Death of the PostHuman: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 1

by Claire Colebrook

Death of the PostHuman undertakes a series of critical encounters with the legacy of what had come to be known as ‘theory,’ and its contemporary supposedly post-human aftermath. There can be no redemptive post-human future in which the myopia and anthropocentrism of the species finds an exit and manages to emerge with ecology and life. At the same time, what has come to be known as the human - despite its normative intensity - can provide neither foundation nor critical lever in the Anthropocene epoch. Death of the PostHuman argues for a twenty-first century deconstruction of ecological and seemingly post-human futures.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Claire Colebrook is an Australian cultural theorist, currently appointed Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. She has published numerous works on Gilles Deleuze, visual art, poetry, queer theory, film studies, contemporary literature, theory, cultural studies and visual culture.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Colebrook's essays on humanism, the posthuman, and extinction. For Colebrook humanism is about, well, humans, and posthumanism is about us again, but merged with technology or animals or planetary ecology. Extinction (or the 'inhuman'), as I understood it, was the follow through on this trend. The question she poses is why we continue to talk about how to survive rather than discussing if we have a right to survive.

"We are not just losing one of our critical powers – our power to represent or synthesize what is not ourselves – we are losing our very selfhood. For ‘we’ are – as human, as identities – just this evolved synthesizing power. … Precisely at the moment of its own loss the human animal becomes aware of what makes it human – meaning, empathy, art, morality – but can only recognize those capacities that distinguish humanity at the moment that they are threatened with extinction."

"In short, one may say that it is precisely at the point in humanity’s history when the question of the acceptability of the species ought to be asked that this very question mutates into a defense mechanism. By asking how we will survive into the future, by anticipating an end unless we adapt, we repress the question of whether the survival of what has come to be known as life is something we should continue to admit as the only acceptable option." (p.202)

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag of incredibly well-written essays. Take what you can use, ignore the rest.

[Bean Wagon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good.