The Posthuman Condition in 21st Century Literature and Culture

More than a decade after its first definitions, critical posthumanism has become consolidated as a key discourse for the understanding of our contemporary state of being within what has been called the paradigm of posthumanity, but also, crucially, as an ideology and a praxis that guides our engagements with the world around us. This double dimension characterizes the contributions to this volume. They resort to critical posthumanism in its most recent developments as a set of tools for critical and cultural analysis of our posthuman times, as posthuman(ist) concerns manifest in our cultural products. This volume studies the most recent evolutions in the field of critical posthumanism as represented in key novels and other (screened) popular cultural products produced in the first and second decades of the twenty-first century. Resorting to the analytical tools provided by critical posthumanist theory in cross-disciplinary dialogue with other fields—such as transhumanism, feminist, gender and queer theory, vulnerability studies, new materialism, critical animal studies and environmental theory—the scholars whose work this volume showcases bear witness to how literature and popular culture have been influenced and impressed by posthumanism. 

Chapters 1, 5, 7,8 and 12 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via Springerlink.