Rhetoric and Posthumanism Mehdi Mohammadi “Posthumanism first appears as antithetical, nearly impossible, for rhetoric”,[1] as the former ventures beyond anthropocentric narratives, yet the latter, as Diane Davis and Michelle Ballif point out, “has been defined as the study of human symbol use which posits at the centre of ‘the rhetorical situation’ a knowing subject who […]
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(Image: Alicia Milesi-Ionescu) Critical Memory Studies for the Posthumanist Age Arleen Ionescu, Laurent Milesi and Stefan Herbrechter As direct witnesses of last century’s major historical events, such as World War II, began disappearing, new memorial paradigms, together with a more pliable, creative understanding of memory itself, started flourishing to compensate for the irreversible loss of […]
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In Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis, Stefan Herbrechter suggests that it ‘would indeed be difficult to overestimate the Nietzschean influence on posthumanism’.[1] Certainly, posthumanists of different stripes like to reference and quote Nietzsche, and some even claim him as one of their own. Yet, his reception is as varied as the motley group of schools of […]
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Genealogies are about ancestors, lineages, progeny and the knowledge they produce. They are historical in the sense that they trace past developments to investigate how ‘things’ have become the way they ‘are’ (or, at least, were at a certain time). In the humanities and social sciences the concept of genealogy is mainly linked to both […]
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Working through questions of human/nonhuman similarity and difference from a critical posthumanist perspective involves rethinking concepts of meaning. Meaningful experience is widespread throughout the nonhuman animal world, ranging far beyond its iterations in human thought and language. There are significant differences, however, among forms of meaning-making, and these differences have to be accounted for within […]
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by Stefan Herbrechter, Manuela Rossini, and Ivan Callus An earlier and longer version of this entry was first published in the European Journal of English Studies; available here. It might at first glance seem that the phrase ‘European posthumanism’ is a contradiction in terms. Is Europe not that venerable, somewhat ‘nostalgic’ entity or idea that has never […]
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