Abstract
As a living condition and state in the process of human development and evolution, a posthuman era has indeed arrived, which has brought about fundamental changes in the role and value of humanity. In the past, in the era of high humanism, the status of humanity as the “primate of all things” and the “elite of the universe” was challenged and resisted by various postmodern trends. In particular, the deconstruction of anthropocentrism by ecocriticism, the challenge posed by animal studies to the power and role of human domination, and the attacks launched by various viruses in nature on human survival and health have directly threatened human survival and evolution. The application and popularization of artificial intelligence in the high-tech era have further marginalized human beings and even made a large number of people who once took pride in their work lose their jobs. In the field of humanities that we are dedicated to teaching and research, humanism, which used to dominate modern and contemporary thought, has also evolved into a kind of “posthumanism”, followed by the rise of posthumanist criticism in the field of literary theory and criticism. Posthumanism challenges and deconstructs the myth that overemphasizes the status and role of the human being, leading the human being back to its original state: a species of all things on the earth. Posthumanist criticism, as the name suggests, is a literary criticism that contradicts the development of humanist criticism to the extreme. In terms of time, it has come after humanist criticism, and in terms of content, it challenges the anthropocentric consciousness of humanist criticism on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can hardly separate itself from it, thus maintaining a certain continuity with it. This is why it is called posthumanist criticism. The rise of posthumanist criticism has added a new direction to literary and cultural criticism in the post-theoretical era.
Keywords
posthuman era, anthropocentrism, humanist criticism, posthumanist criticism, artificial intelligence
First Page
39
Last Page
47
Recommended Citation
Wang, Ning. 2025. "The Advent of the Posthuman Era and the Rise of Posthumanist Criticism." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 44, (6): pp.39-47. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol44/iss6/5
