Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture

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Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture makes a series of valuable contributions to ongoing dialogues surrounding posthuman blackness and Afro-transhumanism. The collection explores the Black body (self) in the context of transhuman realities from a variety of literary and artistic perspectives. These points of view convey the cultural, political, social, and historical implications that frame the space of Black embodiment, functioning as sites of potentiality and pointing toward the possibility of a transcendental Black subjectivity. In this book, many questions concerning the transformation of the Black body are presented as parallels to philosophical and religious inquiries that have traditionally been addressed from a hegemonic viewpoint. The chapters demonstrate how literature, based on its historical and social contexts, contributes to broader thought about Black transcendence of subjectivity in a posthuman framework, exploring interpretations of the old and visions of the new human.

Reviews

Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities presents a series of insightful essays, from both established and emerging scholars, that significantly advance many aspects of our understanding of Black identity in relationship to transhumanist thought. Incorporating scholarship on African-American literature, art, media, and music, this is an important collection for anyone interested in understanding the intersection between science, technology, and the Black body through a transhumanist lens. -- Ken McLeod, University of Toronto
Melvin G. Hills volume makes a valuable contribution to the emerging discussion of Blackness and transhumanism at a turning point in the early twenty-first century. At a time when black people are still negotiating what it means to be Black and human, Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities explores the frontier of blackness, politics and aesthetics of enhancement. -- Reynaldo Anderson, Harris-Stowe State University
With ten essays and an editorial introduction, Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture, edited by Melvin G. Hill, offers an array of insightful perspectives on the intersections of science, technology, and Black subjectivity, particularly in works of African American literature and culture. Focused on American histories and experiences of race, these essays present compelling frameworks for examining Black identity and being in an effort to transcend and enhance the humanunderstood as transhumanismthrough medical, algorithmic, digital, and other technologies. The collections focus on transhumanism means that the essays also touch on the debates surrounding posthumanism and Afrofuturism. * African Studies Review *

Author Bio

Melvin G. Hill is associate professor in the Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Tennessee, Martin.