The Posthuman: Literary Usages and Embryonic Forms

This article investigates the sense of the posthuman in the collective imaginary as reflected in literary usage. Such a perspective makes it possible to avoid the self-referential character of discourses on the posthuman, particularly within feminist and postmodern posthumanism. On the basis of a working, pragmatic definition of the posthuman derived from usage, the study traces a diachronic analysis of its embryonic forms and critiques the widely accepted but reductive Frankensteinian genealogy.