| Abstract |
"Guilty as charged, but let me explain ... and provide, first of all, some more context for this reported claim of mine. Originally I actually raised the following question: is there something like 'posthumanist literature'? And I did so in the context of a reading of Don DeLillo's Point Omega and Zero K. The phrase, 'posthumanist literature', I there argued, might well turn out to be a contradiction in terms, if one starts, as one should in my view, by differentiating between posthumanism, the posthuman and posthumanisation, on the one hand, and literature, the literary and the post-literary (or the question of the 'survival' of literature), on the other hand. This conceptual framework then leads one to further differentiate between a 'literature of the posthuman' and 'posthumanist literature'. Looking at contemporary examples, one notices that literature certainly engages with both posthumanism (understood as a discourse) and the posthuman (understood as a figure) and it does so in a number of ways. Thematically, such a literature of the posthuman (as I would call it, and not: posthumanist literature) is concerned with a variety of topics that are associated with figurations of the posthuman and issues dealt with by posthumanism: for example, climate change, AI, androids and robots, the Anthropocene, enhancement, postanthropocentrism, the question of the 'animal', object ontology, cyborgisation, dis/embodiment, technological enhancement, non/human futures, to name just the most obvious and in no particular order. Conceptually, however, a posthumanist literature implies a level of postanthropocentric (self) reflexion that necessarily problematises the very idea of the literary as a practice and of literature as one of the most central humanist institutions. Maybe the most obvious, pragmatic, question that arises from the kind of stylistic and conceptual challenge that such posthumanist literature, if it existed, namely understood as no longer written by and addressed to humans would be: who might be the addressee of radically nonhuman fiction? I can only assume that its implied reader would necessarily remain utterly human, but a very specific kind of human, namely one that is prepared to 'suspend' his, her, or its humanness and/or humanity. In other words: a critical posthumanist human. However, that does not make literature itself posthumanist. Its aim remains very humanist indeed: namely to make its implied reader a 'better' or at least'different' human. It is an invitation to become human 'otherwise'. If you wish: it is literature against itself, however, not necessarily at a formal-epistemological but at an ideological-ontological level. The following readings will hopefully illustrate what I mean by these distinctions. The critical posthumanist approach I outline in my reading of DeLillo's late fiction (cf. below), and which I am advocating in all the readings collected in this volume, might serve as an example of reading contemporary literature through thwe outlined 'diffraction' of the posthuman and posthumanism. This does not mean that Don DeLillo (or indeed any of the other writes discussed in this volume) is a posthumanist writer. However, DeLillo's work, especially his more recent novels (from Underworld onwards) have been reflecting themes that are often associated with posthumanism: digitalisation, embodiment, globalisation, terrorism, artificial intelligence and climate change. In Zero K, DeLillo specifically and critically engages with what he actually names 'posthumanism'. However, the ideology that pushes Ross Lockhart, one of the main characters in Zero K, towards investing into future (cryogenic) technology is actually closer to transhumanist extropianism: "We want to stretch the boundaries of what it means to be human - stretch and then surpass. We want to do whatever we are capable of doing in order to alter human thought and bend the energies of civilization". A critical posthumanist reading DeLillo (and other writing that engages with human self-reflection outside anthropocentrism) therefore needs to track the tension between this transhumanist incarnation of the posthuman in DeLillo's novel and articulate its context, namely the underlying process of posthumanisation that may be seen at work in the changing role of media - or what one might call the 'digital turn' in DeLillo's media ontology - which, in turn, leads to the question of literature and its 'survival' under these conditions. Paul Sheehan was certainly right in highlighting the tension that inhabits this kind of literature that engages with the posthuman when he asked: Is [the posthuman] a utopian aspiration, a cautionary critique, an evolutionary end-point? Is the posthuman era upon us, or must it remain a permanent possibility, forever just out of reach?"-- Provided by publisher. |
