Is the Post in Postsocialism the Post in Posthumanism?

This essay brings into dialectical consideration the relationship between postsocialism and posthumanism in China through the life story of Marxist humanism from the global 1960s to the present across Eastern Europe, France, and the United States. It especially foregrounds the American counterpart to the irruption of Marxist humanism in Eastern Europe and the humanist controversy in France during the 1950s in the now marginalized work of Raya Dunayeskaya, which brought Marxist humanism, feminism, and antiracism into a powerful interarticulation. The essay argues that postsocialism is not a discreet formation affecting only previously or actually socialist countries and that, when seen through the lens of Marxist humanism, to which American ethnic studies can be considered heir, the condition today in China and globally is resoundingly not posthumanist.