Contested Trajectories of the Human: Examining Posthumanism and Transhumanism Through 21st-Century Texts

Abstract

This paper considers the representations of posthumanism and transhumanism in contemporary literature as antagonistic yet connected concepts. Posthumanism challenges the primacy of humans by suggesting the existence of decentred and hybrid identities that transcend anthropocentrism in contrast to transhumanism
which has accepted technology as a means to human growth and eternity. The study, through its main approach based on comparative literary analysis, examines how literary texts in the works of Kazuo Ishiguro (Klara and the Sun) and Ian McEwan (Machines Like Me) and Manjula Padmanabhan (Harvest) and Vandana  Singh (speculative fiction) maneuver their way through these competing futures. It uses the works of Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti and Nick Bostrom to analyze the ways in which these works articulate the struggle between the aspiration to transcendence and the disintegration of the human. In the end, the article proposes that literature can be an indispensable space to explore these opposing ideologies and provide more subtle insights into the possible ways in which humanity can develop in a technologically mediated age.