Research Catalog

Title

Posthumanism / Pramod K. Nayar.

Author

Nayar, Pramod K.

Publication

Cambridge : Polity, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 183 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

"This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and 'speciesist' politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism's roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of 'normalcy' in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature."--page 4 of cover.

Series Statement

Themes in 20th and 21st century literature

Uniform Title

Themes in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and culture.

Subject

• Humanistic ethics
• Aesthetics > Philosophy
• Semiotics
• Literature and technology
• Technology in literature

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 164-176) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Revisiting the human : critical humanisms -- Consciousness, biology and the necessity of alterity -- The body, reformatted -- Absolute monstrosities : the 'question of the animal' -- Life itself : the view from disability studies and bioethics -- Posthuman visions : toward companion species -- Conclusion: Posthumanism as species cosmopolitanism.

ISBN

• 9780745662404 (hbk.)
• 0745662404 (hbk.)
• 9780745662411 (pbk.)
• 0745662412 (pbk.)

OCLC

• 863676564
• SCSB-12701327

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library