Posthumanism and Critical Applied Linguistics

Abstract Posthumanism can be understood in terms of three overlapping domains: a concern with the tenets of humanist political philosophy (the exclusivity and particularity of the understanding of the human), transformations to what it means to be human as a result of changing technologies (a transhumanist interest in converging technologies that enhance human capacities through a range of augmentations to mind and body), and a new materialist orientation to rethinking the relations between humans and the nonhuman world ( assemblage ‐oriented perspectives whereby objects and places are not seen as separate from humans but as part of integrated wholes). These perspectives present several challenges for (critical) applied linguistics, including different approaches to language, cognition, agency, identity, technology, and materialism. Posthumanism urges us to ask how and why we have come to think about humans in particular ways, with particular boundaries between humans and other animals, humans and artefacts, and humans and nature, enabling a renewed critical applied linguistic perspective on language and material relations.