Review by Choice Review
Peterson turns to deconstruction against/within the supposed anti-anthropocentricism of posthumanism. Echoes of Gianni Vattimo reverberate as the volume argues for a "weak posthumanism." The continuity/discontinuity of animal vocalizations and human language requires that an assessment of animal language cannot escape the trace of human language. Peterson continues to look at posthumanist accounts of language in chapter 2. The relationship between Susan and Friday in J. M. Coetzee's Foe illustrates the transgressive line between speech and silence that occurs in every situation of speech, even within the critique of colonial power. One cannot escape the human, all too human, in language. Chapter 3 engages object-oriented ontology through two films, Melancholia (2011) and Gravity (2013). Peterson argues for a place between an anthropocentric and an object orientation. The fourth chapter affirms/denies a humanism within a cosmocratic political order through a Derridean notion of justice-which-is-to-come. Peterson questions the ethical supremacy inherent in many humanistic scholars' posthumanist claims. A conclusion would have enhanced the book's clarity. Technological posthumanism's absence haunts the book. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --John W. Wright, Point Loma Nazarene University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
