*CFP* “POSTHUMAN PRAXIS OF HUMAN”, SPECIAL ISSUE, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

In posthuman theory we do have an obligation, but it is never what we think it is, because the ethical event cannot be known in advance… Posthuman Ethics shows we cannot ‘do’ ethics, and evaluate whether something was as ethical or not as we would hope.  

                                                                                                             Patricia MacCormack

Recent decades have witnessed new configurations of turns within the studies of what we call ‘human’ (Animal, Nonhuman, and Transhuman within the rubric of Posthuman) as well as turns within turns (Romantic turn within Posthumanism) to characterize the current intellectual climate. Each turn away from ‘human,’ introducing a range of strategies to decenter it, questions the legitimacy of anthropocentric understanding of the cosmos. Many of these strategic turns, pertinent to the geological mapping of the earth-world in this Anthropocene epoch with its evolutionary scale of science, provide a radical and uncertain picture of the ‘human’ and reinterpret its complex entangled relations with the animals, its environment, and technology. In addition, some of these strategies are historically specific responses to the present glocal condition of the world and bare our understanding of the currently possible forms of futurity (Clarke and Rossini).

This strain of Posthumanism remains poised to create a form of future where the inevitability of death would be countered through techno-science. The prime force of such orientation finds its raison-d’etre in the belief that technologically driven evolution of ‘human’ constitutes good life. This advances the problematic of modernity’s thrust that seeks to set human free as an autonomous being free to control his destiny. Such a free human, at the cusp of its transition into something indistinct from non-human species and intelligent inorganic machines, then must deal with questions of axiology and ethics which now would take unprecedented importance as they would focus primarily on ‘human’ action and agency.

This issue of LLIDS invites scholars to explore these wide array of concerns in terms of the possibility of praxis of such de-centered human who is said to be de-void of intrinsic axia (value, worth) as well as purpose. It therefore invites a re-evaluation of its modes of transformation and transcendence; re-thinking of what constitutes a ‘good’ life; contemplative deliberations upon the finitude of life; and re-envisioning of practical sphere of human action along with the responsibility of being human vis-à-vis those actions.

Only complete paper submissions will be considered for publication. The papers need to be submitted according to the latest guidelines of the MLA format. You are welcome to submit full length papers (not less than 3500 words) along with a 150 words abstract, list of keywords, bio-note, and word count (in a separate word doc) on or before 15th December, 2019. Please put the name of the CFP you are submitting for in the subject line. Although the authors are free to submit till the deadline, we really appreciate early submissions.

All necessary author guidelines can be found here. Please email your submissions and queries to – llids.journal@gmail.com.