Care, scepticism and speaking in the plural

posthumanisms and humanisms in King Lear

Andy Mousley

pp. 97-113

in: Stefan Herbrechter, Ivan Callus (eds), Posthumanist Shakespeares, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

What or who is humanist in King Lear? The question is symptomatic of a posthumanist — or "critical humanist" — perception that humanism is diverse and does not name a single, static set of ideas (for a discussion of critical humanism, see Halliwell and Mousley, 2003, pp. 1–17). Posthumanism, in this sense, means "post" any humanism that took itself to be the definitive version of humanism and aspired to the universality of a grand narrative. It means seeing beyond the humanism which stole the limelight from other humanisms by privileging ideas about our sovereignty or specialness or rationality over, for example, humbler attempts to rescue the human from the dehumanizing effects of industrial modernity. Posthumanism, according to this conception of it, means opening up humanism to contestation and critique, or as Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter argue in their introduction to this volume, embracing "the new plurality" and "the new questions that are put to humanism, anti-humanism, posthumanism, even transhuman-ism alike" (pp. 4–5).

Cited authors

Callus Ivan

Herbrechter Stefan