Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities

Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture

Melvin G. Hill

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798765184608
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture makes a series of valuable contributions to ongoing dialogues surrounding posthuman blackness and Afro-transhumanism. The collection explores the Black body (self) in the context of transhuman realities from a variety of literary and artistic perspectives. These points of view convey the cultural, political, social, and historical implications that frame the space of Black embodiment, functioning as sites of potentiality and pointing toward the possibility of a transcendental Black subjectivity. In this book, many questions concerning the transformation of the Black body are presented as parallels to philosophical and religious inquiries that have traditionally been addressed from a hegemonic viewpoint. The chapters demonstrate how literature, based on its historical and social contexts, contributes to broader thought about Black transcendence of subjectivity in a posthuman framework, exploring interpretations of the "old" and visions of the "new" human.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Ch01. “European Mind . . . Engrafted Upon the African Constitution”
• Ch02. The Mystery of the Invisible Drop
• Ch03. Arthurian Legend, Algorithmic Code, and Racialized Technology
• Ch04. Transmedial Posthumanisms
• Ch05. “A Dangerous Idea”
• Ch06. Transhumanism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
• Ch07. Glossolalia
• Ch08. Soul in the Shell
• Ch09. Revising the White Cyborg
• Ch10. On the (Un)Becoming of Cindi Mayweather
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors