The Future of the Literary Text in the Posthuman Condition

Science Fiction Studies, 2018

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2020

L ORDINE NUOVO PUBLICATION, 2025

This study explores the transition from humanism to posthumanism and transhumanism within literary discourse and analyses how evolving technological, ecological, and philosophical paradigms shape contemporary literary perspectives. By comparing humanist narratives—rooted in individualism, rationality, and anthropocentrism—with posthumanist and transhumanist frameworks that emphasize technological enhancement, ecological entanglement, and the decentring of the human, the article examines key literary texts that reflect these shifts. The study engages with philosophical, ecological, postcolonial, and educational contexts to highlight the ways in which literature negotiates and critiques the boundaries of the human. Ultimately, this comparative analysis reveals how literary narratives function as sites of negotiation, where human identity is reimagined in the face of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and global crises, urging a reassessment of ethical and existential concerns in the posthuman era.

Iris Murdoch once observed that 'human beings are creatures that make pictures of themselves and then try to live inside the pictures'. The post-humanist movement relies on the philosophies and literary theorists of the likes of Butler, Foucalt and Derrida, who originally introduced the fluidity of humanity's picture of itself. Through their thought-experiments and proposed ideologies, a new picture of the human was composed, unlike anything that came before it. As this framework became popularized and taken seriously, there was a natural drive to fit inside the picture through the denigration of linguistic technique and the implementation of technological advancement in order to substantiate the reality of this picture of humanity. Tracking the history of literary theory and the philosophical view of language, in the modern period there has been an ever increasingly aggressive effort to negate transcendent truth and decentralize meaning and its role for the individual and society as a whole.

The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2001

2025

Master's Thesis in American Literature Graded 6/6, Excellent. This mémoire explores the intersection of transhumanism, dystopia, and the cyberpunk genre through an intermedial analysis of William Gibson's Neuromancer, Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, and CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077. At the core of this study lies the hypothesis that these works construct narratives of existential alienation, in which characters struggle to find meaning in technologically dominated worlds that curtail self-determination. These cyberpunk dystopias function as metaphorical critiques of transhumanist ideologies, exposing the dehumanizing consequences of technological enhancement, corporate totalitarianism, and digital commodification. By engaging with theoretical perspectives on utopia and dystopia, totalitarianism, and postmodernism, this mémoire demonstrates how these works extrapolate contemporary anxieties surrounding digital technology. Through the themes of cybernetic augmentation, mind uploading, and artificial intelligence, they critique the utopian promises of transhumanism while highlighting its dystopian ramifications. Furthermore, the study examines how these narratives contribute to a broader intermedial discourse, interacting with other films, novels, and video games to form a consensual reflection on the risks of technological progress. Ultimately, this mémoire argues that cyberpunk dystopias serve as cautionary tales and critical meditations on the evolving relationship between humanity and technology. As digital systems increasingly shape identity and agency, these works compel us to reconsider the ethical and existential stakes of a future where human consciousness itself risks becoming another commodity in a corporate-controlled, posthuman landscape.

The term " posthumanism " was used for the first time in the critical sense that entered then common language by Ihab Hassan in 1977. In its almost four decades of existence, posthuman theory has witnessed several evolutions, transformations and refinements, not least because this concept does not name an homogeneous and compact field, but is rather a " discourse " in the Foucauldian sense, a multiplicity of different streams, heterogeneous and fragmented, held together by a basic idea: the notion that old humanism is over. This issue of " Lo Sguardo " intends to attempt a sort of assessment of the last four decades, in order to analyse the limits and boundaries of the concept of posthuman. The leading thread of this issue is thus the question: what is still alive and topical, today, in the question of the posthuman? What themes and trends have progressively run out, and what instead have come to the foreground? How did the questions, and most importantly the answers, to the problem of the posthuman evolve? The question of technology, that is of the hybridization between human and machine, is still for many the most " showy " trait of the posthuman, both in popular culture and for the common understanding within academia; and yet the triumphalism of a certain posthumanism – and above all of its transhumanist deviations – alienated a number of scholars, starting precisely with one of the " mothers " of posthuman theory, Donna Haraway. The fact remains that the levels of technology's intimacy and intrusion into the human have, if anything, enormously increased sinceA Cyborg Manifesto (1983), and so have also the oppositions to it (Habermas, Fukuyama), and this keeps raising inexhaustible ontological, ethical and aesthetic questions (decisive are here Bostrom's reflexions).

2008

This thesis inquires into the relationship between aesthetics and politics, contributing to an ongoing field of inquiry in the relationship of cultural studies to social action. Specifically, this thesis examines and outlines a media-reflexive cyborg textuality in the works and texts analyzed. The author argues that cyborg textuality engenders cyborg subjectivity (a subject's conscious medic engagement), which allows for an enhanced political viability of the subject. The author engages with and combines postmodern, feminist, and technoculture criticism in her inquiry. The author applies these bodies of theory to a trans-medic analysis that moves across media-reflexive and politically charged works in film, creative writing, and visual arts. The hope of the author is to show how one can continually arrive at a revisioning of enlightenment humanism through a rigorous engagement with challenging texts such as the ones examined herein. Through such re-visioning she argues that more effective social action and implementation of human rights can emerge.