Culture After Humanism: History, Culture, Subjectivity

Culture After Humanism asks what happens to the authority of traditional western modes of thought in the wake of postmodernist theories of language and identity. Drawing on examples from music, architecture, literature, philosophy and art, Iain Chambers investigates moments of tension, interruptions which transform our perception of the world and test the limits of language, art and technology. In a series of interlinked essays ranging from Susan Sontag’s novel The Volcano Lover to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Jimi Hendrix and Baroque architecture and music, Chambers weaves together a critique of western humanism, exploring issues of colonisation and migration, language and identity. Culture After Humanism offers a new approach to cultural history, a ‘Post-humanist’ perspective which challenges our sense of a world in which the subject is sovereign, language the transparent medium of its agency, and truth the product of reason.