Humanism after the Human: An Introduction

Abstract

Photography & Culture ’ s special issue “ Humanism after the Human ” engages with posthumanist theories to reconsider critiques of liberal humanism. The authors analyze a selection of nineteenth-century, mid-twentieth-century, and contemporary photography to challenge both a universalizing and glorifying liberal humanism that equates social with economic progress, as well as disembodied posthuman visions. Concerned with questions of what counts as human, non-human, and technological agency, the essays reinforce the importance of imagining alternatives to capitalism ’ s particularizing and objectifying norms. “ Humanism after the Human ” asks: how can we, as humans, realistically but differently interact with our natural, animal, and technological environment that we appro-priate and thereby co-produce? What roles do the artistic medium of photography and photographic images play in critiquing hegemonic humanist practices? And, how can contemporary posthumanist visions and photographic technologies resist subsummation by capitalist reproduction of liberal humanist values? issue