Final Paper Proposal:
In my paper, I am going to try to negotiate how Octavia Butler constructs her posthumans in Dawn, the Oankali, as beings that thrive in genetic difference, but also seek to fix any kind of genetic abnormality they find in humans, whether that be cancer or hierarchical tendencies. Continue reading
As I was in midst of writing my annotated bibliography this week, I decided I would write a blog post about some of the interesting ideas I’m finding. I’m working on Octavia E. Butler’s first book, Dawn, in her Xenogenesis series, renamed Lilith’s Brood. Continue reading
During the reading for today, The Book of Margery Kempe and our recent discussions on temporality, I began to draw relationships between the books read during the first part of the class to our current period. In The Book of Margery Kempe and in previous readings throughout the semester, the value of love has been shown to persevere. Continue reading
In Hayles’ article “After shocks: Posthuman ambivalence,” I really associated with her mixed and unresolved feelings about posthumanism. As I personally often feel uneasy or unsure of what I think about posthumanism, or even how I define posthumanism myself. Continue reading
In Andy Miah’s A Critical History of Posthumanism, we are warned against the commercialization of medical enhancements by Francis Fukuyama. He specifically cautions that the increased privatization of more and more of the crucial sectors of our society could result in the debasement of the fundamental human quality that Fukuyama calls, Factor X. While I believe Fukuyama is perfectly justified for having such a fear, I think he is missing a crucial piece to the puzzle that is our future selves. Privatized medicine, or whatever area in question, does not necessarily mean a loss of human dignity, a loss of Factor X. In fact, I think that if everything was privatized there would be a resurgence of this Factor X. If someone stands to profit off of something, they will absolutely make sure that people can buy it, that it is available, they care, hopefully, about the product they are selling, the thing that their livelihood is made from. Private industry is not the demon they are being made out to be, and to assume that the future economy will be ravaged with overpriced biomodifications is a bit fantastic. Barring some New World Order taking over, society today is actually on a pretty good path, I think increasing access to public and higher education across the globe should be our primary focus. I believe a more educated society would have a hard time becoming the commercialized automatons that Fukuyama fears we will turn into. People will always want to buy the latest stuff, but that doesn’t mean they want to blindly waste their money. They want a good deal, and if someone can provide them with one, they walk away satisfied. There’s no need to fear the future, after all, we’re the ones shaping it, aren’t we?
Our discussion in class today, in reference to the Andy Miah article, really got me thinking about Pepperell and Fukuyama’s stances on posthumanism. Miah comments on Pepperell’s view about the fluidity of humanity as well as some of the additions of my classmates made me look deeper into the concept. Pepperell’s views are much more geared towards the positive aspects of posthumanism rather than Fukuyama’s wary warnings. Continue reading
There is one scene in particular within the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go that represents how the film slightly branches off from the novel. The scene is towards the beginning of the film, when Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are all still children at Halisham. The scene is framed through Kathy’s perspective when she encounters Tommy and Ruth kissing near a fountain on the Halisham grounds. Continue reading
In N. Katherine Hayles’ prologue and first chapter of How We Became Posthuman, I am very interested in her discussion of embodiment, and how posthuman and liberal humanist thought desires an erasure of embodiment. Hayles asks a question in the prologue, where she wonders “what do gendered bodies have to do with the erasure of embodiment and the subsequent merging of machine and human intelligence in the figure of the cyborg?” (Hayles xii) This question is something I grappled with as I was reading the prologue and first chapter, and I came to understand the question in context to her inclusion of liberal humanist “notorious universality” (Hayles 4). Continue reading