Screening the Posthuman, by Missy Molloy, Pansy Duncan, and Claire Henry. Oxford University Press, 2023, 320 pp.

Abstract

The polysemous nature of the term “posthuman” has inspired contentious debates in critical theory, leading both to the term’s miscomprehension and misapplication. Despite its somewhat misleading prefix, the “post” of posthumanism is not to be understood solely in futural terms. Rather than simply encompassing conceptualisations of humanity following the alarming technological, scientific, and environmental developments of late capitalism, the term instead enacts a decentring of the human in order to attain a richer sense of what it means to be human amidst these developments. For Missy Molloy, Pansy Duncan, and Claire Henry, authors of Screening the Posthuman, three core theoretical strands—cultural, deconstructive, and materialist—constitute their understanding of critical posthumanism, developed primarily by theorists such as Donna Harraway, Cary Wolfe, and Rosi Braidotti, among others.

Keywords

• screening the posthuman
• missy molloy
• pansy duncan