Introduction

Abstract

Posthumanism uses technoscience as the impetus for a radical revaluation of human subjectivity, exploring the many ways in which technological innovations such as virtual reality have changed our understanding of what it means to be human in the modern era. Yet the concept of the “posthuman” is often perceived as a threat to the humanities, those academic disciplines dedicated to the study of human nature and culture. If we consider how we arrived in the era of the posthuman, we might reflect on some of the questions that are posed by Geoffrey Harpham — “Did we do this to ourselves, or was it done to us?” (2012: 101) — and whether the posthuman refers to a new form of the human condition or, alternatively, resituates the boundaries of an existing category. There are two basic fears, according to Harpham, that underlie such lines of inquiry:

first, that the human has been compromised even as it has been enhanced by technology, which has altered our social, intellectual, and even our physical lives; and second, that human beings are losing or have lost the attributes of individuality and autonomy as they become more tightly woven into distributed cognitive networks that include an indifferent mix of persons and computers.

(2012: 101–2)