After the Human: Artificial Intelligence, Subjectivity, and the Future of Knowledge

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Martin Neilan

After the Human

Name: After the Human
Price: 31.24 AUD
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ISBN: 9781067624118

Artificial Intelligence, Subjectivity, and the Future of Knowledge

Martin Neilan

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English

Aletheia Editions
01 May 2026

Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge; Social issues & processes; Artificial intelligence

What happens when the human is no longer the centre of knowledge-making? When systems produce insights we can verify but not comprehend? When we are saturated with our own reflected data until we cannot distinguish preference from prescription? When we become ""nodes""-elements in networks whose organising logics exceed us?

This book examines how artificial intelligence is displacing the human as what Michel Foucault called the ""empirico-transcendental doublet,"" describing the paradoxical figure who is simultaneously the subject who knows and the object to be known. For two centuries, this unstable structure anchored modern thought. AI is mechanising it, exhausting it, and ultimately displacing it entirely.

The book's central argument unfolds across two distinct but related regimes of displacement:

The Mirror Regime (Parts I-III) analyses how machine learning systems create what has been called ""the hell of the same""-narcissistic saturation where subjects are endlessly shown their own patterns and predictions. Social media curates feeds reflecting us back; recommendation systems learn then shape our tastes; optimisation eliminates friction and alterity. This is Lacan's mirror stage industrialised: perpetual identification with reflected images that are simultaneously us and not-us, culminating in model collapse-the crisis when AI begins training on AI-generated content, recursively impoverishing the archive.

The Node Regime (Parts IV-V) examines a more radical displacement: humans repositioned from subjects at the centre of meaning-making to nodes-elements in networks whose organising principles may not centre human experience at all. This includes governance through data proxies rather than persons, management of populations and environments rather than individuals, and the prospect of ""alien reason""-forms of intelligence whose operations exceed human comprehension even as we depend on them for consequential decisions.

The manuscript moves from diagnosis through critique to constructive proposal. The final section introduces ""public transcendentalities,"" outlining democratically governed epistemic infrastructures that could provide alternatives to corporate AI systems while preserving space for ""the power of the negative"" (refusal, friction, inefficiency, and the right to remain illegible).

Throughout, the book maintains dual commitments: to philosophical rigour grounded in Foucault, Kant, Lacan, and contemporary continental thought, and to accessibility for readers without specialised philosophical training. Technical concepts from machine learning are explained clearly; abstract arguments are grounded in concrete examples; theoretical chapters are balanced with applied analysis.

Original author: Martin Neilan
Imprint: Aletheia Editions
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 490g
ISBN: 9781067624118
ISBN 10: 1067624112
Pages: 282
Publication Date: 01 May 2026
Audience: Adult education , College/higher education , General/trade , Tertiary & Higher Education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Author Website: http://www.aletheiaeditions.co.uk

Martin Neilan brings a distinctive perspective to critical AI studies, grounded in architectural theory, a discipline that treats buildings and cities as material sites where power and subjectivity are shaped. Trained to think across concepts, materials, abstract systems, and lived experience, he applies this interdisciplinary lens to examine how AI infrastructures are reshaping human subjectivity.Neilan holds three first-class degrees, including a Master of Arts in Histories and Theories (with Distinction) from the AA in London, where his research explored transparency, governmentality, and modern subjectivity in Modernist architecture. As an undergraduate, he was his university's record prize winner, served as valedictorian, and received the Hackett Scholarship for Overseas Study, the institution's most prestigious award. A recipient of multiple national and international awards as a practitioner, he now works as an independent scholar, bringing together continental philosophy and technical analysis while making complex ideas accessible to a wider audience.After the Human draws on Michel Foucault's archaeology of knowledge and genealogy of power to examine how contemporary AI systems are transforming the conditions of human subjectivity. It is part of a broader research initiative tracing the historical emergence of optimisation as a cultural logic, from medieval religious practices, through Enlightenment rationality, to modern self-improvement regimes. The book argues that machine-learning systems are not only intensifying these trajectories but inaugurating a qualitative shift in how subjectivity itself is structured.