Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology, and Cultural Futures

An Open Access edition of this book is available
on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.


Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural
representations and deployments of disability as they interact with
posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working across a wide range
of texts, many new to critical enquiry, in contemporary writing, film and
cultural practice from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, it covers
a diverse range of topics, including: contemporary cultural theory and
aesthetics; design, engineering and gender; the visualisation of prosthetic
technologies in the representation of war and conflict; and depictions of work,
time and sleep. While noting the potential limitations of posthumanist
assessments of the technologized body, the study argues that there are
exciting, productive possibilities and subversive potentials in the dialogue
between disability and posthumanism as they generate dissident crossings of
cultural spaces. Such intersections cover both fictional/imagined and
material/grounded examples of disability and look to a future in which the
development of technology and complex embodiment of disability presence align to
produce sustainable yet radical creative and critical voices.