Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures

Description

This volume is a critical exploration of multiple posthuman possibilities in the 21st century and beyond. Due to the global engagement with advanced technology, we are witness to a species-wise blurring of boundaries at the edge of the human. On the one hand, we find ourselves in a digital age in which human identity is being transformed through networked technological intervention, a large part of our consciousness transferred to "smart" external devices. On the other hand, we are assisted---or assailed---by an unprecedented proliferation of quasi-human substitutes and surrogates, forming a spectrum of humanoids with fuzzy borders. Under these conditions, critical posthumanism asks, who will occupy and control our planet: Will the "superhuman" merely serve as another sign under which new regimes of dominance are spread across the earth? Or can we discover or invent technologies of existence to counter such dominance? It is issues such as these which are at the heart of this new volume of explorations of the posthuman. The essays in this volume offer leading-edge thought on the subject, with special emphases on postmodern and postcolonial futures. They engage with questions of subalternity and feminism vis-à-vis posthumanism, dealing with issues of subjugation, dispensability and surrogacy, as well as the possibilities of resistance, ethical politics or subjective transformation from South Asian archives of cultural and spiritual practice. This volume is a valuable addition to the on-going global dialogues on posthumanism, indispensable to those, from across several disciplines, who are interested in postcolonial and planetary futures. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii The Critical Turn in Posthumanism and Postcolonial Interventions (Debashish Banerji, Makarand R. Paranjape)....Pages 1-10 Front Matter ....Pages 11-11 Posthuman Critical Theory (Rosi Braidotti)....Pages 13-32 The Overhuman (Nandita Biswas Mellamphy)....Pages 33-47 Nietzsche’s Snowden: Tightrope Walking the Posthuman Dispositif (Richard J. Carlson)....Pages 49-74 Exits to the Posthuman Future: Dreaming with Drones (Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker)....Pages 75-90 ‘Synthetik Love Lasts Forever’: Sex Dolls and the (Post?)Human Condition (Prayag Ray)....Pages 91-112 Front Matter ....Pages 113-113 Posthumanism: Through the Postcolonial Lens (Md. Monirul Islam)....Pages 115-129 Two Senses of the Post in Posthumanism (Pal Ahluwalia)....Pages 131-141 Information-Power: Teletechnology and the Ethics of Human–Animal Difference (Samrat Sengupta)....Pages 143-158 Durga, Supermom, and the Posthuman Mother India (Sucharita Sarkar)....Pages 159-176 The Paradox of Surrogacy in India (Amrita Pande)....Pages 177-189 Front Matter ....Pages 191-191 P2P and Planetary Futures (Jose Ramos, Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis)....Pages 193-214 Decolonizing the State of Nature: Notes on Political Animism (Federico Luisetti)....Pages 215-224 Spiritual Pragmatism: New Pathways of Transformation for the Posthuman (Ananta Kumar Giri)....Pages 225-242 Humans Have Always Been Posthuman: A Spiritual Genealogy of Posthumanism (Francesca Ferrando)....Pages 243-256 Individuation, Cosmogenesis and Technology: Sri Aurobindo and Gilbert Simondon (Debashish Banerji)....Pages 257-277 Erratum to: Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures (Debashish Banerji, Makarand R. Paranjape)....Pages E1-E1