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.

The book is about what posthumanism means in the contemporary Indian context and what different lines of consideration this can take.The world today has universalized a Eurocentric history of the human with its privileges, oppressions, exploitations and exclusions. On the one hand, this has led to the triumphalist narrative of technology, the blurring of biological embodiment through prostheses and the dream of transhumanist self-exceeding. On the other hand, we are witness to the contemporary eruption of dystopian anomalies due to the dis-balance or revolt of the “others” of humanism – climate crisis, chronic pandemic, religious, ethnocentric and geopolitical violence, ideological and authoritarian state control. Posthumanism is both an acknowledgement of these blurred boundaries of humanism and a critical response to it.The editors of this volume opine that the discourse of posthumanism in India warrants urgent consideration, if we are to adequately address both national and global emergencies and look for solutions that India may be in a unique position to offer. Essays in the volume are by scholars in the area dealing with representative directions relating to posthumanism in India. The essays are divided into five areas of cultural relevance – (1) internal selves and others; (2) technology, normativity and ethics; (3) human and animal; (4) bodies and their discards; (5) becoming-cosmos. Together they form the beginnings of an approach to a critical cartography of posthumanism as it pertains specifically to India.

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.

The book is about what posthumanism means in the contemporary Indian context and what different lines of consideration this can take.The world today has universalized a Eurocentric history of the human with its privileges, oppressions, exploitations and exclusions. On the one hand, this has led to the triumphalist narrative of technology, the blurring of biological embodiment through prostheses and the dream of transhumanist self-exceeding. On the other hand, we are witness to the contemporary eruption of dystopian anomalies due to the dis-balance or revolt of the “others” of humanism – climate crisis, chronic pandemic, religious, ethnocentric and geopolitical violence, ideological and authoritarian state control. Posthumanism is both an acknowledgement of these blurred boundaries of humanism and a critical response to it.The editors of this volume opine that the discourse of posthumanism in India warrants urgent consideration, if we are to adequately address both national and global emergencies and look for solutions that India may be in a unique position to offer. Essays in the volume are by scholars in the area dealing with representative directions relating to posthumanism in India. The essays are divided into five areas of cultural relevance – (1) internal selves and others; (2) technology, normativity and ethics; (3) human and animal; (4) bodies and their discards; (5) becoming-cosmos. Together they form the beginnings of an approach to a critical cartography of posthumanism as it pertains specifically to India.