ABSTRACT
This book works on the basis that we are posthuman – but that we do not yet know what that fully means, how posthuman subjectivity is emergent, or how our humanist practices might be rethought in order to align with more posthuman perspectives. In this chapter, I outline some of the main arguments that have driven my exploration of these issues, and give an overview of the context of gaming, explaining why I have based my research of posthuman subjectivity in World of Warcraft. In this research, I draw mainly on Braidotti’s genealogy of posthumanism and her vision for a posthuman subject and posthuman ethics; on Barad’s notions of entanglement and intra-action to explore the ways in which we are not ontologically distinct subjects (as the concept of “inter”action might suggest) but are bound up in our relations to everything around us; and on Hayles’ version of the posthuman as a material-informational entity. I give an overview of these arguments, as well as exploring my own interest in the posthuman subject as embodied, before providing a breakdown of the monograph and the aims of each chapter as well as an introduction to the game.
