The New Human in Literature

Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society After 1900

By: Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

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Hardcover | 20 August 2013 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.62 x 15.24 x 2.03

Hardcover

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Twentieth-century literature changed understandings of what it meant to be human. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, in this historical overview, presents a record of literature's changing ideas of mankind, questioning the degree to which literature records and creates visions of the new human.

Grounded in the theory of Niklas Luhmann and drawing on canonical works, Thomsen uses literary changes in the mind, body and society to define the new human. He begins with the modernist minds of Virginia Woolf, Williams Carlos Williams and Louis-Ferdinand Celine's, discusses the society-changing concepts envisioned by Chinua Achebe, Mo Yan and Orhan Pamuk. He concludes with science fiction, discussing Don DeLillo and Michel Houellebecq's ideas of revolutionizing man through biotechnology.

This is a study about imagination, aesthetics and ethics that demonstrates literature's capacity to not only imagine the future but portray the conflicting desires between individual and various collectives better than any other media. A study that heightens reflections on human evolution and posthumanism.

Industry Reviews

"The refreshing thing about The New Human is that it tackles the rise of posthumanism - or the intensifying debate about human evolution, transformation and succession, which is led from a variety of angles (the spectrum goes from critical posthumanism to transhumanism one could say) - from a historical angle and thus takes a longer term view (i.e. from around 1900). So even though it is aware of the current environment of vast technological change mainly due to biotechnology and digitalisation, its focus is on how these changes are philosophically and aesthetically underpinned by the rise of the idea of a renewal of humanity ('the new human') in modern literature." --Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

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