"A passion so strange, outrageous, and so variable"

the invention of the inhuman in the Merchant of Venice

Stefan Herbrechter

pp. 41-57

in: Stefan Herbrechter, Ivan Callus (eds), Posthumanist Shakespeares, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Historically speaking, there is uncertainty if and when posthumanism started or when we became posthuman.¹ Conceptually, however, it is quite inevitable that with the "invention of the human" the posthuman as one of his or her "others' also becomes thinkable, representable, possible, necessary etc. As soon as some form of humanitas begins to characterize the species as a whole, non-human (un-, in-, pre- or posthuman) others start proliferating and the process of inclusion, exclusion and differentiation is set in motion.²