I want to see things as they are
without me. Why, I don’t know
As a kid I always looked
at roadkill close up, and poked
a stick into it. I want to look at death
with eyes like my own baby eyes,
not blinded by knowledge.
I told this to my friend the monk
and he said, Want, want, want.
Roadkill, by Chase Twichell
Search for posthumanism in the academic health literature and you’re most likely to land on something that comes from the critical posthumanisms.
The absolute necessity of finding new levers to drive a stake into the heart of vampiric capitalism and normative Western hetero-patriarchy has led many to see posthumanism as a way to further feminist, postcolonial, disability, and queer thinking and practice.
There’s a detailed reading list for work in this space at the bottom of the page.
But, for me, there is a problem with much of this literature, and that is that it often fails to escape the humanism that it aspires to critique.
Like someone casting a fishing line out into a flowing stream, the initial promise of escaping anthropocentrism is there, but then the line is always reeled back in returning it to the spool that is humanism.
You will find lots of new methodological adventures, methods, and ideals expressed in critical posthumanism, but the research all too often comes back to the questions that others pose for us.
The argument from critical posthumanists is well known: how can we be otherwise than human? Isn’t the point very point of posthumanism to think differently about our place in the world? Isn’t it meant to make possible a more fluid, diffuse, and minoritarian human; one that recognises both its awesome power to destroy the world but also its absolute cosmic insignificance? And can we ever escape our anthropocentrism anyway? Isn’t a bit of anthropomorphism — as Jane Bennett argues — okay?
And while I have no problem with this argument as a justification for critical research, it can be hard sometimes to see how this work is truly posthuman.
In my mind, the real radical potential of posthumanism is the possibility that humanism can be left behind. Entirely.
Deleuze used the metaphor of the clinamen — a term referring to the smallest angle by which an atom deviates from a line (link) — to make a philosophical point about the nature of posthuman thinking.
He argued that philosophy should trace an escape path from the orbit of normal thought. All too often, though, the gravitational force of critical theory pulls the researcher back into re-entry and ultimately lands their work in an all-too-familiar orbit.
What follows is a brief list of some of the material that I feel comes closest to describing an escape path from the planet ‘People’. But for good measure, I’ve added a second list towards the bottom of the post of some of the key works in critical posthumanism.
It’s a very dynamic field and one that’s growing by the day, so if you think I’m made any gross omissions, please let me know and I’ll update the list.
Five key works of posthumanism (well, six really)
Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense
A bit of a cheat straight off the bat to include two books in one, but D&R and LoS are considered by many to be conjoined works. Written during the student riots in Paris in 1968 — a time in which Deleuze spent six months in hospital recovering from a lung resection after years of debilitating TB — they are considered by some to be Deleuze’s greatest works. While Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus caught people’s attention, D&R and LoS set everything that followed in place. Truly remarkable texts.
Arjen Kleinherenbrink’s Against Continuity
Kleinherenbrink’s 2019 book argues that everything is a machine. Drawing links between Deleuze’s entire corpus with the field of speculative realism, Kleinherenbrink shows how Deleuze’s work can be understood as a fourfold structure. Radical, highly innovative, and critical response to the shortcomings of affect theory.
Jon Roffe & Hannah Stark’s Deleuze and the Non/Human
A highly recommended collection of writings that explore a lot of the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological issues involved in posthumanism. Like all of Roffe and Starks’s separate works, Deleuze and the Non/Human is beautifully written and curated and would be accessible to most readers. It includes contributions from Elizabeth Grosz, Simone Bignall, Clair Colebrook, Sean Bowden, Ashley Woodward, and others, as well as the editors themselves.
Manuel de Landa & Graham Harman’s Rise of Realism.
A book that takes the form of a long dialogue between the authors and uses their conversation to unpack their different ontological positions and those of their critics and collaborators. Hugely useful for understanding the field of posthumanism and for getting a better grasp on the principles underpinning the work of these two important thinkers.
Richard Grusin’s The Nonhuman Turn
This edited collection includes contributions from Jane Bennett, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Timothy Morton, Rebekah Sheldon and others, and like Rolfe and Stark’s book begins from the basis that ‘we have never been human’ (Latour). It’s a great reader on some of the intellectual currents running through contemporary posthumanism, including ANT, assemblage theory, new media theory, and cognitive science.
Notable mentions
Some other highly recommended works that didn’t make the top 5:
Thomas Lemke’s The Government of Things— Foucault as a posthuman
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics — the ethics of consuming others
Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object — How objects take form
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra — Not at all superman
Henri Bergson Matter and Memory - Time, space, past, present, and future all reimagined
Graham Harman’s Immaterialism — Withdrawn objects
Erin Manning’s Relationscapes — Movement happening before it happens
Brian Massumi’s Parables of the Virtual — Technology, sensation, movement and affect
Key works in critical posthumanism
Alaimo, S. (2014). Thinking as the Stuff of the World Link
Badmington, N. (2003) Theorizing posthumanism. Cultural Critique 53(1): 10–27.
Barad, K. (2003) Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs 28(3): 801–831.
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press.
Bozalek, V., & Zembylas, M. (2016). Critical posthumanism, new materialisms and the affective turn for socially just pedagogies in higher education: part 2. South African Journal of Higher Education, 30(3), 193-200 Link
Braidotti, R. (2013) Posthumanism. Polity.
Braidotti, R. (2019). A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31-61 Link
Braidotti, R. & Hlavajoba, M. (2022). Posthuman Glossary. Bloomsbury.
Colebrook, C. (2014) Death of the Posthuman. Open Humanities Press.
Coole, D. & Frost, S. (eds) (2010) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Duke University Press.
Daigle, C., & McDonald, T. H. (eds.). (2023). From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. Bloomsbury.
Dolphijn, R. and Van der Tuin, I. (eds) (2012) New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies. Open Humanities Press.
Ferrando, F. (2019). Philosophical Posthumanism. Bloomsbury.
Ferrando, F. (2013) From the eternal recurrence to the posthuman multiverse. The Agonist 4(1–2): 1–11.
Fox, N.J., & Alldred, P. (2016). Sociology and the New Materialism: Theory, Research, Action. Sage.
Fraser, M., Kember, S. & Lury, C. (eds) (2006) Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism. Sage.
Gibson, B.E., Fadyl, J.K., Terry, G., Waterworth, K., Mosleh, D., & Kayes, N.M. (2021). A posthuman decentring of person-centred care. Health Sociology Review, 1-16 Link
Giffney, N. and Hird, M.J. (2008) Queering the Non/Human. Routledge.
Goodley, D., Lawthorn, R. & Rusmwick, K. (2014) Posthuman disability studies. Subjectivity 7(4): 341–361.
Grosz, E. (2011) Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art. Duke University Press.
Halberstam J., Livingston I. (eds) Posthuman Bodies. Indiana University of Press, pp. 1–22.
Haraway, D. (1997) ModestWitness@SecondMillennium. FemaleMan©MeetsOncomouse™. Routledge.
Haraway, D. (2015) Anthroposcene, Capitaloscene, Plantationoscene, Cthuluscene: Making kin. Environmental Humanities 6: 159–165.
Hayles N.K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Herbrechter, S. (2013) Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. Bloomsbury.
Hird, M.J and Roberts, C. (2011) Feminism theorizes the nonhuman. Feminist Theory 12(2): 109–117.
Holland, E. (2011) Nomad Citizenship. University of Minnesota Press.
Irigaray, L., & Marder, M. (2016). Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives. Columbia University Press.
Kroker, A.(2014) Exits to the Posthuman Future. Polity.
Livingston, J. and Puar, J.K. (eds) (2011) Interspecies. Social Text 29(1).
Lyotard, J-F. (1989) The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Blackwell.
MacCormack, P. (2012) Posthuman Ethics. Ashgate.
MacKenzie (2002) Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed. Continuum.
MacKinnon, C.A. (2007) Are Women Human? Harvard University Press.
Nayar P. (2013) Posthumanism. Polity.
Neff, I. (2020). Vital and enchanted: Jane Bennett and new materialism for nursing philosophy and practice. Nursing Philosophy, 21(2), e12273 Link
Olivier, B. (2017). The ethical (and political) status of theorizing the subject: Deleuze and Guattari. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 15(2), e1408 Link
Papadopoulos, D. (2010) Insurgent posthumanism. Ephemera 10(2): 134–151.
Parisi, L. (2004) Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-Technology, and the Mutation of Desire. Continuum.
Parikka, J. (2015). The Anthrobscene. University of Minnesota Press.
Parolin, L.L. (2022). A posthumanist approach to practice and knowledge: Capitalist unrealism: Countering the crisis of critique and imagination. Ephemera, 22 Link
Pepperell, R. (2003) The posthuman manifesto. Intellect Quarterly Link
Raffnsoe, S. (2013) The Human Turn: The Makings of a Contemporary Relational Topography. Copenhagen Business School.
Roden, D. (2014) Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. Routledge.
Semetsky, I. (Ed.). (2008). Nomadic Education: Variations on a Theme by Deleuze and Guattari. Sense.
Shildrick, M. (2009) Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan.
Shildrick, M. (1996). Posthumanism and the Monstrous Body. Body & Society, 2(1), 1-15 Link
Stengers, I. (1997) Power and Invention: Situating Science. University of Minnesota Press.
Sterling, B. (2014) The manifesto of speculative posthumanism Link
Thomsen M.R. (2013) The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Change in Body, Mind and Society after 1900. Bloomsbury Academic.
Tsing, A. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.
Wennemann, D.J. (2013) Posthuman Personhood. University Press of America.
Wolfe, C. (2010) What Is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.
For the courageous who want to start reading Deleuze's "difference and repetition", and not have experience with postmodern literature ( like me...), I would suggest reading first an introductory text such as Todd May's "Gilles Deleuze: an introduction". This could make the leap less daunting ...
In this book(2005) on Deleuze, offered as an introduction, Todd May has chosen not to address critical issues surrounding Deleuze's work and our reception... . Instead, he applies himself to the needs of readers new to Deleuze, seeking to bring out the novel possibilities of thought and life that we encounter in Deleuze's writings.
@ Dave Nicholls: thanks for all your postings!
Thank you, as always for the kind comments, Pawel, and for the suggestions and precis of three of Nietzsche's other key works. These are great suggestions.