This article reviews the rise of posthumanism as a popular discourse and mode of social theory, concentrating on the reception of posthumanism among human geographers. It first identifies the four modalities of hyperbolic, apocalyptic, deconstructive, and vitalist posthumanism and summarizes their key components. The first two refer to contrasting popular posthumanisms; the latter to two different models of critical posthumanism currently practiced in the social sciences. Five themes are discussed, which cut across these different modalities and relate to the ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, ethics, and politics of posthumanism. Each section summarizes the key differences between the four modalities in relation to these themes, drawing on recent work in posthumanistic geography. A further section discusses the implications of posthumanism for a subdiscipline entitled human geography and considers recent efforts toward an intradisciplinary rapprochement with physical geography. The article concludes by identifying the latent humanism within the critical ethos of posthumanism; it considers the ambiguities of the term and appraises the significance of posthumanistic geographies as a new current within the discipline.
