Modernism and the Posthuman

The pairing of modernism and posthumanism highlights a constitutive paradox of new modernist studies. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult not to think about “modernism” as a historical term, yet from its early days of intense critical and aesthetic self-consciousness, modernism has existed, indeed has aggressively positioned itself, and defined itself, in conflict with the historicity of the present moment. So goes an old critical narrative: modernist art stages a constant struggle against the possibility of being historicised, and chases the urgency of an ever-receding future, ripe with revolutionary or technological promise.