GERST 6315 - [Posthumanism, Cybernetics, Systems Theory]

(crosslisted) COML 6186, STS 6131

Fall or Spring. Not offered: 2021-2022. Next offered: 2022-2023. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor. Taught in English.

P. Gilgen.

This graduate course is dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the recent emergence of Posthumanism as a new theoretical paradigm in cultural and literary studies. Hardly a unified theory, Posthumanism draws on a wide variety of precursors and inspirations—in the natural sciences, the philosophy and history of science, the social sciences, and different theory paradigms in the humanities. They all have in common the intention of transcending a worldview that is exclusively premised on human needs and measures. Thus, posthumanist theorizing in the widest sense includes many recent additions to the critical canon, such as eco-criticism and animal studies. It is the underlying hypothesis of this course that much posthumanist thinking is recapitulating—consciously or unconsciously—many of the insights of cybernetics and systems theory, and that tracking this genealogy helps in clarifying the stakes and challenges of posthumanist theory.