Cyborg or Goddess? Religion and Posthumanism From Secular to Postsecular Cover Image

Cyborg or Goddess? Religion and Posthumanism From Secular to Postsecular
Cyborg or Goddess? Religion and Posthumanism From Secular to Postsecular

Author(s): Elaine Graham
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Religion and science , Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Politics and religion, Sociology of Religion, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Cyborg; Donna Haraway; Posthumanism; Postsecular; Religion;

Summary/Abstract: This article works on the premise that critical posthumanism both exposes and calls into question the criteria by which Western modernity has defined the boundaries between nature, humanity, and technology. Yet the religious, cultural and epistemological developments of what is known as the ‘postsecular’ may signal a further blurring of another set of distinctions characteristic of modernity: between sacred and secular, belief and non-belief. Using Donna Haraway’s famous assertion that she would ‘rather be a cyborg than a goddess’, I consider whether critical posthumanism’s valorisation of cyborg identities is also capable of negotiating this ‘final frontier’ between immanence and transcendence, secular and sacred, humanity and divinity. In essence: is there space for a religious dimension to visions of the posthuman?

  • Issue Year: 1/2021
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 23-31
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: English