In this article, I conduct a contextual analysis of transhumanist conceptions of posthuman futures. Focusing on cryonics, nanotechnology, and artificial superintelligence technological projects through a study of primarily American sources from the 1960s onward, I identify three distinct conceptualizations of the posthuman future: Promethean, spontaneous, and scalar. I argue that transhumanists envision posthumanity as resulting from a transition that involves both continuity and radical change. Although these three posthuman futures appear to share an interest in predicting a superior “cosmic” realization of human destiny, they involve distinct “liberal” conceptions of historical agency. These include the unlimited individual liberty of the technologized self, the knowledge-ordering properties of the market, and the rational aggregation of individual interests over the long term. I locate these heterogeneous and partly conflicting conceptions of historical agency in the context of the postwar crisis and remaking of liberalism's future. I argue that transhumanist ideas about the transition toward a more-than-human or beyond-human future are best understood as manifesting a wide range of attempts at thinking about horizons of unprecedented change within the terms of postwar liberal projects. Ultimately, transhumanist futures shed light on the multiplicity of political temporalities that are required for thinking and writing stories about unprecedented futures.

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“凝视奇点”和其他死后故事：未来变化的超人类主义故事

在本文中，我对后人类未来的超人类主义概念进行了语境分析。通过对 1960 年代以来主要美国资料的研究，我专注于人体冷冻学、纳米技术和人工超级智能技术项目，确定了后人类未来的三种不同概念：普罗米修斯、自发和标量。我认为，超人类主义者将后人类视为一种既涉及连续性又涉及彻底变革的过渡。尽管这三个后人类未来似乎都对预测人类命运的卓越“宇宙”实现有着共同的兴趣，但它们涉及不同的历史代理的“自由”概念。这些包括技术化自我的无限个人自由，市场的知识排序属性，个人利益的长期理性聚合。我在战后危机和自由主义未来重塑的背景下定位了这些异质的、部分相互冲突的历史代理概念。我认为超人类主义关于过渡到超越人类或超越人类的未来最好被理解为体现了在战后自由主义项目的范围内思考前所未有的变化视野的广泛尝试。最终，超人类主义的未来阐明了思考和撰写关于前所未有的未来的故事所需的政治时间的多样性。