What to Read If … You’re Interested in Posthumanism

This post was originally published on the former Worrisome Words site on July 27, 2017

Welcome to the second innovation of the summer for the Worrisome Words Blog: the ‘What to Read If…” Column.  This column will provide a bibliographic list of introductory and interesting texts on different topics – sometimes for academic research, sometimes for teaching, and sometimes just for fun!
This week’s topic is Posthuman Theory (my current obsession).  Zoe Jaques defines posthumanism as “a late-twentieth-century reaction to the anthropocentric nature of humanism” with “an explicit focus upon boundaries between humans and those that might be broadly conceived as ‘non-human others’” (Jaques 2).  As such, posthumanism has strong ties with science fiction, as well as being closely related to the fields of ecocriticism and material culture.

Here’s what to read if you want to know more…

Badmington, Neil.  “Mapping Posthumanism.”  Environment and Planning A, vol. 36, no. 8, 2004, pp. 1341-1363.

Braidotti, Rosi.  The Posthuman.  Polity Press, 2013.

Fukuyama, Francis.  Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.    Picador, 2002.

Graham, Elaine.  Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens, and Others in Popular Culture.  Manchester University Press, 2002.

Grusin, Richard.  The Nonhuman Turn.  University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Haraway, Donna.  When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Hayles, N. Katherine.  How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.  Chicago University Press, 1999.

Jaques, Zoe.  Children’s Literature and the Posthuman.  Routledge, 2015.

Ostry, Elaine.  “Is He Still Human?  Are you?: Young Adult Science Fiction in the Posthuman Age.”  The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 28, no. 2, 2004, pp. 222-246.

Wolfe, Cary.  What is Posthumanism?  University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Happy reading!

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