11 Postmodern and Posthuman: Beyond the Human Horizon of Construal

Following structuralism and its deconstruction, late 20th- and early 21st-century thought has increasingly reconceived possibility beyond the human-centric frameworks of prior philosophy. Postmodern and posthuman perspectives open new horizons in which construal is ecological, technological, and relational, dissolving the traditional boundaries that had previously limited the field of potential.

Postmodernism, in its interrogation of grand narratives and foundational certainties, emphasised the multiplicity and contingency of meaning. Possibility is no longer bound to universal reason, historical teleology, or semiotic structure alone; it emerges in local, context-sensitive, and heterogeneous configurations. Knowledge, identity, and agency are distributed and provisional, revealing that construal is always situated within networks of power, discourse, and relationality.

Posthumanism extends this insight further by decentring the human as the primary locus of possibility. Thought and action are understood as entangled with technological, ecological, and non-human agents. Artificial intelligence, networks, and cybernetic systems co-constitute what can be known, done, and experienced. Simultaneously, the environment, ecosystems, and planetary processes participate in shaping potentialities, highlighting the distributed and relational nature of becoming.

In this landscape, construal is no longer the product of singular human subjects but a collaborative enactment across heterogeneous agents and systems. Possibility becomes dynamic, emergent, and relational: an effect of interaction, adaptation, and co-constitution. The human horizon is decentered, and the very notion of subjectivity is reconceived as interdependent, embedded, and evolving.

These shifts open new philosophical and practical terrains. Ethics, epistemology, and ontology alike must account for the interrelation of humans, technologies, and ecological systems. The act of construal is inseparable from the networks through which it flows, and possibility itself is understood as co-emergent, contingent, and multiply instantiated.

In embracing these postmodern and posthuman perspectives, contemporary thought extends the genealogy of construal into a horizon in which possibility is not merely realised through human reasoning or historical process but continually emerges within complex, interdependent, and relational systems. The world is at once open, contingent, and alive with potential — a terrain of becoming that transcends prior limits and inaugurates new modes of understanding, acting, and relating.