Posthuman Feminism

Book excerpt: In a context marked by the virulent return of patriarchal and white supremacist attitudes, a new generation of activists, from the Xenofeminists to Pussy Riot, are continuing the struggle, fighting alongside star feminists like Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson: these are very feminist times. But how do these and other struggles relate to our contemporary posthuman condition? In this important new book, Rosi Braidotti examines the implications of the posthuman turn for feminist theory and practice. She defines the posthuman turn as a convergence between post-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentrism on the other, and she examines the double impact of these two lines of critical enquiry for contemporary feminist practice. In so doing she develops five theses: that contemporary feminism is neo-materialist and that feminism today is not a humanism; that Anthropos has been de-centered and that non-human life, Zoe, is now the ruling concept; and that, as a result of these shifts of perspective, today sexuality can be defined as a force beyond, beneath and after gender. The book ends with a plea for joyful political resistance, calling for embedded and embodied cartographies of the new power relations that are emerging from the current geo-political order. This bold new text by a leading feminist philosopher will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences.