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Tao Lin’s novel Taipei (2013) can be described as a picture of transhuman existence in the current digital world. However, its poetics of failure does not seem to adjust to the typically utopian visions that have often been related to transhumanism. Instead, the novel’s aesthetic approach resists diverse forms of transhumanist universalism in ways that are closer to the theoretical premises of critical posthumanism and agential materialism. In this article, I analyze Lin’s use of accountable metaphors and poetic failure in Taipei as a means to resist uncritical claims to transhumanist, universalist aesthetics.