This volume is a critical exploration of multiple posthuman possibilities in the 21st century
and beyond. Due to the global engagement with advanced technology we are witness to a
species-wise blurring of boundaries at the edge of the human. On the one hand we find
ourselves in a digital age in which human identity is being transformed through networked
technological intervention a large part of our consciousness transferred to smart external
devices. On the other hand we are assisted---or assailed---by an unprecedented proliferation
of quasi-human substitutes and surrogates forming a spectrum of humanoids with fuzzy borders.
Under these conditions critical posthumanism asks who will occupy and control our planet:
Will the superhuman merely serve as another sign under which new regimes of dominance are
spread across the earth? Or can we discover or invent technologies of existence to counter such
dominance? It is issues such as these which are at the heart of this new volume of explorations
of the posthuman. The essays in this volume offer leading-edge thought on the subject with
special emphases on postmodern and postcolonial futures. They engage with questions of
subalternity and feminism vis-à-vis posthumanism dealing with issues of subjugation
dispensability and surrogacy as well as the possibilities of resistance ethical politics or
subjective transformation from South Asian archives of cultural and spiritual practice. This
volume is a valuable addition to the on-going global dialogues on posthumanism indispensable
to those from across several disciplines who are interested in postcolonial and planetary
futures.
