Mapping the Posthuman (Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture)

This book works to delineate some of the major routes by which science and art intersect. Structured according to the origin myths of the posthuman that continue to shape the idea of the human in our technological modernity, this volume gives space to narratives of alter-modernity that resonate with Ursula K. Le Guin’s call for a new kind of story which exposes the violence and exploitation driven by a sustained belief in human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and cultural superiority. In this context, the posthuman myths of multispecies flourishing given in this collection, which are situated across a range of historical times and locations, and media and modalities, are to be thought of as kernels of possible futures that can only be realized through collective endeavour.

Grant Hamilton is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He teaches and writes in the areas of literary theory, twentieth-century world literatures, African literature, and computational literary studies. He is the author of The London Object (2021), The World of Failing Machines (2016), and On Representation (2011). He is the co-editor of A Companion to Mia Couto (2016), and editor of Reading Marechera (2013).

Carolyn Lau teaches and researches on global speculative fictions, contemporary literature, and narrative futures in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Posthuman Subjectivity in the Novels of J.G. Ballard (2023).