"POSTHUMANISM: A STUDY IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY PERSPECTIVES"

JOINT-EDITORS: PINAKI ROY AND TANIMA DUTTA

The world and human civilisation are governed by rapid and gradual changes. In order to perceive and explore these changes - among other disciplines of literature and social sciences - posthumanism was developed very late in the 20th century as a literary-philosophical approach to interpreting these changes.

The posthumanists believe that agencies are distributed through dynamic forces over which individuals often do not have control. From the philosophical, political and critical writings by Ted Schatzki, Ihad Hassan, Evan Thompson, and Robert Pepperell, among several others, it transpires that posthumanism considers human beings to be totally dependent on the environment and as possessing qualities that are not limited only to individuals' but are parts of the ecosystem. It is also assumed that mankind live through interactions producing habits and reason. Human beings do not always crave to bring changes; they, nevertheless, participate in the changes.

In order to explain such beliefs and assumptions, the posthumanists refer to a wide variety of disciplines such as ecology, art, architecture, cybernetics, geology, music, psychoanalysis, and quantum physics. Their scholarship, understandably, can be subdivided into a number of 'branches' like (a) the explanation of the posthuman conditions; (b) antihumanism; (c) imagining the conditions following the voluntary extinction of human beings; (d) exploration of the milieu where the robots and A.I. have come to dominate the human beings; (e) cultural posthumanism; (f) philosophical posthumanism; and (g) antihumanism.

The forthcoming anthology of critical writings on posthumanism, tentatively titled "Posthumanism: A Study in 21st-Century Perspectives" - to be edited jointly by Dr. Pinaki Roy, Professor of English, Raiganj University (Raiganj, District: Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal, India), and Dr. Tanima Dutta, Assistant Professor of English, Buniadpur Mahavidyalaya (P.S. Banshihari, District: Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal), and (likely) to be published from a very old and reputed Maryland-based publishing house in U.S.A. (tentatively) in end-2023 - proposes to compile different approaches to the issue of posthumanism that focus on (but are not exclusively limited to) the different 'sub-branches' mentioned above.

Proposals from the prospective contributors - within 300 words, and suffixed with 5 to 6 keywords and precise bio-notes - are to be posted to both Pinaki Roy (monkaaroy@gmail.com) and Tanima Dutta (duttatanimaofficial@gmail.com) within 15 May 2023.

Upon the acceptance of the proposal (the 'status of acceptance' will be communicated to the prospective contributors through e-mail as soon as possible), the full paper in not less than 4000 words and adhering to the M.L.A. 9th-edition-specifications are to be mailed to both the editors (to monkaaroy@gmail.com and duttatanimaofficial@gmail.com) within 30 June 2023.

Reports of anti-plagiarism-scanning need to be attached to the e-mail (containing the full and completed essay).