This seminar explores salient themes and tropes in posthuman critical theory, reading important texts in the field in light of contemporary cultural concerns such as the impact of media on consciousness, the mechanisation of everyday life, the interpenetration of virtual and material realities, and the transformation of models of subjectivity after the digital revolution.
Discussions will focus on three of the principal strands in posthuman literature: cyborg theory, new materialism, and a post-Nietzschean recalibration of humanist values. Other areas of critical study that overlap with these strands (animal studies and eco-feminism) will be considered briefly.