The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television

In an age characterised by an increasing integration of advanced technology into our everyday lives, posthumanism has developed into a major intellectual force. It affects research agendas, economic developments, social policies, philosophical theories, and ultimately the way we understand ourselves. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the various aspects of posthumanism and how they are represented, discussed and exemplified in the cultural medium of film and television. Understood broadly as any critical engagement with the possibility that the human condition is no longer a given, that it is more fluid than we once thought, and that we are, or will soon be, free to remould our constitutive framework and value systems, posthumanism is the next step in critical engagement in the humanities. It reflects upon the malleability of the human condition and acknowledges the fact that we are no longer the beings we thought we were, and that perhaps we never were.

Michael Hauskeller teaches Philosophy at the University of Exeter, UK.
 
Thomas D. Philbeck is Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.
 
Curtis D. Carbonell teaches Literary Studies and Science Fiction Studies at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. They share an interest in the intersection of the sciences and the humanities and on how technology is changing what it means to be human.

Notes on Contributors
1. Posthumanism in Film and Television; Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck and Curtis D. Carbonell
PART I: PAVING THE WAY TO POSTHUMANISM: THE PRECURSORS
2. From DelGuat to ScarJo; William Brown
3. Self-Immolation by Technology. Jean Baudrillard and the Posthuman in Film and Television; Jon Baldwin
4. Derrida on Screen; Stefan Herbrechter
5. Bruno Latour: From the Nonmodern to the Posthuman; T. Hugh Crawford
6. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Transhuman in Film and Television; Babette Babich
PART II: VARIETIES OF PEOPLE-TO-COME: POSTHUMAN BECOMINGS
7. Terminated: The Life and Death of the Cyborg in Film and Television; Rhys Owain Thomas
8. Of Iron Men and Green Monsters: Superheroes and Posthumanism; Dan Hassler-Forest
9. Growing Your Own: Monsters from the Lab and Molecular Ethics in Post-Humanist Film; Anna Powell
10. Post-Singularity Entities in Film and TV; David Roden
11. Chimeras and Hybrids. The Digital Swarms of the Posthuman Image; Drew Ayers
PART III: RISE OF THE MACHINES: POSTHUMAN INTELLECTS
12: Androids and the Posthuman in Television and Film; Kevin LaGrandeur
13. 'Change for the Machines'? Posthumanism as Digital Sentience; Sherryl Vint
14. Alive in the Net; Jay Clayton and Jeff Menne
15. Autonomous Fighting Machines. Narratives and Ethics; Donal O'Mathuna
PART IV: BODY AND SOUL: POSTHUMAN SUBJECTIVITIES
16. Contest of Tropes. Screened Posthuman Subjectivities; Curtis D. Carbonell
17. Representations of Cybersex in Film and Television; Hilary Wheaton
18. At Home In and Beyond Our Skin: Posthuman Embodiment; Joel Krueger
19. Constructed Worlds. Posthumanism in Film, Television and Other Cosmopoietic Media; Ivan Callus
20. Tanya Krzywinska & Douglas Brown, Games, Gamers, and Posthumanism
PART V: BETTER HUMANS: POSTHUMAN CAPACITIES
21. 'Life's a Bitch, and Then You Don't Die.' Postmortality in Film and Television; Michael Hauskeller
22. A New Lease on Life: A Lacanian Analysis of Cognitive Enhancement Cinema; Hub Zwart
23. Limitless? There's a Pill for That; Kyle McNease
24. Posthumans and Democracy in Popular Culture; James Hughes
25. Negative Feelings as Emotional Enhancement; Tarja Laine
PART VI: CREATING DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITY: POSTHUMAN COMMUNITIES
26. Biopleasures. Posthumanism and the Technological Imaginary in Utopian and Dystopian Film; Ralph Pordzik
27. Of Posthuman Born. Gender, Utopia, and the Posthuman, in Films and TV; Francesca Ferrando
28. Sharing Social Context: Is Community with the Posthuman Possible?; David Meeler and Eric Hill
29. Our Posthuman Skin Condition; Teodora Manea
30. Muddy Worlds: Re-Viewing Environmental Narratives; John Bruni
PART VII: US AND THEM: POSTHUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
31. Executing Species: Animal Attractions in Thomas Edison and Douglas Gordon; Anat Pick
32. The Sun Never Set on the Human Empire: Haunts of Humanism in the Planet of the Apes Films; Phil Henderson
33. Uncanny Intimacies. Human and Machines in Film; Alexander Darius Ornella
34. Posthumanous Subjects; Steen Christiansen
35. Identity: Difficulties, Discontinuities and Pluralities of Personhood; James DiGiovanna
PART VIII: MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN: POSTHUMAN ONTOLOGIES
36. The Final Frontier? Religion and Posthumanism in Film and Television; Elaine Graham
37. The Ghost in the Machine. Humanity and the Problem of Self-Aware Information; Brett Lunceford
38. Trust a Few, Fear the Rest: the Anxiety and Fantasy of Human Evolution; Pramod K. Nayar
39. The Posthumanist Paradigm Shift in Film and Television; Thomas D. Philbeck
40. Object Oriented Ontology; Graham Harman
Bibliography
Filmography
Index