Posthumanism and the More-Than-Human World: Life, Matter, Question of Agency

Posthumanism and the More-Than-Human World is a sharp, accessible, and intellectually serious guide to one of the most important shifts in contemporary thought: the move away from the fantasy of the human as sovereign master of reality. It explains why the old image of "Man" as rational, independent, superior, and separate from the world no longer survives contact with biology, ecology, technology, disability theory, animal studies, feminist thought, climate science, capitalism, and everyday life. This is not a book about worshipping robots, abandoning human dignity, or pretending that rivers have little legal briefcases. It is about understanding the human more honestly. Humans are embodied, dependent, technological, ecological, vulnerable, and powerful in ways they rarely control as neatly as they imagine. We live with animals, microbes, tools, algorithms, plants, infrastructures, weather systems, supply chains, histories, and forms of matter that do not politely remain passive scenery. With dry wit and clear explanations, the book introduces major figures and ideas from Darwin, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Indigenous thinkers, disability theorists, environmental scholars, and many others. Along the way, it asks what agency means when action is distributed, what responsibility means when no one is innocent, and what ethics looks like when humans are no longer alone at the center of the picture. Posthumanism is often made unnecessarily obscure. This book does not do that. It treats difficult ideas seriously without pretending that seriousness requires fog. It is written for readers who want philosophy that can survive contact with supermarkets, smartphones, pets, bills, climate anxiety, and the ordinary indignities of having a body.