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ENG777A: Perspectives of the Posthuman and / in the Anthropocene

Course Description

To grapple with the polydimensionality of the posthuman subject by perceiving it from literary, critical, technological, anthropological, philosophical, political, ecological, and ethical angles and to assess its potentials by foregrounding it in the Anthropocene age when anthropocentric augmentation has occasioned unwarranted ecodestructivity.  To foster an understanding of how aspects of the posthuman and the Anthropocene relate to each other and to the whole ecosystem.

Course Content

The course offers polydimensional perspectives of the posthuman in the backdrop of the Anthropocene age in which the technological man has altered the ecological constitution of the natural environment. It begins with the prevailing tensions involved in the conception of the transhumans vis-à-vis the posthumans. Transhumans are, conceptually and technically, humans enhanced with superhuman intelligence, infallible memory, and physiological resilience facilitated by nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. However, the posthuman realm comprises a symbiotic coexistence of the human with the non-human. The non-human, other than the flora and the fauna, contains replicants, robots, cyborgs, mutants and other astounding forms of artificial intelligence. From a purely anthropocentric perspective, conditioned by the notion of human exceptionalism and autonomy of self, such an all-encompassing ecosphere is forbidding and unwelcome. The roots of technophobia can thus be traced to insecurities of a human self hitherto constructed as integral and whole. Conversely, technophilic humans embrace hybridity, and comprehend that since the time the Homo sapiens made use of non-human tools for making fire, they have been functioning like cyborgs and that the transhuman is the preordained creation of technological singularity. Anthropocene refers to the present geological era, in which, man has become the most significant factor affecting global environmental change. The rise of the Anthropocene offers a gripping perspective on how the transhuman’s phenomenal progress is limited by its inadvertent yet unmindful ecological devastation.  It helps qualify the posthuman continuum between human, technology, and nature and raises such questions as: While the transhumanists administer human longevity do they oversee its concomitant overpopulation? Is transgressing the biotic human desired over a cybernetic transhuman? Will the transhuman tinkering with our nature cause irreversible damage and lead to a postanthropocene Earth without human inhabitants?  The course negotiates with such issues principally by regarding the posthuman, juxtaposed with the transhuman, and the Anthropocene as enmeshed in an ecological entanglement.  Using materials from various fields and disciplines, it explores the possibility of a symbiogenesis between the posthuman and the Anthropocene, which can avert calamities, nurture sustainable environment, and pave way to technonatures of the future.  

Course Audience

There is no prerequisite for the course. However, an aptitude for reading in general, and literary/critical texts in particular, besides an attitude towards developing a sense of global citizenship and acquiring moral responsibility by locating one’s posthuman identity in an age of unintended consequences. Postgraduate students of literature who have developed the desired aptitude will be able to cope with this course and benefit from it.

Outcomes of this Course

Students will have a thorough understanding of complex terms such as transhumanism, posthumanism and the Anthropocene besides developing a critical ability to work on a research paper or a research project.