Posthumanism and Cultural Anxiety in Twenty-First Century Fiction

Abstract

The twenty-first century has produced ruptures technological, ecological, epistemic that have fundamentally destabilised inherited notions of human identity. Digital proliferation, artificial intelligence, and ecological breakdown are not separate crises; they converge into a single, unsettling question: what exactly constitutes the human now? Against this backdrop, posthumanism has gained considerable theoretical traction as a framework that challenges anthropocentric assumptions and redefines the relationship between humans, technology, and the natural world. As Rosi Braidotti argues, the posthuman condition signals the collapse of the opposition between the human and the non-human. Contemporary fiction is among the most honest registers of this collapse. Novels that center around artificial intelligence, cybernetic embodiment, surveillance capitalism, ecological catastrophe, and fractured selfhood do not merely describe cultural anxiety; they generate it, work through it, give it shape. This paper examines the representation of posthumanism and cultural anxiety in twenty-first-century fiction. It focuses on how selected literary texts encode collective fears about technological dependency, the erosion of individuality, ethical incoherence, and environmental fragility. Drawing on the theoretical positions of Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti, and Cary Wolfe, the study analyses three primary texts Never Let Me Go, Oryx and Crake, and The Circle. The paper argues that posthuman fiction constitutes a sustained critique of technological modernity. More than that, it maps the existential disorientation of living in a world that is becoming increasingly digital and ecologically precarious. The cross-disciplinary relevance of posthumanist frameworks to literary and cultural studies is also addressed, along with emerging directions for further inquiry.