From Boundless Expansion to Existential Threat: Transhumanists and Posthuman Imaginaries

From Boundless Expansion to Existential Threat: Transhumanists and Posthuman Imaginaries," in Futures, edited by Jenny Andersson and Sandra Kemp, 333-348. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021):This essay examines visions of the future of human life in transhumanist imaginaries of the posthuman, ranging from utopian figurations to catastrophist warnings. Focusing on libertarian, liberal, and conservative posthuman imaginaries, it argues that the posthu­man condition is defined by changing scientific, moral, and political narratives, including ideas of revolutionary change, progressive evolution through the ethical use of human en­hancement technologies, and the mitigation of existential risk for the preservation of in­telligence and civilization in the long term. Changing posthuman imaginaries, it shows, reshape spaces of present and future political imaginatio