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Gauging the merit of posthumanism for education and distinguishing it from what critics have called transhumanism is anything but easy. This is because, as Siân Bayne remarks, the terminology in post- and transhumanist theory

can present a difficult terrain for scholars new to this area of thought – its literatures are wide, cross-disciplinary, complex and in some instances (the relationship between posthumanism and transhumanism being one example) contradictory with itself. This can make it problematic for scholars and practitioners, in education and other areas, who are trying to unpick its implications for applied fields (2018).

The education theorist, John Weaver, even concludes that there are “almost as many ideas and definitions of the posthuman as there are people writing about the subject” (Weaver 2010: 10). What, then, do we need for a productive engagement with posthumanism in literary learning contexts?

Ihab Hassan’s 1977 essay Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture? counts as one of the first analytical sources to engage with the fact that “human form […] may be changing radically, and thus must be re-envisioned” (843, emphasis added). I am citing it here and stressing the notion of ‘form’ because the idea that humans can change has never been out of the question, at least not since modernity and, most importantly, the enlightenment. It is, in fact, a staple of humanist thought, not least in education, where we expect, or in fact build a career on the idea that humans are educable. The notion of Bildung most pointedly stands for this conviction, but contemporary discussions of competence acquisition and the teacher’s role in supporting it also belong here. A posthumanist educational concern must therefore be with the question of what happens if, as Hassan put it, the human form changes. This includes the role and status of the human vis-à-vis large-scale ecological crises that force us to rethink long-honed practices of human exceptionalism over and against an allegedly inanimate, non-valuable nature. And it concerns the human as an image of separation from this “external” world, challenged as it is now by technology (cyborgisation by implants and the increasing use of technology) and growing ecological vulnerabilities (of which Covid-19 is just the currently most visible example). In the face of these and related developments, the idea of what it means to be human is radically altered, and this also effects ideas of human educability underlying competence frameworks, pedagogic models, and classroom practice, from individualisation measures to remote education via the worldwide web. One of the key challenges of a posthumanist pedagogy, in other words, concerns the question if and in what forms the post-human subject can be said to be educable at all (see Pedersen 2010).

In order to better understand the implications of educability in this context, it is pertinent to distinguish conceptually between post- and transhumanism, and to ponder the educational implications of both notions. As regards posthumanist thinking, Hassan of course is not the only scholar to remark on the fact that modernity and postmodernity have reshaped the idea(l) of the human in significant ways. Scholars such as Donna Haraway (1991) and N. Katherine Hayles (1999) have discussed the increasing enmeshment of human beings and bio- and information technology and envisioned human-machine (or human-animal) hybrids and entanglements as possibly liberating, undoing, as it were, gender hierarchies as well as other pervasive binaries such as ‘natural/artificial’, ‘organic/machinic’, ‘mind/body’, and so forth. As the notorious mind-body binary indicates clearly, posthumanism thus critically interrogates the legacies of Western humanism, and the ‘post’ designates as much an ‘after’ as an ‘against’: While the value of critical thinking is clearly recognised, the subtext of traditional humanisms (sexism, racism, speciecism) are exposed, critiqued, and deconstructed (see, e.g., Herbrechter 2013, Bartosch/Hoydis 2019). In its sexist guises, humanism was meant for males; its racist histories understood humans as white Westerners; and speciecist ones stressed that humans are the measure of all things. All those traditional and exclusionary conceptions of the human have been the target of critical inquiry and contention, so that we could conclude that the common denominator of posthumanism of different vantages is in actual fact the attempt to become post-anthropocentric (see fig. 1).

Fig. 1:

Posthumanist vs. Transhumanist Theories and Pedagogies

As it turns out, what could be described as a transhumanist trajectory plays out quite differently. Instead of a position ‘after Man’, it seeks to imagine subjectivites that are ‘more than Man’ or even ‘Man writ large.’ It is, in other words, less critical of, but enthusiastic about the technological possibilities that enhancement technologies and algorithmic efficiency have in store and conceives of technology not as a condition of modernity to be reckoned with in conceptions of what it means to be human, but rather sees it as the very means to arriving at this point of super-humanity. In other words, while posthumanism engages with modernity’s preponderance of technology, transhumanism celebrates it and dreams of uploading human minds onto computers, enhancing abilities through technological implants and such like. Endorsed by figures such as Ray Kurzweil (2005), it is convinced of the need to transcend human limitations with the help of science and technology. As such, it also permeates categories such as the ‘normal’ and the ‘able,’ and, most importantly, the mind-body-dualism posthumanism seeks to challenge: if I can upload my mind and if consciousness and subjectivity are information, then the body is merely a vessel to be done away with or improved through enhancement. In pedagogic contexts, we thus have to ask ourselves: is the current trajectory of educational reforms, geared as it is towards celebrating the digital transformation and a keen embracing of efficiency measures and individualised monitoring of learning outcomes, more likely to set into practice posthumanist, non-anthropocentric thinking? Or does it solidify anthropocentric stubborn subjectivity? And is this, ultimately, a means of realising, consciously or unconsciously, a process of transhumanisation that warrants critique because it gives way to conservative, dys­topian renderings of the posthuman condition and future that we also find explored in series such as Black Mirror or Upload and novels from Brave New World to The Circle. Which leads me directly to the question: What does this all mean for literature pedagogy?