Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture

Sanna Karkulehto is Professor of Literature at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has published books, articles and book chapters on the critical study of representation, the politics of discourse, and the politics of difference. Her latest co-edited anthology offers theorization on the ethics and politics of reading when studying representations of gender and violence.Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (PhD, contemporary culture studies) currently works as postdoctoral researcher in contemporary culture studies at the University of Jyväskylä. Her research interests include feminist theory, posthumanism, crime fiction and speculative fiction, transmediality, and monster studies.Essi Varis is a graduate student in Comparative Literature and Comics at the University of Jyväskylä. She defended her doctoral compilation dissertation Graphic Human Experiments: Frankensteinian Cognitive Logics of Characters in Vertigo Comics and Beyond in April of 2019.

"In Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman, and Posthuman in Literature and Culture, editors Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Essi Varis have done more than assemble a collection of essays on posthumanisms (broadly conceived); they have amassed a scholarly mesh of sorts, a strange ecosystem of questions, concepts, methodologies, and subject positions that play productively with the evolving formations of critical posthumanisms...the book is dazzling in its playful intelligence and indefatigable curiosity. Because of this spirit of interrogative play, I consider it to be part of the now-vital network of collected essays on critical posthumanisms...the prime value of the collection, at least for this reviewer, is its effort to bring into conversation a wide array of theories, disciplines, primary texts (comics, novels, video games, etc.), materialities, and aesthetic sensitivities that both enhance and question the emerging fields of critical posthumanisms." Tony M. Vinci, Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research"This book does not merely model ways to look at texts through a nonhuman or posthuman lens but illuminates the benefits and even necessity of employing a nonhuman gaze." --Colleen Karn, Methodist College"Is it possible to say something meaningful about "nonhuman" literature? Would you really like to know what it is like to be a bat? How to make sense of the current drive in the "new" humanities towards problematizing "humanness" and "humanity"? What kind of narratives, readings, visualisations, experiences could or should be employed in human-nonhuman-posthuman relations? Sometimes it is by asking the right questions that knowledge, politics and ethics can be reconfigured. The contributions in this volume are a case in point." --Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University

• INTRODUCTION Chapter 1: Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman: Striving for More Ethical Cohabitation Section 1: Towards Posthumanist Literature and Posthumanist ReadingChapter 2: On the Possibility of Posthuman-ist Literature Chapter 3: Posthumanist Reading: Witnessing Ghosts, Summoning Powers Chapter 4: Becoming-instrument: Thinking with Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Timothy Morton's Hyperobjects Section 2: Imagining Alien ExperiencesChapter 5: Alien Overtures: Speculating about Nonhuman Experiences with Comic Book Characters Chapter 6: Playing the Nonhuman: Alien Experiences in Aliens vs. Predator Section 3: Becoming with AnimalsChapter 7: Dead Dog Talking: Posthumous, Preposthumous, and Preposterous Canine Narration in Charles Sierbert's AngusChapter 8: Carnivorous Anatomies: Art and Being BeastsChapter 9: Connecting Difference: A Human/Guide Dog Assemblage Section 4: Technological (Co-)Agencies Chapter 10: Meeting the Machine Halfway: Towards Non-anthropocentric Semiotics Chapter 11: Human and Nonhuman Co-Agency, Neuropower and Counterplay in Minecraft Chapter 12: Cyborganic Wearables: Sociotechnical Misbehavior and the Evolution of Nonhuman Agency Section 5: Afterword: Unnarratable Matter? Chapter 13: Unnarratable Matter: Emergence, Narrative, and Material Ecocriticism