In my PhD project called In Affirmation of All That Becomes: Posthumanism in Contemporary Luxembourgish Literature, I am analysing Luxembourgish literature that was published between the current moment and the early 21st century. My corpus currently entails 16 literary works (short stories, novellas, plays and full-length novels) which cover a wide range of topics: technology, cyborgs, humanism, gender, feminism, capitalism, socialism, ecology, animal studies, neurodivergence, sci-fi, fantasy, aliens, and more. Part of the research project are for example Tullio Forgiarini’s La Ballade de Lucienne Jourdain (2001) and Anne-Marie Reuter’s M for Amnesia (2024). The research covers works by authors from Luxembourg, published in the Grand-Duchy and abroad, and from international writers published in Luxembourg. The stories encompass all four languages predominantly taught and used in Luxembourg: French, English, German and Luxembourgish.
In order to analyse the corpus, I apply a critical, posthumanist reading lens to examine posthuman themes in the literature. Primarily, posthumanism claims that philosophies, which believe the human to be more important than any other forms of life (plants, animals, the environment and even space), are outdated in defining what life and who the human is in the 21st century. It criticises discriminatory practices towards humans that have been historically excluded from the definition and discourse of what constitutes a human. Posthumanism emphasises the connection between all things and argues that our human condition is not what makes us special; in fact, nothing makes us special. Neither as a species nor as highly intelligent creatures.
How can this be related to contemporary Luxembourgish literature? I observed through my research that many of the above cited ideas can be found in multiple, different kinds of literary forms addressing different topics. However, they all discuss one issue: Who and what is the human in the 21st century? The purpose of this research question is to update our notions of what constitutes the human, our humanity and our connections to other forms of life in our time. Thus, it turns an ancient, human question into a contemporary, much more inclusive one.
Who and what is the human in the 21st century? The purpose of this research question is to update our notions of what constitutes the human, our humanity and our connections to other forms of life in our time.
There are many divergent answers to this question and it is important to make a critical difference among them. In the light of this being a philosophical and literary PhD project, I have developed my original methodology for differentiating between these answers in a literary context. There are literary stories that can be categorized as “affirmative posthumanism” and some as “non-affirmative posthumanism”. “Affirmative posthumanism”, on one hand, recognizes its legacy from Renaissance and Enlightenment humanism, where the human was defined through discriminatory channels (such as, but not exclusively, colonialism, racism and sexism), that it seeks to overcome. On the other hand, “non-affirmative posthumanism” works with the aforementioned and outdated definitions of the human, but within a posthuman theme or plot.
Both terms may be differentiated by taking a close look at the narratives within the given story. In La Ballade de Lucienne Jourdain, an elderly woman suffers from a heart condition and the heart valve of a pig is surgically fused with her own to save her life. She then suddenly undergoes a metamorphosis on the level of behaviour. She is no longer a docile, conservative and Christian wife, but an impulsive and frivolous woman. In this “non-affirmative” narrative, technology is perceived as a simple tool for humans to improve and change their lives. From a critical, posthumanist perspective, this is reductive of what technology can do besides serving as a tool for human benefit. This “tool” used to have a life with its own desires and existential condition. In an “affirmative” story, such as M for Amnesia, the protagonist affirms her privilege as the heir to a techno-capitalist mega-corporation, realising that she can have a positive influence on a deeply corrupt world, rather than hiding away from its troubles and people who are disproportionately more disadvantaged than her.
Through my PhD project, I am not only applying an original, posthumanist approach to Luxembourgish literature, but I am also offering a new literary-philosophical methodology to reading posthuman themes in literature.
Pierre Balthasar is a 3rd year PhD candidate at the University of Luxembourg in the department of Luxembourgish Studies. Through his innovative project, he argues that there are distinct kinds of posthumanism in contemporary Luxembourgish literature.
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