Post Humanism

Overview

The term "posthuman" is used to describe the human being who has become enabled, dependant, or taken over by various "non-normal" additions. Katherine Hayles is the scholar whose name is most often associated with the term "posthuman".

Notions of the technology invaded or dependant human being are common in science fiction, especially cyberpunk. For many scholars, the idea of the cyborg is a metaphor for reconsidering current society. Many consider that the use of digital communications and virtual environments, often referred to as "infomatics", qualifies modernised people as "posthuman".   For others, it is clear that we are already literally, physically dependant upon technology.

Reading

"Review of How We Became Posthuman"   by John Bonnett, in Journal of the Association for History and Computing Viluume 3, No 3, November 2000.

http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCIII3/P-REVIEWS/hayles.html

" Cyborgs, New Technology and the Body: The Changing Nature of Garment" by Anne Farren and Andrew Hutchison, in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture

Grey, Chris Hables. 2001. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age .

New York: Routledge.

Hayles, Katherine N. 1999. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

More

An essay on how Hayles' notions interact with those of Lacan and other French theorists .

  "The Lacanian Conspiracy" by Ted Hiebert