A bold challenge to rethink the humanities as intimately connected to the superhuman and to “decolonize reality itself.”

What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the future—to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists. In Kripal’s telling, the history of the humanities is filled with precognitive dreams, evolving superhumans, and doubled selves. The basic idea of the superhuman, for Kripal, is at the core of who and what the human species has tried to become over millennia and around the planet.
 
After diagnosing the basic malaise of the humanities—that the truth must be depressing—Kripal shows how it can all be done differently. He argues that we have to decolonize reality itself if we are going to take human diversity seriously. Toward this pluralist end, he engages psychoanalytic, Black critical, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ecocritical theory. He works through objections to the superhumanities while also recognizing the new realities represented by the contemporary sciences. In doing so, he tries to move beyond naysaying practices of critique toward a future that can embrace those critiques within a more holistic view—a view that recognizes the human being as both a social-political animal as well as an evolved cosmic species that understands and experiences itself as something super.

"It’s relentlessly fascinating, profoundly important and beautifully written. It should be required reading for everyone who reads books other than computer manuals." - Fortean Times

"The Superhumanities marks a turn in Jeffrey Kripal’s oeuvre from the exploratory and theoretical to envisioning the future possibilities and implications of his work for the academy . . . [This book]  is written for an academic audience and is probably best suited for faculty and/or graduate students hoping to become faculty in the humanities." - Choice

"“The Superhumanities marks a turn in Kripal’s oeuvre from the exploratory and theoretical to envisioning the future possibilities and implications of his work for the academy. This text serves as both a summation of this prolific scholar’s past contributions and a transition to his upcoming historical trilogy on the paranormal and science in America, suggestively and collectively named the Super Story Trilogy.”" - Nova Religio

"Kripal has written a brave, exciting book that rewards thoughtful discussion, reflection, and engagement. The Superhumanities is a book that changes minds, a book that changes lives." - Reading Religion

"A fascinating exploration of human potential, proposing a view of humans (superhumans) as possessing innate transcendent qualities and, based on that, a paradigm shift for rethinking the humanities as “superhumanities.” The altered states of consciousness and mystical experiences which are often thought of as the experiences of the few chosen people, here become an essential feature of humanity. Kripal argues that this integral feature of humans widely shapes our histories." - Religious Studies Review

"[Kripal proposes] de-colonising reality itself and enlarging our understanding of human identity, and hence of meaning  and purpose. This is a major and indeed essential cultural enterprise, and this book is an extraordinary tour de force to this end." - Paradigm Explorer

"A fascinating read." - Reader's Labryinth, on Youtube