Editors Evdokia Stefanopoulou and Yannis Mazarakis invite book chapter proposals for a scholarly collection entitled Contemporary Women Filmmakers and Posthumanism. Edinburgh University Press has expressed interest in publishing the book.

The posthuman in popular discourse has often been envisioned as a technologically altered body (e.g. cyborg), whose skills and abilities transcends the biological limitations of the human species. However, critical posthumanism as a theoretical framework delves much deeper, exploring a broader range of themes related to human subjectivity. Authors such as Donna Haraway (1991), Katherine Hayles (1999), Cary Wolfe (2010) and Rosi Braidotti (2013), among others have stressed the need to rethink the Enlightenment definition of the human: the self-sufficient individual characterized by rationality, free will and the mastery of nature. This definition has historically been identified with the White Western male, therefore excluding the majority of human population. It is precisely this strict definition that critical posthumanism challenges, reconsidering what it means to be human in the light of feminist, postcolonial and post-structuralist discourses as well as by the major technoscientific advancements and the current ecological crisis. From this viewpoint, the posthuman signifies a new form of subjectivity, one that challenges human exceptionalism and embraces its co-dependence with multiple non-human others. As Braidotti (2013, 193) puts it, becoming-posthuman “signifies a subjectivity which is “interconnect[ed]… to a variety of others, starting from the environmental or eco-others and includ[ing] the technological apparatus.”

Cinematic representations of the posthuman as described above are relatively rare, especially in the male-dominated mainstream cinema, where the posthuman is usually pictured as an augmented body with unlimited power (e.g. the MCU). However, there are cinematic paradigms which are more aligned with a critical posthumanist approach. Such examples can be found not only in speculative fiction films (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Bacurau (2019, Vesper (2022), etc.) but also in films that adopt the aesthetic conventions of realism, such as Nomadland (2020). The growing literature around the intersection of cinema studies and posthuman theories include examples of both tendencies (see Brown 2009, Hauskeller et al 2015, Molloy et al 2023). However, the majority of these examples examine the work of male directors. Given that women were for a long time (and still are in many parts of the word) excluded from the definition of the human, it is imperative to examine how women filmmakers from different cinematic traditions, envision altered forms of human subjectivity. For example, one needs to think how humans are enmeshed in the environment in the work of Kelly Reichardt or Debra Granik; the socio-ecological tribulations in the work of Mati Diop; the human-nonhuman assemblages in the work of Julia Ducournau; the importance of relationality in the work of Brit Marling. Other women filmmakers whose work can be examined from a posthumanist perspective is Kristina Buozyte [the aforementioned Vesper (2022)], Agnieszka Holland [Spoor (2017)] and Pella Kagerman [Aniara (2018)], and many others.

This collection seeks chapters that apply a critical posthumanist framework in the work of women filmmakers (from different cinematic traditions), examining both themes and style and situating the texts in the historical context of production. The guiding questions of this collection are as follows:

• How women filmmakers envision humanity’s relation with the non-human world?

• What stylistic devices do they use to convey posthuman perspectives?


• How do women filmmakers situate such representations in the wider historical context of the films’ production? (the Anthropocene, gender and race inequalities, etc.)? What are the political and ethical implications of such representations?

• How can we re-examine the much-discussed notion of female authorship in relation to critical posthumanism?

Our aim is to foreground the role that women filmmakers play in envisioning different forms of human subjectivity that move beyond anthropocentrism that can be expressed in different themes/approaches such as:

• ecology, ecofeminism, queer ecologies

• Non-human animals, animality

• Interspecies connections

• technological embodiment, relation with technology

• Hybridity, hybrid identities

• critical race theories and postcolonialism

• Nomadic subjectivities, becoming-with, relationality

• Micro-scales, planetary scales

• The Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, The Chthulucene

We welcome both individual and co-authored pieces for articles of 6000-7000 words. Please submit your 300-word proposal and a short author bio via email to Evdokia Stefanopoulou (evstefan@yahoo.gr) and Yannis Mazarakis (jo.mazarak@gmail.com). Proposal deadline December 1st, 2024.

Timeline:
Proposal Deadline: December 1st, 2024
Acceptance/Non-acceptance notice: January 15th, 2025
Article submission deadline: June 15th, 2025 (articles will undergo peer review)