Posthumanism synthesizes philosophical, literary, and artistic responses to technological advancements, globalization, and mass extinction in the Anthropocene. It asks what it can mean to be human in an increasingly more-than-human world that has lost faith in the ideal of humanism, the autonomous, rational subject, and it models generative alternatives cognizant of the demands of social and ecological justice. Amid rising social justice movements, collapsing economic structures, and the dwindling power of cultural institutions, posthumanism advances thinking on new and previously unenvisionable challenges.

Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks that provide an unprecedented mapping of this intellectual and aesthetic development in a global context. It features groundbreaking theorists including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Mel Y. Chen, Michael Marder, Alexander Weheliye, Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton, N. Katherine Hayles, Bruno Latour, Francesca Ferrando, and Cary Wolfe, as well as innovative, influential artists and curators such as Yvonne Rainer, Skawennati, Chus Martínez, William Wegman, Nandipha Mntambo, Cassils, Pauline Oliveros, and Doo-sung Yoo. These provocative and compelling works, including previously unpublished interviews and essays, speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthumanist thinking in a time of unprecedented cultural and environmental crises.

An essential primer and reference for educators, students, artists, and art enthusiasts, this volume offers a powerful framework for rethinking anthropocentric certitudes and reenvisioning equitable and sustainable futures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giovanni Aloi is adjunct associate professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and adjunct faculty at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. His books include Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (Columbia, 2018), Why Look at Plants? (2019), and Lucian Freud Herbarium (2019). Aloi is founder and editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture and coeditor of the University of Minnesota Press series Art After Nature.

Susan McHugh is professor of English at the University of New England. Her books include Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts: Animal Studies in Modern Worlds (2017) and Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide and Extinction (2019). She is coeditor of Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature.ű

Contents

Introduction: Envisioning Posthumanism, by Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh
Part I: Post-Identity Politics
1. Interview with Cassils: Becoming an Image (2018) , by Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh
2. From SF: Speculative Fabulation and String Figures (2012) , by Donna Haraway
3. From Nomadic Theory (2011), by Rosi Braidotti
4. From Towards a New Class of Being: The Extended Body (2008), by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
5. A Feminist Genealogy of Posthuman Aesthetics in the Visual Arts (2016), by Francesca Ferrando
6. Animality and Blackness (2020), by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
7. Asserting Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace: Interview with the Artist Skawennati (2019), by Amy Ge
8. From Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America (2017), by Edward King and Joanna Page
9. Witnessing Animals: Paintings and the Politics of Seeing (2013), by Sunaura Taylor
10. Video Dog Star: William Wegman, Aesthetic Agency, and the Animal in Experimental Video Art (2001), by Susan McHugh
11. Interview with Garry Marvin: In It Together (2017), by Susan McHugh
12. From Plant Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), by Michael Marder
13. A Program for Plants (2016), by Giovanni Aloi, Linda Tegg, Joshi Radin, and Brian M. John
14. No Manifesto (1965, 2008), by Yvon Rainer
Part II: Material Dimensions
15. Interview with Nandipha Mntambo: Materiality and Vulnerability (2018), by Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh
16. Locating Me in Order to See You (2007), by Nandipha Mntambo
17. From The Rendered Material of Film Stock (2009), by Nicole Shukin
18. Interview with Heide Hatry: On Skin and Meat (2010), by Ron Broglio 115
19. On Some Limits of Materiality in Art History (2008), by James Elkins
20. Elephants in the Room: Animal Studies and Art (2015), by Giovanni Aloi
21. From Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (1998), by Jay Prosser
22. Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment (2012), by Tim Ingold
23. Super-natural Futures: One Possible Dialogue Between Afrofuturism and the Anthropocene (2013), by Angela Last
24. Rhythms of Relation: Black Popular Music and Mobile Technologies (2016), by Alexander G. Weheliye
25. Proliferation, Extinction, and an Anthropocene Aesthetic (2017), by Myra Hird
26. Interview with Graham Harman: On Art and Ecology (2016), by Zane Cerpina
27. From Dark Ecology (2016), by Timothy Morton
28. From What Is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice (2012), by Karen Barad
Part III: Registering Interconnectedness
29. Interview with Kathy High: Something We Are Responsible To (2016), by Jessica Ullrich
30. From Writing Machines (2002), by N. Katherine Hayles
31. From Unexpress the Expressible (2012), by Chus Martínez
32. Introduction to Nocturnal Fabulations: Ecology, Vitality, and Opacity in the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2017), by Erin Manning
33. Posthuman Performance (2010), by Lucian Gomoll
34. Critical Relationality: Queer, Indigenous, and Multispecies Belonging Beyond Settler Sex and Nature (2019), by Kim Tallbear and Angela Willey
35. Ecosex ManiFesto (2011), by Elizabeth M. Stephens and annie sprinkle
36. Interview with Jane Bennett: Vibrant Matters (2010), by Peter Gratton
37. Interview with Pauline Oliveros: Listening to Cicadas (2013), by Helen Bullard
38. Animals, Nostalgia and Zimbawe’s Rural Landscape in the Poetry of Chenjerai Hove and
Musaemura Zimunya (2016), by Syned Mthatiwa
39. Waiting for Gaia: Composing the Common World Through Art and Politics (2011), by Bruno Latour
40. Interview with Newton Harrison: Force Majeure (2017), by Snæbjörnsdóttir / Wilson
41. Seeds = Future (2013), by Ken Rinaldo
Part IV: Emerging Ecologies
42. Interview with Katherine McKittrick: (2021), by Black Human Geographies Betelhem Makonnen
43. Interview with Doo-Sung-Yoo: Organ-Machine Hybrids (2017), by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
44. Interview with Kelly Jazvac: Plastiglomerate, the Anthropocene’s New Stone (2015), by Ben Valentine
45. A Questionnaire on Materialisms, by David Joselit, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, and Hal Foster (2016), with Mel Y. Chen
46. Art as Remembrance and Trace in Post-Conflict Latin America (2016), by Cynthia Milton
47. Interview with Manuela Rossini: Critical Posthumanisms (2012), by David De Kam, Katrien Van Riet, and Hans Verhees
48. African Afro-futurism: Allegories and Speculations (2016), by Gavin Steingo
49. Whose Anthropocene? A Response (2016), by Dipesh Chakrabarty
50. Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species (2011), by Anna Tsing
51. The Rise of Cheap Nature (2016), by Jason W. Moore
52. From Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums (2012), by Eyal Weizman
53. Letters to Dear Climate (2017), by Louis Bury
Coda. Reflections on Art and Posthumanism, by Cary Wolfe
List of Contributors
Index