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This book works to delineate some of the major routes by which science and art intersect. Structured according to the origin myths of the posthuman that continue to shape the idea of the human in our technological modernity, this volume gives space to narratives of alter-modernity that resonate with Ursula K. Le Guin's call for a new kind of story which exposes the violence and exploitation driven by a sustained belief in human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and cultural superiority. In this context, the posthuman myths of multispecies flourishing given in this collection, which are situated across a range of historical times and locations, and media and modalities, are to be thought of as kernels of possible futures that can only be realized through collective endeavour.
List of contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Orientation
Grant Hamilton & Carolyn Lau
Section 1: ELIZA (1964-1966)
Chapter 1. Posthuman Bodies: Why They (Still) Matter
N. Katherine Hayles
Chapter 2. Quantum Machine Intelligence
Alessandra Di Pierro & Luca Viganò
Chapter 3. Berty
Angela Su
Chapter 4. Simulation in the Post-reality Feedback Loop
Kenny K. N. Chow
Chapter 5. An Object Misplaced in Time
Jule Owen
Section 2: Anansi (1526)
Chapter 6. An Interview with Rosi Braidotti
Grant Hamilton, Carolyn Lau & Rosi Braidotti
Chapter 7. Technogenesis as White Mythology
Stephen Cave & Kanta Dihal
Chapter 8. The First Virs
Danbee Kim
Chapter 9. In the Lap of the Synth
Stephen Oram
Chapter 10. Utopianism in the Technological Age
Lizzie O'Shea
Section 3: R.U.Radius (1921)
Chapter 11. Raised by Robots: Imagining Posthuman 'Maternal' Touch
Amelia DeFalco & Luna Dolezal
Chapter 12. Tender Bodies
Zheng Mahler
Chapter 13 Smartwatch
Jennifer L Rohn
Chapter 14. The Tablet Stroker, Redux
Christine Aicardi
Chapter 15. CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY: A Reflection on Machines, Meanings, and Metaphors
Sandra Rodriguez
Chapter 16. Biospheres
Ta-wei Chi
Section 4: Anansi, Reprised (1526)
Chapter 17. Storying Relations as Posthuman Ethics
Carolyn Lau
Chapter 18. The World After, Lost Eons
David Blandy
Chapter 19. Hello, World! Hello, Poetic Zombies!
Winnie Soon & Susan Scarlata
Chapter 20. Foreign Bodies
Pippa Goldschmidt
Chapter 21. Melanin Object
Ari Larissa Heinrich
Chapter 22. An Interview with Jes Fan
Ari Larissa Heinrich & Jes Fan
Section 5: Potnia Theron (6,000BC)
Chapter 23. Beyond Transcendence: From 'human' to 'Human' in Tchaikovsky's Children Series
Sheryl Vint
Chapter 24. Scoby skin, Yellow soup
HSURAE
Chapter 25. Posthuman Spirituality
Francesco Ferrando & Debashish Banerji
Chapter 26. The Left-hand Click and the Left-hand Lay: Intersecting Technology and Folk Belief in Posthuman Spirituality
Evelyn Wan
Chapter 27. Towards a Low-Trophic Theory in Feminist Posthumanities: Staying with Environmental Violence, Ecological Grief, and the Trouble of Consumption
Cecilia Åsberg & Marietta Radomska
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Grant Hamilton is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He teaches and writes in the areas of literary theory, twentieth-century world literatures, African literature, and computational literary studies. He is the author of
The London Object (2021),
The World of Failing Machines (2016), and
On Representation (2011). He is the co-editor of
A Companion to Mia Couto (2016), and editor of
Reading Marechera (2013).
Carolyn Lau teaches and researches on global speculative fictions, contemporary literature, and narrative futures in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of
Posthuman Subjectivity in the Novels of J.G. Ballard (2023).
Summary
An interdisciplinary archive of generative methods of writing, fabulation, and world-making, the contributors to this volume examine various aspects of a new style of living demanded by a more-than-human world.
