Abstract

The transhumanist movement prefigures a post-human future, in which our species, thanks to scientific and technological innovation, will determine its own evolution, overcoming the physical, cognitive and existential limitations of the human condition. Its exponents have admitted the influence exerted on them by the future scenarios outlined by science fiction books and films, and more recently by video games. This essay will provide some general coordinates on the history and composition of the movement, contrasting it with other, very different forms of posthumanism, such as those related to the postmodern critique of Western humanism. Next, it will analyze the eclectic and sometimes contradictory co-presence, in transhumanist imaginary, of very different cultural repertoires, as recent as science fiction or certain types of popular science, or as historically rooted as those of major religions. Finally, it will suggest that transhumanism is characterized by peculiar practices and rhetorical strategies that function as time-handling devices, producing a temporality that is both futuristic and unexpectedly presentist