13Posthumanisms

Abstract

Abstract Posthumanism as a school of thought and a theme in literary and cultural texts strives to keep pace with developments such as terraforming or genetic engineering, but also engages philosophically and politically with those developments, in the form of enunciating questions about human identity, nonhuman agency, and ethics. In more recent times, posthuman thought has moved into areas as diverse as climate change, the Anthropocene, legal identity, and pedagogy. It also continues, as this chapter’s review of books, book chapters, and journal articles published in the year 2021 shows, to be interested in legal subjectivity, ideas of personhood, human genealogy, and their cultural expressions in the form of pop culture and literary texts. The chapter is divided into seven sections: 1. Surveying Posthumanism; 2. Posthumanisms and the Anthropocene; 3. Posthuman Performance; 4. Transhumanism; 5. Posthumanism, Law, and Ethics; 6. Posthumanism and the Pandemic; 7. Conclusion.