1st Edition

Mapping the Posthuman

Edited By Grant Hamilton, Carolyn Lau Copyright 2024
346 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

346 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

346 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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... Read more

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction: An Orientation

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

PART I

ELIZA (1964–1966)

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

1 Posthuman Bodies: Why They (Still) Matter

N. Katherine Hayles

2 Quantum Machine Intelligence

Alessandra Di Pierro and Luca Vigano

3 Berty

Angela Su

4 Simulation in the Post-reality Feedback Loop

Kenny K.N. Chow

5 An Object Misplaced in Time

Jule Owen

PART II

Anansi (1526)

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

6 An Interview with Rosi Braidotti

Grant Hamilton, Carolyn Lau, and Rosi Braidotti

7 Technogenesis as White Mythology

Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal

8 The First VIRS

Danbee Kim

9 In the Lap of the Synth

Stephen Oram

10 Utopianism in the Technological Age

Lizzie O’shea

PART III

R.U.Radius (1921)

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

11 Raised by Robots: Imagining Posthuman "Maternal" Touch

Amelia Defalco and Luna Dolezal

12 Tender Bodies

Zheng Mahler

13 Smartwatch

Jennifer L. Rohn

14 The Tablet Stroker, Redux

Christine Aicardi

15 CHOM5KY vs. CHOMSKY: A Reflection on Machines, Meanings, and Metaphors

Sandra Rodriguez

16 Biospheres

Ta-Wei Chi, Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich

PART IV

Anansi, Reprised (1526)

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

17 Storying Relations as Posthuman Ethics

Carolyn Lau

18 The World After, Lost Eons

David Blandy

19 Hello, World! Hello, Poetic Zombies!

Winnie Soon and Susan Scarlata

20 Foreign Bodies

Pippa Goldschmidt

21 Melanin Object

Ari Larissa Heinrich

22 An Interview with Jes Fan

Ari Larissa Heinrich and Jes Fan

PART V

Potnia Theron (6000 BC)

Grant Hamilton and Carolyn Lau

23 Beyond Transcendence: From "human" to "Human" in Tchaikovsky’s Children Series

Sherryl Vint

24 Scoby skin, Yellow soup

Hsurae

25 Posthuman Spirituality

Francesca Ferrando and Debashish Banerji

26 The Left-hand Click and the Left-hand Lay: Intersecting Technology and Folk Belief in Posthuman Spirituality

Evelyn Wan

27 Towards a Low-Trophic Theory in Feminist Posthumanities: Staying with Environmental Violence, Ecological Grief, and the Trouble of Consumption

Cecilia Asberg and Marietta Radomska

Bibliography

Index

Biography

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).