DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION ODER DESIGN? POSTHUMANISTISCHE PERSPEKTIVEN AUF DIE PROMETHEUS-FIGUR IN LITERATUR- UND ARBEITSDISKURSEN
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION OR DESIGN? POSTHUMANIST PERSPECTIVES ON PROMETHEUS IN DISCOURSES OF LITERATURE, LABOUR AND AGENCY

Summary/Abstract: As a creator figure, Prometheus is invoked in reflections on literature; as an image for autonomous human agency creating the human world through work, the figure illustrates debates about human labour. Since Ihab Hassan’s text “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture” (1977), the figure of Prometheus has been closely associated with the concept of posthumanism (Franssen 2014). Especially important here are considerations of “disruptive innovation” (Schumpeter); innovation is always based on destruction. In contrast, Latour writes about design as the work of a “cautious Prometheus” (Latour 2008). Both “literature” and “work” describe a relationship of human agency and the world, the conception of which is subject to historical change. Both relations are discursively shaped. This paper explores how these relations are elaborated in literary texts with reference to the Prometheus figure. The paper looks at texts in which the Prometheus figure is drawn upon for a reflection on literature itself and on notions of labour and agency: either as disruptive innovation or as careful design.

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