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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

188364

Posthumanism in film and television

Michael HauskellerThomas D. Philbeck Curtis D. Carbonell

pp. 1-7

Abstract

Cary Wolfe begins his widely known book What Is Posthumanism? (2010) by announcing the results of a Google search. He reports that at the time of his writing (summer 2008) the search word "humanism" yielded 3,840,000 hits, while the word "posthumanism" gave him only 60,200. Wolfe concludes from these data that, apparently, "humanism is alive and well" (2010, xi). When we repeated the experiment six years later, in December 2014, "humanism" came up with 9,030,000 results and "posthumanism" with 294,000, which is still considerably less, but almost five times as many as six years ago. You do, however, get many more results if you search for "posthuman" (3,250,000), "transhumanism" (2,310,000) or even (a term that is, outside academia, little known or used) "transhuman" (484,000). So even though humanism may still be alive and well today, the idea of the posthuman and what it signifies, namely the surpassing of the human condition, is rapidly catching up and has now secured a well-established place in our cultural imagination. Clearly, an evolving posthumanist narrative has taken shape in popular culture, providing a new context for what it means to be human and challenging long-held assumptions about the human condition. Yet this narrative did not arrive fully formed. It was first prophesied and then dissected in academic spheres for many years before reaching a level of diffusion large enough to impact popular consciousness.

Publication details

Published in:

Hauskeller Michael, Philbeck Thomas D., Carbonell Curtis D. (2015) The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 1-7

DOI: 10.1057/9781137430328_1

Full citation:

Hauskeller Michael, Philbeck Thomas D., Carbonell Curtis D. (2015) „Posthumanism in film and television“, In: M. Hauskeller, T. D. Philbeck & C. D. Carbonell (eds.), The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television, Dordrecht, Springer, 1–7.