Beyond postmodernism

Starting date
January 1, 2017
Duration (months)
Foreign Languages and Literatures
Managers or local contacts
Adami Valentina , Battisti Chiara , Carpi Daniela , Fiorato Sidia
posthumanism, transhumanism, law and literature

If many critics speak of the death of postmodernism, what has come after it? We meet many definitions that try to cope with the transformations of the term in the twenty-first century: Metamodernism, Remodernism, Transmodernism, Pseudo-modernism, Posthumanism, New Materialism, Transhumanism.
This project focuses on the concepts of Posthumanism and Transhumanism, which offer a rich debate on the impact of technological and scientific developments in the evolution of the human species; and still, they hold a humanistic and human centric perspective. Posthuman is an integral redefinition of the human and stresses the urgency for humans to become aware of pertaining to an ecosystem which, when damaged, negatively affects the human condition as well. In such a framework, the human is not approached as an autonomous agent ,but is located within an extensive system of relations. In this sense the posthuman can be seen as a consequence of the transhuman: the frankensteinean  perspective where the human, through implants and explants, aesthetic surgery, has transformed itself into a new human. This can impinge itself also on penal law, where the culprit can transform himself through surgery into a new individual with new finger prints, a new face in order to become indiscernible and evade the law.  Through a transhumanist approach you force the law to confront a new individual.  If Catherine Hayles debates on how we became posthuman (1999) and on the dismantling of the humanist subject in cybernetics discourse, Rosi Braidotti in The Posthuman (2013) asserts that the debates in “mainstream culture range from hard-nosed business discussions on robotics, prosthetic technologies, neu-trans-humanism and techno-transcendence”.  Transhumanism therefore celebrates the new frontiers  in critical and cultural theory. 
IMPORTO PREVISTO RELATIVO ALLE MISSIONI Daniela Carpi (Fur Daniela Carpi) 2000 euro Chiara Battisti (Fur Chiara Battisti) 1000 euro Sidia Fiorato (Fur Sidia Fiorato) 1000 euro


Project participants

Valentina Adami
Temporary Professor
Chiara Battisti
Associate Professor
Daniela Carpi
Research Assistants
Raffaele Cutolo
Temporary Professor
Sidia Fiorato
Associate Professor
Research areas involved in the project
Letteratura inglese e letterature anglofone
Critical Theory & Poetics


Research facilities