Solidarities with the non/human, or, Posthumanism in literature collected essays on critical posthumanism, volume 2 Stefan Herbrechter

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herbrechter, Stefan, author.

Series:

Critical posthumanisms (Leiden, Netherlands) v. 7

Critical posthumanisms volume 7

Language:

Undetermined

Subjects (All):

Posthumanism in literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism

Essays

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Other Title:

Posthumanism in literature

Place of Publication:

Leiden Boston Brill [2025]

Summary:

"Guilty as charged, but let me explain ... and provide, first of all, some more context for this reported claim of mine. Originally I actually raised the following question: is there something like 'posthumanist literature'? And I did so in the context of a reading of Don DeLillo's Point Omega and Zero K. The phrase, 'posthumanist literature', I there argued, might well turn out to be a contradiction in terms, if one starts, as one should in my view, by differentiating between posthumanism, the posthuman and posthumanisation, on the one hand, and literature, the literary and the post-literary (or the question of the 'survival' of literature), on the other hand. This conceptual framework then leads one to further differentiate between a 'literature of the posthuman' and 'posthumanist literature'. Looking at contemporary examples, one notices that literature certainly engages with both posthumanism (understood as a discourse) and the posthuman (understood as a figure) and it does so in a number of ways. Thematically, such a literature of the posthuman (as I would call it, and not: posthumanist literature) is concerned with a variety of topics that are associated with figurations of the posthuman and issues dealt with by posthumanism: for example, climate change, AI, androids and robots, the Anthropocene, enhancement, postanthropocentrism, the question of the 'animal', object ontology, cyborgisation, dis/embodiment, technological enhancement, non/human futures, to name just the most obvious and in no particular order. Conceptually, however, a posthumanist literature implies a level of postanthropocentric (self) reflexion that necessarily problematises the very idea of the literary as a practice and of literature as one of the most central humanist institutions. Maybe the most obvious, pragmatic, question that arises from the kind of stylistic and conceptual challenge that such posthumanist literature, if it existed, namely understood as no longer written by and addressed to humans would be: who might be the addressee of radically nonhuman fiction? I can only assume that its implied reader would necessarily remain utterly human, but a very specific kind of human, namely one that is prepared to 'suspend' his, her, or its humanness and/or humanity. In other words: a critical posthumanist human. However, that does not make literature itself posthumanist. Its aim remains very humanist indeed: namely to make its implied reader a 'better' or at least'different' human. It is an invitation to become human 'otherwise'. If you wish: it is literature against itself, however, not necessarily at a formal-epistemological but at an ideological-ontological level. The following readings will hopefully illustrate what I mean by these distinctions. The critical posthumanist approach I outline in my reading of DeLillo's late fiction (cf. below), and which I am advocating in all the readings collected in this volume, might serve as an example of reading contemporary literature through thwe outlined 'diffraction' of the posthuman and posthumanism. This does not mean that Don DeLillo (or indeed any of the other writes discussed in this volume) is a posthumanist writer. However, DeLillo's work, especially his more recent novels (from Underworld onwards) have been reflecting themes that are often associated with posthumanism: digitalisation, embodiment, globalisation, terrorism, artificial intelligence and climate change. In Zero K, DeLillo specifically and critically engages with what he actually names 'posthumanism'. However, the ideology that pushes Ross Lockhart, one of the main characters in Zero K, towards investing into future (cryogenic) technology is actually closer to transhumanist extropianism: "We want to stretch the boundaries of what it means to be human - stretch and then surpass. We want to do whatever we are capable of doing in order to alter human thought and bend the energies of civilization". A critical posthumanist reading DeLillo (and other writing that engages with human self-reflection outside anthropocentrism) therefore needs to track the tension between this transhumanist incarnation of the posthuman in DeLillo's novel and articulate its context, namely the underlying process of posthumanisation that may be seen at work in the changing role of media - or what one might call the 'digital turn' in DeLillo's media ontology - which, in turn, leads to the question of literature and its 'survival' under these conditions. Paul Sheehan was certainly right in highlighting the tension that inhabits this kind of literature that engages with the posthuman when he asked: Is [the posthuman] a utopian aspiration, a cautionary critique, an evolutionary end-point? Is the posthuman era upon us, or must it remain a permanent possibility, forever just out of reach?"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Front Cover

Half Title

Series Information

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Critical Posthumanism and Literature

1 There Is No Posthumanist Literature

2 Posthumanist Readings

Part 1 Rereading Humanism

Chapter 1 Shakespeare and After

1 Shakespeare 'after' Theory

2 Shakespeare 'after' Humanism

3 Life 'after' Shakespeare

4 Shakespeare 'after' Technology

5 Shakespeare 'after' the Human

6 We Have Never Been Human

Chapter 2 The Invention of the Posthuman in The Merchant of Venice: "... a Passion So Strange, Outrageous, and So Variable ..."

1 When Did We Become Posthuman?

2 Shylock's Humanism

3 The Merchant of Venice: Posthumanism and Misanthropy

Chapter 3 Hamlet and Posthumanist Politics

1 Posthumanism and Politics

2 Shakespeare, Hamlet and (Post)Humanism

3 Hamlet as Posthumanist? Or, Deconstruction Is a Posthumanism

4 Posthumanist Readings of Hamlet: the Spectre of Human Politics

Chapter 4 Treasuring the Self: a Posthumanist Reading of John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"

1 Secret Treasures

2 Keats: Autobiography of a National Treasure

3 The Secret of Identity: "Ode to a Nightingale"

4 Romanticism ... in Theory

5 Treasuring the Self

Chapter 5 Yearning for the Human in Posthuman Times: on Albert Camus's Tragic Humanism

1 From the Absurd to Revolt

2 Tragic Humanism and The Plague

3 Today's Plague

Part 2 Animal-Writing

Chapter 6 Solidarity with the Non/Human

Chapter 7 Uomini e no: Elio Vittorini's Dogs and Sacrificial Humanism

1 Human

2 Animal

3 Sacrifice

Chapter 8 Animalities: Milan Kundera and the Unbearable Lightness of Being Posthuman

1 Dog Stories

2 Zoohauntology

Chapter 9 "Not that I Am Afraid of Becoming an Animal": Ecography in Marlen Haushofer's The Wall

1 From écriture féminine to écriture animale to ...

2 Surviving: Postapocalypse, Ecocide and Postanthropocentric Writing

3 The Posthumanist and 'Ecographical' Future of Fiction

Part 3 Life-Writing

Chapter 10 Narrating(-)Life

1 Subject to (a) Life

2 From Life Writing to Lifewriting: Postanthropocentrism and Autobiography

Chapter 11 Zoontotechnics: Cultured Meat, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Life after Animals

1 Zoontotechnics, or Life, in Theory

2 Meat, Cultured

3 Brooding

4 Speculative Fiction: Oryx and Crake and Cultured Meat

Chapter 12 Microbes R Us: David Eagleman's Sum, Jim Crace's Being Dead and the Medical Humanities

1 The Microbial Turn

2 (Micro)Biopolitics, Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism

3 The New Microbiology and Symbiosis

4 Microbiome and Autoimmunity

5 Medical Humanities and Being Dead

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Print version record

ISBN:

9789004711358

900471135X

OCLC:

1472149606

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license