At the Borders of the Human

Book excerpt: What is, what was the human? This book argues that the making of the human as it is now understood implies a renegotiation of the relationship between the self and the world. The development of Renaissance technologies of difference such as mapping, colonialism and anatomy paradoxically also illuminated the similarities between human and non-human. This collection considers the borders between humans and their imagined others: animals, women, native subjects, machines. It examines border creatures (hermaphrodites, wildmen and cyborgs) and border practices (science, surveying and pornography).