Posthumanism and India: A Critical Cartography

by Debashish Banerji (Editor), Md. Monirul Islam (Editor), Samrat Sengupta (Editor)

Overview

The book is about what posthumanism means in the contemporary Indian context and what different lines of consideration this can take.
The world today has universalized a Eurocentric history of the human with its privileges, oppressions, exploitations and exclusions. On the one hand, this has led to the triumphalist narrative of technology, the blurring of biological embodiment through prostheses and the dream of transhumanist self-exceeding. On the other hand, we are witness to the contemporary eruption of dystopian anomalies due to the dis-balance or revolt of the “others” of humanism – climate crisis, chronic pandemic, religious, ethnocentric and geopolitical violence, ideological and authoritarian state control. Posthumanism is both an acknowledgement of these blurred boundaries of humanism and a critical response to it.
The editors of this volume opine that the discourse of posthumanism in India warrants urgent consideration, if we are to adequately address both national and global emergencies and look for solutions that India may be in a unique position to offer. Essays in the volume are by scholars in the area dealing with representative directions relating to posthumanism in India. The essays are divided into five areas of cultural relevance – (1) internal selves and others; (2) technology, normativity and ethics; (3) human and animal; (4) bodies and their discards; (5) becoming-cosmos. Together they form the beginnings of an approach to a critical cartography of posthumanism as it pertains specifically to India.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789356404182
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/30/2025
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.65(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Debashish Banerji, Ph.D. is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures, Doshi Professor of Asian Art, Chair, Department of East-West Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Md. Monirul Islam is an Assistant Professor in the Department English, Presidency University, Kolkata, India. He is chiefly interested in studying British Romantics in the global context. He has been awarded the doctoral degree for his research on the Eastern connections of British Romanticism.

Samrat Sengupta, Ph.D. is Associate Professor, Department of English, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal, India.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A Critical Cartography of Posthumanism in India
Debashish Banerji, Md.Monirul Islam, Samrat Sengupta
Section A: Internal Selves and Others
2. Some Observations on the Political Possibilities of Feminist Posthumanism
Ritu Sen Chaudhuri
3. Making and Unmaking of the Marginal Subject: How a Dalit Migrant Remembers the Nonhuman
Samrat Sengupta
4. The Posthuman Uncanny Materiality in Salman Rushdie's Novel Midnight's Children
Malgorzata Kowalcze
Section B: Human and Animal
5. Can Bulls be Cyborgs? Unmaking the Logics of Dispensability
Susan Haris
6. Being Macaque: Nonhuman Ethnographies of Urban India
Anindya Sinha, Maan Barua
Section C: Technology, Normativity and Ethics
7. Artificial Intelligence in India: Crisis of Collusion Between Technocapitalism and Religious Nationalism
Debashish Banerji, Md. Monirul Islam, Samrat Sengupta
8. The Spectre of Artificial Intelligence and Indian Cinema: Critical Perspectives on AI Ethics and Machine Agency
Md Monirul Islam
9. Indian Supercrip Cyborg: Deconstructing Normativity through Feminist Posthumanism
Jaya Sarkar
Section D: Bodies and Their Discards
10. Space, Race, Garbage and the Posthuman: An Intersectional Analysis of the Photographic Representations of the Wasteocene in Varanasi by European Tourists
Sayan Dey
11.'Dirt Accha, Hain': A Posthumanist Critique of Mahatma Gandhi's Doctrines of Sanitation and Sanitation Labourers
Soumili Das
12. The Posthuman in the Burial Grounds: Unravelling the Headless and the Crematorial Kali
Asijit Datta
Section E: Becoming Cosmos
13. Poems
I. A Journey into the Chakras: 7 Posthuman Visions
II. Five Fingers: In Touch with Reality
III. Posthuman Love
Francesca Ferrando
14. Posthumanism and Indian Spirituality
Debashish Banerji
15. Becoming Raga: From Posthuman Sono-Rituals to Transindividual Sound-Bodies
Jonathan Kay
16. Sri Aurobindo's Tales of Prison Life and the New Ethics of Selfhood
Subham Dutta
About the Editors and Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

This timely collection of essays shows how posthumanism with its multiculturalism and multidisciplinary approach has been accepted and expanded in India. While exploring a variety of common subjects of posthumanism such as technology, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, new bodies, materialities and subjectivities, the anthology also examines the specific ways in which humanism creates its hierarchies and others in India, as, for example, through caste, gender or cultural perceptions of animals. The book also pioneers a consideration of the relationship between posthumanism and Indian spirituality and various traditions and interpretations of Hinduism. Someone often forgotten in international posthumanist circles, but a figure of key significance, also appears in this collection: Sri Aurobindo, whose ideas and works not only build bridges across different traditions but also shed light on many contemporary problems. Apart from its significance for India, the anthology opens up new vistas for everyone who engages with posthumanism globally. Many thanks go to its contributors and editors for this wonderful work!” —Yunus Tuncel, Adjunct Professor, Liberal Studies, New York University; Co-founder, The Nietzsche Circle; Editor-in-chief, The Agonist

“Posthumanism and India is a fundamental book for the international philosophical discourse that shows us how today, more than ever, we need to overcome the barriers between cultures and the hierarchical and disjunctive approach that has characterised Western humanism. It is a book that urges us to rediscover an inclusive relationship and coexistence with the Earth, abandoning that anthropocentric logic of domination and submission of every form of otherness that is at the basis of the global ecological crisis, through an ethics of empathy and a plural ontology. This book also considers our contemporary relationship with technology in a critical way, eschewing triumphalist tones and irrational fears, with the awareness that every technology has an impact on human beings as well as on the world. I highly recommend reading this work which, through the vision of the various authors, shows us an important perspective of posthumanism.” —Roberto Marchesini Director, School of Human-Animal Interactions; Director, Center for the Study of Posthumanist Philosophy, Bologna, Italy

“If humanism is the language of modernity, how do we think about posthumanism in relation to what comes after the modern? By raising questions like this, the aim of this volume is to create a much needed critical space for considering posthumanism in the Indian scene of postcolonial thought. Most significantly, it underscores the political nature of posthumanist knowledge practices in the Indian context, covering a wide range of topics from human–animal relations to technology and mobilising multiple disciplines like philosophy, literature, cinema studies and anthropology. The book's layered discussions on Brahminical normativity, gender, politics of AI, embodiment and waste, music, spirituality, religion and tantrism will make it an esoteric trailblazer for the dissemination of posthumanism in India.” —Arka Chattopadhyay Assistant Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Gandhinagar, India

From the Publisher