IJELS, 2022

Posthuman" does not mean after human or beyond human. It is only a reconfiguration of what it means to be human in the rapidly changing technological scenario. Though the Enlightenment concept of the human as autonomous, as a rational creature who by the use of the faculty of reason, can give any shape to the self as s/he wishes, has been discredited by Darwin's theory of evolution, Marx's dialectical materialism, and Freud's psychoanalysis, yet the biological and the technological world had not infringed upon the human, thereby reducing all claims of autonomy to sarcasm, as they do in the present era. The posthuman denotes, Cary Wolfe says, "the embodiment and embeddedness of the human being is not just its biological but also its technological world (Qtd Seldon etal 284). N. Katherine Haylesin How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodie in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999) contends that normal human beings become post-human by using prosthetic body parts adopting computer technologies. Donna Haraway has indeed conceived of the humans as cyborgs who are part human and part machine, the machine being a prosthetic extension of the human. In this age of Information Technology and social media, a natural corollary of the posthuman condition is Digital Humanities: This essay explores how the post human condition and digital humanities impact the interactive composition and interpretation of the literary text.

European Journal of English Studies, 2014

To anticipate a question that may arise in many readers' minds: why is a special issue of EJES on European posthumanism appropriate right now? Questions like this can have simple answers. And one answer to this question is simple enough. Posthumanism is in the air. It has been so for some years, and the themes and concerns that it names are now shaping English Studies in discernible ways, even when these themes are not designated by the term posthumanism. Overriding and recurring questions on what it means to be a human in the twenty-first century lend urgency to any inquiry that appears to suggest, through that fateful post-prefix, that we have already come out on the other side of humanism and humanity. We know, of course, that we have not-at least not quite yet. But instability caused by humanism's and humanity's precariousness on the one hand and their abiding, felt presence, on the other, renders posthumanism a compelling and apposite label for our times. In its most straightforward usage, this term is linked to the 'technological imagination' (de Lauretis, Huyssen and Woodward, 1980), or to what has been described as 'a mindset that enables people to think with technology, to transform what is known into what is possible' (Balsamo, 2011: 7). In more sensational usages, it countenances the conceit that it might not be hubristic to speculate that the human condition, or at least some aspects of it, can be reengineered. Away from those scenarios, the term accrues further associations specific to the current historical moment and its unprecedented challenges and affordances. Thus, for instance, questions about the nature of animal being and the extent of ecological responsibility have become increasingly pressing. Further, the evolving interfaces between humans, machines and prosthetic extensions lead to scenarios that have become conceivable only in our time. They bear distinct ethical and political provocations that raise issues concerning inhumanity, while the increasing interest in 'worlds and universes without us' scenarios brings home just

Love and Sex with Robots, 2018

This article explores how human-posthuman intimate relationships are thematized in both robotics and in science fiction film, literature and robotic art. While on the one hand many engineers and computer scientists are working hard, albeit in an altogether affirmative way, toward the technological development of anthropomorphic robots which are capable of providing social assistance, emotional support and sexual pleasure, aesthetic representations of intimacy between man and machine give us on the other hand a more nuanced and critical picture of possible future forms of desire. However, these fictional works are themselves very often complicit with the use of familiar dualistic paradigms as male-female or self-other. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's ideas of 'becoming-other,' scholars in critical posthumanism counterpose to this as an essentially traditional approach a nondualist reconceptualization of human beings and of the technological other, a reconceiving which is centered on 'encounters of alterity' and 'unnatural alliances.' The aim of this article is to expand on and to further develop these theories into what can be called a theory of 'new networks of desire.' According to this network idea, romantic entanglements between man and machine can better be seen as a specific form of power which does not leave us just where and who we were, but transformed. Desire is thus shown as a site for challenging our restricted self-understanding as humans and for transgressing humans' self-centeredness.

BMCR, 2020

If it is indeed incumbent upon us all "to make the anthropocene as short/thin as possible,"[1] as Donna Haraway avers, where, exactly, does that leave the humanist? And if (as Haraway herself notes, along with other theorists like Jason Moore and Kathryn Yusoff) seeing beyond the anthropocene requires the recognition that even the epochal descriptor itself flattens the distinction between ἀνθρώποι who are the authors of our current global catastrophe and those who are set to suffer most gravely by it, where does that leave the Classicist, when Greco-Roman antiquity has

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2010

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:

Literature & History, 2016

Posthumanism is associated with critical explorations of how new technologies are rewriting our understanding of what it means to be human, and how they might alter human existence itself. Intersections with analytical psychology vary depending on which technologies are held in focus. Social robotics promises to populate everyday settings with entities that have populated the imagination for millennia. A legend of ‘A Marvellous Automaton’ appears as early as 350 B.C. in a book of Taoist teachings, and is joined by ancient and medieval legends of manmade humanoids coming to life, as well as the familiar robots of modern science fiction. However, while the robotics industry seems to be realising an archetypal fantasy, the technology creates new social realities that generate distinctive issues of potential relevance for the theory and practice of analytical psychology.

Technics and technology are always systems and devices of acceleration-and thus are always also weapons.-Bernard Stiegler, States of Shock

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2008

2020

Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture by Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Essi Varis presents an array of theoretical and analytical approaches that encourage the reader to move beyond the traditional anthropocentric assumptions that still dominate literary and cultural studies. Five sections dedicated to different ways of understanding the nonhuman explore alternative models of the human/nonhuman relationship, while investigating contemporary cultural objects, including fiction, videogames, and experimental design.