Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture

I’m delighted to share the release of a new book, and proud to have contributed chapter 12.

Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture

Edited By Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Essi Varis, 1st Edition, 2019

The time has come for human cultures to seriously think, to severely conceptualize, and to earnestly fabulate about all the nonhuman critters we share our world with, and to consider how to strive for more ethical cohabitation. Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture tackles this severe matter within the framework of literary and cultural studies. The emphasis of the inquiry is on the various ways actual and fictional nonhumans are reconfigured in contemporary culture – although, as long as the domain of nonhumanity is carved in the negative space of humanity, addressing these issues will inevitably clamor for the reconfiguration of the human as well.

Chapter 12: Cyborganic Wearables: Sociotechnical Misbehavior and the Evolution of Nonhuman Agency

Patricia Flanagan, Raune Frankjær

The twelfth chapter authored by Patricia Flanagan and Raune Frankjær explores how the evolution of wearable technology blurs the boundaries of the body. The writers propose that emergent wearable technologies that augment human perception and sensual capacity may thus come to expand or alter our understanding of what it truly means to be human. Consequently, this techno-genesis of the body, in collaboration with advanced materials and tools, can potentially foster new, interconnected ways of understanding our place within the Neganthropocene.

Building critically on the writings of Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Bernard Stiegler, Peter-Paul Verbeek, and Bruno Latour, the chapter arrives at a theory of “cyborganic wearables”. Here, the concept of “cyborganic” describes a fictional posthuman entity who is a hybrid of human, nature, and machine. Such a figure, through its relation to cyborganic mutation and creativity, directly calls for a redefinition of humanness itself – a new conceptualization that would lay a more sustainable foundation for the humanity’s self-understanding in the future.