Working towards the Posthumanities

Over the last thirty years in most advanced liberal democracies, the public criticism of the Humanities has been increasing and a largely negative consensus has emerged, especially among right-wing and populist political parties, that the Humanities are not financially viable, that they are a luxurious hobby for the privileged few and that they do not deserve public funding. In this article I will first contextualize this debate in the larger frame of the question about the role and function of the university in the Twenty-first century. I will subsequently go on to argue a case for the relevance of the “new” Humanities, which I refer to as “Posthumanities.” My general hypothesis is simple: the Humanities can and will survive their present predicament and contradictions to the extent that they will show the ability and willingness to undergo a major process of transformation in response to both new technological advances and on-going geo-political developments. We need schemes of thought and figurations that enable us to account in empowering terms for the changes and transformations currently under way. More importantly, we need a new definition of our subjectivity in the direction of posthumanist and postanthropocentric perspectives. In the main section of this paper I will give you some concrete examples of new trends in what I have called the “Posthumanities.”