Post-Self : Journeys Beyond the Human Body – 9781913462949

Using extreme music and film as points of departure, Post-Self digs deep into the darkest thoughts of the most dissatisfied minds, minds that want to leave their bodies behind. Everyone is looking for a way out. Throughout history, the physical body has often been seen as a prison, as something to be escaped by any means necessary: technology, mechanization, drugs and sensory deprivation, rapture, or even death. Taking in horror movies, heavy metal, philosophy, science fiction, and cybernetics, Post-Self is an exploration of the ways that human beings have sought to make this escape, to transcend the limits of the human body, to find a way out. As the physical world continues to collapse around us, and we are faced with a particularly 21st-century kind of dread and dehumanization,Post-Self asks what this escape from our bodies might look like, and what it might mean for the future of civilisation.