Who Comes After the Human?

In recent years, "posthumanism" has been coined as
a term to capture work by critical thinkers and
artists that explores the limits of the human.
Those limits can be traced back to the origins of
Western modernity in the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, and their ties to colonialism.
Starting from the "dark side" of Western modernity
and the contradictions of "humanism" that it
reveals, this course will consider various ways in
which the human has both been asserted and
challenged in Western philosophy after the Second
World War. The course will pursue its historical
and philosophical inquiry in relation to various
works across the literary, visual, and performing
arts ranging from a short story by Franz Kafka, to
artworks by Barnett Newman and Carolee Schneemann,
and music by Grace Jones and M.I.A. Apart from
philosophy's troubled relation to the colonial
subject and the slave, the course will consider
various figures that have challenged Western
philosophy's privileging of the human, including
the animal, the cyborg, the object, and the plant.
Philosophers to be discussed include Jacques
Derrida, Adriana Cavarero, Alexander Weheliye,
Byung-Chul Han, Vandana Shiva, and Donna Haraway.
Requirements include weekly reading and writing as
well as a final art project.