Overview

"Posthumous Life launches critical life studies: a mode of inquiry that neither endorses nor dismisses a wave of recent ""turns"" toward life, matter, vitality, inhumanity, animality, and the real. Questioning the nature and limits of life in the natural sciences, the essays in this volume examine the boundaries and significance of the human and the humanities in the wake of various redefinitions of what counts as life. They explore the possibility of theorizing life without assuming it to be either a simple substrate or an always-mediated effect of culture and difference. Posthumous Life provides new ways of thinking about animals, plants, humans, difference, sexuality, race, gender, identity, the earth, and the future."

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9780231172141

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Reviews

"This superb book haunts in all of the best and most disquieting ways: memories of a future already lost to ourselves, with writers who illuminate those registers of nonlife and postlife that arise when all of the living-on and living-through of humans has been exhausted or self-extinguished. The chapters serve as a chanting of rites to the nonhuman animal, to plants, to birds, to the inorganic, to the planet, to the ends of stories. -- Gregory Seigworth, Millersville University This splendid collection proposes a site of inquiry-critical life studies-that not only generates unexpected questions but offers invaluable perspectives on many obdurate philosophical topics that currently confront us regarding the posthuman, the inhuman, the inorganic, and the anthropocene. If, as the title of Isabelle Stenger's essay proposes, ""Thinking Life: The Problem Has Changed,"" then these essays consider-in rigorous as well as ludic modes-what it may now mean to think life. -- Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times This collection of insightful and comprehensive essays resists the celebratory tone on the question of the posthuman and provides much-needed critical depth and analytic vigor. A necessary and novel contribution to the studies of life and biopolitics. -- Donna V. Jones, author of The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Negritude, Vitalism and Modernity"

This superb collection haunts in all of the best and most disquieting ways: memories of a future already lost to ourselves, with writers who illuminate those registers of nonlife and postlife that arise when all of the living-on and living-through of humans has been exhausted or self-extinguished. The chapters serve as a chanting of rites to the nonhuman animal, to plants, to birds, to the inorganic, to the planet, to the ends of stories. -- Gregory Seigworth, Millersville University This collection of insightful and comprehensive essays resists the celebratory tone on the question of the posthuman and provides a much-needed critical depth and analytic vigor. A necessary and novel contribution to the studies of life and biopolitics. -- Donna V. Jones, author of The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: N gritude, Vitalism and Modernity This splendid collection proposes a site of inquiry-that of critical life studies-that not only generates unexpected questions but offers invaluable perspectives on many obdurate philosophical topics that currently confront us regarding the posthuman, the inhuman, the inorganic, and the anthropocene. If, as the title of Isabelle Stenger's essay proposes, Thinking Life: The Problem Has Changed, then these essays consider-in rigorous as well as ludic modes-what it may now mean to think life. -- Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times

This splendid collection proposes a site of inquiry-that of critical life studies-which not only generates unexpected questions but offers invaluable perspectives on many obdurate philosophical topics that currently confront us, regarding the posthuman, the inhuman, the inorganic, and the anthropocene. If, as the title of Isabelle Stenger's essay proposes, Thinking Life: The Problem Has Changed, then these essays consider-in rigorous as well as ludic modes-- what it may now mean to think life. -- Stacy Alaimo author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times This superb collection haunts in all of the best and most disquieting ways. Memories of a future already lost to ourselves: with writers who illuminate those registers of non-life and post-life that arise when all of the living-on and living-through of humans has been exhausted or self-extinguished. Here, chapters serve as a chanting of rites to the non-human animal, to plants, to birds, to the inorganic, to the planet, to the ends of stories. -- Gregory Seigworth, Professor of Communication Studies at Millersville University

Author Information

Claire Colebrook is professor of English at Penn State University. Jami Weinstein is associate professor of gender studies at Linkoping University.

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