Posthumanism
Posthumanism begins where the old picture of “the human” starts to look less like a universal truth than a historical invention—one entangled with machines, animals, code, ecosystems, and power.
Quick Facts
- Period
- 1901 – 2000
- Region
- Americas
- Key Figures
- Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault +2 more
Key Figures
Donna Haraway
Proponent
Science and Technology Studies; Feminist TheoryDonna Haraway is one of the defining architects of critical posthumanism because she made hybridity feel politically ser...
Judith Butler
Interlocutor
Gender Theory; Critical TheoryJudith Butler is one of the most influential, and also one of the most frequently caricatured, philosophers in feminist ...
Michel Foucault
Interlocutor
French Post-Structuralism; History of IdeasMichel Foucault is the central intellectual interlocutor behind Han’s work, even where Han departs from him. Foucault’s ...
N. Katherine Hayles
Proponent
Literary Theory; Media StudiesN. Katherine Hayles gave posthumanism one of its most disciplined and influential formulations by showing how a culture ...
Rosi Braidotti
Proponent
Contemporary Continental Philosophy; Feminist TheoryRosi Braidotti helped give posthumanism a more explicitly philosophical and affirmative vocabulary, especially in *The P...
The Story
This narrative combines documented history with dramatized scenes for storytelling purposes.
The World That Made It
Posthumanism did not arrive as a single thesis dropped into an empty field. It emerged from a world in which the word “human” had become both too flattering and...
The Central Idea
At the heart of posthumanism is a refusal that can sound modest until one sees its consequences: the human is not a fixed essence, but a historically contingent...
The System
Once the human is no longer treated as a fixed center, posthumanism has to build a vocabulary capable of doing real work. It cannot survive as a mood or a sloga...
Tensions & Critiques
The most serious objection to posthumanism is not that it is strange; it is that it may be too successful in dissolving the very standpoint from which moral and...
Legacy & Echoes
Posthumanism’s legacy is visible wherever the old border between human and nonhuman now feels unstable rather than obvious. In philosophy, it helped reconfigure...
Timeline
Birth of N. Katherine Hayles
**1943** — N. Katherine Hayles was born in 1943, and her later work would become central to the critique of disembodied information. Her trajectory helped connect literary theory, media studies, and cybernetics into a posthumanist framework that could distinguish embodiment from abstraction.
Birth of Donna Haraway
**1944** — Donna Haraway was born in 1944, and her writing would become one of the founding sources of critical posthumanism. Her later work made the cyborg a political and philosophical figure for boundary-crossing identities.
Foucault’s archaeology destabilizes the human
**1966** — In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault argued that “man” was a recent invention and might disappear. Although not a posthumanist manifesto, the book supplied later thinkers with a historical method for questioning the supposed naturalness of the human category.
Haraway publishes “A Cyborg Manifesto”
**1985** — Haraway’s essay reframed the cyborg as a critique of purity, origin myths, and rigid separations between organism and machine. The text became a landmark for feminist theory and for posthumanism’s insistence that the human is already hybrid.
Butler’s performativity reshapes the subject
**1991** — Gender Trouble gave posthumanist thought an allied critique of the centered subject by showing how identity is produced through repetition and norms. Its influence helped broaden posthumanism’s skepticism toward essentialist accounts of personhood.
Hayles publishes How We Became Posthuman
**1999** — Hayles’s book became a foundational statement of critical posthumanism, tracing the rise of information theory and warning against disembodied models of mind. It remains one of the movement’s clearest attempts to define posthumanism without collapsing it into technophilia.
Braidotti systematizes posthuman thought
**2008** — With work such as Nomadic Subjects and later The Posthuman, Braidotti helped turn posthumanism into a more explicit philosophical program. Her emphasis on relational subjectivity and planetary ethics broadened the movement’s reach.
The Posthuman expands the debate
**2013** — Braidotti’s The Posthuman brought the term into wider philosophical circulation and clarified its distinction from simple technological enhancement. The book sharpened debates about whether posthumanism should be mainly critical, affirmative, or both.
Posthumanism enters mainstream humanities debate
**2017** — By the late 2010s, posthumanism had become a common framework in environmental humanities, media studies, and animal studies. The movement’s vocabulary began shaping discussions of climate change, AI, and multispecies ethics.
Pandemic life exposes distributed vulnerability
**2020** — The COVID-19 pandemic made interdependence, infrastructures, and biological vulnerability more visible to a broad public. Many readers saw in the crisis a confirmation of posthumanism’s claim that the self is never fully autonomous.
Generative AI intensifies posthuman questions
**2023** — The rapid public spread of generative AI systems renewed questions about intelligence, authorship, labor, and agency. Posthumanist debates increasingly focused on whether such systems decenter the human or reproduce old forms of hierarchy under a new technical surface.
Posthumanism remains an active critical framework
**2026** — In contemporary philosophy and adjacent fields, posthumanism continues to serve as a major framework for thinking about embodiment, ecology, technics, and political recognition. The debate now centers less on whether the human is stable than on how to rebuild ethics after that stability has been questioned.
Sources
- primary_textHaraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto" in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
Foundational essay for feminist and critical posthumanism.
- primary_textHayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
Classic statement of critical posthumanism and embodiment.
- primary_textBraidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman
Major philosophical synthesis of posthumanist ethics and subjectivity.
- primary_textFoucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
Important precursor for historical critique of the human.
- encyclopedia_entryStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Posthumanism
Reliable overview of the main debates and distinctions.
- encyclopedia_entryInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Posthumanism
Accessible scholarly overview.
- secondary_sourcePepperell, Robert. The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain
Early influential treatment of posthuman condition and cybernetic thought.
- secondary_sourceWolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism?
Key scholarly account distinguishing critical posthumanism from humanism.
- secondary_sourceWolfe, Cary. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame
Important development of posthumanist animal and biopolitical questions.
- secondary_sourceBraidotti, Rosi and Hlavajova, Maria, eds. Posthuman Glossary
Useful reference for the movement's vocabulary and its many strands.
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The philosophies documented here connect to the broader record. Explore the context through our sister archives.
