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@article{192049,
        author = {Anjali Gurung},
        title = {From Gothic Monsters to Digital Minds: Posthumanism in Contemporary Shakespearean Adaptations Across Cultures},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {12},
        number = {no},
        pages = {24-30},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=192049},
        abstract = {This paper explores posthumanist thought through a critical engagement with Shakespearean drama and its contemporary literary and cultural adaptations. Posthumanism, as a theoretical framework, challenges Enlightenment humanism by questioning anthropocentrism, stable subjectivity, and the centrality of the rational human. The study argues that Shakespeare’s plays anticipate posthumanist concerns through their persistent interrogation of bodily boundaries, non-human agency, and liminal identities. Characters such as Caliban in The Tempest, the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, and the ghost in Hamlet occupy threshold positions that destabilise binaries between human and non- human, nature and culture, material and spectral existence.
Building upon this proto-posthuman foundation, the paper examines how modern adaptations across postcolonial, speculative, and technologically mediated contexts transform these liminal figures into posthuman subjects. These adaptations reimagine Shakespearean characters as cyborgs, artificial intelligences, digitally fragmented selves, or ecological entities, thereby reflecting contemporary anxieties surrounding technology, embodiment, and agency. The shift from gothic monstrosity to digital consciousness illustrates how adaptation functions not merely as reinterpretation but as a posthuman process that enables texts to exceed temporal, cultural, and corporeal limitations.
Through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the study demonstrates that Shakespeare’s enduring adaptability positions his works as transhistorical sites for negotiating evolving conceptions of the human. By situating Shakespeare within posthumanist discourse, the paper contributes to adaptation studies, contemporary literary theory, and Shakespeare studies, foregrounding the relevance of early modern drama in addressing twenty-first-century questions about identity, technology, and the future of the human.},
        keywords = {Posthumanism; Shakespearean Adaptations; Liminality; Non-human Agency; Transhistorical Texts},
        month = {},
        }