wars, but they also connect with the Russian Special Military Operation.
Russia is accused of kidnapping Ukrainian children who are then transferred to Russia. However, the question I would ask here is how different the kidnapping of the children is from the techno-scientific kidnapping of human minds which are then transferred to the metaverse?
Russia is physically capturing the bodies of the children, but techno-scientific capitalism is set to scan, capture, and transfer human minds to the metaverse.
It would be good if scholars in the various disciplines related to these matters address this question in the future.
The argument in the foregoing is that during the enslavement era, slave owners became rich by capturing and transporting enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the so-called New World, but in the 21st Century, global capitalists are set to enrich themselves by scanning and capturing the minds of Africans and other sections of humanity.
They are then transferring or transporting them away from the physical world to the metaverse or virtual world where they live as minds without claims on the physical resources in the physical world (Nhemachena 2023a).
Whereas during the colonial era, colonialists enriched themselves by dispossessing Africans of their rich and fertile land and their livestock, in the 21st Century global capitalists are set to enrich themselves by scanning and capturing African minds and then transferring or displacing them from the rich natural world to the metaverse or virtual world where there are no physical resources.
In other words, Africans will be ‘enhanced’ and ‘augmented’ so that they will be able to migrate from the physical world and they begin to live as minds in the metaverse or virtual worlds that have been created for them by the global capitalists.
Declared or undeclared, the resource wars are already raging often silently. Like the Russia Special Military Operation in Ukraine, the resource wars may have other names, even though their essence is still that of war.
In an era where global capital has weaponised everything, African security forces and establishments need not assume that threats to State security emanate solely from physical threats.
This entails the need to adopt multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity, and trans-disciplinarity in African security studies. Security studies do not lie only in the realm of political science, international relations, government studies, or war and strategic studies.
Security studies are now as much a province of sociology, anthropology, psychology, bioscience, bioethics, neuroscience, technology studies, futurism, anticipation studies, history, law, cultural studies, religious studies, nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, natural sciences, food sciences, humanities and economic studies.
Much as there is need for African unity to defend Africans, there is also need for unity in terms of bringing together disciplines that speak to new inter-disciplinary security studies of the 21st Century.
While Russia has survived the Western sanctions through setting up what is called Fortress Russia, China has Fortress China, Europe has Fortress Europe and North America has Fortress America, the sad thing is that there is no Fortress Africa (Hodes 2016; Bhandar 2010; Carr 2012; Papastavridis 2010; Stefan 2017; Junemann, Scherer, and Fromm 2017; Koff 2008; Kynge, Yu, and Lewis 2022, September 15; Huotari 2022, November 17; Buckley 2022, August 7; Riley 2022, February 27; Marques and Johnson 2022, April 18). Africa remains open and vulnerable in all dimensions. Also, while Russia and China have put in place their internet sovereignty, Africa remains open and vulnerable.
Even Europe has put in place laws to protect data from its citizens. Yet Africa remains open and vulnerable (Nhemachena 2022).
It is necessary for African states to consider putting in place robust structures to build Fortress Africa and to protect Africans from techno-scientific global capital which is seeking to mine Big Data from human bodies, including minds wherein they insert, implant, and inject microchips and nanorobots.
The problem is that while Africans, and the Global South more generally, are persuaded to be open and to open up their societies and states, Europe, North America, Russia and China are establishing fortresses to protect their societies, polities, economies and cultures.
While Africans are being persuaded to connect with non-humans, including animals, in the Harmony with Nature, One Planet, One Earth and Mother Earth discourses, Europe and North America are closing their borders and even establishing fortresses against African immigrants, and immigrants from the Global South more generally.
If connections were unconditionally good, the West would not be establishing fortresses against immigrants from the Global South who seek to connect with Western economies, societies, polities and cultures.
While the West is establishing fortresses against African immigrants, and those from the Global South, the West persuades Africans to connect with other humans and non-humans over the Internet of Things, Internet of Everything, Internet of Humans, Internet of Medical Things, Internet of Health Things and Internet of Battlefield Things.
And they are encouraged to even sacrifice their autonomy, bodily integrity, privacy and sanity for the sake of the connections through microchipping, insertions, injections and implantations of nanorobots and nanobots into their bodies, including brains.
The point that I am making here is that if connections were really just good, the West would not have established fortresses against African immigrants who are now being persuaded to think that it is best for them to connect wirelessly via microchips, nanobots, and nanorobots.