Introduction: Conceptualizing post-human futures

Abstract

It is widely held that emerging technologies call into question common assumptions about human beings and their place within the world. However there is lack of clarity about exactly what we mean by the human in a rapidly growing and often polarised literature, as well as the theoretical challenges involved in discerning the horizons of incipient futures while we remain embedded within the present world. In this introduction, we engage with exemplars of posthumanist and transhumanist thought in order to recover questions of conceptual methodology which too often get lost in discussions of socio-technical change and human nature. This includes discussions of the dilemmas of epochal theorising, the risk of reproducing contemporary orthodoxy, the perennial challenge of conceptualising the subject and its relationship to empirical research.