Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies - 'When did we become post/ human?' (review)

It has been a great pleasure to obtain, and have the opportunity to review, the inaugural double issue of Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, edited by Eileen A. Joy and Craig Dionne and subtitled 'When did we become post/human?' The journal is published in association with the BABEL Working Group, founded in 2004, which operates in North America, the UK, and Australia. The mainly medievalist scholars involved in the group endeavour - as explained in the volume - to develop new cross-disciplinary bonds between the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and the fine arts in order to 'formulate and practice new "critical humanism", as well as to develop a more present-minded medieval studies and a more historically-minded cultural studies' (www.babelworkinggroup.org).

It is an impressive publication, with its eye-catching and well-chosen graphical design. The packed contents page reveals the following items: an editors' introduction; three response essays - the three respondents, Andy Mousley, Kate Soper, and Katherine Hayles are known contributors to contemporary discourses on critical, anti-, and post-humanisms; a book review essay; and twenty-eight short essays which constitute the main body of the issue.

The book review essay, written by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, examines three books: Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles (J. J. Cohen, 2006); Premodern to Modern Humanisms: The BABEL Project (Special issue of Journal of Narrative Theory 37.2, E. A. Joy and C. M. Neufeld, eds, 2007); and Queering the Non/Human (N. Giffney and M. J. Hird, eds, 2008). In addition, two other studies are reviewed which help to distinguish what 'the human' means: Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (C. W. Bynum, 2007); and The Inner Touch: Archeology of a Sensation (D. Heller-Roazen, 2007).

The aim of the issue, we are told, is to answer the question of 'how to account ... for our supposedly novel (and potentially historically de-stabilizing) post/human present (and future) precisely through a (re)turn to what Julian Yates in this issue calls the "contact zone" of the past?' (p. 3). The volume smartly tackles the idea of interrelations between 'human' and 'post-human', an investigation that is propelled by elaborate juxtapositions of true values with modern technological innovations. The editors assert that the entire dilemma of what is human and what is post-human 'is thoroughly modern because of its important relation to certain technological and medical innovations that could not have even been imagined in the past' (p. 4).

Nonetheless, the editors state that they do not intend to draw teleological pre-histories or mark points of origin of the contemporary question of the post/human, nor do they wish to emphasize differences or samenesses of the past in light of this question. Thus the main purpose of the journal is to carry out an interdisciplinary, cross-temporal, and socially interventionist medieval cultural relationship with scholars working on a diverse collection of post-medieval subjects, encompassing critical principles that are un- or under-historicized. In a nutshell, the post/human correlation is conditioned upon 'a plurality of different, discontinuous and heterogeneous temporalities ... different Nows existing alongside each other' (p. 6). The editors attempt to show that the post/human issue raises questions pertaining to aspects of embodiment, identity, subjectivity, free will, sociality, sexuality, cognition, self-determination, spirituality, representation, expression, ethics, well-being, governance, and the like, and all of them can be reflected upon, thanks to premodern history and culture.

Due to the limitation of space, it is not possible to reflect on every one of the twenty-eight essays in this review, but all of them are highly scholarly and worth reading. In particular, I found the essay by J. Moreland 'Going native, becoming German: Isotopes and identities in...