Posthumanism and India

This timely collection of essays shows how posthumanism with its multiculturalism and multidisciplinary approach has been accepted and expanded in India. While exploring a variety of common subjects of posthumanism such as technology, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, new bodies, materialities and subjectivities, the anthology also examines the specific ways in which humanism creates its hierarchies and others in India, as, for example, through caste, gender or cultural perceptions of animals. The book also pioneers a consideration of the relationship between posthumanism and Indian spirituality and various traditions and interpretations of Hinduism. Someone often forgotten in international posthumanist circles, but a figure of key significance, also appears in this collection: Sri Aurobindo, whose ideas and works not only build bridges across different traditions but also shed light on many contemporary problems. Apart from its significance for India, the anthology opens up new vistas for everyone who engages with posthumanism globally. Many thanks go to its contributors and editors for this wonderful work! -- Yunus Tuncel, Adjunct Professor, Liberal Studies, New York University; Co-founder, The Nietzsche Circle; Editor-in-chief, The Agonist Posthumanism and India is a fundamental book for the international philosophical discourse that shows us how today, more than ever, we need to overcome the barriers between cultures and the hierarchical and disjunctive approach that has characterised Western humanism. It is a book that urges us to rediscover an inclusive relationship and coexistence with the Earth, abandoning that anthropocentric logic of domination and submission of every form of otherness that is at the basis of the global ecological crisis, through an ethics of empathy and a plural ontology. This book also considers our contemporary relationship with technology in a critical way, eschewing triumphalist tones and irrational fears, with the awareness that every technology has an impact on human beings as well as on the world. I highly recommend reading this work which, through the vision of the various authors, shows us an important perspective of posthumanism. -- Roberto Marchesini Director, School of Human-Animal Interactions; Director, Center for the Study of Posthumanist Philosophy, Bologna, Italy If humanism is the language of modernity, how do we think about posthumanism in relation to what comes after the modern? By raising questions like this, the aim of this volume is to create a much needed critical space for considering posthumanism in the Indian scene of postcolonial thought. Most significantly, it underscores the political nature of posthumanist knowledge practices in the Indian context, covering a wide range of topics from human–animal relations to technology and mobilising multiple disciplines like philosophy, literature, cinema studies and anthropology. The book’s layered discussions on Brahminical normativity, gender, politics of AI, embodiment and waste, music, spirituality, religion and tantrism will make it an esoteric trailblazer for the dissemination of posthumanism in India. -- Arka Chattopadhyay Assistant Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Gandhinagar, India