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 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).
