Posthuman Personhood takes up the ethical challenge posed by Francis Fukuyama’s work, Our Posthuman Future. Daryl J. Wennemann argues that the traditional concept of personhood may be fruitfully applied to the ethical challenge we facein a posthuman age. He draws upon Wilfrid Sellars’ treatment of the concept of a person within “the manifest image of man in the world.” Sellars proposed that we develop a stereoscopic view of reality that includes both a scientific understanding of the world and a meaningful place for persons living and acting in the world. Following Mary Anne Warren, Wennemann develops a distinction between two meanings of the term “human,” a biological meaning and a moral meaning, and maintains that all (biologically) humanbeings are persons. But, it is not necessarily the case that all personsmust be (biologically) human. After drawing on a contemporary version of Kant’s distinction between a theoretical possibility and a real possibility, the book posits that biologically non-human persons like robots, computers, or aliens are a theoretical possibility but that we do not know if they are a real possibility. Finally, Wennemann describes an ethic of self-limitation for the posthuman age.

Prophets of the Posthuman provides a fresh and original reading of fictional narratives that raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of rapidly developing bioenhancement technologies. Christina Bieber Lake argues that works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, James Tiptree, Jr., and Margaret Atwood must be reevaluated in light of their contributions to larger ethical questions. Drawing on a wide range of sources in philosophical and theological ethics, Lake claims that these writers share a commitment to maintaining a category of personhood more meaningful than that allowed by utilitarian ethics. Prophets of the Posthuman insists that because technology can never ask whether we should do something that we have the power to do, literature must step into that role. Each of the chapters of this interdisciplinary study sets up a typical ethical scenario regarding human enhancement technology and then illustrates how a work of fiction uniquely speaks to that scenario, exposing a realm of human motivations that might otherwise be overlooked or simplified. Through the vision of the writers she discusses, Lake uncovers a deep critique of the ascendancy of personal autonomy as America’s most cherished value. This ascendancy, coupled with technology’s glamorous promises of happiness, helps to shape a utilitarian view of persons that makes responsible ethical behavior toward one another almost impossible. Prophets of the Posthuman charts the essential role that literature must play in the continuing conversation of what it means to be human in a posthuman world.

This book provides a reimagining of how Western law and legal theory structures the human–earth relationship. As a complement to contemporary efforts to establish rights of nature and non-human legal personhood, this book focuses on the other subject in the human–earth relationship: the human. Critical ecological feminism exposes the dualistic nature of the ideal human legal subject as a key driver in the dynamic of instrumentalism that characterises the human–earth relationship in Western culture. This book draws on conceptual fields associated with the new sciences, including new materialism, posthuman critical theory and Big History, to demonstrate that the naturalised hierarchy of humans over nature in the Western social imaginary is anything but natural. It then sets about constructing a counternarrative. The proposed ‘Cosmic Person’ as alternative, non-dualised human legal subject forges a pathway for transforming the Western cultural understanding of the human–earth relationship from mastery and control to ideal co-habitation. Finally, the book details a case study, highlighting the practical application of the proposed reconceptualisation of the human legal subject to contemporary environmental issues. This original and important analysis of the legal status of the human in the Anthropocene will be of great interest to those working in legal theory, jurisprudence, environmental law and the environmental humanities; as well as those with relevant interests in gender studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy.

This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and ‘speciesist’ politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism’s roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of ‘normalcy’ in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.

Can a monkey own a selfie? Can a chimp use habeas corpus to sue for freedom? Can androids be citizens? Increasingly, such difficult questions have moved from the realm of science fiction into the realm of everyday life, and scholars and laypeople alike are struggling to find ways to grasp new notions of personhood. Posthuman Folklore is the first work of its kind: both an overview of posthumanism as it applies to folklore studies and an investigation of “vernacular posthumanisms”—the ways in which people are increasingly performing the posthuman. Posthumanism calls for a close investigation of what is meant by the term “human” and a rethinking of this, our most basic ontological category. What, exactly, is human? What, exactly, am I? There are two main threads of posthumanism: the first dealing with the increasingly slippery slope between “human” and “animal,” and the second dealing with artificial intelligences and the growing cyborg quality of human culture. This work deals with both these threads, seeking to understand the cultural roles of this shifting notion of “human” by centering its investigation into the performances of everyday life. From funerals for AIBOs, to furries, to ghost stories told by Alexa, people are increasingly engaging with the posthuman in myriad everyday practices, setting the stage for a wholesale rethinking of our humanity. In Posthuman Folklore, author Tok Thompson traces both the philosophies behind these shifts, and the ways in which people increasingly are enacting such ideas to better understand the posthuman experience of contemporary life.

When the Matrix trilogy was published in the mid-1980s, it introduced to mass culture a number of post-human tropes about the conscious machines that have haunted our collective imaginaries ever since. This volume explores the social representations and significance of technological developments – especially AI and human enhancement – that have started to transform our human agency. It uses these developments to revisit theories of the human mind and its essential characteristics: a first-person perspective, concerns and reflexivity. It looks at how the smart machines are used as agents of change in the basic institutions and organisations that hold contemporary societies together, for example in the family and the household, in commercial corporations, in health institutions or in the military. Its main purpose is to enrich the ongoing public discussion of the social and political implications of the smart machines by looking at the extent to which they further digitalise and bureaucratise the world, in particular by asking whether they are used to develop techno-totalitarian societies that corrode normativity and solidarity.

New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human – or posthuman – to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects. The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches—two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each. Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault’s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working on ethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics.

Sixteen original essays by leading scholars on Mary Shelley's novel provide an introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts.

"In Personhood in Science Fiction, Juli L. Gittinger does more than merely survey or even analyse the treatment of persons human, alien, and android across some of the most popular sci-fi franchises of recent years. She engages with one of the most puzzling and ethically challenging questions there is, in conversation with everyone from philosophers to neuroscientists to theologians-and yes, of course, our most beloved science fiction authors. Although engaging with highly technical matters, Gittinger does so in a way that is impressively accessible. The result is a book that is of great significance for all the aforementioned fields and many others, and deserves to be read and discussed widely. Juli L. Gittinger skilfully leads readers on a quest for the souls of androids and aliens, and in the process helps us discover and explore our own."--James F. McGrath, Professor of Religion, Butler University, USA This book addresses the topic of personhood-who is a "person" or "human," and what rights or dignities does that include-as it has been addressed through the lens of science fiction. Chapters include discussions of consciousness and the soul, artificial intelligence, dehumanization and othering, and free will. Classic and modern sci-fi texts are engaged, as well as film and television. This book argues that science fiction allows us to examine the profound question of personhood through its speculative and imaginative nature, highlighting issues that are already visible in our present world.

Personhood is considered at once a sign of legal-political status and of socio-cultural agency, synonymous with the rational individual, subject, or citizen. Yet, in an era of life-extending technologies, genetic engineering, corporate social responsibility, and smart technology, the definition of the person is neither benign nor uncontested. Boundaries that previously worked to secure our place in the social order are blurring as never before. What does it mean, then, to be a person in the twenty-first century? In Impersonations, Sheryl N. Hamilton uses five different kinds of persons - corporations, women, clones, computers, and celebrities - to discuss the instability of the concept of personhood and to examine some of the ways in which broader social anxieties are expressed in these case studies. She suggests that our investment in personhood is greater now than it has been for years, and that our ongoing struggle to define the term is evident in law and popular culture. Using a cultural studies of law approach, the author examines important issues such as whether the person is a gender-neutral concept based on individual rights, the relationship between personhood and the body, and whether persons can be property. Impersonations is a highly original study that brings together legal, philosophical, and cultural expressions of personhood to enliven current debates about our place in the world.