Solidarities with the Non/Human, or, Posthumanism in Literature: Collected Essays on Critical Posthumanism, Volume 2

This volume collects essays written over the last decade by one of the founders and leading figures of the theoretical movement of critical posthumanism. The readings of literary texts gathered here, from Shakespeare, Keats, Camus, Vittorini, Kundera, Haushofer, Atwood, Eagleman, Crace and DeLillo, focus on ‘posthumanist moments’ in which questions of postanthropocentrism and the nonhuman become prominent, are negotiated and ultimately foreclosed. They show how a deconstructively-minded way of reading humanistically-motivated texts can help making these texts relevant for our so-called ‘posthuman times’. In doing so, these critical posthumanist readings demonstrate that literature remains one of the privileged cultural institutions and practices from which solidarities both with and between the human and nonhuman can be formed and negotiated. Front Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Critical Posthumanism and Literature 1 There Is No Posthumanist Literature 2 Posthumanist Readings Part 1 Rereading Humanism Chapter 1 Shakespeare and After 1 Shakespeare ‘after’ Theory 2 Shakespeare ‘after’ Humanism 3 Life ‘after’ Shakespeare 4 Shakespeare ‘after’ Technology 5 Shakespeare ‘after’ the Human 6 We Have Never Been Human Chapter 2 The Invention of the Posthuman in The Merchant of Venice: “... a Passion So Strange, Outrageous, and So Variable ...” 1 When Did We Become Posthuman? 2 Shylock’s Humanism 3 The Merchant of Venice: Posthumanism and Misanthropy Chapter 3 Hamlet and Posthumanist Politics 1 Posthumanism and Politics 2 Shakespeare, Hamlet and (Post)Humanism 3 Hamlet as Posthumanist? Or, Deconstruction Is a Posthumanism 4 Posthumanist Readings of Hamlet: the Spectre of Human Politics Chapter 4 Treasuring the Self: a Posthumanist Reading of John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” 1 Secret Treasures 2 Keats: Autobiography of a National Treasure 3 The Secret of Identity: “Ode to a Nightingale” 4 Romanticism ... in Theory 5 Treasuring the Self Chapter 5 Yearning for the Human in Posthuman Times: on Albert Camus’s Tragic Humanism 1 From the Absurd to Revolt 2 Tragic Humanism and The Plague 3 Today’s Plague Part 2 Animal-Writing Chapter 6 Solidarity with the Non/Human Chapter 7 Uomini e no: Elio Vittorini’s Dogs and Sacrificial Humanism 1 Human 2 Animal 3 Sacrifice Chapter 8 Animalities: Milan Kundera and the Unbearable Lightness of Being Posthuman 1 Dog Stories 2 Zoohauntology Chapter 9 “Not that I Am Afraid of Becoming an Animal”: Ecography in Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall 1 From écriture féminine to écriture animale to ... 2 Surviving: Postapocalypse, Ecocide and Postanthropocentric Writing 3 The Posthumanist and ‘Ecographical’ Future of Fiction Part 3 Life-Writing Chapter 10 Narrating(-)Life 1 Subject to (a) Life 2 From Life Writing to Lifewriting: Postanthropocentrism and Autobiography Chapter 11 Zoontotechnics: Cultured Meat, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Life after Animals 1 Zoontotechnics, or Life, in Theory 2 Meat, Cultured 3 Brooding 4 Speculative Fiction: Oryx and Crake and Cultured Meat Chapter 12 Microbes R Us: David Eagleman’s Sum, Jim Crace’s Being Dead and the Medical Humanities 1 The Microbial Turn 2 (Micro)Biopolitics, Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism 3 The New Microbiology and Symbiosis 4 Microbiome and Autoimmunity 5 Medical Humanities and Being Dead Chapter 13 Don DeLillo’s Point Omega and Zero K as ‘Posthumanist Literature’ 1 Literature, Posthumanism and the Posthuman 2 Don DeLillo 3 Point Omega and Zero K: a ‘Posthumanist Reading’ 4 Conclusion: a Dark Yearning Postscript: Don Delillo’s The Silence Postface Posthumanism and the Death of Tragedy 1 Tragic Times 2 The Law of Genre 3 The Posthuman Death of the Death of Tragedy 4 Posthuman Death: the Death of the Posthuman Bibliography Index of Names Back Cover