Contemporary Posterity: A Helpful Oxymoron: Or, what the post-digital can teach us about the dynamics of temporal periodization and transformative potentiality in relation to post-whatever

What does it mean to be post? In a time of countless movements of post-[x], the value of the prefix itself becomes of interest: what does it do to a concept to reposition it by turning it into a ‘posterity’? I will unpack this question through an inquiry into the concept of post-digital, scrutinizing and seeking to overcome the problems of rigid periodization thatthe prefix risks to imply. Such an inquiry is arguably also central to the ongoing exploration of posthumanist tendencies in literary and aesthetic fields. Indeed, posthumanism and the (post-)digital are – historically and continuously – thoroughly intertwined. As Laura Shackelford argues, the post-digital’s “practice-based experimentation continues to pursue ... posthumanist inquiries and immanent engagements with technicity” (349). So what can the concept of post-digital contribute to the study of posthumanism? A noticeably large proportion of inquiry into the post-digital has revolved around discussions of the troublesome notion of being ‘post’ – discussions which, in my view, are relevant across multiple ‘posterities’.