The Human Reimagined

The articles featured in The Human Reimagined examine the ways in which literary and artistic representations of the body, selfhood, subjectivity, and consciousness illuminate late- and post-Soviet ideas about the changing relationships among the individual, the environment, technology, and society.

Julia Vaingurt is associate professor in the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published widely on Russian modernism and avant-garde, including Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and Arts in Russia of the 1920s (Northwestern University Press, 2013).

Colleen McQuillen is associate professor in the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has authored numerous publications on Russian literature and culture, including The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

Julia Vaingurt is associate professor in the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published widely on Russian modernism and avant-garde, including Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and Arts in Russia of the 1920s (Northwestern University Press, 2013).

“This groundbreaking volume is well positioned to be indispensable reading on posthumanist thought in the context of Russian history and culture… The Human Reimagined offers an excellent guide for classroom discussion on posthumanism in the Russian cultural context and should be of great interest to the Slavic studies academic community.”

– Volha Isakava, H-SHERA

“‘Humanism in the European sense of the word,’ Nikolai Berdyaev wrote in his Russian Idea (1946), ‘formed no part of the experience of Russia.’ What Russia did experience, and ‘with some particular sharpness,’ he continues, was ‘the crisis of humanism.’ This crisis lies at the heart of Colleen McQuillen and Julia Vaingurt’s excellent and timely collection The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia. … The Human Reimagined is a valuable contribution that opens up vital new methodologies and relevant paths of inquiry for the Slavic field. It will be useful for both newcomers and specialists in these subfields, and its crossdisciplinary engagement will enrich both Slavic Studies and posthumanist discussions throughout the humanities.” —Bradley A. Gorski, Vanderbilt University, the Russian Review Vol. 78, No. 3

Aaron Winslow:
"The Human Reimagined is an unassuming but essential volume. It’s a minor form — the edited collection of academic essays — that undertakes the major work of rearticulating a field of philosophical and political inquiry. The editors and contributors present a vision of a powerful theoretical and philosophical concept of the human based in the material reality of history. It’s that materialist grounding and that range that give posthumanism — and The Human Reimagined — its radical potential." —Aaron Winslow, Los Angeles Review of Books

From the work of Dostoevsky and Fedorov to Malevich and Kharms, Russian culture has sought to explore post-human conditions, treating so-called human nature and human reason as annoying fetters. For the first time, this volume connects these artistic intuitions with the scholarly explorations of post-humanism that have occurred in the humanities for more than a decade. The Human Reimagined places Russian posthumanism in a broad theoretical context and reflects upon the specific character of these Russian cultural phenomena, which can be retroactively defined as posthumanist. Contributors to this volume outline a number of very promising directions for this quest (Platonov, science fiction, computer gaming, etc.), and their articles are like scout parties entering vast and exciting territories, still awaiting exploration. This is a pioneering volume, and its significance will only grow with time.