Review
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"The Posthuman makes a vital contribution to feminist scholarship
across disciplines… Braidotti’s reading of contemporary issues is
out of the box: challenging, encouraging and inspiring."
Feminist Review
"An important and generative step toward new theories and
scholarship and a welcome addition to Braidotti’s already
formidable canon."
H+ Magazine
"Shows remarkable clarity and concision even as it lays out
highly technical, complexly theoretical, and deeply
interdisciplinary concepts."
Choice
′′This is a rather startling work that requires heavy
concentration on the part of the reader to follow the brilliant
thinking of the author. Rosi Braidotti, a contemporary
philosopher and feminist theoretician, `makes a case for an
alternative view on subjectivity, ethics and emancipation and
pitches diversity against the postmodernist risk of cultural
relativism, while also standing against the tenets of liberal
individualism.′ Throughout her work, Braidotti asserts and
demonstrates the importance of combining theoretical concerns
with a serious commitment to producing socially and politically
relevant scholarship that contributes to making a difference in
the world.′′
Grady Harp, Literary Aficionado
"This is an exciting and important text, full of intellectual
brilliance and in. It will make a major mark."
Henrietta L. Moore, University of Cambridge
"Braidotti′s exhilarating survey of the constellation of
posthumanity is lucid, learned and provocative. It will be an
essential point of reference in future debates about the central
philosophical problem of our age."
Paul Gilroy, King’s College London
"Debates over humanism and post–humanism have been fought over
from feminist philosophy to literary theory and post–colonial
studies. This latest work by Rosi Braidotti presents us with a
clear–headed glimpse of some of the hard choices we have before
us. Braidotti knows the philosophy, cares about the politics, and
empathizes with those who have been shoved aside in these brutal
last hundred years. She shows us how feminism, technoscientific
infrastructure and political strands cross, sometimes with
sparks."
Peter Galison, Harvard University
From the Back Cover
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This book offers an original and accessible
introduction to the contemporary debates on the notion of the
posthuman. It develops two lines of argument. First, contemporary
market economies profit from the control and commodification of
all forms of life. 'Second Life', genetically modified food,
advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are
familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically
mediated societies. This high degree of bio-technological
development results in hybridization, erasing categorical
distinctions between the human and other species, , s,
animals and machines. The dislocations produced by posthuman
cultures therefore make possible a critique of anthropocentrism.
Post-anthropocentric politics, as exemplified by
environmentalism, encompass not only other species but also the
sustainability of our planet as a whole.
The second line of argument is concerned with the shape of
contemporary philosophical debates about the human. Braidotti
explores the extent to which a post-humanist perspective
displaces the traditional unity and universality of the subject.
Rather than perceiving this as a loss of cognitive self-mastery
and ethical decency, she argues that the posthuman condition
helps us make sense of, and find a new moral compass within, our
globalised culture. The book concludes by providing some
intellectual and ethical guidelines for the new and alternative
modes of non-anthropocentric thinking that are emerging today.
The challenge of the posthuman condition is to seize the
rtunities for creating new forms of social bonding and
community building, while pursuing economic sustainability,
empowerment and social justice.