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).
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?
3. Teaching the Posthuman: Media Competence without New Media
In educational contexts, we can use texts to critically reflect on developments described as either post- or transhumanism; or we can look for moments of literary and cultural learning within the new technocultural environments of the twenty-first century (cf. Bartosch 2019). Both educational takes can be organised around the distinction between post- and transhumanism that, in turns, relates to the notions of relatability and stubborn subjectivity, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter and displayed above. As posthumanism displaces the image of the human as the measure of all things and places emphases on human-animal, human-machine, and mind-body relations, the “most hated neologism” that Garrard speaks of – relatability – might be indicative of a posthumanist endeavour to think beyond the merely human. Transhumanism’s techno-utopian fantasies of transcending the human, by contrast, are a form of stubborn subjectivity writ large – and, as Jürgen Kreft has argued, it is stubborn subjectivity literary learning helps overcome. Such alignment of theoretical positioning and educational realisation will have to bring posthumanism into proximity with related pedagogical concepts such as have been formulated in sustainability and digital education. Then, we see that The Circle, mentioned above, provides space for reflecting on digitisation and digital media, which is why Daniel Becker in a brilliant essay suggests using it in contexts of education for global digital citizenship (Becker 2019). What makes it relevant for posthumanist debate is that it goes beyond simply telling stories about technology. It rather registers how through digital technology, subjectivity and, indeed, “human form […] may be changing radically, and thus must be re-envisioned”, to quote Hassan’s phrasing from 1977. The novel follows young college graduate Mae, who begins working at a major tech firm, called The Circle (but easily recognisable as a mix of Facebook and Google). Its working routines and social protocols among workers increasingly become cult-like and deliberately use the employees’ social media accounts as constant surveillance apparatuses – not only for themselves but also against those who would rather refrain from using them. Such social and economic pressures are well-known to so-called digital natives in class and may instigate critical discussion of such developments, especially with regard to scenes that dramatize them significantly.
In one such remarkable scene, an online community chases down Mercer, one of the protagonist’s former friends, and drives him to suicide. All this happens against the backdrop of social anxiety and pressure, exacerbated by the social media accounts of the so-called Circlers and the firm’s eerie desire for “completion”: a moment in which all accounts and technologies become united and immortalised, and that no less eerily echoes Google’s becoming “Alphabet” in the extratextual world. In its linking of the speculative and the actual, and of showing how technology shapes human behaviour and being, the novel is frightfully accurate and therefore pedagogically worthwhile. In Becker’s own words:
As more recent sociological and cultural studies on digital identity show, this instrumental perspective disregards the complex interactions taking place when an individual encounters digital technology. In today’s digital age, individuals do not only shape their digital environment but are, in turn, also shaped and influenced by this very environment. As such, one might argue, a concept of digital citizenship exclusively relying on an instrumental point of view cannot adequately prepare young citizens for the complex digital world they experience daily (2019: 168).
The point Becker so diligently elaborates is that new media significantly shape subjectivity and that literary writing can serve as a means of reflection on such effects of digitisation – although of course a so-and-so-many-pages novel might not be the first thing to come to mind when we think of digital competence.
And yet, this is exactly the point of “media competence without new media”. If part and parcel of critical media education is the ability and willingness to assess the complex influence of digital media on the daily lives and subjectivities of prosumers, then literary fiction – with its indisputable potential for reflection and depragmatised experience of the mental and social worlds of fictional characters – serves us more
