The most influential postmodernists were concerned largely with art, literature, historiography, and philosophy. The work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, not easily characterized either as poststructuralist or as postmodern, has also profoundly influenced posthumanist theory. Those gestures of subversion can all be seen as laying the groundwork for what Hassan 1977 labeled as posthuman culture. In each case, the reaction was an attempt to subvert claims to unity, simplicity, or universality. Poststructuralism and postmodernism are critical reactions to what are perceived as totalizing practices and rhetorics of the modern era. Jameson 1991 took art and aesthetics as his starting point and argued that postmodernism's aesthetic characteristics could not be separated from postindustrial economic conditions. Lyotard's work offered a critique of the so-called master narratives, which he identified in the ideologies and communicative practices of the modern period. Critical theorists developed postmodernism into a general theoretical category-a development exemplified by two very different works: Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition 1979/1984 and Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism 1991. The most influential poststructuralists included Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Paul de Man. Poststructuralism specifically critiqued the structuralist analysis of language, literature, and culture. What they sought to displace were the modernist truths: the assumptions of universally applicable aesthetics and universally valid epistemology. By the second half of the 20th century, the various poststructuralist and postmodern theorists were all engaged in projects of displacement. The era of modernist art and politics (roughly the first half of the 20th century) could be understood as the final manifestation of the paradigm of the autonomous, enlightened agent. Posthumanism, Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism Nevertheless, although the separation and elevation of man from and over the natural world were called into question by these 19th-century developments in biology, psychology, and economics, positivist science sought to maintain the subject–object dichotomy even in the 20th century. Scholars of posthumanism regard Darwinian biology, Marxist economists, and Freudian psychology as preliminary indications of the breakup of this unified Enlightened subject. This view of man as an autonomous agent, separate from though still engaged with nature, flourished in the Enlightenment. As a Cartesian thinking subject, man could examine the world and explain its workings with scientific detachment-as Galileo famously put it, in the language of mathematics. Modern science beginning in the Renaissance sought to achieve an understanding of the natural world that depended on human powers of observation and reason to uncover universal laws. Humanism was by definition anthropocentric humanism as a historical phenomenon drew on a renewed and reinterpreted appreciation for the rhetoric and civilization of Greece and Rome, in placing man (rather than God) at the center of its literary and philosophical project. Although the term “humanism” itself may be applied to a complex set of assumptions and disciplinary commitments developing over centuries (from the early Renaissance to the late 20th century), posthumanist scholars focus on a few core characteristics: above all, the notion that the proper study of man is man.
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Related terms, with their own theoretical nuances, include the transhuman and the antihuman.Īs its name suggests, a defining characteristic of posthumanism is its rejection of traditional Western humanism. The postmodern theorist Ihab Hassan coined the term and offered a seminal definition in an article entitled “Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture?” 1977. It seeks to undermine the traditional boundaries between the human, the animal, and the technological. Posthumanist theory claims to offer a new epistemology that is not anthropocentric and therefore not centered in Cartesian dualism.
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For these groups, posthumanism designates a series of breaks with foundational assumptions of modern Western culture: in particular, a new way of understanding the human subject in relationship to the natural world in general. The term “posthumanism” is applied to a range of contemporary theoretical positions put forward by researchers with disciplinary backgrounds in philosophy, science and technology studies, literary studies, critical theory, theoretical sociology, and communication studies.