The present article wishes to present critical posthumanism as an ethics of radical alterity. It is divided into three explanatory moments: firstly, it provides a set of perfunctory remarks on the interdisciplinary field of posthumanism; it will then proceed to a general overview of Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman (2013); finally, a brief case-study analysis of W. Szymborska’s poetry will be conducted, thus hoping to show how posthumanist theory can illuminate literary texts and, indeed, how these can, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory.