Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative 2020048672, 9780367655136, 9781003129813

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Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative

Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative brings together 15 scholars from five different countries to explore the different ways in which the posthuman has been addressed in contemporary culture and more specifically in key narratives, written in the second decade of the 21st century, by Dave Eggers, William Gibson, John Shirley, Tom McCarthy, Jeff VanderMeer, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Cixin Liu, and Helen Marshall. Some of these works engage in the premises and perils of transhumanism, while others explore the qualities of the (post)human in a variety of dystopian futures marked by the planetary influence of human action. From a critical posthumanist perspective that questions anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, and the centrality of the ‘human’ subject in the era of the Anthropocene, the scholars in this collection analyse the aesthetic choices these authors make to depict the posthuman and its aftereffects. Sonia Baelo-Allué is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German of the University of Zaragoza (Spain) where she currently teaches US Literature and British and American Culture. Mónica Calvo-Pascual is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German of the University of Zaragoza (Spain) where she teaches Contemporary US Literature and British Culture.

Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture Series Editor: Karen Raber, University of Mississippi, USA Literary and cultural criticism has ventured into a brave new world in recent decades: posthumanism, ecocriticism, critical animal studies, the new materialisms, the new vitalism, and other related approaches have transformed the critical environment, reinvigorating our encounters with familiar texts, and inviting us to take note of new or neglected ones. A vast array of non-human creatures, things, and forces are now emerging as important agents in their own right. Inspired by human concern for an ailing planet, ecocriticism has grappled with the question of how important works of art can be to the preservation of something we have traditionally called “nature.” Yet literature’s capacity to take us on unexpected journeys through the networks of affiliation and affinity we share with the earth on which we dwell—and without which we die—and to confront us with the drama of our common struggle to survive and thrive has not diminished in the face of what Lyn White Jr. called “our ecological crisis.” From animals to androids, non-human creatures and objects populate critical analyses in increasingly complex ways, complicating our conception of the cosmos by dethroning the individual subject and dismantling the comfortable categories through which we have interpreted our existence. Until now, however, the elements that compose this wave of scholarship on non-human entities have had limited places to gather to be nurtured as a collective project. “Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture” provides that local habitation. In this series, readers will find creatures of all descriptions, as well as every other form of biological life; they will also meet the non-biological, the microscopic, the ethereal, the intangible. It is our goal for the series to provide an encounter zone where all forms of human engagement with the non-human in all periods and national literatures can be explored, and where the discoveries that result can speak to one another, as well as to scholars and students. Bees in Early Modern Transatlantic Literature Sovereign Colony Nicole A. Jacobs Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture Edited by Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual The Ethos of Digital Environments Technology, Literary Theory and Philosophy Edited by Susanna Lindberg and Hanna-Riikka Roine For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Perspectives-on-the-Non-Human-in-Literature-and-Culture/book-series/PNHLC

Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture Edited by Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Baelo-Allué, Sonia, editor. | Calvo-Pascual, Mónica, editor. Title: Transhumanism and posthumanism in twenty-first century narrative / edited by Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Perspectives on the non-human in literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020048672 | ISBN 9780367655136 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003129813 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Literature, Modern--21st century--History and criticism. | Posthumanism in literature. | Transhumanism in literature. Classification: LCC PN56.P556 T73 2021 | DDC 809/.93384--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048672 ISBN: 978-0-367-65513-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-12981-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgments (Trans/Post)Humanity and Representation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Anthropocene: An Introduction

vii viii xiii

1

SONIA BAELO-ALLUÉ AND MÓNICA CALVO-PASCUAL

1 Before Humanity, Or, Posthumanism Between Ancestrality and Becoming Inhuman

20

STEFAN HERBRECHTER

2 From Utilitarianism to Transhumanism: A Critical Approach

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MAITE ESCUDERO-ALÍAS

3 Posthuman Modes of Reading Literature Online

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ALEXANDRA GLAVANAKOVA

4 Vigilance to Wonder: Human Enhancement in TED Talks

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LOREDANA FILIP

5 Patterns of Posthuman Numbness in Shirley & Gibson’s “The Belonging Kind” and Eggers’s The Circle

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FRANCISCO COLLADO-RODRÍGUEZ

6 Subjects of the ‘Modem’ World: Writing U. in Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island

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MARGALIDA MASSANET ANDREU

7 The Paradoxical Anti-Humanism of Tom McCarthy’s C: Traumatic Secrets and the Waning of Affects in the Technological Society SUSANA ONEGA

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Contents

8 Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016): Transhumanism, Trauma, and the Ethics of Premature Cryopreservation

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CARMEN LAGUARTA-BUENO

9 A Dystopian Vision of Transhuman Enhancement: Speciesist and Political Issues Intersecting Trauma and Disability in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split

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MIRIAM FERNÁNDEZ-SANTIAGO

10 The Call of the Anthropocene: Resituating the Human Through Trans- & Posthumanism. Notes of Otherness in Works of Jeff VanderMeer and Cixin Liu

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JUSTUS POETZSCH

11 “Am I a person?”: Biotech Animals and Posthumanist Empathy in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne

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MONICA SOUSA

12 Posthuman Cure: Biological and Cultural Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam

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ESTHER MUÑOZ-GONZÁLEZ

13 Posthuman Transformation in Helen Marshall’s The Migration

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SHERRYL VINT

Conclusion: Towards a Post-Pandemic, (Post)Human World

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SONIA BAELO-ALLUÉ AND MÓNICA CALVO-PASCUAL

Index

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Figures

4.1 “Explore Like a Hero” image featured in Jason Sosa’s TEDx Talk “The Coming Transhuman Era” (2014) 9.1 Frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan, by Abraham Bosse (1651). Public domain, from the British Library’s collections, 2013 9.2 “The Revelation of St John: 12. The Sea Monster and the Beast with the Lamb’s Horn” by Albrecht Dürer (between 1497 and 1498). Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository 9.3 “General Jackson Slaying the Many Headed Monster” (1836). Public domain, from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division (digital ID cph.3a05364)

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Contributors

Sonia Baelo-Allué is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German of the University of Zaragoza (Spain), where she currently teaches US Literature and British and American Culture. Her research centres on contemporary US fiction, trauma studies, 9/11 fiction, digital fiction and posthumanism. Her more recent publications include the journal articles “Transhumanism, Transmedia and the Serial Podcast: Redefining Storytelling in Times of Enhancement” (in International Journal of English Studies, 19(1), 2019) and “Exhaustion and Regeneration in 9/11 Speculative Fiction: Kris Saknussemm’s ‘Beyond The Flags’” (in Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, 22, 2018). She has also published the book Bret Easton Ellis’s Controversial Fiction: Writing between High and Low Culture (Bloomsbury, 2011) and co-edited with Dolores Herrero two books on the representation of trauma in literature: The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-Colony and Beyond (Rodopi, 2011), and Between the Urge to Know and the Need to Deny: Trauma and Ethics in Contemporary British and American Literature (C. Winter, 2011). Mónica Calvo-Pascual is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German of the University of Zaragoza (Spain) where she teaches Contemporary US Literature and British Culture. Her current research focuses on representations of trauma and post-humanity in 21st-century US and Canadian fiction, critical posthumanism, and gender studies. Her latest publications include journal articles such as “‘The new children of the earth’: Posthuman Dystopia or a Lesbian’s Dream in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl” (in Orbis Litterarum, 73, 2018) and “Eating Disorders and Constitutive Absence in Contemporary Women’s Writing” (in Journal of International Women’s Studies 18(4), 2017). She is the author of Chaos and Madness: The Politics of Fiction in Stephen Marlowe’s Historical Narratives (Rodopi, 2011), and coeditor with Marita Nadal of Trauma in Contemporary Literature: Narrative and Representation (Routledge, 2014). Francisco Collado-Rodríguez is Professor of American Literature at the Department of English and German of the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches courses on 20th-century American Literature and Popular Culture. His present research centers on Trauma and Posthumanity in contemporary

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fiction. He has published articles and essays on Thomas Pynchon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, E. L. Doctorow, Bharati Mukherjee, Kurt Vonnegut, Bobbie Ann Mason, Eric Kraft, and Michael Chabon, among others, and books on Richard Adams and Thomas Pynchon. In 2013 he edited Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Choke (Bloomsbury). Among his recent articles are: “Intratextuality, Trauma and the Posthuman in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge” (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 57(3), 2016), “The Holy Fool’s Revelation: Metafiction, Trauma, and Posthumanity in E. L. Doctorow’s Andrew’s Brain” (Papers on Language and Literature, 53, 2017), and “Narratives of the Rocket: Chabon’s ‘Amnesiac’ Revisitation of Pynchon’s Posthuman Zone” (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 61(1), 2020). Personal webpage in Academia: https://unizar.academia.edu/FranciscoColladoRo dríguez. Research team website: http://typh.unizar.es. Maite Escudero-Alías is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), where she teaches 19th-century English literature and contemporary Irish literature. Her main research interests centre on literary criticism, feminism, and queer and affect theory in literature and culture. She is the author of Long Live the King: A Genealogy of Performative Genders (2009) and has published widely in journals such as Journal of Gender Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Journal of International Women’s Studies. She is also the co-editor of Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature (2017). Miriam Fernández-Santiago, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Granada (Spain), where she teaches graduate and postgraduate courses on critical theory, postcolonial narrative and the cultures and literatures of English-speaking countries. She is the current lead researcher of research group “Studies in Literature, Criticism and Culture” (Ref. GRACO-HUM 676). At present, her research interests include Critical Posthumanism, Trauma, Vulnerability and Disability Studies. Loredana Filip is a PhD candidate and research fellow on “Cultures of Vigilance” at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She finished her Master’s degree in North American Studies at Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg where she served as a lecturer, research assistant and tutor for international students. Her dissertation investigates the various forms of self-scrutiny in TED talks, mindfulness literature and science fiction novels, especially in the wake of contemporary self-help culture. Her research interests include critical posthumanism, affect theory, history of science, and contemporary literature. Alexandra Glavanakova, PhD, is Associate Professor in American literature and culture at the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Her research fields are US culture and

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List of contributors literature; the major cultural shifts in literacy, education, literary studies, the creation and reception of texts under the impact of digital technology. She has been involved in a number of projects on e-learning and digital humanities, and teacher courses in digital culture, multimodal writing and literature in the age of the Internet. Her major publication in this field is Posthuman Transformations: Bodies and Texts in Cyberspace (2014). Her other main areas of research and teaching are transcultural studies; immigration, race, and ethnicity in the USA and Canada; and the study of the Bulgarian Diaspora in the USA and Canada. Her major publication in this field is Transcultural Imaginings. Translating the Other, Translating the Self in Narratives about Migration and Terrorism (2016).

Stefan Herbrechter is a former Reader in Cultural Theory at Coventry University and Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Heidelberg University. He has published widely on English and comparative literature, critical and cultural theory, and cultural and media studies. His main publications related to his current research focus, posthumanism and its critique, include Autoimmunities (2018); Narrating Life (2016); European Posthumanism (2016); Posthumanism – A Critical Analysis (2013); Posthumanist Subjectivities (2012); Posthumanist Shakespeares (2012); Posthumanismus – Eine kritische Einführung (2009); Cy-Borges: Memories of the Posthuman in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges (2009); and Discipline and Practice (2004). He is director of the Critical Posthumanism Network (http://criticalposthumanism.net/) and general editor of its online “Genealogy of the Posthuman” project (http://criticalposthumanism.net/genealogy/). For more details and a full bibliography please see his homepage (http://stefanherbrechter.com). Carmen Laguarta-Bueno is a Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza. She has recently completed her dissertation on transhumanism and the representation of human enhancement technologies in 21st-century US fiction, with a special focus on the work of Richard Powers, Dave Eggers, and Don DeLillo. She has also been an academic visitor at the University of California, Riverside (2018) and at Trinity College, Dublin (2019), and she has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals: ES Review (2018), Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos (2018), Nordic Journal of English Studies (2019). Margalida Massanet Andreu is an English teacher currently working at IES Calvià (Mallorca). Previously, she held other teaching positions around the island and at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she participated both as a writer and editor in the college magazine, Fósforo. Margalida holds a BA in English Studies from the University of the Balearic Islands (UBI), where she also obtained her Master’s Degree in Modern Languages and Literatures. In her MA thesis she investigated emerging tendencies within the field of literary criticism which encompass Metamodernism, affect theories and the place of fiction

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in the 21st century. Her interests encompass the representation of neocapitalist societies in globalization, posthuman, and metamodern subjects, and mass media and digitization in writing, mostly in British novels. She is now a collaborator in the research group Modern and Contemporary Anglophone Literatures (LITANGLO) at the UBI, in which she continues her investigations. Esther Muñoz-González is a Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza. She has recently completed her PhD on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels. Her main research interests lie in contemporary US fiction from a posthumanist perspective, with a special interest in dystopian representations of the Anthropocene period and Cli-fiction. She is the author of several articles in peer-reviewed academic journals (Journal of English Studies, 2017; ES Review, 2017; Verbeia, 2018; Brno Studies in English, 2018; Complutense Journal of English Studies, 2018; Odisea, 2018; Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, 2019). Susana Onega is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the Department of English and German Philology of Zaragoza University. She is a coopted member of the Academia Europaea (AE) since 2008, and an appointed member of the Section Committee of Literary and Theatrical Studies of AE since 2015. She is also the former President of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies and the former Spanish Board member of the European Society for the Study of English. She was granted the title of Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College (University of London) in 1996. Professor Onega has written extensively on contemporary fiction, literary criticism and theory, and ethics and trauma. She is the author of five monographs, including Form and Meaning in the Novels of John Fowles (UMI Research Press, 1989), Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd (Camden House, 1999), and Jeanette Winterson (Manchester University Press, 2006). She has edited or coedited 14 volumes, including Narratology: An Introduction (Longman, 1996); Refracting the Canon in Contemporary Literature and Film (Rodopi, 2004); Trauma and Romance in Contemporary British Fiction (Routledge, 2013); Liminality and The Ethics of Form in Contemporary Trauma Narratives (Routledge, 2014); Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st-Century Fiction (Routledge, 2017); Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature (Palgrave, 2017); The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction: A Paradoxical Quest (Routledge, 2018); and Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm (Routledge; 2020). Justus Poetzsch studied Sociology and Psychology at the Technological University of Dresden. His diploma thesis focused on the phenomena of space colonization from an anthropological and sociological perspective. Since then, his scientific interests have been oriented around the transforming

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List of contributors perceptions of the conditio humana and related worldviews, which he was also able to continue in the interdisciplinary graduate school ‘Life Sciences – Life Writing’ at University Mainz. In this structured PhD-program, Justus is currently doing research about a potential paradigm shift concerning the question ‘what it means to be human’ in the era of Anthropocene. By comparing transhuman technological transcendence and posthuman philosophy of becoming, other new r(el)ationalities of environment and humankind, world and worldlings, nature and culture will be developed to reframe anthropology for planet earth and not vice-versa, as it used to be done.

Monica Sousa received her BA (Honors) in English in 2017 and her MA in English in 2018 from Brock University. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the department of English at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Monica is specializing in contemporary literature, and her research focuses on animal studies, posthumanism, and technology in the genres of contemporary speculative fiction and science fiction. Her research explores human and nonhuman relations in contemporary speculative/science fiction novels, with a focus on technologically-altered animals (genetically modified animals or animals with robotic attachments or cybernetic enhancements). She is interested in the practice of empathy and what it means to empathize with technologically modified animals (or if it is even possible). Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where she directs the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science program. Her books include Bodies of Tomorrow, Animal Alterity, and Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed. She is an editor of the journals Science Fiction Studies and Science Fiction Film and Television, and the book series Science and Popular Culture. She has edited several books, most recently Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader. Her current research project, The Promissory Imagination: Speculative Futures and Biopolitics, explores the exchanges between speculative imagination and material practice in biotechnology.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thanks all those who have contributed to the preparation of this book, especially the members of the Research Group ‘Contemporary Narrative in English’ and the Research Project ‘Trauma, Culture and Posthumanity: The Definition of Being in Contemporary North-American Fiction’ for their constant support and encouragement. The authorship of Chapters 5, 8, 9, and 12, the co-authorship of the Introduction and Conclusion, and the coediting of this book, are part of two projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (code FFI2015–63506-P) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (code PID2019–106855GB-I00). The authorship of Chapters 2 and 7 was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (code FFI2017–84258-P). Thanks are also due to the Government of Aragón and the European Social Fund (ESF) (code H03_20R).

(Trans/Post)Humanity and Representation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Anthropocene An Introduction Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual The present is a time of change, of technological development, and exponential growth—a quantum leap in human progress. It is also a time of social inequality, of climate change, of dehumanization, and unemployment. It all depends on the perspective that we adopt when trying to account for the fluctuations that have taken place in the last few decades. Since the 18th century there have been four industrial revolutions; whether we consider these revolutions as marks of progress or as processes of dehumanization depends on our understanding of what progress and being human actually means.

1 The Fourth Industrial Revolution The history of the industrial revolutions is often told as a history of progress. The first industrial revolution (1760–1840) focused on mechanical production thanks to the steam engine; the second industrial revolution (1870–1914) brought mass production thanks to electricity and the assembly line; the third industrial revolution (the latter half of the 20th century) brought the development of information theory and digital computing and electronics, moving from mechanical and electronic technology into digital electronics. According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, in the first industrial revolution it was steam power that allowed humans “to overcome the limitations of muscle power, human and animal, and generate massive amounts of useful energy at will […] the first time our progress was driven primarily by technological innovation” (2016, 6–7). They consider that, since the 21st century, we are living in a second machine age in which digital technologies have boosted human mental power, in the same way as the first machine age was a boost to physical and mechanical power. If our muscles were enhanced in the first machine age, it is our brains that are being enhanced in this second machine age. The new technologies are exponential, digital, and combinatorial. These three features have made possible the creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a common digital network that connects most people on the planet (90). Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, considers that this second machine age can be better understood as a fourth industrial revolution—a concept that he used for the first time in 2016 in

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the World Economic Forum, and that, owing to its scale, scope, reach, and complexity, constitutes a paradigm shift which is transforming in an exponential way how we live, express ourselves, work, connect with others, and get information (2016, 2). This revolution builds on the digital one but it is characterized by a set of emerging technologies that include “artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, additive manufacturing, neurotechnologies, biotechnologies, virtual and augmented reality, new materials, energy technologies, as well as ideas and capabilities we don’t yet know exist” (2018, 7). However, what really defines this revolution is the fusion and harmonisation of these technologies and the way they co-evolve and interact with one another across the physical, digital, and biological domains (2016, 8; 2018, 3). Brynjolfsson and McAfee also think that we are at an inflection point in human evolution because of the way that digital technologies are progressing and bringing a profoundly beneficial transformation. In the same vein, Schwab believes that emerging technologies “interact with one another and co-evolve as our relationship with data is transformed, the physical world is reformed, human beings are enhanced and new systems with huge power envelop us” (2016, 3). This is a standpoint similar to that of transhumanists but whereas transhumanism, as we will see, is a social and philosophical movement that promotes human-enhancement technologies, Brynjolfsson, McAfee, and Schwab are more concerned with the ways that technological change can affect the economy, industries, and civil society. In this sense, Brynjolfsson and McAfee believe that there will be an increase in the variety and volume of people’s consumption bringing more choice and freedom. Bounty will be one of the main economic consequences of this progress with the increase in volume, variety, and quality of products and the decrease in cost (12). The negative aspect of this transformation has to do with the economic disruption it will bring about since many jobs will be lost to computers, robots, and other digital technologies. There will also be an increase in spread—the differences among people in economic success. Schwab also sees rising inequality as one of the main risks of the fourth industrial revolution, together with temporal job destruction (especially middle-income routine and repetitive jobs) and polarization, owing to the changes in the nature of work (2016, 35–38). Luciano Floridi has also studied the consequences of the fourth revolution, but focusing on how it is changing our sense of self and our relationships. His perspective is more philosophical and starts from the idea that information and communication technologies are modifying our concept of reality and transforming it into an infosphere. We are turning into informational organism (inforgs) totally integrated into this infosphere—that is, the whole informational environment “constituted by all informational entities, their properties, interactions, processes, and mutual relations” (2014, 41), which includes the cyberspace but also offline and analogue spaces of information. One of the main consequences of the infosphere is that since interfaces are becoming less visible “the threshold between here (analogue, carbon-based, offline) and there

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(digital, silicon-based, online) is fast becoming blurred […] [t]he digital online world is spilling over into the analogue-offline world and merging with it” (2014, 43). This new space is what Floridi calls “onlife,” in which the threshold between online and offline is less and less clear to establish. Two information technology (IT) phenomena inextricably linked to the fourth industrial revolution account for this experience: Machine to Machine communication (M2M) and The Internet of Things (IoT). M2M is direct communication, by sharing data between two network devices using any wired or wireless communication. Automated teller machines use this technology when approving transactions without human intervention. IoT offers more functionality, as it involves a network of devices that communicate through a cloud networking platform. Schwab considers to be IoT one of the main bridges between the physical and the digital applications that the fourth industrial revolution provides (2016, 18). Elvira Wallis, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Internet of Things at SAP, goes even further by claiming that IoT is the backbone technology behind Industry 4.0, as IoT implementations are leading to “smart factories and digital supply chains powered by data, insight, and automation […] With IoT driving Industry 4.0 forward, machines and business processes are now interacting without human intervention—freeing enterprises to focus on business outcomes” (2020). These technologies are becoming part of our environment in seamless ways which could lead to unexpected outcomes. On a panel at the World Economic Forum, Eric Schmidt, former Google chairman, claimed that: the Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won’t even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. (Schmidt in Szalai, 2015) At present, ambient computing has made it possible for computing platforms to seamlessly integrate in our surroundings, as is the case when we speak to Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant instead of providing active input into a computer. All these new technologies and scientific advances have consequences in how we define ourselves, how we connect with others, and how communication is established. On the one hand, M2M and IoT create a whole network of communication from which humans are excluded. Is our ability to communicate complex and abstract ideas not what makes us human? Do M2M and IoT not extend that ability beyond ourselves? On the other hand, we are merging with these technologies when we talk to an intelligent assistant like Siri. In this sense, Brynjolfsson and McAfee predict two amazing events that will take place in the near future: “the creation of true

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machine intelligence and the connection of all humans via a common digital network, transforming the planet’s economics” (251). These two events would end with two defining features that sets us apart from other animals: our intelligence and our individuality. Technology is putting into question how we define ourselves and what our role is in this changing environment. In this sense, Floridi considers that the fourth industrial revolution has put into doubt our superior thinking abilities, as we are not the only ones processing information logically and autonomously. As Floridi puts it, we are inforgs embedded in the infosphere that we share with other natural and artificial agents, therefore we are not even at the centre of the infosphere (94). This destabilisation of our position is not something new, as science has been changing our understanding of the world and of ourselves for centuries. Floridi summarizes the three previous revolutions and how we came to be in the position we are now (87–100). Humans used to think that God had placed them on Earth at the centre of the universe until Nicolaus Copernicus (1473– 1543) published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and his theory about the movement of planets around the sun with its reconsideration of our own place and centrality. After the Copernican revolution, a second industrial revolution took place as a result of the discoveries of Charles Darwin (1809– 82), which were published in On the Origin of Species, which also displaced human beings from the centre of the biological kingdom. The third industrial revolution destroyed our belief that we were at least the masters of our own mental contents and thoughts as René Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” had succinctly put it in the 17th century. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)—and later neuroscience—brought about a third industrial revolution with the idea that the mind is not fully transparent, but also unconscious and has defence mechanisms that can make it opaque and hard to understand. The fourth industrial revolution has not put us at the centre of the infosphere; we depend on our smart devices, as data and machine-driven operations are becoming more common. We complement machines, but, as Brynjolfsson and McAfee optimistically put it, “it’s great to be a complement to something that’s increasingly plentiful” (182). Schwab also sees biotechnology as a key field in the fourth industrial revolution (2016, 21–25; 2018, 157–166). Our bodies and what we can do with them are also subject to change, owing to advances in the biological realm. Genetic sequencing, the activation and editing of genes, and synthetic biology are advances that will allow us to create genetically modified plants, animals, and even designer babies. Technology and biology will also combine in bioprinting, which makes use of 3D printing and gene editing to create living tissue or even transplant organs in the future. All this, together with the advances in neurotechnology and the potential for human enhancement, make it necessary to reconsider what it means to be human from a biological perspective and where the limits to what we can do are. The fourth industrial revolution is not without contradictions. On the one hand, our role seems to diminish in an informational environment that

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engulfs us as machines become more and more intelligent and we become more dependent on them. On the other hand, the combination of the digital, physical, and biological dimension is leading to great advances in science and technology contributing to human enhancement, both of our bodies and our minds. These contradictions make the realm of the posthuman an especially attractive subject to explore.

2 Transhumanism, Posthumanism, Critical Posthumanism The notion of humanity has long been interrogated by a wide array of disciplines, more often than not, from an anthropocentric perspective: the question “what is it that makes us human?” has typically revolved around finding the traits that make us essentially distinct from—and, implicitly, superior to—the non-human, be they other animal species or machines. The term ‘posthuman’ involves a leap to pondering the future of humanity or, more specifically, what comes after humanity as we know it. As Francesca Ferrando points out: [i]n contemporary academic debate, ‘posthuman’ has become a key term to cope with an urgency for the integral redefinition of the notion of the human, following the onto-epistemological as well as scientific and biotechnological developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (2013, 26) Much has been published around the concept ‘posthuman’ in various attempts to dispel the theoretical confusion provoked, mainly, by the parallel but dissimilar use of the term by the disciplines of Transhumanism and Posthumanism, which “share a common perception of the human as a nonfixed and mutable condition” (Ferrando 2013, 27) and “consider the question of human coevolution with technology” (Ranisch and Sorgner 2014, 8). However, they emerge from different philosophical traditions and hold divergent positions with respect to Classical and Enlightenment humanism. Thus, while Transhumanism “aims at liberating humans from their biological limitation” by applying scientific and technological innovations and “can be seen as an intensification of humanism” in its privilege of the rational mind over the body and progress beyond natural boundaries (17; emphasis in the original), Posthumanism amounts to a criticism of humanism, as it “hopes to liberate humans from the harmful effects of the established humanist paradigms by debunking its false assumptions” (17) about the universalism and exceptionalism of what constitutes humanity. Thence, both attempt to “move beyond humanism” as they consider “the humanist ‘human’ as outdated” (17) in physiological and conceptual terms, respectively. In what follows, we will aim at shedding some further light onto that conceptual confusion and at providing clear-cut definitions of both concepts. The term transhumanism was coined by Julian Huxley in 1957 and first defined in its current sense by Max More in 1990. Nick Bostrom, one of its

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founders, describes it as “a loosely defined movement that […] promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology” (2005, 3). Transhumanists’ notion of enhancement encompasses “radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities” (3) by means of current developments like genetic engineering and IT, and “anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence” (3). In this volume, we will follow Bostrom’s definition of the term ‘transhuman’ as denoting “transitional beings, or moderately enhanced humans, whose capacities would be somewhere between those of unaugmented humans and full-blown posthumans” (5). Bostrom understands the posthuman as “a radically enhanced human”—the furthest degree of transcendence of human limitations that a person can reach—while a transhumanist is, for him, “somebody who accepts transhumanism” (5). Unlike transhumanism, which can be seen as a form of hyper-humanism, posthumanism involves a break with humanism. Coined in 1977 by Ihab Hassan, the latter cannot be described as one coherent movement. In line with the humanist privilege of the mind over the material body, one of the earliest expressions of posthumanism—cybernetic posthumanism—privileged the view of the human being as pure information patterns that could be transferred from one medium to another and remain unchanged. In the cybernetic paradigm that developed from the mid-1940s onwards, “humans were to be seen primarily as information-processing entities who are essentially similar to intelligent machines” (Hayles 1999, 7; emphasis in the original). As N. Katherine Hayles remarks in her groundbreaking work How We Became Posthuman, “the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman. Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as being a body” (1999, 4; emphasis in the original). Cybernetic posthumanism thus shares with transhumanism the view of the human body as an accessory that can be either improved (enhanced) or simply ignored (as the mind is what defines humanity and it can therefore be disembodied). Paving the way for later critical posthumanist theorists, Hayles sets out to contest the dislodgement between materiality and information—in her own words, “for information to exist, it must always be instantiated in a medium” (13; emphasis in the original)—and vindicates: a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. (5)

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The implications of Hayles’s interrogation of Cartesian dualism and its privilege of the abstract realm as the site of identity build up the foundations of the nature-culture continuum put forth by critical posthumanism, which will be developed further below. The two main ingredients of this approach are (1) continuity between body and mind as integral and inseparable parts of the human subject;1 and (2) continuity between the human and the non-human (be it machine, animal, the environment), as opposed to the humanist and transhumanist belief in human exceptionalism. Hayles’s argument that “[o]nly because the body is not identified with the self is it possible to claim for the liberal subject its notorious universality, a claim that depends on erasing markers of bodily difference, including sex, race, and ethnicity” (1999, 4–5) will be taken up by authors like Sherryl Vint, Rosi Braidotti, and Stefan Herbrechter in their versions of critical posthumanism— in itself an ethical project that explores what it means to be human from an inclusive perspective whereby the organic body, the machine, and other life forms co-evolve and are interdependent. According to Braidotti, “Humanism’s restricted notion of what counts as the human is one of the keys to understand how we got to a post-human turn at all” (2013, 16). The ideal of Man as the measure of all things that Braidotti refers to, first formulated by Protagoras and later canonized by Leonardo da Vinci in his Vitruvian Man, is exposed in critical posthumanism as a regulatory model that encapsulates what is considered essentially human: the bodily unmarked, i.e., male, white, able-bodied, and presumably heterosexual. As a corollary of the Classical humanist model of human perfection, “the sexualized, racialized, and naturalized others […] are reduced to the less than human status of disposable bodies” (Braidotti 2013, 15), in opposition to which Braidotti proposes “an affirmative posthuman position” (38) that transcends the centrality of ‘Man’ through the celebration of difference. In Vint’s words: [c]ertain specificities are thus coded as ‘outside’ human identity, while others that might be thought of as equally marked and specific are instead taken to be transparent and universal. Returning the specificities of embodied experience is one of the ways of resisting such erasures. (2007, 11) Indeed, the bases of critical posthumanism, as Braidotti acknowledges, are to be found in the anti-humanist, poststructuralist movements of the 1970s and, particularly, in the ‘politics of location’ advocated by feminists like Adrienne Rich. Thus, Braidotti calls for a posthuman subjectivity that is “rather materialist and vitalist, embodied and embedded, firmly located somewhere” (2013, 51). In this posthuman exploration and reclaiming of the material, Vint eloquently explains the fundamental yet liminal position that the body occupies “between self and not-self, between nature and culture, between the inner ‘authentic’ person and social persona” (2007, 16). She takes up the definition of the body that Elizabeth Grosz elaborates in

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Volatile Bodies as “a Möbius strip”: that which “acknowledges both the psychical or interior dimension of subjectivity and the surface corporeal exposures of the subject to social inscription and training; a model which resists, as much as possible, both dualism and monism” (Grosz 1994, 188). In Vint’s words, Grosz’s approach to the body: offers a way to conceive of the two aspects of the body (interiority and surface) as always interacting yet not reducible to the same thing, which allows analysis to address cultural inscription on both the body and the subject, yet also looks for ways that the subject can resist such cultural marking and offer alternative possibilities. The human body, like the human subject, is a product of both culture and nature. (2007, 16–17)2 The nature-culture continuum that Hayles and Braidotti allude to extends beyond the quality of the subject to a wider understanding of the world as such. Taking Spinoza’s monism as point of departure, Braidotti develops her notion of zoe (natural life, as opposed to bios, or human life) as the nonhierarchical conjunction and co-development of human and nonhuman ‘earth’ others. In her own words: The posthuman dimension of post-anthropocentrism […] deconstructs […] species supremacy, but it also inflicts a blow to any lingering notion of human nature, anthropos and bios, as categorically distinct from the life of animals and non-humans, or zoe. What comes to the fore instead is a nature-culture continuum in the very embodied structure of the extended self […]. Zoe as the dynamic, self-organizing structure of life itself […] stands for generative vitality. It is the transversal force that cuts across and reconnects previously segregated species, categories and domains. Zoe-centred egalitarianism is, for me, the core of the postanthropocentric turn: it is a materialist, secular, grounded and unsentimental response to the opportunistic trans-species commodification of Life that is the logic of advanced capitalism. (Braidotti 2013, 60, 65) Sharing this overall concern with environmental exploitation and dwelling on the ethics of human-nonhuman relations, Stacy Alaimo proposes the concept of trans-corporeality; human corporeality is, for her, “always intermeshed with the more-than-human world” (2010, 2), a basic instance being the presence of millions of bacteria in our organism, or the processes of eating and digesting, whereby nutrients from plants and/or animals become part of our flesh (12). This is significant in the context of a post-anthropocentric posthuman ethics since, according to Alaimo, “understanding the substance of one’s self as interconnected with the wider environment marks a profound shift in subjectivity” (20), preventing a sense of separation

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between the human and “the interconnected, mutually constitutive actions of material reality” (24). In a similar vein, Manuela Rossini’s vision of critical posthumanism entails: a radically democratic future in which […] the experience of embodiment in all its richness and variety marks post/humanity and in which the lived body remains the ground not only of individual subjectivity but also of the interaction and connection with the world and with others. (2005, 33) Unfortunately, and far from this ethical awareness of our being one with the universe, the intricate, intimate connection between the human and nonhuman does also present an uglier face: namely, the irreparable damage that human action is inflicting upon the environment, to such a degree that human intervention has apparently brought the Holocene to an end.

3 On the Anthropocene In 2000 chemist Paul J. Crutzen and biologist Eugene F. Stoermer coined the term ‘Anthropocene’ to refer to a new geological era marked by the effects of human intervention on the environment to the extent that those effects can be scientifically verified in the analysis of geological strata. Humaninduced environmental change, connected to scientific progress and accelerated technological development, is so wide-ranging and ubiquitous that it is having the effect of a geological force comparable to volcanoes, earthquakes, or meteors. In other words, the Anthropocene signals the moment in which human beings officially become responsible for the consequences of our own actions upon the Earth. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), founded in 2009 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, has acknowledged that the Anthropocene can effectively be considered an era within the geological time scale (Dillon, 2018, 5–6). Crutzen and Stoermer originally located the beginning of the Anthropocene in the second half of the 18th century, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom and continental Europe and James Watt’s development of the steam engine in 1784. In turn, the AWG first located the beginning of this epoch around 1800, as geological research signalled that time as the beginning of the increasing global concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the analyses of air trapped in the polar ice, thereby linking for the first time the notion of the Anthropocene with the concern with climate change. However, in 2016 the AWG proposed a later date, 1945, owing to the impact of “the development and testing of nuclear weapons” (Dillon, 2018, 7; see also Zalasiewicz, 2014), and of the so-called Great Acceleration of the third industrial revolution, characterized by the massive use of plastics and aluminium, together with the excessive exploitation of natural resources in order to provide for the new market and consumerist needs created in the

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Western world, which brought about further environmental damage such as the acidification of oceans, ozone depletion, and biosphere degradation. Indeed, one of the main issues regarding the Anthropocene is climate change, which could bring about super-storm-induced involuntary land slippages, the rise of sea levels, water and food scarcity, or the rise of temperatures beyond humans’ adaptation capacity (Pereira Savi, 2017, 950–951). In this sense, in November 2017 more than 15,000 scientists worldwide signed a ‘second warning’ to humanity concerning the risks of environmental devastation provoked by current industrialization, including dramatic climate change and a sixth mass extinction whereby many contemporary life forms might be annihilated or in serious risk of extinction by the end of the 21st century (Ripple et al., 2017; see also Steffen et al., 2011). Despite the lack of general agreement regarding the date when the Holocene gave place to the Anthropocene, awareness of living in the new era starts, as the data above suggest, in the very early 21st century—so much so that it has become a central theme in an important body of contemporary literature dealing with environmental concerns, the possibility of human extinction and the future inhabitability of planet Earth. As Rosi Braidotti puts it, “the fact that our geological era is known as the ‘anthropocene’ stresses both the technologically mediated power acquired by anthropos and its potentially lethal consequences for everyone else” (2013, 66). As philosopher Eugene Thacker points out: “The world is increasingly unthinkable—a world of planetary disasters, emerging pandemics, tectonic shifts, strange weather, oil-drenched seascapes, and the furtive, always-looming threat of extinction” (2011, 1). In his denunciation of anthropocentrism in Western philosophy and culture, Thacker asserts that, in order to survive in the Anthropocene, human beings must change our anthropocentric viewpoint for a planetary one and confront the possibility of a “world-without-us.”3 Advocates of the fourth industrial revolution see the problem very differently and, instead of changing anthropocentric viewpoints, they see the human at the centre of the revolution. As Marc R. Benioff claims, the fourth industrial revolution brings “an empowering, prosperous, human-centered future for all” (2016, viii). They also claim that through geoengineering and technological interventions, the effects of human impact on the environment and the atmosphere can be corrected. These corrections would actually be further interventions like “installing giant mirrors in the stratosphere to deflect the sun’s rays, chemically seeding the atmosphere to increase rainfall and the deployment of large machines to remove carbon dioxide from the air” (Schwab, 2018, 203). We cannot conclude this section without acknowledging the fact that the very concept ‘Anthropocene’ has been questioned by critics like Donna Haraway (2015), who prefers the use of Andreas Malm and Jason Moore’s notion of ‘Capitalocene,’ highlighting the fact that the whole of humanity does not contribute to the same extent to the destruction or geological transformation of the planet; rather, they argue that environmental damage

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results from the over-exploitation of natural resources by capitalism as a socioeconomic and productive system, where most human beings as a species are alienated from the effects of their own work. Malm and Alf Hornborg emphasize how, from the first industrial revolution onwards, “capitalists in a small corner of the Western world invested in steam, laying the foundation stone for the fossil economy” (2014, 92), blaming what they call “advanced capitalist countries” for the current situation. According to their data, “in the early 21st century, the poorest 45% of the human population accounted 7% of emissions, while the richest 7% produced 50%” (64). In turn, the use of ‘Capitalocene’ is challenged by historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, who admits that not all societies are equally responsible for planetary destruction and adds that an egalitarian distribution of wealth and industrial capacity would increase the abuse of fossil fuels and the resulting pollution. The state of affairs described above has found expression in contemporary debates in the humanities and in cultural and literary production. We can talk about a nonhuman turn that is shared by the interest in the Anthropocene, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, critical posthumanism, queer ecologies, etc., whose implicit goal is challenging the dichotomies that for centuries have been used as grounds to justify the oppression of women, ethnic minorities, nature, and other beings considered to be nonhuman, infrahuman, or “less than human” in Braidotti’s terms. Likewise, the 21st century is witnessing a rapid expansion of the concern for the nonhuman in literature, including issues like environmental disasters, the impact of excessive meat eating and production, of genetically modified seeds in agriculture (see authors like Margaret Atwood, Emily St. John Mandel, Ruth Ozeki, or Larissa Lai) and the proliferation of cli-fi (climate fiction), encompassing perhaps the most significant body of cultural production on the Anthropocene.

4 Literary Fiction and the Posthuman In the time of the posthuman in which the physical, digital, and biological domains co-evolve and interact, and in which the boundaries of the human are blurred and our position in the universe questioned, literature emerges as an ideal field in which to explore these emerging contradictions. As we have seen, the same reality is seen very differently by transhumanists and by critical posthumanists. What the former see as human enhancement, the latter see as further intensification of what is wrong with the human. While transhumanists see the fourth industrial revolution as empowering and human-centred, critical posthumanists champion instead the change of our anthropocentric viewpoints. Science fiction has engaged with these debates for centuries. According to Lisa Yaszek and Jason W. Ellis, through the 19th and early 20th century science fiction focused mainly on Enlightenment ideas of the human and the concept of unlimited perfectibility, exploring the idea of using the human being to create new species. After World War II, and as

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a result of the advances in cognitive science and computational technologies, the limits of the human have been explored, namely the species’ multiplicity, mutability, and nature. Science fiction and literature in general have the power to address the ethical concerns, dilemmas, possibilities, and dangers that can derive from the posthuman and cause in readers a more immediate and at times even emotional response. As Badmington suggests, in this type of fiction we see “the certainties of humanism fade and […] bodies, minds, desires, limits, knowledge, and being itself reimagined in ways for which traditional anthropocentrism cannot possibly account” (2011, 375). Literature also has the power to take abstract philosophical ideas and complex scientific and technological concepts and give them an embodiment in the form of narrative, resisting abstraction through its textual illustrations. As Hayles puts it: the literary texts do more than explore the cultural implications of scientific theories and technological artifacts. Embedding ideas and artifacts in the situated specificities of narrative, the literary texts give these ideas and artifacts a local habitation and a name through discursive formulations whose effects are specific to that textual body. (1999, 22) The cultural, social, and representational implications of the posthuman and the fourth industrial revolution find an expressive outlet in the literary text.

5 Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative In the past few years, the connection between literary fiction and the posthuman has been explored from different perspectives in edited collections like Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini’s The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman (2017), which deals with different literary periods (from Medieval to Postmodern), literary modes (from science fiction to e-literature), and themes. The relationship between young adult literature and the posthuman has also been especially fruitful and has recently been studied in monographs and edited collections like Victoria Flanagan’s Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction: The Posthuman Subject (2014), Anita Tarr and Donna R. White’s Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction (2018) and Jennifer Harrison’s Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide (2019). The reflection of science and technology on literature has also been analyzed in volumes like Justin Omar Johnston’s Posthuman Capital and Biotechnology in Contemporary Novels (2019) and Nina Engelhardt and Julia Hoydis’s Representations of Science in Twenty-First-Century Fiction: Human and Temporal Connectivities (2019). Closer to a critical posthumanist perspective and from a theoretically informed and innovative perspective, we also

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find Tony M. Vinci’s Ghost, Android, Animal: Trauma and Literature Beyond the Human (2019) and Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Essi Varis’s Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture (2019). Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative aims at studying the contradictions that emerge out of the transhumanist and critical posthumanist approaches to the changing concept of the human in the context of the fourth industrial revolution as seen in key novels written in the second decade of the 21st century by Dave Eggers, William Gibson, Tom McCarthy, Jeff VanderMeer, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Cixin Liu, and Helen Marshall. From a critical posthumanist perspective that questions anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and the centrality of the ‘human’ subject in the era of the Anthropocene, the scholars in this collection analyze the aesthetic choices these authors make to depict the posthuman and its ethical consequences. The collection opens with a more theory-oriented section, Theoretical Approaches: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, in which the past, present and future of humanity, posthumanism, and transhumanism are set in dialogue as the inherent contradictions of transhumanist discourses are exposed and the impact of digital literature is explored. In chapter 1, Stefan Herbrechter examines the current posthumanist climate in which the question of what it means to be human is being asked again with great urgency, in the context of new threats and fundamental technological and ecological change. For Herbrechter, posthumanism refers to the rush for ever smarter technologies that increasingly think with and for humans, but also to the ever more urgent discussion about climate change, extinction angst, exoplanets, biopolitics, and speciesism. In this context, his critical posthumanism is aimed at evaluating, contextualizing, and historicizing but also appreciating the resistance to the posthuman, posthumanisation, posthumanism, or posthumanity. In this vein, Herbrechter challenges posthumanist futurists and techno-utopians by foregrounding prefigurations, genealogies and disavowals of the posthuman through a rereading of paleoanthropology and the notion of ancestrality. In chapter 2, Maite Escudero-Alías draws a theoretical analogy between the philosophy of Utilitarianism and Transhumanism in that both seek to improve human nature and to enhance the development of the self by means of technology, thus admittedly claiming a Nietzschean revaluation of values through scientific enquiry and of the disputing notions of “freedom” and “self-improvement.” For this purpose, Escudero-Alías explores the notions of “sympathy” and “liberty” as exposed by liberal thinkers such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Her critical revision of Utilitarianism establishes a continuum between old disciplines of attention that gave way to enactments of sympathy deeply rooted in the environment and a current posthuman ethics that can open up more reparative paths of enquiry, and reclaim affective and attentive readings of literature. In chapter 3, Alexandra Glavanakova explores how the use of digital devices changes reading habits, affecting the plastic reading circuit and the cognitive modes involved

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across a generational divide. Glavanakova takes up researchers’ and educators’ concern that these changes can hinder the development of the expert reading brain, thus affecting critical thinking, analytical skills, and the experience of empathy, and sets up to analyze what specific training and what strategies of reading need to be employed in order to foster the bi-literate brain—one equally conversant in both digital tabular reading and long-form linear reading. Thus, she argues for studying through distant reading methodology datasets of readers’ contributions on social platforms for writing, which activate collective reading, and can involve collaborative meaning-making and critical evaluation of fiction in order to meet this goal. Section II of this volume deals mainly with the contradictions and dark side of transhumanism and the dangers that it can bring. In chapter 4, Loredana Filip analyzes the ways in which biomedical and technological enhancement is presented in TED talks by leading transhumanists such as Nick Bostrom, Julian Savulescu, Natasha Vita-More, Ray Kurzweil, and Jason Sosa. Filip reveals the rhetorical and visual strategies that they use to make their discourses more persuasive via affective responses to images, videos, and statistics. She also shows the inherent contradictions of their discourse, which combines mystical feeling, scientific wonder, and confessional trust. In the TED talks that she has selected, Filip analyzes how the power of imagination, rational thinking, or the superiority of the mind is celebrated, at the same time as the aesthetic strategies that they use reveal the importance of feelings, the gut, or sense experiences and the significance of the body, which seems to undermine their own agenda. In chapter 5, Francisco Collado-Rodríguez provides an insightful analysis of two works that can seem very different at first sight: John Shirley and Gibson’s The Belonging Kind (1986) and Eggers’s The Circle (2013). Drawing from Wiener’s notions on a new understanding of the human being, McLuhan’s theories of self-amputation and social narcosis, and Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity, Collado-Rodríguez analyzes both narratives as reflections of the limits and failures of transhuman discourse: enhancement can reach only the very rich, which can lead to the creation of an infrahuman species, and the transhuman conception of humans as information, which makes of them easy victims of mass media manipulation. Collado-Rodríguez shows how in Shirley and Gibson’s short story and in Eggers’ novel the mystical notion of the circle and the motif of the chase transform their meaning and point to human stagnation rather than human enhancement. In chapter 6, Margalida Massanet delves into our networked world of widespread techno-scientific development and inherent contradictions coming from the collision between the real and the digital, the present and the future, or humans and their future projections. In her analysis of Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (2015), Massanet reflects on these contradictions, the increasing importance of corporations in Western capitalist societies, and the dynamic role of literature to write the present and reformulate the future. U, the novel’s main character, is conceived through the Deleuzian notion of the ‘dividual,’ a relational being with a networked

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subjectivity who stems from the embrace of techno-scientific developments. Going beyond the novel itself, Massanet develops a theory of dividual affects to ignite change and micro and macro political agency over the globe and determine how literature can be a site for revolution but also evolution and progress. Section III of the volume, Transhumanism: Trauma and (Bio)Technology, focuses on the role that trauma plays as response to the excesses of transhuman discourse as seen in Tom McCarthy’s C (2010), Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016), and M. Night Shyamalan’s film Split (2017). Susana Onega opens this Section in chapter 7 with an analysis of Tom McCarthy’s third novel, C (2010), as an example of a conceptual novel in which, in the technological age, human beings are presented as necronauts—questers ready to undergo near-death experiences in order to explore the Underworld. Onega focuses on a double trauma: the one produced by the dehumanisation generated by the development communications technology that climaxed in the First World War; and the incest trauma that led to the suicide of the novel’s main character’s elder sister. Serge is deprived of any psychological depth, empathy, or capacity for affect, which naturalizes melancholia and challenges the traditional reliance on psychological realism of liberal humanism. For this reason, C can be considered an emblematic example of posthumanist fiction. In chapter 8, Carmen Laguarta-Bueno intertwines some of trauma theory’s main tenets and transhumanist concerns with overcoming death in her analysis of DeLillo’s 2016 novel Zero K. The novel’s starting point is the wish of the main character’s father to undergo early cryopreservation, aiming at overcoming death in the future by dying in the present and leaving behind his embodied existence, intimate relationships, and his problems and responsibilities. Laguarta-Bueno reads DeLillo’s novel as a narrative of trauma that uses strategies such as a minimalist style of narration, flashbacks, repetitions, or intrusive images to question the disembodiment and dehumanization inherent in the idea of suspending our present lives. The novel addresses the complex ethical dilemma that emerges from early cryopreservation and reinforces the need to learn to cope with our responsibilities and accept illness and death as integral parts of being human. Chapter 9 closes Section III with Miriam FernándezSantiago’s analysis of M. Night Shyamalan’s film Split (2017). Drawing from both posthuman and disability studies, Fernández-Santiago questions the utopian visions of transhuman enhancement and denounces the movement’s demand for the individual right of self-determining (often prosthetic) embodiment, which turns the merely organic human into a disabled body that lacks something that the prosthetic transhuman embodiment has. Therefore, transhumanism displaces disability towards the organic human, who, losing humanist supremacy, fails to adjust to the new cyborganic norm. According to Fernández-Santiago, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016) blends trauma, disability, and transhumanist discourses in the film’s presentation of a dystopian vision of transhumanity, in which the label of mental disability is inflicted on a human identity that is fragmentary and dysfunctional. This reveals in the end

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the violent, savage drive in transhumanist evolutionary logic as it also turns into an allegory of the causes, discourses, and policies following the USA’s national trauma of 9/11. The final Section of the collection, Posthumanity: Post-Anthropocentric Scenarios, explores the qualities of the (post)human in a variety of dystopian futures marked by the planetary influence of human action. Thus, in chapter 10 Justus Poetzsch contextualizes the notion ‘Anthropocene’ to later focus on narratives concerning the techno-ecological transformations of the planet, which try to redefine mankind’s place and relevance in light of the new reactive and relational earth, climate and environmental others. Poetzsch suggests that in Liu’s space saga, transhuman enhancement is put forward as the ideal solution to regain power and re-establish the human dominance in an exponentially accelerating and vastly growing reality, while VanderMeer presents posthuman perspectives that identify human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism as the original problem that caused planetary disruptions in the first place, pleading for an embedded, embodied and entangled narration of our world. In chapter 11, Monica Sousa considers how VanderMeer’s biotech postapocalyptic novel Borne (2017) explores ideas of posthumanist empathy towards animals created through biotechnology. Borne follows a scavenger, Rachel, in the ruins of a nameless future city who finds Borne, an enigmatic hyper-advanced genetically produced organism, whose body and mental capabilities rapidly evolve, resulting in Rachel blurring the boundaries between plant, animal, and person. While Borne invites readers to consider how biotechnology can have dire consequences and to consider the implications and consequences of creating genetically modified animals, a larger focus of Sousa’s chapter is to consider human responsibility towards these creations once they have been created, exploring posthumanist empathy in the novel, and further concerns about the notion of personhood. In chapter 12, Esther Muñoz-González scrutinizes whether MaddAddam, the last novel of Atwood’s homonymous trilogy, with its palindromic title that evokes circularity, proposes the eternal return of the same or a hopeful “repetition that saves.” Muñoz-González shows that it is only when the human survivors learn that Craker/human reproductive abilities are still possible and both groups start to share memories and culture that the bonds between the posthuman and the human are established. ‘Posthuman motherhood’ is approached both as a spiritual motherhood exemplified by Toby’s mentoring of a Craker child and as biological motherhood: the birth of the hybrid offspring of women and Crakers. While the newborns represent the source of hope in the novel through miscegenation, MaddAddam is exposed as a hetero-patriarchal society in an apparent gender backlash. The section closes with chapter 13, where Vint argues that Marshall’s The Migration provides a vision of posthuman subjectivity that suggests that humans must change themselves in order to thrive on a planet changed by climate change. The novel’s metaphor of evolutionary mutation offers a figuration of a materially transformed human body

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that demonstrates how humanity is interdependent with its environment, including our planetary climate. Marshall presents this posthuman as an entity that can survive only if we find the capacity to see the potentiality for life in what we deem to be lifeless—an orientation that the novel proposes we take toward the ecosystems around us as well as to the posthuman bodies that are transformed rather than killed by diseases in the novel. Vint eloquently proposes that Marshall’s posthuman is a vision of mutuality and symbiosis, which is consistent with Haraway’s thinking on trans-species community.

Notes 1 According to Vint, “Western culture remains attached to a concept of self as disembodied, a concept of self that has important consequences for how we understand the relation-ship between humans and the rest of the material world” (2007, 6–7). 2 Grosz’s approach can be aligned with Karen Barad’s new materialist notion of agential intra-action, which remarks the inseparability of nature and culture in the material-discursive practices whereby subjectivity is sedimented (2003, 822–823). Or, to put it in Vint’s words: “subjectivity is as much material as it is abstract, about the body as well as about the mind, and subjectivity is shaped by cultural forces that produce the sense of an interior” (2007, 8). 3 A more radical version of this idea is put forth by Patricia MacCormack, whose Posthuman Ethics (2012) proposes human extinction as the requisite for the survival of Planet Earth.

Bibliography Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Badmington, Neil. 2011. “Posthumanism.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science, ed. Bruce Clarke & Manuela Rossini, 374–384. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(3): 801–831. Benioff, Marc R. 2017. “Foreword.” In The Fourth Industrial Revolution, by Klaus Schwab, vii–viii. New York, NY: Portfolio Penguin. Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “Transhumanist Values.” Journal of Philosophical Research (Special Issue: Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century): 3–14. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brynjolfsson, Erik & Andrew McAfee. 2016. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, And Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY and London: W.W. Norton & Company. Clarke, Bruce & Manuela Rossini, eds. 2011. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Crutzen, Paul J. & Eugene F.Stoermer. 2000. “The ‘Anthropocene’.” Global Change Newsletter 41: 17–18.

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Dillon, Sarah. 2018. “The Horror of the Anthropocene.” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, 6(1): 1–25. doi:10.16995/c21.38. Engelhardt, Nina & Julia Hoydis. 2019. Representations of Science in Twenty-FirstCentury Fiction: Human and Temporal Connectivities. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Ferrando, Francesca. 2013. “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations.” Existenz 8(2): 26–32. Ferrando, Francesca. 2020. “Leveling the Posthuman Playing Field.” Theology and Science 18(1): 1–6. Flanagan, Victoria. 2018. Posthumanism and Young Adult Fiction. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Floridi, Luciano. 2014. The 4th Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Haraway, Donna. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities, 6: 159–165. Harrison, Jennifer. 2019. Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide. Lanham, MD and London: Lexington Books. Hassan, Ihab. 1977. “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture?” The Georgia Review, 31(4) (Winter): 830–850. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Herbrechter, Stefan. 2013. Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Huxley, Julian. 1957. New Bottles for New Wine. London: Chatto & Windus. Johnston, Justin Omar. 2019. Posthuman Capital and Biotechnology in Contemporary Novels. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Karkulehto, Sanna, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, & Essi Varis, eds. 2019. Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture. London and New York, NY: Routledge. MacCormack, Patricia. 2012. Posthuman Ethics. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Malm, Andreas & Alf Hornborg. 2014. “A Genealogy of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative.” The Anthropocene Review 1(1): 62–69. Miah, Andy. 2008. “A Critical History of Poshumanism.” In Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity, ed. Bert Gordjin & Ruth Chadwick, 71–94. New York, NY: Springer. More, Max. 1990. “Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy.” Entropy, 6 (Summer): 6–12. Pereira Savi, Melina. 2017. “The Anthropocene (and) (in) the Humanities: Possibilities for Literary Studies.” Revista de Estudos Feministas 25(2): 945–959. Ranisch, Robert & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. 2014. “Introducing Post- and Transhumanism.” In Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism, ed. Robert Ranisch & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, 7–27. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Ripple, William J. et al. 2017. “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.” Bioscience, November 13, 2017: 1026–1028, doi:10.1093/biosci/bix125. Rossini, Manuela. 2005. “Figurations of Post/Humanity in Contemporary Sience/ Fiction: All Too Human(ist)?” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 50: 21–35.

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Schwab, Klaus. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York, NY: Portfolio Penguin. Schwab, Klaus. 2018. Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum. Steffen, Will, et al. 2011. “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship.” Ambio 40(7): 739–761. doi:10.1007/s13280-011-0185-x. Szalai, Georg. 2015. “Google Chairman Eric Schmidt: ‘The Internet Will Disappear’.” The Hollywood Reporter, January 22, 2015. Available at: www.hollywoodreporter. com/news/google-chairman-eric-schmidt-internet-765989. Tarr, Anita & Donna R.White, eds. 2018. Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi. Thacker, Eugene. 2011. In the Dust of This Planet. Washington, DC: Zero Books. Vinci, Tony M. 2019. Ghost, Android, Animal: Trauma and Literature Beyond the Human. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Vint, Sherryl. 2007. Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Wallis, Elvira. 2020. “How The Internet Of Things Speeds Up Industry 4.0 Progress.” Forbes, March, 2020. Available at: www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2020/03/04/ how-the-internet-of-things-speeds-up-industry-40-progress/#5e38f81b5998. Yaszek, Lisa & Jason W.Ellis. 2017. “Science Fiction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman. Eds Bruce Clarke & Manuela Rossini, 71–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zalasiewicz, Jan, et al. 2014. “When did the Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-twentieth Century Boundary Level is Stratigraphically Optimal.” Quaternary International, 30: 1–8.

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Before Humanity, Or, Posthumanism Between Ancestrality and Becoming Inhuman Stefan Herbrechter

1 Before… Before is one of those magic words that contain an intrinsic opposition. Grammatically speaking, before is an adverb, preposition and conjunction that expresses sequence in both space and time. Spatially, it serves, for example, as the opposite of behind with its meaning of “in front, in or on the anterior side; in a forward direction.” However, it also implies, ironically, maybe, a certain futurity in the sense of “ahead, in advance, in front.” Temporally, this therefore also seems to translate into previous, in the sense of “in the time preceding that in question, previously to that or this, earlier, sooner” (Oxford English Dictionary). So, one could say that before thoroughly ambiguates futurity, presence and pastness. A statement like “Humanity stands here before you” is a performative, signifying presence; while a statement like “Humans were here before humanity,” claims a precedence of human difference over a universal notion of humanity; and a statement like “This human has his or her whole life before them,” obviously refers to an individual human’s future. The phrase before humanity speaks to all these meanings of before— pastness, presence and futurity—and it does so in the context of our current posthumanist climate, when the question of what it means to be human is once again being asked with great urgency, in the face of new and not so new threats and new and also not so new opportunities. Posthumanism’s current main symptoms are, on the one hand, the rush for ever smarter technologies that increasingly think with or, indeed, for humans, and, on the other hand, the ever more urgent discussion about climate change, extinction angst, biopolitics, speciesism and the search for exoplanets. In short, posthumanism labels the mess that arises once traditional answers to the question of “what does it mean to be human?” are giving way to a renewed uncertainty about what humanity, if such a thing actually exists beyond a mere conceptual construct, should do next. In short, it is a critique of the most fundamental anthropocentric values, assumptions and reflexes that have been underpinning modernity. The ongoing critique or deconstruction of humanism that the label posthumanism points towards increasingly affects human self-understanding in

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terms of ethics (in the form of a critique of anthropocentrism, speciesism, human enhancement, etc.), politics (in the form of a critique of neoliberal biopolitics, datafication, ubiquitous surveillance, cognitive capitalism etc.), aesthetics (through a turn towards nonhuman agency in bioart, new media art, digital games, electronic literature etc.), epistemology (involving the rise of the new life sciences, the posthumanities, ubiquitous computing, etc.) and lifestyle changes (as a result of technological developments like prosthesization, virtual reality environments, social media, etc.). The proliferating ideas and visions of our looming posthumanity are now reaching a wider public and are coming to dominate the traditional mass media, as well as the new digital and social media. As a result, the transformative potential of posthumanism has become undeniable—for better or for worse. In this context, what I have called ‘critical posthumanism’ (Herbrechter, 2013) is aimed at evaluating, contextualising and historicising the transformative potential posthumanism promises. It welcomes for example the new and extensive possibilities for co-operation between the humanities, the social sciences and the new bio- or life sciences. However, critical also means appreciating the resistance to ideas relating to the posthuman, posthumanisation and posthumanity. The aim here is to read the anxieties and desires at work when dealing with such concepts as the human, posthuman or nonhuman and to look at prefigurations, genealogies, disavowals and alternative futures. The ideas evoked by the phrase before humanity are therefore part of an ongoing critical practice that challenges posthumanist futurism and technoutopianism. It serves to remind us of the essential openness and unknowability of the future for humans and nonhumans alike. Focusing on the ambiguity of before implies a kind of reverse thinking and an imagining of a time before origins, before there was such a thing called humanity. This deliberately goes against the predominant strain of posthumanism that tends to focus on (and maybe even help to bring about) what comes after humanity. The main obstacle, however, is that we (humans) have no idea what it means to be human. Any content that we stick to something like human nature is immediately undermined, rejected, rewritten, transcended (be it tool-use, walking upright, symbolic language, neoteny, consciousness, culture, art, empathy laughter, lying… none of these can really uphold human exceptionalism). This is why posthumanism might be better understood, following Lyotard’s logic of the postmodern, as a kind of “anamnesis”—a re-membering or perlaboration (Lyotard, 1991, 24–35). Postanthropocentrism, in this sense, thus really implies a kind of psychoanalysis applied at the problematic level of species identity, or, in other words, a process of rewriting humanity in the face of the spectre of its loss or the advent of the posthuman. Whether one looks at the asynchronicity prompted and exploited by rewriting the human or at the “ancestrality” at the heart of object-oriented ontology and speculative realism (cf. Meillassoux, 2008), the before in before humanity opens up a possible juncture (or, figuratively, a kind of wormhole) between prehuman and posthuman times. It is in this sense that we, today, stand before

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the human, in the same way that we are before the law, as in Kafka’s text. Even though Derrida (1992, 182–220) reads Kafka’s parable in an entirely different context, namely as an explanation of the relation between literature and the law, there are a number of observations that will be useful for understanding the complex meaning of before humanity in his reading: namely that the preposition before allows for a positioning in front of something, either facing it or turning one’s back on it (like the man seeking entrance and the doorkeeper barring it, in Kafka’s text). And just like the man seeking entrance to the law without ever actually proceeding to confront it, we have been before humanity without ever finding it. Humanity, just like the law (and its unlocatable presence), remains forever deferred, or in différance. The analogy goes even further: just like the man who spends his life waiting for access to the law, who is (a subject) before the law without ever experiencing it as a presence, right until the doorkeeper closes his particular access upon the man’s death, we, humans, might find ourselves before humanity in a similar way, without ever acceding to it, gaining access to or realising our humanity, so to speak. Every single human finds him, her or indeed, today, itself before (the law of) humanity by interpellation, while waiting an entire life to enter that promised state, only to find out that at the end (the end of man) some mediating doorkeeper closes our singular access nihilistically claiming that it is no longer needed. Instead, it will be reopened elsewhere for some other human, or, indeed, its successor. There is no better way of describing the peculiar performativity at work in a residual humanism in posthuman times (cf. also Wolfe, 2013). As we might be, in all this frenzy of posthuman times, about to forget what drives this humanism, we are well advised to look back (and forth) at some beginnings. The phrase before humanity sets up two alternative scenarios, two speculative questions: what happened just before we apparently became human (which involves a rereading of paleontology, evolution and hominisation narratives)? And, witnessing the end of (at least a certain notion of) humanity, what task lies before the human (now)? In other words, while others might choose to rush ahead into techno-utopias of artificial intelligence and embrace the apparent inevitability of our continued evolution towards augmented posthumans, I am here interested in the proto-, the paleo-, the ante-… conceptualisations on which these ‘science factional’ (Herbrechter 2013, 107–134) scenarios rely. The suspicion that develops out of this might be articulated in the question whether we have ever been human (in a humanist sense) and if not, what could we have been? What could we maybe still be? This, certainly, is an ancestral question.

2 Ancestrality As Quentin Meillassoux writes, in After Finitude: You think that a precursor is someone who comes before those who follow after? Well, you’re wrong: the precursor is not the one who

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comes before, but rather the one whom the successors subsequently claim came before… This is the peculiar knowledge to which philosophers lay claim, a knowledge that sometimes seems to amount to little more than these rigmaroles wherein time is turned upside down, the better to contrive a countersensical redoubling of the time of science. A peculiar knowledge indeed, which renders us incapable of grasping precisely that which is actually most gripping about the temporality of science—the fact that science does indeed think that what comes before comes before, and that what came before us came before us. (Meillassoux, 2008, 123) The idea of before humanity certainly resonates with the desire “to get out of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not,” as investigated by Meillassoux. The crux of his use of the concept of ancestrality lies in the promise “to carve out a path towards the outside for [thought].” The desire in pursuing the logic of ancestrality is to find out whether “everything could actually collapse,” once we escape (Kantian) “correlationism,” i.e. the idea that nothing exists outside a relation to a (human) observer and that any qualities a thing might have do not make sense without a (cor)relation to a (human) subject (Meillassoux, 2013, 1–7). The loss of the “great outdoors,” as Meillassoux calls this pre-Kantian space, can thus be seen as a near synonym of before humanity, not only in a temporal sense but in the sense of an outside humanity, a postanthropocentric world taken literally. It also necessarily poses a question that paleoanthropology is predominantly concerned with in what can be called its search for a “non-correlationist” way of explaining how we became human. What Meillassoux terms the “arche-fossil” is the (at least to the humanities) outrageous ability that science has of making truthful statements about a time before humanity, even before life as such, with the additional effect that deep geological time seems to become less and less mysterious (a process, which as a result, also increasingly demystifies us, humans). Meillassoux is understandably intrigued: what is it exactly that astrophysicists, geologists, or palaeontologists are talking about when they discuss the age of the universe, the date of the accretion of the earth, the date of the appearance of pre-human species, or the date of the emergence of humanity itself? (2008, 9) His explanation is that these sciences are concerned with things that are “anterior to every form of human relation to the world” (10). It is this anteriority that constitutes the “ancestral” (or “any reality anterior to the emergence of the human species”), while the “arche-fossil” refers to “materials indicating the existence of an ancestral reality or event; one that is anterior to terrestrial life” (10). For any correlationist, subject-oriented, philosophy, this

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is Meillassoux’s claim, these questions must remain illegitimate since they originate in a literally unwitnessable scenario. A time before humanity is literally unthinkable, unless it were a teleological (evolutionary) time that was (always) already announcing the human, or at least some pre-human or proto-human—in the sense that prehistory was always already a kind of proto-history (“a retrojection of the past on the basis of the present”, 16), or, in other words, the product of reverse-teleology, or retro-fitting. A truly ancestral understanding of before humanity, meanwhile, would involve an entirely other relationship, as Meillassoux explains, an ontology that is “anterior to givenness itself”: how to conceive of a time in which the given as such passes from nonbeing into being?… For the problem of the arche-fossil is not the empirical problem of birth of living organisms, but the ontological problem of coming into being of givenness as such… (20–21) This involves a thinking that is both speculative and realist (hence Meillassoux’s followers’ call for a speculative realism). It is worth pointing out, however, that, as Meillassoux himself admits, his thoughts are in fact not so much (or at least not primarily) prompted by an ancestral before but rather by the prospect of a futural after (or, to be more precise, by the absence of the latter), namely of “transcendental subjects, coordinated between themselves but unfolding and ‘floating’ in the midst of an absolute nothingness into which everything could dissolve once more were the human species to disappear” (35–36). Before and after are thus once more conjoined or anticipated by Meillassoux in some “world without us” scenario (cf. Weisman, 2007). It is therefore no coincidence (given the janus-faced nature of the before) that this scenario has become particularly relevant in the current climate of posthumanist postanthropocentrism, extinction threats and species angst. Meillassoux himself admits as much when he says: Closer inspection reveals that the problem of the arche-fossil is not confined to ancestral statements. For it concerns every discourse whose meaning includes temporal discrepancy between thinking and being— thus, not only statements about events occurring prior to the emergence of humans, but also statements about possible events that are ulterior to the extinction of the human species. (Meillassoux, 2008, 112) It is precisely this temporal discrepancy—which Meillassoux goes on to term “dia-chronicity,” by which he means “all such statements about events that are anterior or ulterior to every terrestrial-relation-to-the-world” (112)—and which has become meaningful through the “hiatus between being and terrestrial thought” when introduced by “the very inception of

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modern science” in the first place (113). It is this dia-chronicity that, as I would argue, is doubly inscribed within the phrase before humanity. And it is clear that a true engagement with the questions raised by this dia-chronicity today only makes sense through new (i.e. posthumanist) forms of co-operation between the humanities (e.g. philosophy, literature) and the sciences (paleontology, biology, etc.), since, as Meillassoux rightly states: It was science that made it meaningful to disagree about what there might have been when we did not exist and what there might be when we no longer exist—just as it is science that provides us with the means to rationally favour one hypothesis over another concerning the nature of a world without us. (114) Before humanity thus necessarily but also critically refers to this speculative reality of “a-world-without-us” and the limits that it makes thinkable by following the double meaning of what lies before (i.e. both behind and ahead of) us and what we may become as a result.

3 Becoming In/Human What the aporia of the before thus opens up is the (paleontological) idea of “alternative humans,” as Clive Finlayson explains: It is sobering to think that there have been alternative ways of being human, and that some of the options vanished despite good design, and that such a fate might have easily awaited us round some unexpected corner of our short history. Indeed, it may await us still. (Finlayson, 2009, 2–3) Given this precariousness of human evolution, the historian Felipe FernándezArmesto in his Brief History of Humankind somewhat counterintuitively or even ironically singles out conceptuality as the greatest threat to humanity: “Humanity is in peril: not from the familiar menace of ‘mass destruction’ and ecological overkill—but from a conceptual threat” (Fernández-Armesto, 2004, 1). Primatology, the animal rights movement, paleoanthropological and evolutionary uncertainty about when we became human, as well as the explosion of the biological category of species, the rise of artificial intelligence and biotechnology all produce an erosion of the idea of humanity and undermine confidence in the historically quite recent category of the human. FernándezArmesto is therefore quite rightly worried about the conceptual integrity of what it is and what it means to be human. However, he cannot help but also insist on a deep trust in what he calls the human “spirit” (or, more precisely, “the imaginative discovery that life is animated by spirit”, which elevated our ancestors out of “primitive” materialism, 165). In doing so, he joins the long

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list of those who, in the face of some posthuman future, almost instinctively return to defending a mythical form of human nature, supposed to guarantee some kind of (human) continuity; in short, he advocates trust in the continued re-articulation of humanism. On closer inspection, this ultimately blind trust, however, is based on a form of sophistry: namely—and this is where we return to the question of beginning, which is certainly no coincidence—the conceptual impossibility of establishing, without doubt, a before and an after. As we do not know how and when we became human, we also do not (and thus cannot) know how and when we will cease to be human: How much our nature has changed before our descendants cease to be human is a question we are not yet ready to answer. In this respect it resembles a question about when, in the course of evolution, our ancestors became human—which is also unanswerable at the present stage of our thinking and knowledge. (Fernández-Armesto, 2004, 169–170) Fernández-Armesto clearly thinks that being human and thinking about ourselves as humanity, ultimately, will be a question of choice—which means that, in the end, he is not too worried about the conceptual threat to humanity that he himself identified, after all, as he declares: For now, if we want to go on believing we are human, and justify the special status we accord ourselves—if, indeed we want to stay human through the changes we face—we had better not discard the myth, but start trying to live up to it. (170) But how, one might ask, is one to live up to a myth of which one ignores both the beginning and the end, or its true “nature,” for that matter? Or, to put it differently, what exactly is Fernández-Armesto trusting, if not some diffuse conceptuality without concept that says that somehow “we will know,” somehow we will (have) become human (because we just have to, because we are somehow bound to)? Given the irreducible plurality of meanings that the beginning, the process and the end of hominisation produces, however, nothing seems less certain. Nothing is ever guaranteed by the undecidability between before and after. At what point does one begin, and at what point might one cease to be, human? One could, indeed, add to the endless anthropological attempts to distinguish the human from nonhuman animals the idea that the human is that life form which, constitutively (i.e. necessarily, but also strategically), confuses before and after. This is so because humans see themselves both as subject of and subject to becoming—they are always humans-in-the-making. Humans thus project themselves, literally, by seeing themselves as projects. In this sense, humanism is, first of all, projectural. The number of titles containing the

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phrase becoming human is therefore hardly surprising. In one of these books, Chad Wellmon (2010) provides a critique of Immanuel Kant’s foundational gesture or question that has opened up (philosophical) anthropology: “Was ist der Mensch [What is man]?” Wellmon argues that modern anthropology is founded on an impossible double imperative, namely that of defining human nature (i.e. the empirical question of what the human is) and of establishing a moral trajectory (i.e. the transcendental, normative or moral question of what the human should become). It is this foundational crisis (the ambiguity between being and becoming) that, strictly speaking, underpins the 18th-century emergence of (Enlightenment) modernity, which “sees itself as condemned to draw its norms and very self-understanding from itself” (Wellmon, 2010, 2). Modernity and its self-reflexivity is thus from its very beginning based on an anthropological mode of thought: “Anthropology’s crisis of self-recognition epitomises the critical project of modernity that since its self-proclaimed inception has been obsessed with its own operations” (3). Its double claim on empiricism and transcendentalism means that anthropological modernity is, according to Wellmon, “the epoch in which the human being is condemned to justify itself” (6). Kantian anthropology is also from its inception pedagogical (i.e. normative and teleological) in the sense that “it was meant to orient and guide the individual towards becoming human. Anthropology was pedagogy for the human race” (8). However, owing to the erosion of the boundaries drawn between the human—as both subject and object of its own self-reflexivity—and its others, as outlined by Fernández-Armesto above, anthropology, and in particular its (humanist) pedagogical thrust, have run into trouble and can no longer be seen as self-legitimating (cf. Sloterdijk, 1999, Herbrechter, 2018). A variety of stances in such a post-anthropological environment have been emerging. I can only provide some but hopefully symptomatic and representative positions here, which all reconnect with the temporal confusion contained in the idea of becoming human—both in the sense of how did we become human? (i.e. the mystery of a time before humanity) and what is becoming of the human? (i.e. what lies before humanity, now?). There is, first of all, following Günther Anders (1980), the sense of human “obsolescence” and a return of the Nietzschean question of the “overman” in the contemporary guise of the (technologically enhanced) posthuman. Following this trajectory, the question of philosophical anthropology, namely what is man?, today becomes to what extent is the human enhanceable or perfectible? and up to what level of enhancement is a human still ‘human’ (all the while ‘human’ remains (forever) to be defined)? What lies before humanity in this transhumanist understanding is thus the uncertain future of technology and the teleology of (technological) becoming, which is based on nothing else than the idea that the human is essentially something that needs to be overcome. This inevitably leads to the question who (or what) comes after the human?—with all the echoes this brings back of the question asked by Eduardo Cadava in his collection Who comes after the subject? (1991). At

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the same time, this also again emphasises the ambiguity of the after, in the sense of (evolutionary) succession, but also in the sense of who or what is driving (going after) the human and thus, by implication, what comes before it? (Cadava, 1991). What usually remains more or less intact on this circular trajectory, however, is the idea of human exceptionalism on which some form of anthropocentric principle of projection into a more or less human future is based (even, paradoxically, if that future were to turn out to be a “world without us”). It is clear that animal studies have very different views regarding anthropocentrism: in fact, animal studies can only be said to be posthumanist in so far as they are also a critique of anthropocentrism. The anthropological question what is man?, or, more neutrally, what is the human?, within posthumanist/postanthropocentric animal studies only makes sense from an ethico-ecological perspective. The ethologist Domique Lestel, for example, in one of his recent interventions on the critique of the modern relationship between humans and animals asks: “A quoi sert l’homme? [What’s the point, or what is the use of the human?]” (Lestel, 2015). Lestel attacks “le papy de Königsberg [the grand-dad from Königsberg]” (i.e. Kant) who committed the original anthropological “sin” of determining that “unlike other animals, man is useless, every man is an end to himself, etc.”, which leads Lestel to come up with a provocative definition of (Western) “man” as “a means that takes itself for an end” (Lestel, 2015, 8). The self-legitimatory anthropocentric view established by “European humanism,” however, is not only bad news for nonhuman animals but also for humans themselves, as Lestel explains: By giving extraterritorial status to the human, and by making it the end of everything, European humanism has placed man in danger of death. The human exists as such through a life shared with other living beings… The posthumanist currents, contemporary or older, say nothing else, after all. The future of man is a machine. If man is useless, he can at least serve to eliminate himself. (10) The (technological) transhumanist vision of a postanthropos scenario is of course unacceptable to animal studies since transhumanism strives to eliminate whatever remains of human animality through technological enhancement and this might finally cut our chord with “the living” [les vivants] altogether. In trying to overcome the human, posthumans (in the sense transhumanists usually attribute to them) nevertheless still act in some perverted interest of preservation: “Whatever they claim, post-humans still try to save, not the human for sure, but whatever may be human in the human. Well, good luck, guys!” (Lestel, 2015, 103). What the human is “good for” then—and this is Lestel’s postanthropocentric imperative—basically lies in unlearning to be human or in a human retraining—i.e. in a diversion of the

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original anthropological pedagogical project—and more specifically, in finally accepting to become part of nature. In a similar vein, Matthew Calarco (following Giorgio Agamben) proposes to “jam the anthropological machine” (Calarco, 2008, 79–103), which is based on a reliance “on the human-animal distinction that serves as the foundation for Western political and metaphysical thought” (79). What lies before humanity, should the jamming be successful, is thought to be some form of re-humanisation, outside or without the anthropocentrism. This human, us, so Calarco, is called upon to take on its ethico-ecological responsibility. What it means to be human, in this context, is to, first of all, show humility, solidarity and care (especially for the nonhuman). There is, in this rationale, not so much a posthuman future but rather a (new, or a return to) prehistory—an anthropology without humans, or, as Jean-Luc Nancy would have it: “A humanity without humanism” (Nancy, 2001, 126). In an equally subtractive or (self-)extractive vein, Martin Crowley, in L’Homme sans [Man without], highlights the semantic “stripping process” that anthropology has always been engaged in: “l’homme sans [man without]… everything that one has to subtract from man so that he can be what he is”, Crowley writes (2009, 15). This “man without qualities” (cf. Musil, 1995; Callus and Herbrechter, 2011) constitutes the subject of a negative anthropology (or “negentropology”, as Edgar Morin (1973, 213) called it)— which is the only anthropology that remains open after all those characteristics are subtracted which used to make man exceptional, namely language, culture, bipedalism, tool-use, laughter, music or lying etc. For such a postanthropology, as one might understand it, “le propre de l’homme” would, precisely, consist of this exposure to the subtraction of everything that the human was supposed to have as “propre” (Crawley, 2015, 16). Crawley goes on to use this fundamental absence or lack (of qualities), which is not a lack of “any/thing” but a constitutional lack that cannot be filled or remedied, as the starting point of what he calls a new “politics of finitude” based on the solidarity (between human and nonhuman animals) of this experience of “divestment”—a stance close to that articulated by the Holocaust survivor Robert Antelme in L’Espèce humaine (1957). The specifically human task, following Crawley (who, in large parts, follows Antelme and Jean-Luc Nancy), would be to become human, not by embracing animality (which would be a form of self-condemnation leading towards victimisation and passivity) but inhumanity (by which he obviously does not mean inhumane but rather a kind of unthinking—a deconstruction of anthropocentrism and humanism). This would also be close to the understanding of the “inhuman” and “inhumanism” Jean-François Lyotard suggested in his volume The Inhuman (1991). Lyotard, notably, differentiated between two forms of inhumanity: “The inhumanity of the system which is currently being consolidated under the name of development (among others) must not be confused with the infinitely secret one of which the soul is hostage” (Lyotard, 1991, 2). Lyotard

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goes on to locate this inhumanity of the (individual human) soul within human “neoteny”: What shall we call human in humans, the initial misery of their childhood, or their capacity to acquire a “second” nature which, thanks to language, makes them fit to share in communal life, adult consciousness and reason? That the second depends on the first is agreed by everyone. The question is only that of knowing whether this dialectic, whatever name we grace it with, leaves no remainder. (3) Lyotard here, in fact, articulates another important aspect of before humanity—namely the fact that hominisation is a process that every individual has to go through, a cultural evolution every single specimen of the species has to re-enact in order to become fully human despite having been biologically born human. For Lyotard, before humanity is the state of the human child, and this is precisely the reason why the child is also the most human, owing to its “misery” (its neotenous exposedness, defenselessness, helplessness) but also because of its “potentiality” (in many ways, the child is thus “l’homme sans” par excellence): “Shorn of speech, incapable of standing upright, hesitating over the objects of interest, not able to calculate its advantages, not sensitive to common reason, the child is eminently the human because its distress heralds and promises things possible,” as Lyotard proposes (3–4). The cruel irony, then, is that the human system that humans create to educate the child into becoming (fully) human (let’s call this humanism) depends on and has to eradicate this first humanity of the child, a process that the inhumanity of the system requires and exploits for its further development. Humanism, following Lyotard’s logic, therefore has two sides: on the one hand, it is that ideology that demands “child development,” so to speak. While on the other, humanism that takes the first humanity of the child seriously, would in fact be an inhumanism, and for which becoming human(ist) is, in fact, too high a price to pay. The irresolvable double imperative of humanist anthropology, of being and becoming human, which feeds the anthropological machine continues to echo, even in the phrase before humanity. It is precisely what prompts the ongoing deconstruction of humanism—or the coming to terms with the “remainder of the dialectic,” as Lyotard writes. If all this sounds very similar to Nietzsche’s injunction that we should finally become who we are, this is also certainly no coincidence. As Steven Connor put it so well in his foreword to another volume entitled Becoming Human: For no human being can simply be, and leave it at that. The nature of human beings, it is often said, is not to be but to subsist in a state of becoming, by which is meant coming about, coming-to-be, being in transit, being on the way to what one will have been. (Connor, 2003, ix)

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This impossible demand (at once to be and to become human), as Connor goes on to explain, implies that “to become human is always to become more, or less, than human.” Nietzsche’s imperative does therefore not really help, as “to be what you are becoming is to attempt to will and be in advance what it is you will end up having been” (Connor, xi). No wonder that the temptation would be to either subtract ourselves from the tiresome task of becoming (human), or, indeed, to press ahead and become somehow post- or transhuman. Both of these escape routes (subtraction or transcendence), however, do not come with unwanted side-effects, as Connor explains (echoing Michel Foucault’s famous statement about man’s looming disappearance, at the end of The Order of Things): “If the face of the human is being effaced in the sand, it may be possible to say of the human that nothing becomes it so well as the manner of its taking leave of itself” (Connor, xvi). What this insight prompts is, in the end, a (posthumanist) political stance: we, humans, must not shirk the responsibilities that lie before us, and this is precisely why we must resist the temptation to cut through the aporia of the before—namely that the human is always in the process of becoming and at the same time is always too late for this very event. However, business as usual is no option either, given that time, technology, ecology and geology will not stand still. Instead, to quote Paul Sheehan (who echoes Emmanuel Levinas): “If rather than being human we are, more modestly, becoming human, then we do better to speak not of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ but, in Emmanuel Levinas’s phrase, of ‘what occasionally is human in man’” (Sheehan, 2003, 11). And although I have not directly addressed the other inhumanity here— Lyotard’s “inhumanity of the system,” which, today, if one believes Bernard Stiegler, can only be resisted by keeping open the “history of technological possibilities of anticipation” as “the history of the different mirror stages in which humanity reflects itself” (Stiegler, 1998, 159)—what I derive from a reconceptualisation of human prehistory in the face of the posthuman is not at all unrelated to Stiegler’s vast project of rewriting the history of anthropology from the point of view of technics (cf. Turner, 2016, 194). In a way, I find Edgar Morin’s claim that we are in the middle of a “seconde préhistoire [second prehistory]” quite attractive as long as we engage with it without the sense of the tragic that this so often involves, for example when Morin calls for a “regenerating” of humanism in the face of “human megalomania” and the idea of pursuing “hominization by humanisation” (Morin, 2001, 274–275), or with the prospect, to speak with Heidegger, of finally “poetically dwelling” (Heidegger, 1971, 213–229) on this planet (which, of course, problematically assumes that we know what poetically, means, in this context). Our particular challenge, in a time when before humanity threatens to finally coincide with after humanity, literally, materially, is therefore to very much resist Fernández-Armesto’s idea that any “post-human future,” might very much still “resemble the pre-human past” (FernándezArmesto, 2004, 165).

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Bibliography Anders, Günther. 1956. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Band 1: Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution. Munich: Beck. Anders, Günther. 1980. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Band 2: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution. Munich: Beck. Antelme, Robert. 1957. L’espèce humaine. Paris: Gallimard. Cadava Eduardo, ed. 1991. Who Comes After The Subject? New York, NY: Routledge. Calarco, Matthew. 2008. Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Callus, Ivan & Stefan Herbrechter. 2011. “Humanity Without Itself: Robert Musil, Giorgio Agamben and Posthumanism.” In Towards a New Literary Humanism, ed. Andy Mousley, 143–160. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Connor, Steven. 2003. “Foreword: Coming to Be.” In Becoming Human: New Perspectives on the Inhuman Condition, ed. Paul Sheehan, ix–xvi. Westport, CT: Praeger. Crowley, Martin. 2009. L’Homme sans—Politiques de la finitude. Paris: Lignes. Derrida, Jacques. 1992. “Before the Law.” In Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge, 181–220. New York, NY: Routledge. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. 2004. So You Think You’re Human? A Brief History of Humankind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finlayson, Clive. 2009. The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. “…poetically man dwells…” In Poetry, Language, Thought, 213–229. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Herbrechter, Stefan. 2013. Posthumanism—A Critical Analysis. London: Bloomsbury. Herbrechter, Stefan. 2018 “Posthumanist Education?” In International Handbook of Education, Volume 1, ed. Paul Smeyers, 727–745. Cham: Springer. Lestel, Dominique. 2015. A quoi sert l’homme? Paris: Fayard. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1991. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Cambridge: Polity Press. Meillassoux, Quentin. 2008. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. London: Continuum. Morin, Edgar. 1973. Le Paradigme perdu: La nature humaine. Paris: Seuil. Morin, Edgar. 2001. L’Identité humaine (La Méthode 5: L’Humanité de l’humanité). Paris: Seuil. Musil, Robert. [1943] 1995. The Man Without Qualities. London: Picador. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2001. Les Muses. Paris: Galilée. Sheehan, Paul, ed. 2003. Becoming Human: New Perspectives on the Inhuman Condition. Westport, CT: Praeger. Sloterdijk, Peter. 1999. “Rules for the Human Zoo.” Environment and Planning D, 27: 12–28. Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press. Turner, Ben. 2016. “Life and the Technical Transformation of Différance: Stiegler and the Noopolitics of Becoming Human.” Derrida Today, 9(2): 177–198. Weisman, Alan. 2007. The World Without Us. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press. Wellmon, Cad. 2010. Becoming Human: Romantic Anthropology and the Embodiment of Form. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Wolfe, Cary. 2013. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

2

From Utilitarianism to Transhumanism A Critical Approach Maite Escudero-Alías

1 Introduction When Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the father of Utilitarianism, coined the ethical and philosophical doctrine of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” he was aligned with the liberal promise of the Enlightenment that insisted on the improvement and modernisation of society through a sole focus on utility and self-interest. The doctrine of utilitarianism was best illustrated in the fields of economy and education. In the former, an excessive reliance on figures, statistics, and numbers was praised as the successful outcome of progress and profitability, leaving aside poignant questions related to the harsh and dangerous labor conditions of the working classes in an incipient industrial revolution that was to drastically change the lives of its people forever. In the latter, the relegation of critical thinking and open-mindedness and the denial of values such as sympathy, compassion, and altruism gave way to the utilitarian trust in a sterile reason as the most efficient tool to achieve progress: “facts, facts, facts, teach these boys and girls nothing but facts” (2006, 1), reminds us Mr Gradgrind in Hard Times (1858), a novel in which Dickens satirizes about the futile attempts to educate the children at school under the scope of Utilitarianism. Keeping these essential ideas in mind, this chapter aims critically to draw an analogy between Utilitarianism and Transhumanism in that both seek to improve human nature and to enhance the development of the (cognitive) self by means of technology. As ethical doctrines, the spread of improvement in historical and personal conceptions of progress has conditioned past and present communities to designate an imagined projection of kinship based on exclusion more than affection—on an elitist defence of the self against altruistic reconstructions of social welfare. Accordingly, my contribution not only examines some counter-discourses that contest the myth of human selftransformation and the world’s self-congratulatory progress by reliance on technology, but also explores how some of these narratives enact an alternative path of enquiry that interrogates the alleged prevalence of “better and happier people” as the main exponent of both, Utilitarianism and Transhumanism. Admittedly, these dogmas have also aspired to a Nietzschean

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revaluation of values through scientific enquiry and to new configurations of the disputing notions of “freedom” and “self-improvement.” In my discussion, I will have recourse to Utilitarian thinkers such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill as the main exponents of one’s duty in order to attest to the prevalence of good over evil, to make better and happier people by relying on traditional Christian values—not alien to transhumanists either— such as compassion, charity, openness to the other, etc. The enhancement of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities is at the core of Transhumanism today and thus transhumanists’ claim for critical thinking and self-transformation as necessary assets in the development of who we are. However, when applied to the field of pedagogy and education, the ostensible efficiency of technological platforms as superlative venues to foster students’ autonomous learning and excellence seems to be at odds with the reality that we all face in our classrooms. Taking as the point of departure William Blake’s poetry and other nineteenth-century writers, such as Thomas Carlyle, Mill or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who denounced the disenfranchisement suffered by the imposition of abstract reasoning processes and machinery upon individuals, my conviction is that the application of digital media into our classrooms prompts the erasure of critical thinking in our students as well as their lack of interest in the essence of knowledge itself. Contradictory as it might seem, the Transhumanist ethos of cognitive, intellectual, and emotional selfimprovement and enhancement through new technologies proves to promote an enslaving system of cognitive modes and pedagogical online platforms which, rather than posit freedom of choice, homogenize us all, teachers and students, at the cost of emptiness and shallow knowledge. More often than not, there is an increasing tendency among our students towards lack of reflexivity, stagnant imagination, and disdain for subjects such as literature, history, and culture, thus aligning themselves with the utilitarian doctrine of only teaching profitable and useful knowledge to the detriment of spirituality and the creative powers of the mind.1 Similarly, most research in the Humanities is labelled as interdisciplinary because of the presence of approaches from the fields of sociology, psychology, and soft economics which, under the disguise of new brands for the sake of liberal consumption and innovation, act as catalysts for an annulled critical awareness. My pessimistic stance is faithful to the decadence of our work as teachers of literature in the Humanities, and it vigorously contests the transhumanist tautological promise of self-improvement through technology when applied to education, merely because “information has supplanted thought and knowledge” (Dinerstein, 2006, 569). In the era of technology, the dynamics of boredom and decreased attention emerge as something normal, as reading on screen lays more emphasis on disruptions, speed and immediacy at the expense of deep attention. Katherine Hayles (2007) admits that we are “in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive styles that poses challenges to education at all levels,

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including colleges and universities” (191) and although she associates “deep attention” with critical analysis, personal reflection, and analytical skills in the Humanities, “hyper attention” is characterized “by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom” (187). Other critical voices from researchers and educators, such as cognitive neurologist Maryanne Wolf (2008), have warned against the perils of technology in that it promotes a decreased working memory, continuous partial attention, and the addiction to novelty, among others. Undeniably, reading Romantic poetry and Victorian fiction requires deep attention, and if the evidence indicates that our students are keener on hyper attention, reading summaries of novels online and watching film adaptions rather than practising deep reading, then, a new literary ethics is needed, cultivating higher degrees of interpretation and willingness to embrace disciplines of attention. In this respect, Caleb Smith has recently elaborated on the genealogy of disciplines of attention, stemming from David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) as the epitome of “attentive reading as a secular spiritual exercise” (2019, 885). Drawing upon American educators and reformists of the early nineteenth century, Smith identifies the sources of distraction and defends the role of literary studies “to restore the self’s agency and to display a kind of ethical virtue” (888). The challenge now is how to capture the students’ deep reading modes while fostering their capacity for critical analysis, especially in an era defined by weariness, distraction, and lack of fixity and thought, where most readers seek pleasure and personal autonomy. As I see it, the field of critical Humanities must insist on interpretative practices that carry openness to the past in order to revise and disclose other texts that could contain the seed for more affective approaches to literature. For this to be so, Walter Benjamin’s unorthodox theses on history and philosophy as dialectical sites of fragmented materials and concepts come to mind, as we should increasingly bear witness to previous forms of literary knowledge in order to pursue a creative act of rethinking the past, just as a collector or an artist might do. In Benjamin’s view, the figure of the collector is a key one when it comes to digging under the layers of language and concepts, for in moments of personal and collective rupture and displacement, the search for a reevaluation of the past could fuel a more profound transformation in one’s life. Faithful to his method of material history, Benjamin offered constellations in which the past merges with the present, and the present anticipates the future. This mode of thinking proposed by Benjamin suggests a politics of possibility that enables us to drill the depths of language and history so as not to foresee any causal or systematic connection all at once. As Hannah Arendt states in her Introduction to Benjamin’s Illuminations, Benjamin’s conception of life is: like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to light but to pry loose the rich and the

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Maite Escudero-Alías strange, the pearls and the coral in the depths […] as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living—as ‘thought fragments’, as something ‘rich and strange.’ (2007, 51, 52)

It is this Benjaminian spirit of remembering and embracing the “full phantom deep,” which nonetheless permits to “select its precious fragments from the pile of debris” (258) and move a step forward towards a restorative paradigm that requires re-envisioning literature as a political form of affection that permeates the past and improves the present. Such an alternative understanding of temporality, not as teleology of progress, but as a coexistence of past and present accounts of cultural values, seems important to revisit, if only to transform the common “hermeneutics of suspicion” against the use of new technologies when teaching literature into a more flexible and congenial position. In introducing the concept of “hermeneutics of suspicion,” I follow here Eve K. Sedgwick’s claim that the methodological centrality of suspicion when discussing the offspring of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud “has involved a concomitant privileging of the concept of paranoia” (2003, 124), leaving aside other forms of cognitive and affective theoretical practices. A paranoid position, then, is intrinsically oppressive and disavows productive criticism, preventing potential “narrative, epistemological entailments for the seeker, knower, or teller” (125). This position, facilitated by Silvan Tomkins’ theory of affects as well as by Sedgwick’s subsequent interpretation of Tomkins’ account, involves offering a reparative reading on Utilitarianism and questioning its doctrine of self-interest and materialist ethos, in order to avoid the anticipatory trait of unidirectional readings on literary texts and broach “other ways of knowing, ways less oriented around suspicion, that are actually being practiced, often by the same theorists and as part of the same projects” (144). In what follows, then, I will provide a brief critical overview of Utilitarian doctrines stemming from some writers who, despite advocating the cultivation of individuality and improvement through abstract reasoning, also allowed for a more sympathetic understanding of human life. Thus, in an era characterized by Carlyle as the “Age of Machinery [because] Philosophy, Science, Art, Literature, all depend on machinery […] in every outward and inward sense of that word which forwards, teaches and practices the great art of adapting means to ends” (1829, n.p.), authors such as Smith or Mill offered a critical approach to Utilitaniarism—one that interrogated the sole reliance on machinery to accomplish spiritual well-being. As I will argue later, their openness to theories of taste, wherein the deep love of beauty and sympathy dwell in men (sic: human beings), are analogous to current critiques on Transhumanism stemming from the field of posthuman ethics, feminism, queer theory, and environmental studies, to name but a few. It is

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my contention, then, that posthuman ethics is indebted to dissident currents of thought that struck a chord in the Victorian era, such as Romanticism and critical Utilitarianism. By tracing a genealogical account of such a significant thread of knowledge, we can open up more reparative paths of enquiry that look at the past not only to nurture a revaluation of values that are disappearing in the Humanities, but also to recognize startling positions such as freedom, surprise, and interest in our processes of teaching and learning. According to Tomkins, the human affect system resembles the cybernetic principle of the feedback system, but the former’s higher degrees of flexibility and complexity “give rise to the extraordinary competence and freedom of the human organism” (in Sedgwick and Frank 1995, 38), thus promoting cognitive modification and an inherent capability to activate selfrewarding responses. What this means is that, as the main motivational system of human life, affects can be autotelic; that is, self-reinforcing agents with essentially affective responses. The indispensable characteristic of the affect system is that it has both self-rewarding and self-punishing characteristics that can be temporarily transformed into negative and positive responses, respectively, transmuting emotional and cognitive traits in order “to invest affect in one or another object, to shift affect investment, to overinvest affect, to liquidate such investment, or to find substitute investments” (49).2 This implies that the same affect can be endlessly reassembled and modulated, so much so that the “entire cognitive apparatus is in a constant state of alert for possibilities, imminent or remote, ambiguous or clear” (Tomkins, 1962–1992, 433). Concomitantly, I believe that tracing back affective structures of knowledge imbued in literary modes in the form of an “empathetic view of the other as at once good, damaged, integral, and requiring and eliciting love and care” (Sedgwick, 2003, 137) are grounded on an ethical possibility that unveils monolithic regimes of teaching and learning. Furthermore, technology and digital platforms do not necessarily make us freer individuals, and neither do they constitute an evolutionary transformation of the self towards modern affective subjects.

2 Critical Utilitarianism and the Mechanization of Society While Adam Smith is best known as the major proponent of laissez-faire economic policies, and of the Utilitarian principle of self-interest, he thoroughly examined human ethics and the positive role of emotions in moral decisions in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Moreover, he argued that sympathy and imagination are fundamental to human nature, thus paving the way for emerging philosophical trends that were to be developed later within British Romanticism. Paradoxical as it may seem, Smith’s treaty laid the foundations for the development of a counter-narrative that questioned the Enlightenment’s idea of the perfectibility of man through the sole application of reason. According to Smith, sympathy should be enacted if complete happiness and pleasure are to be achieved:

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Maite Escudero-Alías of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others […]. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it. (2006, Book 2, Sec. IX, n.p.)

Sympathy is not exclusively confined to the humane, as the “greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it” (Book 2, Sec. IX, n.p.), but it was considered a virtue easily accessible for those with a higher sensibility. Imagination, meanwhile, could lead to new conceptions of human feelings and politics, as it fuelled self-motivated grounds for empathy and altruism: by the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as if it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations. (Book 2, Sec. IX, n.p.) Smith’s ideas were based on David Hume’s critique of philosophical rationalism, for he believed that passion, rather than reason, governs human behaviour. Thus, in A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), Hume sought to introduce an account of morality arguing that ethics is based on sentiments and passion and vehemently defending that sympathy is the chief source of moral distinctions in that it also needs imagination in order to feel the pains and pleasures of others who are not physically with us. For Hume, sympathy is easily felt with family, friends, and our beloved ones, and: when our fancy considers directly the sentiments of others, and enters deep into them, it makes us sensible of all the passions it surveys, but in a particular manner of grief and sorrow […] We rejoice in their pleasures, and grieve for their sorrows, merely from the force of sympathy. (1896, Book 2, Sec. IX, n.p.) By strengthening the notion of sympathy, both Hume and Smith aligned themselves with the Christian values of piety, compassion, and altruism, regularly ascribed to those endowed with a higher sensibility as a privileged sign of superior delicacy and moral virtue. Other Utilitarian thinkers like Bentham and Stuart Mill foregrounded the principle of utility as a tool to promote general happiness, despite the inevitable force of our sense of pain. Whereas Bentham’s analytic approach exemplifies the Enlightenment project based on abstract theorizing and a passive mind, Stuart Mill recognizes an amalgamation of different feelings, such as sympathy, childhood recollections, and self-worth, binding to the concept of duty. Mill argues that duty is subjective and develops with experience. In so doing, human beings

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develop an instinctive feeling of duty toward general happiness, hence our altruistic stance. What interests me here is Mill’s emphasis on duty as the categorical imperative that must strive for good over evil, for individual choice and freedom over collective custom and uniformity. In his essay On Liberty (1859), he elaborated on a set of characteristics aiming at reinforcing the faculty of reason, together with an acute sense of observation and the cultivation of originality as key elements that produce well-developed human beings. In his search for originality as a valuable element, he praised the notion of individual choice against the despotism of custom: The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminate feeling, mental activity and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice […] The despotism of custom is everywhere standing hindrance to human advancement. (2012, 1097) Interestingly, the question of originality goes hand in hand with that of individuality, as both merge into a symbiotic weave of freedom, not wearing down into uniformity, and thus generating a richer and more diversified human life. Uniformity, in making a people all alike—i.e. in our customs, morals, etc.—not only governs our thoughts and feelings but also deprives us of firmness and critical thinking to hold to our decisions. And it was precisely Utilitarianism’s eagerness for improvement in machinery, politics, education, and even morals that prompted them into a coercive and oppressive system of facts, ignoring individual suffering and alienation. However, as Mill reminds us, the spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, “for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people, and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement” (1011). Although Mill was a strong proponent of liberalism, his eclectic views on the defence of originality for the sake of both individual and social improvements made him a great admirer of Romantic writers such as Blake, Samuel Coleridge or Carlyle. For Romanticism, one’s moral duty consisted in fostering creativity and imagination as part of the individual’s freedom, attacking the political, moral, social, and economic foundations of authoritarian regimes which, on behalf of “social improvements,” extensively imposed severe constrictions on the weakest population. As is well known, the Romantic stance towards the question of improvements was one addressed with fervent contestation and challenge: from John Clare’s and Robert Burns’s critiques of the imposition of enclosures up to Blake’s dialectics between two mythological figures: Urizen, the representative of abstract reason and paralysis, and Los, the embodiment of energetic and imaginative forces that aimed to fuel creativity

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and equality among humans. Thus, in Romantic poetry we often find lyrical subjects expressing anguish and despair at the destruction of the common land by Enclosure Acts and their devastating effects on the people and the countryside, all justified for the sake of improvement. Acclaimed by critics as “a poet of nature and the English countryside” (Robinson, 1986, 9), Clare’s critical view of enclosures as an infringement of the land was propelled by his deep sense of communal symbiosis with nature. Although the enclosure of the land was a phenomenon that started in the thirteenth century, its peak was reached “in the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the first quarter of the nineteenth century,” owing to the rapid industrial growth (Williams, 1973, 26).3 The response to such destruction of nature on the part of romantic writers was often defined by melancholic moods and wailings for an idealized past which would never come back, hence their odes to natural cycles of life, Arcadian settings, and birds and other animals of all sizes and colors. Doing so involved deep sympathy with the physical beings of the natural world and so in his distinction between “Typical Beauty” and “Vital Beauty,” John Ruskin defined the latter as a kind of beauty “located in environmental features that revealed divine order and intention” (in Frost, 2017, 16). Vital beauty invited readers to sympathetically identify with nature’s joyful gifts and indicated “deep-rooted engagement between us and things, […] a relationship with caring and an immediate seeing-feeling-thinking relationship which extends beyond organic life” (17). The notion of sympathy helps to empathize with other forms of existence, “however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be” and so, vital beauty occurs when “we recognize effort and energy as something familiar and invite identification with humble organisms routinely regarded as unconscious or senseless” (18). Ruskin, then, complicated anthropocentric divisions present in Victorian society. Furthermore, the Romantic appraisal of the concept of the Sublime was heightened by the increasing impact of technology on the world, in which humankind, “in its moments of hubris, imagines that it can ensure its own survival through technological means, ultimately winning its war with nature” (Hitt, 1999, 603). For the Romantics, the Sublime was defined by a sense of astonishment and fear to the same extent.4 In his landmark A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1755), Edmund Burke pointed out that the sublime induced equal amounts of pleasure and pain, alternating between attraction and repulsion, and associating it with the greatest power of imagination and sensibility as new modes of transcendence. The threatening condition and hazardous effects of the industrial revolution upon both the workers’ lives and nature as a benevolent source of spiritual growth and virtuous knowledge brought about a set of prolific writings that denounced the exploitation of children, women and the laboring classes, and which were imbued with social commitment and political dedication. Not coincidentally, the Luddite movement began as a mode of protest against the use of machines in the textile

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industry as they feared that machines would replace their role in mills and factories. Although this was a radical position, it nonetheless planted the seed for subsequent ways of resisting a widespread mechanization of society. Barrett Browning’s poetry, for example, constitutes a valuable legacy of dissent against the abuses of capitalist forces on women, children, and nature alike. In a different vein, George Eliot’s writings also pondered about the importance of natural science and concepts of cooperation, functionform relationships, especially connected with seaside environments and new valuations of plant and animal life as an epitome of increasing knowledge.5 Both women writers carefully embraced an ecological thought that attempts to avoid hierarchical constructions of men-women and human-non-human difference, challenging teleological accounts of human superiority. Their critiques on human epistemological categories gave way to enactments of sympathy deeply rooted in the environment—concepts that have been widely discussed in the field of posthuman ethics.

3 Ecology Re-visited and Posthuman Ethics Undoubtedly, the situation has changed dramatically since Romanticism, when nature was often seen as an emblem of permanence. Nowadays, the urge to deal with the newly coined term of our ‘anthropocene era’ (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000, 17), and its destructive consequences on nature and the human being has become an imperative move in literary criticism, be it out of self-complaisance or true activism. Well-known writers such as Rosi Braidotti working in the field of Posthumanism reflect on the role of the posthuman in the Humanities. More specifically, she goes on to argue that posthuman theory: is a generative tool to help us re-think the basic unit of reference for the human in the bio-genetic age known as ‘anthropocene’, the historical moment when the Human has become a geological force capable of affecting all life on this planet. (2013, 5) For Braidotti, the crisis of the human and its aftermaths, be it Posthumanism or Transhumanism, has dire consequences for the academic field, more closely for the Humanities, mainly because the “banality of self-interest” has incited a “shallow version of neo-empiricism” (4), often prompting a “zombified landscape of repetition without difference and lingering melancholia” (5). There is a sense in which, in order to produce socially relevant knowledge, new technologies have replaced reason, yearning for an individual and collective enhancement that comes at the expense of one’s freedom and imagination. If we are to take the posthuman condition as an opportunity to “think critically and creatively about who and what we are” (12), then, together with Braidotti, I would call for a posthuman ethics that dismisses

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self-interest and proposes, instead, “an enlarged sense of inter-connection between self and others, including the non-human or ‘earth’ others, by removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism” (49–50). Although Braidotti defends a materialist turn to Baruch Spinoza’s monism, my line of argumentation is to trace back the genealogy of concepts such as sympathy, duty, liberty, and imagination in order to advocate not only their longstanding bond to critical Utilitarianism but also a defiant project of education that involves genuine social improvement and respect for nature and non-human beings. If the myth of technological progress emerged from Utilitarian practices rooted in an adamant faith in political institutions, nowadays technology has become the new religion for the popular imagination, as it is widely assumed that our faith in the future depends on technology. In this way, rather than rely on human values that can potentially benefit humanity as a whole, technological progress is vested in a faith in political and economic institutions that structure our identities, so much so that GNR enthusiasts disdain their own human bodies as increasingly uncompetitive and defend the enhanced us as the only means that “will bring longterm progress” (Mitchell, 2003, 7). Admittedly, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics have brought about an imminent transformation of the human body in the field of medicine, providing safer methods to overcome physical limitations. However, it is not clear that re-envisioning the human body as a computer array can predict either an evolution of cognitive abilities or a reversal in the environmental destruction left by the human print. While new technologies help to maintain the myth of progress and of white male Western superiority,6 highlighting a teleological relation between technology and social progress, there is an increasing production of cultural imagination that revolves around hedonism, self-idolatry, and mobility for the upper classes, as opposed to forced mobility for refugees and prostitution, to name but a few. The question at stake is what kind of subjects are being produced today? More specifically, within the realm of the Humanities, several disciplines have examined the long-standing concept of what counts as human: i.e. radical epistemologies such as feminist philosophy and Anthropocene feminism, race critical theory, disability studies, animal studies, veganism, queer and postcolonial theory, globalization studies, peace studies, suicide studies, death studies, human rights criticism, trauma and affect theory, etc. These discourses share an interest in new configurations of knowledge as opposed to androcentric and anthropocentric knowledge, thus bringing to the fore unquestioningly accepted categories of the self as a non-human-centred entity. Associated with this discourse is the idea of transhumanism. In “Postcyborg Ethics: A New Way to Speak of Technology,” Heidi Campbell defines the transhuman as “a transitional human,” as someone who plunges into dynamic cultural, social, and political movements, hence its eclectic boundaries of knowledge (2006, 279). The academic acceptance of

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transhumanism enables us to delve into other disciplines that enhance a new stage of human evolution in which intellectual capacity and bodily function are modified as a self-reported well-being. For Campbell, “transhumanists believe in the moral right to extend life, in enhanced mental and physical capabilities, and that new technology should be embraced while exercising on-going reflection about the future” (283). Significantly, this idealistic stance relies on a techno-utopian promise of self-improvement through a technical revolution. And yet, whereas Romantic writers gave the human imagination the power to transcend earthly limitations, transhumanists adhere to technology alone. Unlike Mill’s humane liberalism, transhumanists value a type of liberalism which implies that people have the right to choose, “to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance their memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine their emotional experiences and subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over their own lives” (Bostrom, 2005, 8). So, the ethical conundrum at the core of transhumanism lies in how startling new powers are shaping the welfare of future generations: “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” becomes the failed promise of an individualistic ethics of the self that only values the achievement of a better life, refusing to accept ugly realities. These goals reveal a delusive perception of both reality and the self, as what is urgently needed is a reflection on “what kind of selves we need to be in order to live in harmony with others” (Bieber, 2013, 7). In her work on the power of narratives to literalize ethical action, Christina Bieber Lake argues that, unless we consider the other as a person who has the same rights to freedom as we do, the prophets of the posthuman veil will continue exposing “the belief in a protean self with nearly limitless personal freedom, the belief in the glamour and promise of technology, and the dominance of a consumer culture that trains people to buy solutions first” (12). Drawing on Kantian ethics and other Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Bieber convincingly strives for a revision of values that involves an acknowledgement of persons “as bearers of particular roles in society—as neighbours, parents, friends, members of gilds, citizens of nations—not just as individuals” (4). Questioning technological progress requires a reassessment of history, social justice and educational ethics, among others. In his discussion on postcyborg ethics, Steve Mann asserts that we have unquestioningly accepted technology in our lives, shaping who we are and “without assessing its effects on our personhood and privacy” (in Campbell, 2006, 281). In her groundbreaking work How We Became Posthuman (1999), Hayles focuses on how information has been dislodged from the body all throughout the history of cybernetics. Interestingly, she traces back the deconstruction of the liberal subject and how cybernetics constitutes a “means to extend liberal humanism, not subvert it” (1999, 7), mainly because of the privilege of cognition and the mind over the body. At this point, I would like to recall her definition of ‘reflexivity’ and its subversive effects when applied to the rise of contemporary critical theory or

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what she calls “cybernetics of the observer,” understanding the observer as someone who is outside the system they observe. For Hayles, reflexivity “is the movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates” (8). This definition has cogent implications for what it means to count as a human, for differences of gender, race, sexuality, ability, and social class, to name but a few, become essential when assessing the role of technology and access to knowledge. She goes a step further and introduces the term ‘skeuomorph’—from archaeological anthropology—to name “a feature that is no longer functional in itself but refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time” (17), simultaneously reinforcing and undermining past and future, as the new cannot be spoken except in relation to the old. In this vein, I recall old concepts and reparative impulses, such as surprise and interest in what we learn, that have been erased from our times if only in a nostalgic attempt to authenticate those elements as part of our literary and cultural heritage, leaving an imprint on us.

4 Conclusion As literary critics and teachers of literature, most of us should also ponder about the consequences of promoting the use of cutting-edge technologies in our courses. Often encouraged by educational institutions, politicians, and/or legislators, we are increasingly convinced that it is our duty to educate and train better students by means of state-of-the-art technologies, even in the Humanities. Likewise, it is frequently assumed that these paranoid methodologies “seem realistic and necessary to experience surprise” (Sedgwick, 2003, 146) when in fact I fiercely believe that “aversion to surprise seems to be what cements the intimacy between paranoia and knowledge per se” (130). The possibility of fondly moving away from repetitive and homogeneous structures of knowledge transmission emerges as both a necessary reparative transhistorical position between subject and object and as a more ecological view of literary communication that could favor a contingent feature towards relational practices imbued with reflexivity and affects. Remarkably, Bostrom emphasizes that “critical thinking, open-mindedness, scientific inquiry, and open discussion are all important helps for increasing society’s intellectual readiness” (17). And yet, technology has become the new religion, but one deprived of a narrative of sympathy, reflexivity, imagination, and affective ethics. Technology and social networks control us all in an attempt to make us fall into the despotism of custom and collective uniformity. Not surprisingly, the founders of Silicon Valley and owners of the empire of technology are looking backwards, à la Benjamin, when it comes to making a choice in the education of their children, for they are being taught by a sole confidence in paper, pen, and a reassuring return to classical Greek and Latin as the main subjects of their syllabus. Similarly, the field of medical humanities is gaining a relevant

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presence not only in medicine degrees but also in STEM—i.e. Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics—programmes wherein the teaching of skills such as creativity, innovation, imagination, and empathy become a compulsory move when it comes to combining useful knowledge with critical thinking. As I see it, to what extent such attempts at transforming the banality of information into a more virtuous knowledge will work in the near future depends on a genuine attempt at recovering abandoned learning practices such as attentive readings of texts, a thorough examination of concepts and ideas, respect towards difference, a reflection on our identities and cultural backgrounds, and a continuous questioning of grand narratives of progress and conspicuous consumption, to use Veblen’s wellknown notion.7 Possessive individualism and self-idolatry can be easily identified with Western modes of living and being, positing an exhaustion of skeuomorph features that otherwise could potentially linger on us as vigorous sources of critical thinking and vital beauty. To quote Deleuze and Guattari: capitalism is profoundly illiterate. The death of writing is like the death of God or the death of the father: the thing was settled long ago, although the new of the event is slow to reach us, and there survives in us the memory of extinct signs with which we still write. (2003, 240) Unless we acknowledge the traces of a valuable past and we learn from it, basic virtues will become “bodies without organs” (240), transforming themselves into an assemblage of non-human entanglements and aesthetic pleasures. The solace of empathy with humans, the responsibility for caring about plants and animals, and the ability to point us towards reflexivity and sympathy suggest a more virtuous and reparative knowledge, not only of ourselves, but also of the world around us.

Notes 1 As Mr Gradgrind commands to the children in Coketown’s classroom: “But you mustn’t fancy. You are never to fancy. You are to be in all things regulated and governed by facts” (Dickens, 2006, 6). 2 Tomkins distinguishes between positive affects (interest-excitement, enjoymentjoy), negative affects (distress-anguish, fear-terror, shame-humiliation, contemptdisgust and anger-rage), and resetting affects like surprise-startle, which can neutralize the negative force of harmful affects. In his own words: “affects may be invested in other affects, combine with other affects, intensify or modulate them, and supress or reduce them. In marked contrast to the separateness of each drive, the emotions readily enter into combinations with each other and readily control one another” (1995, 56). 3 Raymond Williams argues that during this time, “nearly four thousand Acts, more than six million acres of land were appropriated mainly by the politically dominant landowners: about a quarter of all cultivated acreage” (1973, 96).

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4 For a thorough examination of the concept of the Sublime throughout history and literature, see Philip Shaw’s The Sublime (2006). 5 In her essay “Recollections of Ilfracombe” (1856), Eliot recalls the delight in observing seaweeds and sea anemones as creatures that captivated the Victorian imagination while inspiring a discourse of interconnectedness of all life forms. 6 For a discussion on how the myth of technological progress has been built upon racist and misogynist paradigms, see Dinerstein’s “Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman” (2006). 7 In 1899 the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ in 1899 to describe the families of the upper class that exhibited their prominent wealth by displaying in public their social and economic prestige. In the 19th century, this term was also applied to the new rich social class that emerged from the industrial revolution, highlighting a new behavioural condition induced by consumerism and the sole desire for immediate gratification and hedonism. Since then, the habit of conspicuous consumption has rapidly spread as a global practice among most social backgrounds. Unquestionably, technology has contributed to such homogeneity in our customs and values.

Bibliography Benjamin, Walter. 2007. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Translated by Harry Zohn; ed. Hannah Arendt. New York, NY: Schocken Books. Bieber Lake, Christina. 2013. Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood. Indiana, IN: Indiana University Press. Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1): 1–25. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burke, Edmund. 2005. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/ 15043-h.htm#A_PHILOSOPHICAL_INQUIRY. Campbell, Heidi. 2006. “Postcyborg Ethics: A New Way to Speak of Technology.” EME: Explorations in Media Ecology, 5(4): 279–296. Carlyle, Thomas. 1829. “Signs of the Times”. Available at: www.victorianweb.org/ authors/carlyle/signs/signs1.html. Crutzen, Paul & Eugene Stoermer. 2000. “The Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter, 41: 17–18. Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari. 2003. Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum. Dickens, Charles. 2006. Hard Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dinerstein, Joel. 2006. “Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman.” American Quarterly, 58(3): 569–595. Eliot, George. 1998. “Recollections of Ilfracombe.” In The Journals of George Eliot, ed. Margaret Harris & Judith Johnston, 262–273. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frost, Mark. 2017. “Reading Nature: John Ruskin, Environment, and the Ecological Impulse.” In Victorian Writers and the Environment. Ecocritical Perspectives, ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno & Ronald D. Morrison, 13–28. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Hayles, N. Katherine. 2007. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.” Profession: 187–199.

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Hitt, Christopher. 1999. “Toward an Ecological Sublime.” New Literary History, 30 (3): 603–623. Hume, David. 1896. A Treatise of Human Nature. Book 2, Sec. IX. Available at: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-a-treatise-of-human-nature. Mill, John Stuart. 2012. “On Liberty.” In The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Victorian Age, ed. Catherine Robson and Carol T.Christ, 1095–1105. New York, NY and London: W. W. Norton & Company. Mitchell, William. 2003. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Robinson, Eric. 1986. The Parish. Harmondsworth: Viking. Sedgwick, Eve K. 2003. Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sedgwick, Eve K. & Adam Frank, eds. 1995. Shame and Its Sisters. A Silvan Tomkins Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Shaw, Philip. 2006. The Sublime. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Smith, Adam. 2006. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Book 2, Sec. IX. Available at: www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_MoralSentiments_p.pdf. Smith, Caleb. 2019. “Disciplines of Attention in a Secular Age.” Critical Inquiry, 45: 884–909. Tomkins, Silvan. 1962–1992. Affect Imagery Consciousness. New York, NY: Springer. Vebler, Thorstein. 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Available at: http://moglen. law.columbia.edu/LCS/theoryleisureclass.pdf. Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wolf, Maryanne. 2018. Come Home. The Reading Brain in a Digital World. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

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Posthuman Modes of Reading Literature Online Alexandra Glavanakova

The transformations in reading both on paper and on screen, specifically the evolution of new reading modes in the digital environment, and the consequences of these for the development and sustaining of literacy and education, are inevitably positioned within the larger debate on the evolution of humans and on posthumanism as philosophy and practice. The posthumanist perspective is applicable to the discussions of new reading modes when thinking critically about who humans are in the process of becoming in the beginning of the twenty-first century. As applied here, the posthumanist perspective does not refer to the modifications in story-telling and narrative, to the organization of the text: its typography and layout, or to representations of the posthuman in art, cinema and literature, although these are intrinsically related to the discussion at hand, but rather to how we read. Therefore, the focus here falls on the emerging posthuman modes of reading. Posthumanism has branched out into multiple anthropocentric and technocentric strains.1 The posthumanist perspective on the future of humanity appears either as technophobia: most often in popular—and populist—discourses comprising dystopian representations of immanent disaster and apocalyptic dread; or as utopian technophilia marked by the euphoric perception of the human as an evolutionary form leading to an enhanced and superior techno-creature of the future. However, in a different reading, posthumanism challenges humanism and denies humanism’s conception of the autonomous and rational humanist subject: an interpretation undoubtedly springing up from earlier forms of philosophical anti-humanism. According to his view, voiced by Rosi Braidotti (2013, 2019) and Stephan Herbrechter (2013) among others, posthumanism is “the ultimate humiliation of anthropocentrism” (Herbrechter, 2013, 7). Humans and their humanity are perceived as historical and cultural constructs rather than as essentialist concepts free from ideology (Herbrechter, 2013, 9). Out of this view arise the arguments for a critical posthumanist approach propagating “a posthuman humanness […] understood not as the ‘end of man’ but rather as the end of a very specific notion of humanity, or being human” (Herbrechter, 2013, 95). In the discussion about human nature, which our contemporary digital age has instigated with renewed vigor, issues in the spotlight of the debate are not only the biological and cognitive transformations, but also the very nature of human

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intelligence. It is in this wider sociocultural context that the matter of reading is positioned and in particular the reading of literary texts. The claim that “technologization is changing our species” (Herbrechter, 2013, 50) hardly pertains only to the current moment. Technology has never been just supplementary but rather always required: originary technogenesis is a major factor in human evolution as hypothesized by several researchers (Hayles, 2004, 292; Hansen, 2006, 26). Undeniably, technological innovation is ambiguous, though not in itself. Its ambiguity is in direct correlation to any kind of observable and measurable progress made through technology’s utilization. There could be no better or more direct illustration of the impact forces between technology and the human than the posthuman modes of reading, some of which are heralded as the new normal. Reading as a process has always been intrinsically shaped by the evolving text technologies. For many, digitization leads to the erasure of traditional forms of reading, which in itself is perceived as a symptom signaling the demise of humanism as cultural politics and as intellectual system, while also posing a serious threat to the university: the most humanist of institutions (Herbrechter, 2013, 14). This weakening of the traditional modes of deep immersion and close attention to the texts, which are associated with reading on paper, is perceived as a move towards the cognitive impotence of homo sapiens in the face of the rise of the new ‘robo sapiens’ (Herbrechter, 2013, 13). Similarly, Maryanne Wolf warns of the “potential loss of our essential human qualities” (leading towards animality), or the “possibility of an enhanced intelligence” (envisioned as transhumanity) (Wolf, 2016, 157). To begin with, reading is defined as the “multiple perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, affective and psychological processes involved in the act of decoding and comprehending written language” (Wolf, 2016, 2–3), taking place in a specific sociocultural environment. Building on two major premises, neuroscience, aided by cognitive science and psychology, is only beginning to solve the intriguing mystery of reading. The first premise is that “human beings were never born to read. The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens” (Wolf, 2018, 1). The human brain, it has been established, has no specific reading center or in-built genetic program. In evolutionary terms, reading is a recently acquired skill, originating some 5,000 years ago, and this learned behavior relies on the brain’s plasticity. A new reading circuit is formed from older, genetically programed circuits and uses the neural tissues initially developed for language, coordination, and vision (Wolf, 2016, 4).2 Secondly, the “reading-brain circuits are shaped and developed by both natural and environmental factors, including the medium in which reading is acquired and developed” (Wolf, 2018, 7). Therefore, the reading process is undeniably deeply influenced by the media ecology—the container, which is used for mediating the text.3 A clearly observable tendency nowadays is the scale and velocity of change regarding text technologies,4 which provide diverse containers for

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texts and a variety of platforms for reading. Print reading, which was dominant for a brief time compared to other technologies of writing and reading, is greatly reduced in cultural resonance. However, digital technology has affected the affordances of text containers, since “literature in the twenty-first century is computational” (Hayles, 2007a, 99). This is certainly true for electronic literature, which is “digital born, created on a computer and meant to be read on it” (Hayles, 2007a, 99).5 However, not only electronic literature in its many varieties displays the special impact of digitality on textuality, because nowadays “almost all print books are digital files before they become book” (Hayles, 2007a, 99). Recent experimentation in print fiction, for example, draws on the digital, and leads to playing around with the materiality of the text. This development has led to a further foregrounding of the physical and fictional nature of printed texts in ways that are both original and reminiscent of the modernist experiments with language as a material object: both aurally and visually, in terms of layout and typography. The digital medium has become intrinsic to print literature and has thus opened new opportunities for exploration and experimentation, prolonging the life of this particular text container.6 However, not all developments are so positive. There is the tendency to truncate literature online in order to reduce it to reading material fit for the “twitter brain,” which puts even more pressure on diminishing text size and accelerating reading speed. Abridged and pre-digested forms of novels appear online on webpages and applications especially designed for the purpose: Cliffnotes, Monkey notes, BookRags, Sparknotes, E-notes, Book Shots, etc. debrief readers in literary works. Further, there are flash fiction (1,000 words or less), Twitter fiction, and insta fiction (on Instagram), as well as mass-produced fiction online series meant to be read in one sitting, perhaps in line with Edgar Allan Poe’s serious and much applied theory of “the unity of effect.” Another development concerning size is the shrinking of the screen. To this should be added the return of speed-reading and the many applications promoted to help to develop it. Fiction has turned into fast food. There is an observable impulse, which has manifested itself in several ways, to go in the opposite direction in the aim to preserve the ability for deep linear reading. There is a deep reading revival, where “online communities have seized the tools of social media for deep reading” (Dowling 2014, paragraph 6). One of the examples supporting this claim is the annual live non-stop reading of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1852) at New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was initially organized in 2009 as a form of protest against digital media’s ubiquitous presence.7 Eventually, the community of its readers widened, paradoxically, through social media channels. Other examples are the online discussions on Walden and Resistance to Civil Government on the website The Reader’s Thoreau.8 A further significant development is the rise of the “Slow Reading Movement”—a logical outcome of the digital fatigue. Books, webpages, and communities have been set

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up to sustain this movement. It aims to revive older modes of continuous, linear patterns of reading in a quiet environment free of distractions. Regardless of these efforts, reading habits are changing, as digital devices encourage us to browse, skim, tap, and click, rather than read in depth, as well as searching for information, rather than going into the deep reading of continuous prose, especially of long-form texts. As Hayles has stated in her now seminal text “How We Read: Close, Hyper and Machine”: “people read less print, and they read print less well” (2012a, 56). Studies have indicated that even more than ten years ago people read on average less than 30 percent of the words online (Nielsen, 2008)—a trend followed by professional readers like academics who are taking less time to read a scholarly article, particularly online, than they used to (Tenopir et al., 2009). The online reading experience emphasizes speed and immediacy at the expense of the length, complexity, and density of texts, which affects the “plasticity of the reading brain circuit” (Wolf, 2018, 15). As a consequence, reading texts mediated through the digital containers helps foster “continuous partial attention” (Stone, 1998), decreased working memory, rapid attentional switching between different media, high levels of stimulation, low-level threshold for boredom, and the addiction to novelty (Willingham, 2017, 173). Since reading onscreen has emerged as the new normal, memory and concentration are proving to be more challenging. One observable consequence, in Hayles’s view, is a significant generational shift in cognitive modes, initiated by the surrounding socio-technological environment, which systemically privileges hyper attention (Hayles, 2007b, 197). Owing to hyper attention, humans are capable of scanning large amounts of data and of identifying repetitive patterns. Hyper attention helps to develop flexibility in switching between different information streams, a quick grasp of the gist of material, and rapid movement between texts (Hayles, 2007b, 72). However, this type of attention usually requires instant gratification and is marked by a very small attention span. In contrast, deep attention involves a long-term engagement with a problem that can eventually lead to gaining expert knowledge, solving problems, and dealing with issues of high complexity. The time required for decoding object information from the human visual cortex ranges between 100 to 200 milliseconds. Based on the findings of cognitive neuroscience, it is only after this period that there is the possibility for thinking your own thoughts (Wolf, 2010, 2018). Because of the increased speed in reading, Wolf concludes that it becomes problematic to process abstract text, which is often interpreted quite literally, and the subtlety of meaning is lost to the reader. As continuous reading, especially of long-form texts, is constantly being interrupted, even disrupted, in the digital environment, so is the opportunity for deep reading, defined as “the array of sophisticated processes that propel comprehension and include inferential and deductive reading, analogical skills, critical analysis, reflection and insight” (Wolf and Barzillai, 2009, 33). Deep reading is a pre-eminently important skill, as it develops not only the capacity for critical thinking, but

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also fosters empathy (the affective connection with others) (Wolf 2016, 2018). Researchers and educators express the concern that as reading on screen encourages the development of specific cognitive modes, it can stump the expert reading brain. In the past two decades, a significant number of empirical studies have been conducted to investigate this shift. Reading research has evolved into a burgeoning field applying methodological and critical perspectives from cognitive science, neurobiology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies, and pedagogy. The focus in many of these studies has been on the differences between print and screen reading. The research findings are inconclusive as can be expected for a phenomenon which is in a state of flux. The major shifts in reading modes and the serious problem concerning functional literacy—the ability to use reading and the information acquired through it in life—has been the target of several sociological surveys carried out in Bulgaria in the past two decades (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018) by the Alpha Research Agency within the national interdisciplinary project ‘Reading Practices in Bulgaria,’ the largest study of reading and literacy in Bulgaria, financed by the Bulgarian Science Fund. The four stages of this project have been partly motivated by the troubling fact established by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey that 47 percent of Bulgarian students in 2018, in particular those aged 15 and 16, are “functionally illiterate.”10 Reflecting the wide-spread concerns over functional literacy, the project has aimed for a longitudinal study of the place of reading in the leisure time of Bulgarians. It was only in the most recent 2018–19 edition of the project that a special working group, supervised by the author of this chapter, was set up to study the patterns of reading online by Bulgarian readers. Some of the relevant findings are included in the present discussion. The 2018 survey revealed that out of the over one thousand respondents aged 18+, 27 percent read every day, the highest number being women up to 30 years of age, or those in the 40-to-60 age group, with high education and high salary; 15 percent do not read at all, while 19 percent of all respondents read materials other than books. The latter category comprises mostly men, people not well educated, from smaller villages and with low-paying jobs, or from ethnic minority groups. The number of people who say that they never read books has grown by 8 percent over ten years, while the number of those who read books has remained a permanent 10 percent for the same period. The largest increase is in the group of people in Bulgaria who have not read a single book for the past 12 months: up to 42 percent, which is a 10 percent rise in comparison to the 2014 survey. These findings are in line with the global trend of the decline, not only in book reading as such, but also in the number of books read and the decline in book reading time. The research conducted in Bulgaria verified that fragmentary and incomplete reading is on the rise, as fewer and fewer respondents read texts longer than

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100 pages (13 percent in 2014; 7 percent in 2019), and when having started a text, there is a 10 percent decrease in the number of people who will actually finish it. In Bulgaria, almost 50 percent of those who read prefer the print format to digitally mediated forms of literature. But even for those who read fiction online, electronic literature as a literary form remains an undiscovered territory. This regionally limited research falls in line with the findings of the larger Academic Reading Format International Study research group (2014–2017), the project READ-IT—Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool (2018–2020), and the European-based Evolution of Reading in the Age of Digitization (E-READ) (2014–2018) research group. The E-READ group published their findings in summarized format in the Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading in 2018. One of the conclusions included in the Declaration is of great significance regarding the new modes of reading and their implementation for literacy development. It states that the “digital text offers excellent opportunities to tailor text presentation to an individual’s preferences and needs. Benefits for comprehension and motivation have been demonstrated where the digital reading environment was carefully designed with the reader in mind” (Stavanger Declaration, 2018). Further important conclusions were drawn by two recent meta-studies which summarize the main findings in comparing reading comprehension on screen and in print in order to gauge the emerging new reading modes. The survey published by Singer and Alexander (2017) aimed at establishing the levels of comprehension when reading in print and on digital media. The authors selected 36 studies out of 254 published research papers on the subject. The main parameters for categorizing the research data used by Singer and Alexander were: the length of the text for reading comprehension (a short one consisting of up to 500 words; and a long one above 500); the various definitions of reading provided in the papers (conceptual, componential, multifaceted, operational); the settings where the research was carried out (instructional, research or non-academic). Singer and Alexander concluded that comprehension was significantly better for a print text when it was longer than 500 words (more than an average page or screen), when it was more complex, and when deep reading was required as opposed to reading for gist. These findings are consistent with others, which also indicate that digital natives prefer paper reading when the purpose of reading is deep understanding and gaining knowledge.11 The second meta-study, reviewing published research, compared the reading of print with that of digital texts which most closely resemble the printed ones, for example e-books (Delgado et al., 2018, 19). This review included experiments with 171,055 participants and came to the following conclusions: “the paper-based reading advantage increased in time-constrained reading,” “the paper-based reading advantage was consistent across studies using informational texts” but not narrative texts, and “the advantage of paper-based reading increased over the years” in the period between

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2000 and 2017 (Delgado et al., 2018, 19). These conclusions are further supplemented by the recent findings of Mangen, Olivier, and Velay (2019). When comparing long-form text reading on Kindle and in print, they found that “on most tests subjects performed identically whatever the reading medium” (Mangen, Olivier, and Velay, 2019, 1). However, when deep reading was required, screen reading proved to be inferior to paper in terms of comprehension; notably, this was valid for digital natives as well. Although it seems logical to hypothesize that in the dominant digital ecology the preference would be for reading online, a number of studies, in addition to the abovementioned, have gone against this proposition establishing that in variable contexts, and for variable reasons people, especially students, chose reading print over online texts (Baron, 2015; Baron et al., 2017). These studies revealed that most students preferred print not only for schoolwork, but also for reading for pleasure, especially when the length of the text was a factor. An important consideration in any discussion of the reading process are the distinct media affordances of print and screen, which determine their functionality. These are of primary importance in shaping the experience of physicality for the reader, in the elicitation of the reader’s attention, in determining the level of the reader’s interactivity and engagement with the text, etc. (Wolf, 2016, 158–159). The role of physicality—both of the text and of the reader’s bodily experience—in the activity of reading are also being investigated. For example, studies have established the importance of the physical dimensions of print for following the sequence of the plot of a text when comparing levels of comprehension of the same text read in print and on screen. Plot details remained undetected by students when reading onscreen (Mangen et al., 2013; Mangen, Olivier, and Velay, 2019). “The immediate sensory—kinesthetic and tactile—access to text sequence, as well as to the entirety of the text” aid the readers’ capacity to form an “effective mental map of the text” and to “localize relevant events within the space of the text and within the time of the story,” when reading on paper (Mangen et al., 2019, 3). However, reading on screen requires increased interactivity between the reader, the text, and the container, which leads to the active involvement of the hands. The concomitant coordination between hands and eyes has further neurological effects.12 Bearing in mind the affordances of the digital medium and the changes in the reading process that they lead to, the most significant goal of reading research, in my view, is to establish what reading strategies are required to foster the biliterate brain: one equally conversant in both digital tabular reading and long-form linear reading (Wolf, 2018, 141–156). What needs to be investigated further is whether digital devices can also be applied to cultivate deep reading. Can this skill be trained by properly designing online material and when the user is willing, and enabled by the platforms, to avoid distractions? In line with Wolf’s suggestion that it is possible to preserve deep reading by recalibrating the digital screen, changing the interface,

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and rethinking the content, I hypothesize that the applications and webpages designed for collective reading can be utilized towards achieving this goal. The way that digital reading will develop remains unknown beyond a few identifiable tendencies—social reading is one of them. Reading and writing nowadays are ever so often mediated through online platforms; they are deeply intertwined and emerge in very many cases as collaborative acts, which have the potential to affect reading literacy in a positive way. Reading onscreen significantly tips the balance from a solitary encounter with a fictional text into a collective, interactive process. The explosive growth of online social networking has led to the creation of many possibilities for online reading in groups, where social reading is “carried out on virtual environments where the book and the reading favour the formation of a ‘community’ and a means of exchange” (Cordón-García et al., 2013, 156). Social reading platforms become open agora-like spaces that facilitate the exploration, sharing, and creation of personal and communal tastes related to literature. The trend towards direct reader participation alongside the proliferation of user content is projected to increase, thus making social reading central to the new digital ecosystem. The collective reading of print texts has had a long history. Book histories, among them the monumental A History of Reading in the West (1997) edited by Chartier and Cavallo, as well as Alexander Kiossev’s The Quarrels Over Reading (2013) published in Bulgarian, have researched collective reading meticulously and have found that it has proliferated at various historical periods, spurred on by important social and cultural developments: reading aloud throughout antiquity; vocal reading of liturgical texts outside of the Church during the Middle Ages; and collective reading of the Bible during the reformation and counter-reformation, especially within devotional societies; oral reading of popular genres, too, as chivalric romances, epic poems, etc. during the Renaissance. Certainly, vocal reading does not necessarily involve interactivity but has the potential to do so. Therefore, despite the differences in social, cultural, and technological environments, collective reading nowadays is a “going back to the future” in Robert Stein’s words (2014). Collective reading is practiced nowadays on online book clubs; in specialized blogs, forums, and applications designed for social reading; on online sites for book reviews; and in collaborative writing of fictional works. The best examples of collective reading in the past decade are several projects instigated by Stein, where reading involves dedicated social interaction by turning a document into a space open to conversation. Stein’s projects often followed the format of online book clubs: the Wordpress plugin, Comment Press (2012), for example, the ground-breaking The Golden Notebook Project (2008), and SocialBook (2011). Most of them are associated with the Institute for the Future of the Book also spearheaded by Stein. Ironically, because of the very nature of the medium which transmits them, some of the projects are dedicated to long-form online collective reading. The Golden

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Notebook Project for example, launched in 2008, offered an open, free deep re-reading of Doris Lessing’s novel. There is a clear tradition coming from the material book, which this project emulates. These are the practices of annotation and marginalia in hand-written manuscripts or print books, which can be perceived as a practice of asynchronous collective reading. Online book clubs, such as Infinite Summer,13 #OccupyGaddis:14 1book140,15 Atavist,16 BookTalk.org,17 LitLovers: A Well-Read Online Community,18 onlinebookclub.org,19 and platforms such as Shelfari (later acquired by Amazon and merged with Goodreads), LibraryThing20 and Goodreads, emphasize connecting readers as reviewers based on shared literary tastes and titles on their virtual bookshelves. Other developments that need to be taken into account as they further promote the interactive online reading of books are the mass digitization archives (Google Books, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive), and the setting-up of bookless, all-digital libraries.21 Digital archives and social platforms for the review and recommendations of books have helped to create the phenomenon of “distributed reading”: one that takes place over multiple platforms and formats (Barnett, 2018). The social reading of one and the same text might involve the processes of collaborative meaning-making and collective critical evaluation. Consequently, social reading is leading towards a significant cultural and social transformation in text production, dissemination, comprehension, and evaluation, comparable to the shift that followed the introduction of the technology of the printing press. Today’s collective reading on social platforms favors the creation of communities, establishing horizontal relationships between its multiple members, who discuss works, often assess and label them (Cordón-García et al., 2013, 249). Digital technology has played a crucial role in the expansion of “secondary orality” (Ong, 1982), which resembles the primary orality of pre-literate societies by fostering a communal sense, concentrating on the present moment, using formulaic language patterns. Marshall McLuhan’s claim about the relative similarity between the aural stage and the electronic (later digital) one in communication (1964) echoes the concept of secondary orality, defined by Walter Ong as “essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print” (Ong, 1982, 133). In contradistinction to primary orality, the secondary orality of the code- and information-based digital age mixes features of the oral mode of communication with the chirographic one, and this intermingling is clearly visible on social reading sites. Overcoming the dualistic view of digital technology as either friend or foe, in my view, here lies the middle ground where the transforming potential of technology can be tied up to the growth of literacy in a practical way. Online reading can now be a shared, interactive process, potentially that much more interesting as a result, and, I would claim, substantially positive. A similar idea has been expressed by Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine:

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Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do something: to research the term, to query your screen ‘friends’ for their opinions, to find alternative views, to create a bookmark, to interact with or tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it. Book reading strengthened our analytical skills. Screen reading encourages rapid pattern-making, associating this idea with another, equipping us to deal with the thousands of new thoughts expressed every day. The screen rewards, and nurtures, thinking in real time. (2016, 104) A case that is particularly illustrative of the trends I have laid out so far is Wattpad, a social platform for the establishment of storytelling communities. Set up in 2006, it took a full two years before a user uploaded an original story to Wattpad (its first works were public domain titles from Project Gutenberg). The breakthrough came when interactive features were added: the ability to vote on works and follow authors, and the regular hosting of writing contests. Later, Wattpad gave writers access to certain metrics, most prominently the number of page views and likes a story received and allowed readers to comment on each paragraph and to create markers on a narrative’s best parts. Traditional publishers have tried their hand at such platforms. For instance, HarperCollins launched Authonomy in 2008 for users to upload manuscripts and the editors would read the five highest-rated stories each month. By the time that the site shut down in 2015, the publisher had picked up 47 books for publication. Macmillan’s Swoon Reads22 welcomes new manuscripts of young adult fiction, applying a crowd-sourcing model for publishing those with the highest reader’s ratings. However, Wattpad stands apart from other crowd-writing platforms, which curate original work, because of the huge number of people contributing writing online and their dedicated readers. Wattpad boasts having 80 million active users, 90 percent of which are Generation Z or millennials, who spend over 23 billion minutes a month engaged in original story-telling on its site and its mobile application.23 The platform shows the number of reads, the number of likes, the number of comments, and naturally in our speed-focused times, the amount of time left for the reader to complete each chapter. It offers original content in dozens of languages and scripts, including Bulgarian and Russian. Since Wattpad does not own the rights to the stories on its site, it can act as an agent between its most popular pieces and book publishers, TV and movie studios while taking a cut of the authors’ deals.24 Wattpad provides the space for building micro-communities in the coconstruction of digitally mediated public fiction. A reconsideration of the role and function of shared reading is required. The new mode observable on this platform is defined by the involvement of writing with reading,

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facilitating the constant dialogue between writer and reader in the very act of the creation of serialized texts. The online literary text, which is produced out of this conversation, becomes a collection of documents that can be analyzed through the methods of both close and distant reading. Such platforms for collective reading can provide valuable data for laying out the cartography of literary reading today by utilizing distant reading methodology. Distant reading, which involves analytical evidence-based techniques developed out of quantitative sociology and utilizes digital technology, refers to a wide range of approaches: network analysis, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and word vectors. The human-computer interaction in this case offers the possibility for analyzing the experience of multiple readers as they engage with a text online. The data gathered from social reading websites can be used to explore an extensive body of literature that otherwise remains untouched by literary analysis. What I find particularly intriguing here is how the production and reception of texts becomes more entangled, and this interweaving carries important implications for the critical analysis of analytical categories as implied reader and actual reader, reception, and response. Even a cursory look at the comment section of a given text in Wattpad proves the point already made by Nora Kaplan that phatic messages outnumber any messages that might either provide information about or enter into dialogue about books and reading: what is important is to ‘be in contact’ with others rather than transmit content to others (2016, 3). Most of the comments focus on affect and are spontaneous reactions to the text. There is a wide use of emoticons and text- type expressiveness, and clearly a predominance of the values of Affection and Appreciation/reaction (CordónGarcía, 2013, 250). Another group of comments, however, center on the content, the quality of the writing and on specific aspects of the narrative, including: title, cover, blurb, grammar, punctuation, atmosphere, tone, character building and development, plot twists, etc. These comprise the Appreciation/evaluation value and the critical remarks. It is this exchange that is of great interest to the literary scholar, and to future research in reading. A closer look at the discussions on the platform as well as on the online book clubs and book review sites can be intensely specialized. Research of the reader-writer interaction on Wattpad is just beginning.25 Rebora and Pianzola, for example, have analyzed how reader-response changes in the act of reading as evidenced by the comment section of the platform, which forms their dataset, by gathering statistics on the most commented books in the ‘Classics’ and ‘Teen’ section. Through the combined methodology of reader-response theory, cognitive literary theory, and computational analysis, the researchers examine the effect of certain passages of the fictional works on the readers. They note that there were over 2,600 comments to the first paragraph of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from a total of over 42,000. In comparison, there were over 2.5 million comments to the most

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commented book in the ‘Teen Fiction’ category. This fact is itself revealing of the readers’ literary preferences (Rebora and Pianzola, 2018, 25). It is hard to predict where the tendencies noticeable now will lead in the future. A crucial point on the research agenda is to examine further what these online experiences can teach us about the reading of literary texts. For me, the claims that the digital technology can support only one mindset, associated with shallow reading and thinking to the exclusion of other practices, is one-dimensional. Instead of perceiving online reading narrowly through a negative lens as distracted reading or ‘anarchical reading’ (Petrucci, 1999, 366), to recognize it as an evolving practice with a positive potential; not to see screen reading only as ‘jet-skiing’ and anathema to immersive linear deep reading (Carr, 2008, 2), but as offering possibilities for ‘differential reading practices’ (Clement, 2013, paragraph 1). Platforms such as Wattpad can involve deep reading alternating with the social practices of tweeting, texting, chatting, blogging, and forum participation. What future research will have to examine is how the reading process is transformed when the analogue is substituted for the digital, as the apparently immaterial text fleets, flickers, and floats on the screen. The urgent questions posed are: Can social reading offer a middle way to bridge the polarization between print (expert deep reading) and the digital modes (browsing and skimming in the F- or Z- patterns on the screen)? Can this immersion in digital formats and experiences advance the development of slower cognitive capacities fostered by deep reading? The study of collective online reading as a social practice in which several users read the same text and respond to it by commenting, in my view can have long-term implications for literacy and the training of deep-reading, for the development of methodologies and practices for the teaching of literature. Social platforms for reading, especially those involving writing, need to be contextualized within the framework of literacy. Observing the role of creativity and reading for pleasure on such platforms is crucial for literacy development. Repeatedly researchers emphasize that what is required to raise literacy levels—and especially reading literacy levels—is to integrate reading for pleasure with reading for learning or for work. The new digital environment can provide for the personalization of reading material and the creation of own original content to be shared with peers, who provide feedback. The association between reading and pleasure can be developed as early as the pre-reading stage, which comprises the earliest of the six stages in the development of reading (Chall, 1983, 10–24). When a young child is being read to by its parents, this can activate feelings of pleasure, comfort, and security, which are to be associated positively with the book (Wolf, 2016, 41). Rather than insist on the materiality of the printed text, what is more important is the involvement of a child’s linguistic and cognitive development with positive emotions, which can then be triggered in the process of reading any text regardless of the container. The Internet can be used by a child at a later stage to locate material for reading for pleasure:

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what has been termed ‘free voluntary reading’ (Krashen, 2011, 67). Once the ground has been laid, the logical next step of educators and researchers is to establish what online text content and organization and which affordances of online platforms help to develop the modes of reading required to cultivate the biliterate brain. Traditional methodologies for close reading used in the humanities certainly play a significant part in developing deep attention. Further controlled experiential research regarding the role of collective reading on social platforms in advancing deep reading could provide many of the answers to the questions regarding the posthuman modes of reading.

Notes 1 For more on this distinction see Alexandra Glavanakova, Posthuman Transformations: Bodies and Texts in Cyberspace (Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2014). 2 See Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain. The New Science of How We Read (New York, NY: Penguin, 2009). 3 For more on this interconnection see Hayles and Pressman, 2013; Wolf, 2016, 2018. 4 For more on this, see Elaine Treharne and Claude Willan, Text Technologies. A History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020); Lori Emerson, Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Keith Houston, The Book. A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Times (New York, NY: Norton, 2016). 5 The evolution of electronic literature see be traced through the three-volume anthology compiled by the Electronic Literature Organization: https://collection. eliterature.org. 6 Some of the most acclaimed texts of experimentation in print inspired and made possible by digital technology: Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000), Only Revolutions (2006); Salvatore Plascencia’s People of Paper (2005); Michael Joyce’s novel WAS: annals nomadique/a novel of internet (2007); Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Tree of Codes (2010); S, written by Doug Dorst and conceived by Jeffrey Jacob Abrams (2013). 7 www.whalingmuseum.org/programs/annual-events/annual-moby-dick-marathon. 8 http://commons.digitalthoreau.org. 9 See, for example the Slow Movement webpage: https://www.slowmovement.com/ slow_books.php; John Miedema, Slow Reading (Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2009). 10 The data is from the most recent survey carried out among 5,294 participants from 199 schools in Bulgaria, OECD, Bulgaria, student performance, PISA 2018, conducted every three years since 2000. http://gpseducation.oecd.org/Coun tryProfile?primaryCountry=BGR&treshold=10&topic=PI 11 See McNeish et al., 2012; Kurata et al., 2017. 12 A strong argument for the phenomenological psychology of reading can be found in Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 13 An online group dedicated to the reading of David Foster Wallace’s difficult and profound novel Infinite Jest in the summer of the writer’s passing http://infinitesummer. org. The challenge set was “to join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week.”

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14 This comprises a large online reading group, assembled through Twitter and message boards, devoted to discussing William Gaddis’s J R. www.leekonstantinou. com/2012/06/15/occupygaddis-begins. 15 #1book140 https://twitter.com/search?q=%231book140&src=hash 16 A multimedia publishing platform: https://atavist.com/ 17 A free book discussion group: https://www.booktalk.org/home.html. 18 www.litlovers.com/getting-started. 19 https://onlinebookclub.org. 20 A cataloging and social networking site for book lovers: www.librarything.com. 21 BiblioTech was the first, public library founded in 2013 in San Antonio, Texas; Do Space in Omaha, Nebraska (2015), alongside university libraries at Kansas State University (2000), Stanford University (2009), the University of Texas at San Antonio Applied Engineering and Technology library (2010), the Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland (2014). Europeana, Europe’s multimedia online library, opened in November 2008: www.europeana.eu/portal/en. The Bulgarian National Library has spearheaded similar projects on a local level: digitizing and preserving the written legacy of Bulgaria, www.nationallibrary.bg/ wp/?page_id=4119&lang=bg, and by university libraries as well, including the Sofia University Library. 22 www.swoonreads.com. 23 The data was published on the company’s website as of October 2019, https:// company.wattpad.com/press. 24 E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) started out as fan fiction on a rival site FanFiction.net, which was launched in 1998 and is still operational. Similarly, the After series by amateur writer Anna Todd has been read more than 1.5 billion times on Wattpad since it was first posted there in 2013. It is now a bestselling book series, with millions of copies sold after Wattpad negotiated a deal with the publishing house Simon & Schuster. 25 See Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, 2016; Simone Rebora and Frederico Pianzola, 2018.

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Willingham, David. 2017. The Reading Mind. A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Wolf, Maryanne & Mirit Barzillai. 2009. “The Importance of Deep Reading.” Educational Leadership, 66(6): 32–37. Wolf, Maryanne. 2016. Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolf, Maryanne. 2018. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

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Vigilance to Wonder Human Enhancement in TED Talks Loredana Filip

1 Human Enhancement and Transhumanism The subject of human enhancement has gained traction across media: from scientific journals to popular magazines, TED talks, or science fiction. The prospect of designing babies by using CRISPR-Cas9, the prescription of ADHD pills to boost academic performance (Schwarz, 2012), the increasing tendency to use drugs not only for therapeutic reasons, but also to “augment normal encoding mechanisms” (Chatterjee, 2006), and the emergence of medicinal “neuro-enhancement” for professional chess players (Hamblin, 2017): these are just a few examples that display an increasing fascination with the physical or mental augmentation of human traits. Bionic limbs, implants, artificial intelligence or even the idea of uploading our mind on the cloud (Kurzweil, 2014), the belief that ‘we’ can change for the better via scientific and technological means has spread widely in recent years. Biohacking communities practice a form of DIY biology: BioCurious has established itself as a “community lab for citizen science” in the Bay Area (Lightman, 2013, 16). “Life bloggers” track their lives in order to broadcast them (Carmichael, 2013, 34). The Quantified Self movement started in 2007 to practice self-understanding and self-knowledge; projects such as “Tweetwhatyoueat,” “Lifecasting” or “Your Genome on Twitter” show a surge in both the practice of self-tracking and the act of sharing these results. CureTogether is a patient datasharing website that “enables decision support” (Carmichael, 2013, 38). But besides the prospect of personalized medicine, all these practices seem to promise a future self-improvement as they may strive to even “change what it means to be human” (Bell in Carmichael, 2013, 33). Humanity+ is a non-profit organization that has adopted the Transhumanist Declaration and endorses the belief in an altered future humanity: Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. (More on Humanity+, 2016–2020)

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Following Max More’s definition, the narrative of human enhancement relies on an evolutionary logic and a trust in the power of science and technology to eliminate the risk of extinction. Governed by a desire to overcome death and end aging, Humanity+ has the missionary purpose to raise public awareness on the prospect of human enhancement. Its projects include a magazine, a press, conferences and events, or an essay prize. And it also encourages the creation of local TED events, or TEDxH+. In its online section entitled “Global Leadership,” More features in a picture taken at a TEDx in Hong Kong. One of the reasons why transhumanists might favor the genre of TED talks is the promise of global reach. But TED talks also aim to evoke certain affective responses in the audience. By focusing on the TED talks given by transhumanists, one can gain a new perspective on their narrative that is otherwise sidelined in an analysis of their writings or a focus on their theoretical concepts only. For instance, one of the recurring concepts adopted by transhumanists is the notion of “Singularity.” Transhumanists value perpetual progress and they advance a futuristic approach to life: in a hypothetical point in the future, the Singularity will occur. This is the life-changing event that will bring about a new reality and superhuman intelligence in “the blink of an eye,” and it will thus inaugurate the “post-human era” (Vinge, 1993). As an analogy to the technological Singularity, Vernor Vinge uses “the rise of humankind within the animal kingdom” (in Wolens, 2013, 56) to emphasize the magnitude of this change. At the same time, his approach reveals a human-centric view of the world which harks back to Enlightenment principles. Transhumanists also rely on the principle of rational thinking (More, 1998), which leads to the belief that the mind is superior, while the body is secondary and can be easily disposed of or at least manipulated. The coming “Diamond Age” (Orca, 2013, 183), for instance, imagines a nanotechnological future that allows us to assemble molecules at will. Transhumanists also reinforce a peculiar understanding of evolution. Theories of human enhancement assume that a transition from natural selection to deliberate selection, from Darwinian evolution to enhancement evolution (Harris, 2010, 4) is the moral step that humanity needs to take. Allen Buchanan also envisions evolution (i.e. natural selection) as a morally insensitive and cruel tinkerer (2011, 17). In “The Pursuit of Crappiness,” Joe Quirk goes even further in describing survival as struggle and discussing how the “evil universe [was] designed to create suffering” (2013, 251). Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord have also claimed that “[e]volution doesn’t care about human happiness” (2006, 666–667). These comments also reveal the transhumanist understanding of ‘morality’ as the promise of happiness. In other words, it is the ‘pursuit of happiness’ that constitutes the overarching goal of transhumanism, rather than mere life extension. They also decouple and replace the notion of evolution from survival and attach it to the goal of happiness. It is precisely this dimension that has been less analyzed or systematically addressed in connection to its philosophy. And it is an aspect that reveals itself more forcefully in TED Talks too.

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So, rather than focusing on the transhumanist writings of More, Natasha Vita-More, John Harris, Julian Savulescu, or Bostrom, this paper aims to focus on their TED or TEDx talks in an attempt to gain new insight on their philosophy, as well as their rhetorical and visual strategies that aim to make their ideas more appealing to the public. But before this incursion, the next part will focus on the bioethical debates on the topic of human enhancement. This will mediate an overview of its main arguments, and it will also strengthen the need for new approaches to the topic. For instance, an analysis of cultural and literary texts could contribute to a renewed understanding of human enhancement as they also actively shape it. As this paper will show, TED talks can shed a new light on how transhumanists treat notions of time, evolution, and the human mind, so that they do not always come up with the same answers: i.e. Singularity, deliberate selection, and cognitive mastery. Will the new answers even undermine them?

2 Bioethical Debates on Human Enhancement The bioethical debates on human enhancement have been carried on between the so-called transhumanists and bioconservatives. One of the matters that they disagree on is the very definition of ‘human enhancement.’ The tendency to distinguish ‘enhancements’ from therapy or treatments is rejected by transhumanists, who for instance regard contact lenses or eyeglasses as a form of “vision enhancement”; clothing as “skin enhancement” and mood modifiers such as caffeine as “other enhancement technologies” or “older enhancement technologies” (Bostrom, 2005). According to Bostrom, human modification technologies such as growth hormone therapy, cosmetic surgery, or anti-depressants are just newer forms of enhancement. While the distinction between therapy and enhancement is continuously challenged, as the very “distinction between normal and abnormal health will sometimes seem arbitrary” (DeGrazia, 2005, 263), the notion that enhancements are motivated by desires for self-improvement still remains a guiding principle in social debates. This also proves that ‘human enhancements’ should be discussed not only in a biomedical context, but also in connection to the cultural landscape, especially the self-help tradition. But so far, it is solely within the context of the so-called bioethical debates that the prospect of human enhancement has been discussed and negotiated. They have been interested in at least three concerns: epistemic concerns about possible gaps in our knowledge, social issues of justice and (in)equality, as well as questions of ‘human nature’ and ‘identity’ (Elliott, 1999; Fukuyama, 2002). Epistemic questions focus on the issue of safety, asking whether we have sufficient knowledge to grasp the benefits and risks of human enhancements, or whether the enhancement of certain skills and abilities would necessarily lead to well-being; whether more is always better and whether unanticipated downsides may arise. For instance, would cognitive speed crowd out creativity? Would the absence of sleep imply horrible

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boredom? Would better impulse control make people more submissive? (Little, 2014, 00:03:23). These concerns become particularly urgent when they attend to radical enhancements that are irreversible, such as gene editing. Bioethical debates are also concerned with social issues, as people might be pressurized to change traits only to conform to societal norms. But transhumanists would respond to such claims by invoking the “status quo bias” to argue that people tend to prefer the familiar state of things. Social concerns also raise questions about inequality and social justice. The main worry regards the risk of radical inequality between the enhanced and nonenhanced, especially if enhancements are made available to the rich first and foremost, thus leading to a wider inequality gap. Such a prospect raises concerns about the domination of one social class, as well as a possible breakdown of social solidarity; the possibility for political and economic domination is entailed here as well as much social unrest, as people might fight to gain access to a technology that remains unaffordable to people lying on their death bed. But Harris believes that the emergence of “parallel populations” should not prevent us from seeking immortality (2010, 62). Even more, transhumanists counter these concerns by arguing that enhancements might actually lead to more equality, as everybody will have access to limitless opportunities for self-design. Finally, the last and probably most widely debated issue concerns the conceptualization of human nature and identity. Sport is an arena where people have already experimented with enhancements such as the use of steroids or blood doping. Harvard philosophy expert Michael Sandel, author of The Case Against Perfection believes that genetic enhancements should not be allowed in sports. He believes that the telos of medicine should be the treatment of diseases and the promotion of health. He criticizes non-medical uses of technology, such as memory and height enhancement or sex selection in children. He quotes safety and fairness as two reasons why enhancements should not be allowed in sports, but his main argument reinforces the “human dimension and the display of natural human gifts” (2010, 32). Thus, his arguments retort back to the belief in a ‘natural’ and given state of the human that should not be lost. Although he also claims that he does not merely celebrate ‘nature’ as such, as he is only worried about the hubristic desire to “exert dominion over all on nature including human nature” (2010, 35). On the other front, Harris continues to make the claim for self-design, arguing that the self-sufficiency argument (of Sandel) could hide a fear that exists regardless of benefits and safety. However, Harris does not consider the ways in which transhumanist approaches could hide ‘fearful’ attitudes too, whether fear of death, vulnerability, or pain. Ironically, he also claims that enhancements would help us be “less fearful” (2010, 2). Altering the human genome is thus another matter on which bioconversatives and transhumanists disagree, one side insisting that it is immoral (Annas, Andrews, and Isasi, 2002), while the other claims that it might even be morally

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required (Savulescu and Persson, 2012). The human genome cannot be preserved, as it continuously changes while genes die and others mutate. After Darwin, species have been understood as evolving and thus changing. The main disagreement circles around the belief whether humans might or might not directly and intentionally alter the genome. Bioconservatives such as Francis Fukuyama rely on a belief in “human dignity,” which is why any intentional alteration is deemed as immoral. But transhumanists “view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways” (Bostrom, 2003). Thus, according to them, any altering of the genome is not immoral, but sometimes might even be morally required. In Unfit for the Future, Savulescu argues that humanity has an obligation to enhance itself. As much of the psychology and impulses of humanity have developed during the Pleistocene era, when life looked drastically different, the present threatens the survival of the species. Our species does not have the right equipment to deal with issues such as global warming or nuclear weapons; hence we need to morally enhance ourselves. But the concern whether more empathy would lead to more submissiveness remains, as well as the worry that such changes might be difficult to regulate. The entire debate eventually boils down to how different parties conceptualize and understand the notion of ‘human nature,’ ‘human identity,’ and ‘humanity.’ The only way to escape this impasse is also to challenge the very concept of the ‘human’—any core elements that presumably define what it means to be ‘human.’ A critical posthumanist approach would thus provide a counter-balance to all such attempts to define the ‘human.’ Because despite commonalities and differences, the ‘human’ cannot be subsumed to one category. Such labels do not work for the complex and ambiguous ways in which humans exist. Furthermore, this entire discussion about ‘humanity’ and ‘our’ species bypasses any concern with ‘difference.’ It does not address the question: who speaks for the humanity as a whole? Who decides in the name of humanity what is good or bad for the human? Harris has claimed that choices to be black, white, male, or female are “morally neutral” (2010, 7); but this comment seems to disregard any gender or race issues and inequalities that exist in contemporary culture and society. Furthermore, the transhumanist battle seems to be fought by overwhelmingly white and male authors and innovators, with very few exceptions, such as Vita-More. Bioethical debates have reached an impasse, because bioconservatives and transhumanists alike rely on different conceptualizations of the ‘human.’ Zemlicka has also argued along the same lines, arguing that “neither side can seem to engage the other on the same conceptual plane” (2013, 262); and they also seem to force the public to either desire or abhor the prospect of human enhancement, as their ethic is either “blindly reactionary” or “overly permissive” (259, 277). Zemlicka aims to dismantle this dichotomous positioning by revealing the rhetorical nature of both discourses as they attempt to define the essential qualities of the ‘human.’ Their definitions are contradictory and they enact a tropological regress; bioconservatives such as Leon

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Kass emphasize “human goods” such as modesty and humility whereas Harris and “posthumanists latch onto the concepts of progress and choice” (268). Whether intrinsic to humanity or linked to the notion of progress, both sides rely on their metaphors as a vehicle for artificial transcendence (269). In other words, the bioethical debates themselves remain ‘humanistic’ at their core, which is why they would profit from critical posthumanist perspectives. Thus, we also need new approaches to escape this impasse. Rather than focusing on bioethical debates only, this paper seeks to gain a new perspective from an analysis of cultural texts: TED talks. I assume that these texts actively shape the discourse on human enhancement; bioethical debates might thus be seen from a different angle. A further analysis of the rhetoric of human enhancement could also contribute to a renewed understanding of its core values, tacit assumptions, and particular worldview. TED talks might offer another answer to the question: how do transhumanists manage the transition “from yuck to wow” (Harris, 2010)? And do they manage to expose an “ideology of transcendence” (Graham, 2002) at the heart of transhumanism?

3 TED Talks and Human Enhancement If the genre of TED talks reflects an interest in improvement and betterment supported by science, one cn assume that transhumanist notions would thrive in such a context. Famous transhumanists such as Bostrom and Ray Kurzweil have indeed used TED as a platform to spread their ideas. Bostrom’s talks on “A Philosophical Quest for Our Biggest Problems” (2005), “The End of Humanity” (2013), and “What Happens When Our Computers Get Smarter Than We Are” (2015) probe the question of the future of humanity and the necessity of progress. During his first talk, Bostrom presents the three biggest problems for humanity: first, death (and aging). He makes an analogy with books to suggest the enormity of losses and lost experiences in just one year. Second, he introduces the notion of “existential risk” as a “threat to human survival, or to the long-term potential of our species” (2005, 00:02:24). He shows how different studies (John Lesley; Astronomer Royal) estimate a fifty percent probability that the species will survive the century. And finally, he spends more time talking about the third problem or what he calls “ordinary life” in contrast to fantastic or wonderful moments, such as: the flow stage, creative inspiration, romantic love, or an aesthetic experience—when life is at its best. According to him, the problem is that “life isn’t usually as wonderful as it could be” (00:06:59). Thus, according to him, the prospect of human enhancement becomes justifiable not only because it aims to save humanity from extinction, but also because it promises humanity a wonderful existence. In other words, the narrative of human enhancement is not only a narrative of survival understood as endurance and durability, but it also engages with the quality of life. So far, the debates have emphasized the transhumanist desire to prolong life, or the ways in which ‘life’ becomes a

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quantitative value: the more one lives, the better. However, in this talk, Bostrom shifts the focus to the qualitative dimension of life, which can make the prospect of human enhancement even more attractive to the audience than mere life extension. So, TED talks reveal how presenters also rely on certain affective responses to make their arguments more persuasive. An analysis of transhumanist TED talks reveals not only a desire to transcend the body, but also the belief that through such transcendence, one can achieve a transcendent state of being—similar to what the genius feels when inspired or what the artist evokes in an aesthetic experience. Paradoxically, through bodily transcendence, the human can presumably sustain a transcendent feeling. If survival presumes a vigilance to threats to keep the individual safe, the future survival that transhumanists propose presumes a vigilance to wonder in order to keep the individual happy. This notion is further tested in TED talks not only on the thematic level of content, as a topic, but also in more subtle ways, as presenters make use of rhetorical and visual strategies. One way in which they mobilize this vigilance to wonder is the evocation of a sense of transcendence. One context in which they evoke a sense of transcendence is the insistence on cosmic proportions, which could also raise “awe at the vastness of space and time” (Hartwell, 1996, 66). In his most recent talk, Bostrom begins with an analogy that evokes a sense of awe: “Think about if Earth was created one year ago, the human species then, would be ten minutes old. The industrial era started two seconds ago” (2015, 00:00:86). In “The End of Humanity,” Bostrom talks about existential risks and different types of catastrophe, as well as the ways in which the topic of human extinction is neglected in academic research. At the same time, he uses the metaphor of a rocket to describe his concept of dynamic sustainability or the trajectory that humanity needs to consider: “taking more risks in the short term to reduce risk in the long term” (2013, 00:15:16). While this is offered as a solution to human extinction, the metaphor of the rocket also evokes images of breakthrough, upward movement, progress, and even transcendence. It connotes the trope of exploration—an exploration of the vast universe and the discovery of unknown worlds and planets. The trope of exploration comes up in Jason Sosa’s TEDx talk as well (“The Coming Transhuman Era”). He envisions a future where biology can be conquered, and “we could explore the stars” (2014, 00:12:38–12:40). The image of the explorer that he finishes with (see Figure 1) could summon a feeling of awe as the human explorer encounters something for the first time, conjuring a frontier experience of first contact. Accordingly, this trope also suggests an imperialist zeal to conquer. This image also functions as a reminder that human beings can reach a sense of transcendence as well. Images of flight become a favored trope of transhumanists, as they forcefully imply a transcendence of bodily limitations as well—all while it juxtaposes the sense of transcendence with the ultimate freedom, elevated perspective, and sense of power.

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Figure 4.1 “Explore Like a Hero” image featured in Jason Sosa’s TEDx Talk “The Coming Transhuman Era” (2014)

But another way in which transhumanists create a sense of transcendence is through the use of numbers, or the mathematical sublime. In his most recent talk (2015), Bostrom compares humans with computers, especially with regards to biological limits: whereas a biological neuron fires at 200 hertz, in computers “signals can travel at the speed of light” (00:05:31–05:34), which places technology on a cosmic and transcendental plane. The use of graphs seems to function in a similar way. Kurzweil’s logarithmic graphs assume that the only trajectory is upward, progressive, and ever-increasing. In “How to Create a Mind,” he introduces this logarithmic scale to illustrate the notion of exponential evolution as opposed to linear evolution. He gives examples of exponential trends, such as the Human Genome Project. He also compares Watson’s capabilities to the human abilities: even if we can read one page better than Watson, the computer can read 200 million pages, which is something that we cannot do. However, it remains uncertain why sheer quantity is better than the quality of reading. These examples do not only evoke a technological sublime, or a belief in the superiority of technology, but also betray a fascination with large scales and immensity, just like the trope of exploration. Their function could be the summoning of a sense of awe and wonder. By emphasizing the geologic time-scale, the vastness of the universe, or big numbers, transhumanists animate a sense of enormity or immensity. At the same time, such comments tend to emphasize the insignificance of the human, which makes their call for enhancement even more urgent. Their goal is to challenge this vulnerability, rather than embrace or accept it: to propose to the human the same kind of transcendent possibility. Such an attitude recalls a self-help ethic that encourages a movement away from a position of victimhood to gaining control. The narrative of

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taking control over one’s own life looms large in a culture governed by positive thinking and self-help. This emphasis on individual agency goes hand in hand with the transhumanist belief in deliberate selection. However, a further analysis of Julian Savulescu’s TEDx Talk in Barcelona (“Pills That Improve Morality”) reveals a somewhat paradoxical attitude towards the concept of choice. Even though he wants to reinforce the notion that ‘we’ should choose our destiny, his arguments rest on the assumption that our choices are heavily influenced and shaped by external forces, evolution, and predispositions that we have no control over, so he calls for a change of human nature itself. For instance, as ‘we’ have been shaped by a huntergatherer mentality that disregards the distant future and cares only for the short-term, ‘we’ tend to act irresponsibly. He gives other examples, such as a statistical study that supposedly reveals how the judges’ decisions in court are influenced by their level of glucose—whether they had lunch or not. And he moves on to claim that putting estrogen in Hitler’s food could have made “him more like his docile sister” (2013, 00:09:04), which besides raising gender issues (are women supposed to be more docile?), it also diminishes the power of the choices that were taken—were they a mere ‘overdose’ of masculinity? In this case, human choices are no exercises in agency, but the results of a greater force. He insists that the only way to escape these biological limitations that also limit us morally is to enhance ourselves. However, his very notion of enhancement keeps the self imprisoned in the same narrative: Prozac can make people less aggressive and more cooperative, while oxytocin can make people more trustworthy. Besides reducing human behavior to biological processes, this view also undermines the very concept of deliberate selection. Savulescu insists on a narrative of control, while at the same time he depicts an actual lack of individual control. Furthermore, as all these problems are biological, his narrative implies that utter freedom of choice can be attained only once the body is left behind, which is another transhumanist trope, but one that is also treated paradoxically in other TED talks. The narrative of human enhancement is thus framed as a human conquering and exploring of the vast and cosmic universe. In this transcendent realm, humans need to become transcendent too. Accordingly, transhumanists favor the figure of the genius: whether invoking Nietzsche’s concept of the superhuman (Vita-More, 2014, 00:10:49) or the figure of Leonardo da Vinci, they use the genius to highlight the power of imagination and intelligence. Only the ‘mind’ can help the human to transcend the limitations of the body. In TED talks, transhumanists might also invoke or visually depict the act of flying to reinforce this idea. At another locally organized TEDx event (München Salon), Vita-More introduces the “Body by Design—An Iteration for Life” (2014). Whether cognitive neuroscience, information technology, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, or cryonics, Vita-More has a team of scientists working on a radical redesign of a future body: the primo posthuman. She makes the claim that our bodies are not enough, by confessing her own experience of an ectopic pregnancy and listing other disabilities. She quickly moves from this

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example of bodily vulnerability to another bodily-related aim: to be “more perceptive, more aware” (00:09:06), which implies that our senses are not perceptive enough. Towards the end of her talk, she displays the image of Icarus and his flight in order to suggest that the desire for human enhancement is just a “normal” human pursuit. However, despite her desire to transcend the body, she paradoxically returns to feelings as the most marvelous part of the brain’s information processing: “synapses can trigger information to your hand so you can feel the heat of a cup” (00:18:47) or to feel “the warmth of someone else’s hand, this is marvelous” (00:18:55). Ironically, what she claims to be marvelous is just the ‘ordinary’ human sense of touch, rather than any enhanced abilities. So, in this case, she returns to the body, rather than flee from it. Enhancements should also gradually remove the obstacles of the body and allow the ‘brain’ to expand: for instance, Kurzweil’s synthetic neocortex. In “Get Ready for Hybrid Thinking,” Kurzweil believes that the extension of the neocortex will lead humanity in a new era. In his theory, the 300 million modules that constitute the entire human brain is presumably too limited. But a synthetic neocortex would allow for limitless extension—a quantitative enlargement in the brain that will lead to a qualitative leap in our culture and technology too. Sosa also imagines the transition from wearables to small sensors that can be placed underneath the skin. Presumably ‘we’ will just “plug into” the invisible force of the internet as we become a “digital nervous system” (2014, 00:06:01). All devices will adjust themselves, and “these agents will run in the background taking care of you” (00:06:40). But despite the insistence on cognitive mastery and bodily disposal, in their TED talks, transhumanists rely on and continuously highlight the senses. As Bostrom argues triumphantly, we might be able to add “new sensory capacities and mental faculties” (2005, 00:13:00). Some other examples include having the ability to switch between states like relaxation and activity or to “preserve” love for another person. So, in the end, we could gain access to different modes of being that are unknown to us; we could explore more possible states and experiences: “in this little human circle there, there are these enormously wonderful and worthwhile modes of being” (00:15:14). In the end, wonder does not come from scientific discoveries and explorations, but sensory experiences. These presenters’ attempt to raise a vigilance to wonder finally decouples the notion of wonder from cognitive processes, where ‘wow’ is just a mere cognitive response—and it embeds it within a sensory world. In other words, they undermine their own agenda by proving the opposite of what they are trying to argue: the significance of the body. In his first TED talk on “The Accelerating Power of Technology,” Kurzweil focused on the “potential to overcome disease and poverty” (2005, 00:01:35). His talk takes a turning point when he suggests changing the “software programs” that run our bodies: as we could “turn off” the “fat insulin receptor gene” (00:13:13), so we could eat ravenously and yet remain slim, which seems to follow the logic of gain without pain or effort. He

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finishes his talk by making bold predictions such as: full-immersion virtual realities, computing power that will surpass the human brain, and our own mergence with technology. The nanobots “will first be used for medical and health applications […] But they’ll also go inside our brain” which will allow the human to have “any kind of experience with anyone involving all of the senses” (00:21:32; emphasis added). Once again, his narrative also reveals a great interest in sense experience, rather than mere cognitive mastery. However, it remains unclear why humans need nanobots or virtual environments to use their senses. Also, “experience beamers” will presumably allow the human to experience what it is like to be like someone else. This is another sign that the target of enhancement here is something else than mere disposal of the body. Jason Sosa also celebrates the body 2.0 which “will include artificial eyes with zoom capabilities. Infrared sensors and night vision will be possible and the prosthetic limbs of the future will be even more flexible and powerful than our original organic limbs” (00:07:18–07:33). Removing and implanting memories or dreams are just a few other innovations that Sosa welcomes. Imagination is “an insurance policy” and “we are the species that transcends and transforms it” (00:10:47). His rhetoric is utterly humanistic, as he keeps reinforcing the notion that this is “what we are”—a species that needs to advance by means of imagination; that drives to reach “the pinnacle of human potential” (00:11:07), echoing a desire to reach self-actualization. For the newer generations whose smartphones are extensions of their brain, transhumanism will seem as “natural as evolution” (00:12:16). But then his continuous celebration of imagination turns into something else: towards the end, he encourages the audience to trust their “gut, life, destiny, karma” (00:14:15)—invoking faith as the basis of choice, which reframes transhumanism as a religion, rather than science. But it also shifts the focus away from imagination to the gut—to instincts and feelings—as the basic motivator of our behavior. Surprisingly, even though on an explicit level, transhumanists celebrate the power of imagination, rational thinking, or the superiority of the mind, they also make more subtle comments about the importance of feelings, the gut, or sense experiences, which seem to undermine their own agenda. In other words, the call to be “more perceptive, more aware” (Vita-More, 2014, 00:09:06) seems to actually require the body, rather than escape it.

4 Conclusion The ubiquity of transhumanist ideas and ideals needs to be investigated by using different approaches and texts, rather than leaving the debate in the hands of a few philosophers. Bioethical debates on the subject of human enhancement have ended in a stalemate because they rely on and reinforce a humanistic approach to the topic. Critical posthumanism would thus offer a new way to approach the subject. At the same time, a rhetorical analysis of

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cultural texts, such as TED talks, might also shed a new light on the transhumanist agenda and the tensions and contradictions that lie at its core. Even though transhumanists propose the concepts of singularity, deliberate selection and cognitive mastery to describe the future, their TED talks reveal a paradoxical stance. By focusing on images of exploration, they also counter the notion of singularity as a one-time explosive event. Also, by insisting on the biological limitations of the human body, they also challenge notions of deliberate selection. Thus, individual choice and freedom are associated with cognitive power, and yet their various calls to be more aware also depend on bodily senses. Marvin Minsky has claimed that seeing “emotions as the opposite of—as something less than thinking, is immensely productive” (2003, 00:10:15). However, in TED talks, presenters actually rely on emotional and affective strategies to persuade the audience. Even when they downplay the role of emotions, transhumanists practice the opposite: whether raising fear—by talking about existential risks and catastrophes (Bostrom), body vulnerability (Vita-More), or human violence (Savulescu); intimacy and trust—by confessing to the audience (Vita-More); or a sense of wonder—by evoking images of flight (Sosa; Vita-More). In other words, TED talks are a particularly persuasive medium precisely because persuasion occurs on many (affective) levels: autobiographical—building a sense of intimacy and trust by confessing one’s own life experiences and struggles (Vita-More); scientific—building a sense of certainty and confidence by displaying graphs and statistics, using scientific jargon or relying on an academic style of presentation; and mystical—by invoking images of flight, awe, and wonder. This chapter has focused especially on this last persuasive dimension and the ways in which transhumanists rely on creating a sense of transcendence and vigilance to wonder in order to propel their agenda: human enhancement. The focus on notions of flight, exploration, vastness of the universe, or mathematical sublime—whether visual or discursive—contribute to animating a sense of wonder. The new transhumanist aim that emerges in this context is not mere life extension, but life optimization: making life as happy and wonderful as possible. Accordingly, transhumanism becomes another manifestation of the self-help culture. Alternatively, it shows how self-help looks like in a world governed by science and technology, where the means for improvement are expanded to include genetic and digital tools.

Bibliography Annas, George J., Lori B.Andrews, & Rosario M.Isasi. 2002. “Protecting the Endangered Human: Toward an International Treaty Prohibiting Cloning and Inheritable Alterations.” American Journal of Law and Medicine, 28(2–3): 151–178. Bostrom, Nick & Toby Ord. 2006. “The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics.” Ethics 116(4) (July): 656–679. Available at: https://doi.org/10. 1086/505233.

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Bostrom, Nick. 2003. “Transhumanist Values.” In Ethical Issues for the 21st Century, ed. Frederick Adams, 3–14. Charlottesville, VA: Philosophical Documentation Center Press. Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “A Philosophical Quest for Our Biggest Problems.” Filmed July 2005 at TEDGlobal, Oxford, UK. Video, 16:40. Available at: www.ted.com/talks / nick_ bostrom_a_ philosophical_ quest_ for_our_biggest_problems. Bostrom, Nick. 2013. “The End of Humanity.” TEDxOxford, YouTube Video (16:34), March 26, 2013. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Nf3TcMiHo. Bostrom, Nick. 2015. “What Happens When Our Computers Get Smarter Than We Are?” Filmed March 2015 at TED2015, Vancouver, Canada. Video (16:23). Available at: www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_comp uters_get_smarter_than_we_are. Buchanan, Allen. 2011. Better Than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carmichael, Alexandra. 2013 “Self-Tracking: The Quantified Life Is Worth Living.” In Best of H+ Magazine, Vol. 1: 2008–2010, ed. R. U. Sirius, Ben Goertzel, and David Orban, 33–40. Humanity+ Press. Available at: https://goertzel.org/BestOfH+ MagazineVolume1.pdf. Chatterjee, Anjan. 2006. “The Promise and Predicament of Cosmetic Neurology.” Journal of Medical Ethics, 32(2): 110–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme.2005. 013599. DeGrazia, David. 2005. “Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 30(3): 261–283. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03605310590960166. Elliott, Carl. 1999. A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture and Identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Graham, Elaine. 2002. “‘Nietzsche Gets a Modem’: Transhumanism and the Technological Sublime.” Literature & Theology, 16(1) (March): 65–80. Hamblin, James. 2017. “On Cognitive Doping in Chess (and Life).” The Atlantic, March 21, 2017. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/cognitiveenhancement-paradox/519948. Harris, John. 2010. Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making People Better. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hartwell, David G. 1996. Age of Wonders. New York, NY: Tor. Humanity+. (2016–2020). “Philosophy.” Accessed July 1, 2020. Available at: https:// humanityplus.org/philosophy. Kass, Leon R. 2003. “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Human Improvement.” The President’s Council on Bioethics, Washington, DC. Available at: https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcbe/background/kasspaper.html. Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. “The Accelerating Power of Technology.” Filmed February 2005 at TED2005, Monterey, California. Video (22:44). Available at: www.ted. com/talks/ray_kurzweil_the_accelerating_power_of_technology. Kurzweil, Ray. 2013. “How to Create a Mind.” TEDxSiliconAlley, YouTube Video (21:39). March 5, 2013. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIkxVci-R4k. Kurzweil, Ray. 2014. “Get Ready for Hybrid Thinking.” Filmed March 2014 at TED2014, Vancouver, Canada. Video (09:41). Available at: www.ted.com/talks/ray_ kurzweil_get_ready_for_hybrid_thinking.

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Lightman, Alex. 2013. “The Rise of the Citizen Scientist.” In Best of H+ Magazine, Vol. 1: 2008–2010, edited by R. U. Sirius, Ben Goertzel, and David Orban, 13–19. Humanity+ Press. Available at: https://goertzel.org/BestOfH+MagazineVolume1. pdf. Little, Maggie. 2014. “Maggie Segment 4 v3.” PHLX:101X: Introduction to Bioethics, GeorgetownX, YouTube Video (06:37). April 18, 2014. Available at: https://youtu. be/WlQaLDKea3M. Minsky, Marvin. 2003. “Health and the Human Mind.” Filmed February 2003 at TED2003, Monterey, California. Video (13:15). Available at: www.ted.com/talks/ marvin_minsky_health_and_the_human_mind. More, Max. 1998. “The Extropian Principles Version 3.0: A Transhumanist Declaration.” Available at: https://mrob.com/pub/religion/extro_prin.html. Orca, Surfdaddy. 2013. “How Close Are We to Real Nanotechnology?” In Best of H+ Magazine, Vol. 1: 2008–2010, ed. R. U. Sirius, Ben Goertzel and David Orban, 175– 183. Humanity+ Press. https://goertzel.org/BestOfH+MagazineVolume1.pdf. Quirk, Joe. 2013. “The Pursuit of Crappiness.” In Best of H+ Magazine, Vol. 1: 2008–2010, ed. R. U. Sirius, Ben Goertzel, and David Orban, 247–252. Humanity+ Press. Available at: https://goertzel.org/BestOfH+MagazineVolume1.pdf. Sandel, Michael. 2007. The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sandel, Michael. 2010. “Michael Sandel on Sport and Enhancement.” In Philosophy Bites, ed. David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, 29–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Savulescu, Julian. 2013. “Pills That Improve Morality.” TEDxBarcelona, YouTube Video (15:12). July 23, 2013. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v= DhtIFTrJQJ4. Savulescu, Julian & Ingmar Persson. 2012. Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwarz, Alan. 2012. “Attention Deficit Disorder or Not, Pills Help in Schools.” New York Times, October 9, 2012. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/ health/attention-disorder-or-not-children-prescribed-pills-to-help-in-school.html. Sosa, Jason. 2014. “The Coming Transhuman Era.” TEDxGrandRapids, YouTube Video (15:37). June 24, 2014. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v= 1Ugo2KEV2XQ. Vinge, Vernor. 1993. “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” In NASA. Lewis Research Center, Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, San Diego, CA, 11–22. Available at: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940022856.pdf. Vita-More, Natasha. 2014. “Body by Design: An Iteration for Life.” TEDxMünchenSalon, YouTube Video (20:15). March 28, 2014. Available at: www.youtube. com/watch?v=kwb0DqrDm4g. Wolens, Douglas. 2013. “Our Machines/Ourselves: AI/Bots/The Singularity.” In Best of H+ Magazine, Vol. 1: 2008–2010, ed. R. U. Sirius, Ben Goertzel, and David Orban, 55–57. Humanity+ Press. Available at: https://goertzel.org/BestOfH+Maga zineVolume1.pdf. Zemlicka, Kurt. 2013. “The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropes of the ‘Human’ and ‘Dignity’ in Contemporary Bioethical Debates over Enhancement Technologies.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 46(3): 257–279. doi:10.5325/ philrhet.46.3.0257.

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Patterns of Posthuman Numbness in Shirley & Gibson’s “The Belonging Kind” and Eggers’s The Circle Francisco Collado-Rodríguez

1 Introduction: The Future, the Posthuman, the Transhuman, and the Symbol of the Circle In his sixth and final column for the magazine Interzone, author Bruce Sterling recounts how the cyberpunk movement and its poetics had sprouted in the early 1980s thanks to a small group of writers—Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, William Gibson, and himself—arguably to die only a few years later. Being not only one of those cyberpunk pioneers but also a critical commentator of this sci-fi sub-genre, Sterling pointed out the capacity of cyberpunk to anticipate a bleak future for humanity and to erase any previous confidence in the future that classic sci-fi might have offered sometimes to its readers. By the end of the twentieth century, once postmodernism had questioned, demoted, or even erased the old Western values from their traditional centralized position, the use of technology was not going to be necessarily positive or lead to the massive creation of immortal perfect beings. On the contrary, Sterling’s analysis of the condition of humanity at the turn of the millennium turned out to be rather uncertain if not pessimistic. In his own words, it had become clear that “there are no sacred boundaries to protect humans from themselves.” He interrogated the possibilities for the future of humankind and dramatically declared: Our place in the universe is basically accidental. We are weak and mortal, but it’s not the holy will of the gods; it’s just the way things happen to be at the moment. And this is radically unsatisfactory; not because we direly miss the shelter of the Deity, but because, looked at objectively, the vale of human suffering is basically a dump. The human condition can be changed, and it will be changed, and is changing; the only real questions are how and to what end. (1997, 4) By the end of the second millennium, critic N. Katherine Hayles profusely debated on how our vale of human suffering was turning our old species into the new posthuman one. Strongly relying on Norbert Wiener’s theories,

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in How We Became Posthuman (1999) Hayles defined the new evolved creature as being the result of a strong techno-scientific and cultural change and linked the new paradigmatic condition to our increasing understanding that we are basically the result of information and information patterns. Not surprisingly, unlike the pessimistic cyberpunk prophecies for our near future, the consideration of being as information led other critics under the umbrella of the posthuman paradigm to develop the notions of transhuman, transhumanism, and transhumanity. With these notions, they signified the new physical or existential state that results from (bio)technological body enhancements and the predictable advent of processes in which human memories or even a full consciousness might expand their life spans by inhabiting a technological device or a virtual space (see Tirosh-Samuelson, 2011, 9–23). However, the optimistic transhuman approach seems to have, at least, two big flaws. On the one hand, there is only a very limited group of (mostly wealthy) people who can or will have access to sophisticated body enhancement (bio)technology, leaving the rest exposed to living conditions that, as things go, might increasingly lower the species down to the level of an infrahumanity. On the other, in the formulation of the posthuman, the basic premise that humans are information makes of them (of us) an easy target of mass media manipulation. As the following pages exemplify in the grounds of fiction, in the 1950s Wiener’s insights into the issue of mass manipulation connected to the development of cybernetics proved to be prophetic—and somehow coincidental with the findings of the Marxist Frankfurt School. While discussing informational patterns as the key to develop artificial intelligence, for Wiener the erosion of limits between human and machine became one of the big issues to account for the future of humanity. Although he was mostly concerned about developing intelligent machines that would replicate human brain patterns, when looking at his aim from the opposite perspective Wiener also anticipated unnerving results: I have spoken of machines, but not only of machines having brains of brass and thews of iron. When human atoms are knit into an organization in which they are used, not in their full right as responsible human beings, but as cogs and levers and rods, it matters little that their raw material is flesh and blood. What is used as an element in a machine, is in fact an element in the machine. (1954, 185) In line with the most pessimistic perspectives that can be drawn from Wiener’s ideas, at the turn of the millennium thinkers like Francis Fukuyama updated the traditional fears raised by the increasing levels of hybridity operating between the human and the other. Thus, Fukuyama took into account cognitivism, genetic engineering and, in general, the risks that biotechnology represents for the future of the so far called human

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species (Fukuyama, 2002, 18–40, 72–102, and Part III: “What To Do”). As anticipated by Wiener, such fears openly clash with the beliefs in a more positive transhuman future—beliefs that were also questioned in the grounds of fiction and the cinema, sometimes in very subtle ways. This work offers a contrastive analysis of two fictional narratives rather dissimilar in their styles: a short story by cyberpunk writers Shirley and Gibson and a novel by Dave Eggers. Its main aim is to focus on both narratives as reflections of the limits that a transhuman approach can find from our present condition. Interestingly, both narratives share a deep concern with the lack of critical capacity seemingly existing among people living in the USA and, by extension, in Western societies. In line with Wiener’s early analyses of the relations between humans and machines, Marshall McLuhan’s theory of selfamputation and Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity help to a reading of each narrative as being far away from any optimistic notion of transhumanism. Furthermore, the two literary works are also analyzed as examples of the dystopic and anti-mythic drive that the three writers provide for the notion of the circle—an ancient symbol frequently associated with the continuity of life and the permanent durability of existence. It is a well-known cultural fact that early in the twentieth century, the symbol of the circle became a powerful sign among modernist artists and thinkers, from T. S. Eliot to Carl Jung, to resuscitate a mythic understanding of life that could somehow replace the decreasing importance of Christian religion (see Manganaro, 1992, 1–110). Some decades later, both at the peak of postmodernism (Shirley’s and Gibson’s story) and in the early twenty-first century (Eggers’s novel), it seems that irony and pragmatism have already displaced the positive and almost religious power previously conferred to the circle. Finally, this chapter evaluates the motif of the chase to round off the contrastive analysis of the two works and point out their allegedly different but complementary understanding of human development (or stagnation) at both sides of the crucial turn of the millennium.

2 Before and Beyond the Crossing of the Millennium: The Forge of Posthuman Numbness At the beginning of the Introduction to his collection of essays Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan wrote this illuminating and prophetic passage: After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively

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McLuhan published his book in 1964, anticipating in some years Jean Baudrillard’s well-known theories about our present condition of living at the third stage of the simulacrum (“The Orders of Simulacra,” 1983). His impressive capacity of analysis allowed the Canadian literature professor to foresee a simulation of human consciousness that might be achieved, thanks to the new technologies, and become epistemologically complete, covering everybody on the planet, which led to his well-known notion of our world becoming a global village, in which human individuals are its “electrodes.” Fifty years after the publication of Understanding Media, in his novel The Circle (2013) Eggers fictionalized the ideological implications that such completion of the circle of knowledge would have when it might be extended “collectively and corporately … to the whole of human society.” Thus, we can assume that, echoing McLuhan’s theory, Eggers’s narrative also relates to the process of self-amputation that the Canadian thinker associated with the acquisitions of new technological skills or extensions of man that precede the alleged process of total collective knowing. However, with his characteristic cryptic style, McLuhan also pointed out that with every new extension of man a price has to be paid: self-amputation. “The effects of technology,” he claimed, “do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (1964, 18, emphasis added). More explicitly, in one of the most widely cited essays collected in his book, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” McLuhan warned his readers that acquiring a new extension brings about a process of narcosis or numbness. Narcissus became numb when watching his reflective extension in the water, and, as a result, he drowned. However, in his interpretation of the classic myth, the Canadian professor pragmatically concludes that Narcissus did not drown because he was in love with himself—as we have been repeatedly told—but because he was not aware that the reflection in the water was his own image. Thus, a lack of self-awareness becomes an open gate to human inanity. Furthering his contention, McLuhan argues that “self-amputation forbids selfrecognition” (1964, 42), which results in the fact that our culture is (and already was in the 1960s) “narcotized.” What follows in his essay on narcosis is the development of a well-known notion that has been amply proven by the abundant literature existing on the effects produced by the excessive use of the smart-phone or of constantly surfing the Internet. As he asserts, “The principle of self-amputation as an immediate relief of strain on the central nervous system applies very readily to the origin of the media of communication from speech to computer” (1964, 43). In other words, the extension takes over. As a result, our consciousness is suppressed, and thus we become slaves of the system. When electric technology arrived, man “extended, or set outside himself.” McLuhan interprets that such change becomes a “suicidal” process of

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self-amputation because any technological extension demands “new ratios or equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body” (1964, 45). In the field of creative literature, such process results, among other things, in the eventually bodiless new creatures that Gibson declared to exist when, by surfing the web, his cyberpunk characters “left the meat behind” in his first novel, Neuromancer (1984). In cyberpunk but also in horror fiction and film, it is frequent to find warning and scary images of new kinds of individuals as empty shells or even as contemporary livingdead moving from material into virtual space and back. These creatures have proliferated in written and audiovisual narratives of recent decades as symbolic icons of the collective process of ultimate self-amputation. Such abundant dystopic symbolism on the results brought about by the transformation of the human into new intended transhuman creatures insistently points towards unwanted consequences existing in the present paradigmatic shift.

3 Belonging Nowhere and Everywhere or the Pre-Millennium Community Closer to the publication of McLuhan’s book than to Eggers’s novel, Shirley and Gibson’s short story “The Belonging Kind” already offered in the early 1980s a symbolic reading of humanity as being in the process of becoming selfamputated and, thus, numbed by its new condition. The reasons for such a process to take place clearly point to the capitalist system and its resulting consumer society. Life in Shirley’s and Gibson’s story has become a circle of production and consumption that keeps people subdued to the status quo. Thus, in practice, they become slaves of apparently unknown forces whose nature, although in a conceited way, is gradually revealed by the cyberpunk authors in the pages of their short story. Their tale explicitly describes the means to acquire the ultimate extensions of man: from fashion and shapeshifting to money-making, which leads to a reading of “The Belonging Kind” as a subtle exemplification of that condition of our times, which Bauman famously described as “liquid modernity.” Although from a different perspective, Bauman complements McLuhan’s theories when he contends that by the end of the twentieth century, traditional solid ideologies had been erased to be replaced only by shallow and permanently flowing consumption, in a development that systematically decreases the critical capacity of the human being— McLuhan’s self-amputated individual. Stylistically, Shirley’s and Gibson’s tale borrows some elements from horror and sci-fi narratives and films, whereas it coincides with Eggers’s novel in the use of Henry James’s old strategies of focalization. In both works, their shared realist style relies on the neverexplained omniscience of a narrator that abundantly focalizes the story through the perception of the main protagonist—James’s “center of consciousness” technique (see Miller, 2005, 124–125). However, in both stories it is also difficult or at least paradoxical to imagine their respective focalizing protagonists as

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centers of “consciousness.” In the case of these two narratives, James’s old strategy should be better addressed as a center of lack of consciousness because their protagonists finally embrace McLuhan’s stage of narcotic selfamputation. First published in 1981 and later included in Gibson’s short-story collection Burning Chrome (1986), “The Belonging Kind” is a strange tale that transgresses the classic boundaries existing between narratives of manners, horror, and sci-fi stories. Its unknown omniscient narrator follows the protagonist, a man named Coretti who, in his turn, obsessively chases a mysterious girl from bar to bar in a big city. By means of quick narrative brushes, Coretti is soon described as somebody who does not fit well anywhere he goes: he is a teacher of linguistics in a community college, but paradoxically he is unable to communicate with other people, even if he goes to many bars trying to establish new friendships (Shirley and Gibson, 1986, 44). The narrator portrays him as somebody who lives in isolation; even his ex-wife thinks that “he didn’t look as though he belonged anywhere in the city” (44). However, Coretti’s life experiences a dramatic change when, attracted by a girl, he begins to stalk her. The element of fantasy appears when eventually the protagonist realizes that the girl he is so obsessed about has the outstanding capacity to change her dress and shape in keeping with the type of bar or club that she visits. She is a contemporary shape-shifter—a new version of one of the oldest creatures that have traditionally inhabited mythologies all around the world. However, Shirley’s and Gibson’s interest does not seem to rely on past mythologies. When, after much effort, Coretti is able to start a conversation with the shape-shifter, she replies by imitating his own tone and insecure voice. However, the narrator informs readers that she is not a mimic, but one of the “belonging kind”; she fits perfectly in any environment because of her capacity to transform her emotionless self accordingly. That is, in addition to her capacity to shift her shape and clothes, she is a creature in the tradition of Eliot’s hollow men—an impassive living-dead, that is, like McLuhan’s Narcissus, unconscious of her own self, moving along an urban environment described by the narrator in terms of quickly shifting bars, dresses, and drinks. In addition, the narrative voice offers different descriptions of the settings that the characters visit that frequently refer to their Art Deco decoration and to mass-produced furniture, which might allow readers to conclude the important role played by popular culture, consumerism, and the mass media in the formation of the mysterious “Belonging Kind.” Thus, early in the story Coretti “pushed resolutely between the empty chrome-andFormica tables” of the bar she had previously entered (Shirley and Gibson, 1986, 44). Later, he follows her to a club: “Lothario’s was a quiet complex of rooms hung with ferns and Art Deco mirrors. There were fake Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling” (48). Moreover, the narrator provides descriptions that are frequently mediated by mirrored images. Those reflections come from actual mirrors but also from bottles and glassware of the bars that they visit and offer readers the possibility to know the moral but also the physical

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description of the protagonist: “he studied himself in the mirror, behind the bar, a thirtyish man with thinning hair…” (44). A mirror might even produce a paradoxical “dark clarity” (44). They are symbolic warnings that direct access to reality is not possible any longer; nothing appears beyond the array of clothes, drinks, and bars that, condensed in the figure of the girl, continuously lure the protagonist into abandoning his previous life as a linguist who can still recognize himself in the mirror. While Coretti follows the shifting girl and an accompanying male friend from bar to bar, the protagonist gradually builds an incredible tolerance to alcoholic drinks, similar to that of the strange creatures that he is following (47). If in the first pages of the story Coretti is still conscious of his own being and able to study himself in the mirror, his state of self-consciousness will progressively disappear. At an early stage of his metamorphosis and despite his heavy drinking, he is still able to understand the shallow nature of the creatures that he is chasing: “They were the kind you see in bars who seem to have grown there, who seem genuinely at home there. Not drunks, but human fixtures. Functions of the bar. The belonging kind” (49). The shifting, fluid creatures in their sea of fashion and alcohol could recall features of disguised invaders from sci-fi horror movies from the 1950s, especially in the episode when the protagonist follows them to their hotel room. There, Coretti discovers that they perch like birds and even show “membranes, third eyelids that reflected the faint shades of neon from the window” (54). The protagonist’s shock when he sees the perching creatures could bring to mind the horror to which the human protagonists of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) were exposed when they realized that their town was in the process of being taken by extraterrestrial impersonators. In the case of Siegel’s film, his terrifying creatures might symbolically embody the fear of communist deceivers in the era of the Cold War. However, in Shirley’s and Gibson’s tale, the flowing, liquid embodiments of the belonging kind more likely represent the numbed condition of the people in developed countries who are trapped in the cycle of consumerism—a condition associated with the incapacity of the individual to see and experience actual reality owing to the luring veils fabricated by the mass media. Thus, the creatures’ full description from the perspective of a still horrified Coretti is pervasively imbued with the notion of an indirectly visual and always-mediated approach to reality: At first he thought that their eyes were open, but then he realized that the dull pupils were sealed beneath nictitating membranes, third eyelids that reflected the faint shades of neon from the window. They wore whatever the last bar had called for; shapeless Salvation Army overcoats sat beside bright suburban leisurewear, evening gowns beside dusty factory clothes, biker’s leather by brushed Harris tweed. With sleep, all spurious humanity had vanished. They were roosting. (54)

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It is sufficient for the belonging kind to consume their alcoholic liquids and they can shift clothes and appearances, provide insubstantial conversations as if they were “functions of the bar” and, as Coretti eventually discovers, even make money out of their own bodies, which they use to buy more drinks that allow their existential consumerist cycle to start again. Increasingly, Shirley’s and Gibson’s tale shows a profound pessimism about the future of humanity that Coretti represents. Despite his disturbing findings about these creatures with three eyelid layers, the protagonist becomes further attracted to them. As a result, he loses his job at the community college, symbolically renounces any religious belief, and finally, after much drinking, becomes able to fabricate his own money (56). His first act of fluid copulation with the girl he had been stalking happens also in a bar, after which he is able to maintain a mindless conversation with the bartender, which prompts the narrator to add the final ironic sentence in the story: “And [Coretti] said it right. Like a real human being” (57). According to Bauman, constructing a durable identity in liquid modernity becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible. The task, he writes: is consumption, and consumption is an utterly, irredeemably individual pastime, a string of sensations which can be experienced—lived through—only subjectively. The crowds filling the interiors of George Ritzer’s “temples of consumption” are gatherings, not congregations; clusters, not squads; aggregates, not totalities. However crowded they may be, there is nothing “collective” in the places of collective consumption. (2000, 97) Shirley’s and Gibson’s liquid consumers of fashion, alcohol, and empty conversations live mechanical lives that are centered on the notion of “satisfaction in distraction.” In addition, the sharp cyberpunk authors frequently connect such type of life to Art Deco and mass culture as indicators of the progressive lack of solid ideologies that characterizes postmodern or liquid modernity. In “The Belonging Kind,” the stalker is finally absorbed into his alleged prey’s species when, like McLuhan’s Narcissus, he becomes unable to recognize himself in the mirror any longer. Coretti’s human image disappears when his former solid isolation progressively gives way to his utter dissolution into the social, allegedly inane closed circle of consumption that characterizes the belonging kind. The result is a paradoxical new type of being—a non-conscious member of a monstrous gathering, unable to recognize his self as distinctive from the others. The same as tourists do, the belonging kind accept everything that they see, wherever they go, and leave their money to the place, without altering the system in any way. As mentioned above, in the final scene of the tale, Coretti mechanically initiates an act of copulation with the girl. A strong sense of fluidity marks the sexual encounter:

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After the third margarita their hips were touching, and something was spreading through him in slow orgasmic waves. It was sticky where they were touching; an area the size of the heel of his thumb where the cloth had parted. He was two men: the one inside fusing with her in total cellular communion, and the shell who sat casually on a stool at the bar, elbows on either side of his drink, fingers toying with a swizzle stick. Smiling benignly into space. Calm in the cool dimness. (Shirley and Gibson, 1986, 57) Again, Bauman’s ideas are revelatory of the protagonist’s plight: “The body orifices (the points of entry) and the body surfaces (the places of contact) are now the primary foci of terror and anxiety generated by the awareness of mortality” (2000, 184). Finally, once their sticky touching has displaced his former body orifices, Coretti is accepted into the communitarian tribe of the unself-conscious belonging kind, at a time in which communitarianism has been increasingly accepted as a mechanical and sedative alternative to the existential horrors still found in the fluid condition of contemporary society (Bauman, 2000, 170–171).

4 The Circle of Knowledge or the Implosion of the Human If Coretti’s fluid conversion into the inane belonging kind is achieved by his entrance and absorption into the circle of consumerism, in Eggers’s novel The Circle the story stops at the verge of completing a cycle also related to consumerism but with new posthuman nuances. Shirley’s and Gibson’s circle of consumerism and alcoholic drinks at the end of the millennium has been amplified in the more recent story to incorporate the transforming role information plays in our present lives. If Bauman focuses on fluidity, as mentioned above, McLuhan focuses on ratios. In Eggers’s story, the ratios that defined the traditional human individual are strongly disrupted by the ever-increasing information flows that constitute the main product that the Circle social network acquires, produces, and sells, together with its implementing technological tools. Built as an updated story of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon for the age of information and social nets, Eggers’s novel offers his readers an ironic perspective of a new type of belonging kind, characterized by the stupefied condition that you can see every day present in so many people who are unable to control the power that their smartphones have over them. The omniscient narrator in The Circle follows the progress of the young protagonist, Mae Holland, after she gets a job at the powerful technological corporation and social network, The Circle. From her new position, she will quickly advance to one of the most important and privileged ranks in the corporation, very close to two of the so-called three “Wise Men” who set up the company. The final and subversive aim of The Circle is to complete what they call “the circle of knowledge”—that is to say, to reach an absolute control of all possible existing information, an aim that

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demands the end of privacy and also, eventually, of human individuality. Eggers portrays his characters as beings linked to an updated repertoire of informational devices that force them to become progressively trapped and consumed by their own anxiety for info-consumption; they grow into the flesh and blood exemplification of McLuhan’s human electrode. Although Mae becomes increasingly absorbed by the multiple informational tasks that she is assigned, seemingly unaware of the dangers that they represent, we find in the figure of her ex-boyfriend Mercer the renegade who, close to McLuhan’s ideas, is not ready to accept the tyranny of the social network corporation. On the contrary, he foresees the gigantic dangers involved in the completion of the circle of knowledge. Where Mae, as Coretti did, stops being a self-conscious individual and is absorbed by the mechanical attraction of communitarianism, Mercer stays alert and self-conscious, avoiding his exposure to the new technologies and their increasing demands for personal information. Strongly recalling Orwell’s dystopian analysis of the authoritarian society in 1984, “Secrets are Lies, Sharing is Caring, and Privacy is Theft” become the new political mottoes of the social network. The maxims are attributed to Mae, but they have been subtly forced out of her mind by one of her bosses. The two “wise men” who actually control the company use such mottoes to justify the necessity to end privacy and install small devices, ironically called “SeeChange cameras,” all over the planet. The Shakespearean “sea change” extolled by Ariel to celebrate the mythic cycle of life in The Tempest becomes in Eggers’s novel a network of machines to find and control information all over the world. Thus, the new Circle will have access to all information flows and trap in it all existing beings. In a letter to his former girlfriend, self-conscious Mercer writes as follows: We are not meant to know everything, Mae. […] You people are creating a world of ever-present daylight, and I think it will burn us all alive. There will be no time to reflect, to sleep, to cool. Did it occur to you Circle people, ever, that we can only contain so much? Look at us. We’re tiny. Our heads are tiny, the size of melons. You want these heads of ours to contain everything the world has ever seen? It will not work. (Eggers, 2013, 547–548) In other words, Mercer recognizes the dangers of the ultimate extension of man and prophesizes a gigantic McLuhanean short-circuit if the circle of knowledge ever comes to completion. However, Mae is irreversibly trapped in her own dumbness. Her technologically narcotized condition does not allow her to stop believing that such completion will bring peace and unity to the world. She is no longer conscious of her extremely limited self and, like Narcissus, she is ready to jump into the waters of her own ruin. Eggers has constructed her as a prototypical antihero, but adapted her role to the

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posthuman environment foreseen by Wiener and McLuhan: the more important she becomes in the company, the more screens are added to her desk, the more messages she needs to answer, and the more online groups she needs to belong to. Increasingly, her personality is taken over by the technological extensions she has to use in her job. At an earlier stage, she can still cope with the demands: She was asked to sign a petition for more vegan options at lunch; she did. There were nine messages from various work-groups within the company, asking her to join their sub-Circles for more specific updates and information sharing. For now she joined the ones dedicated to crochet, soccer, and Hitchcock. (135) However, in line with Bauman’s analysis of fluid modernity, she is soon infected by ideas of “community first” and “transparency,” which eventually lead the protagonist and still center of consciousness to stop having any private life and to stay in The Circle premises, making her social life part of her job. Eggers details the process that turns Mae into a source of increasing income for the company in a formula that adds and mixes ideas of communitarianism to Wiener’s centralization of information and McLuhan’s theories on the modification of human ratios resulting from the use of extensions. In other words, the more influential the protagonist becomes, the more people follow her advice to purchase goods and services, and the more revenue The Circle obtains. Accordingly, within the social structure of the company, her so-called “conversion rate” increases on a par with her position in The Circle (319). As happened to Coretti, her private habits—symbolized in the activity of solitary kayaking—give way to her almost totally public existence when she enrolls in an experiment to go “transparent” and becomes the surveillance object of anybody who wishes to connect to her camera. In sequential episodes, Eggers describes the process by means of which a human being becomes almost totally self-amputated in the interrelation with her extensions. The result is that Mae becomes a living (?) camera-eye, whose main purpose is for everybody else to go “transparent” and thus complete the circle of knowledge. Induced by sinister Bailey, the “Wise Man” who eventually takes control of the company, Mae declares that “Secrets are lies” among the “stampeding applause” of The Circle’s multitude (385) in a public act that puts an end to Book I of the novel. The second part of The Circle opens with a reference to what eventually develops as the main symbol for Bailey, who is the eventual controller of everything in the corporation. He has planned an experiment with a tank of water where a turtle and some sea-horses are expected to coexist with a new species of shark which, as The Circle aims to do to the whole world, is transparent. Despite being regularly fed, the shark eventually kills and devours every living being in the tank, as a metaphorical indication that Bailey’s plan of “transparency” for the whole planet is the prelude to its

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devastation. The issue at stake is, of course, who may control the one who controls all information. As progressively—and seemingly unawares—Mae helps Bailey to convince people at The Circle and an increasing number of politicians alike to go transparent, Mercer’s previous words of warning become prophetic. SeeChange cameras are installed all over the planet, and Mae develops a conspiratorial scheme to control American democracy by means of a new social program called Demoxie or “direct democracy” (507–508).

5 After All, it is the Chase Again: Homo Homini Lupus As pointed out above, both Coretti in “The Belonging Kind” and Mae in The Circle follow a similar path of dissociation from their individual consciousness, motivated by a number of extensions that require the rearrangement or selfamputation of their former (human) capacities. By his sticky-touching coupling with the girl, a new uninsulated Coretti extends and is absorbed by the belonging kind. Thanks to her capacity to interact with technological devices, Mae’s individual perception is extended with similar results: she becomes narcotized by the need to attain all possible information, thus increasing her “conversion rate.” Alongside her process of being absorbed by the surveillance machines, she even brings about the public exposure of her parents’ sexual life (468–471) and, eventually, also the death of her former boyfriend. The protagonists of both narratives, in this sense, qualify as McLuhan’s unselfconscious creatures, whose extensions have brought about their narcosis and its subsequent devastating effects. Accordingly, there is another, important aspect that the two literary works share: the motif of the chase. If there is something that stands out in human behavior since the first historical records that we have, it is humanity’s proclivity to chase its own species, often to kill it or, at least, to subdue it. Whereas other hunting species usually chase other species for purposes of survival, humans have systemically hunted all other species but also themselves to the point of causing massacres, if not total extinction. In the two narratives analyzed here, the motif of the chase is also evident. Furthermore, in each of them it revolves upon itself to suggest the extinction of the human species. In Coretti’s case, the paradox is that the chaser ends up being the chased prize; the bait is sexual attraction, and the result is the development of a human individual into a non-thinking piece of the circle of consumerism. However, Mae becomes a believer and supporter of The Circle’s conspiracy to control all information in the world. While doing so, she also becomes the chaser of Mercer—her former boyfriend and McLuhanean defender of the human way. Mercer behaves as a prototypical old human; his extensions are his fashioned physical tools, among them his pen because he is even a writer of letters that he posts, not a consumer of technological devices that take control of you as soon as you use them. When, in her attempt to test the efficiency of the technological programs allegedly developed to suppress crime, Mae offers Mercer’s name to be localized by The Circle’s cameras, she is

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offering her ex-boyfriend as a human sacrifice to the new technologies, not to the new allegedly transhuman creatures who are actually controlled by the technological devices. The episode results in the ritual chase of the innocent human by a pack of thoughtless infrahuman beings which, like the transparent shark, are ready to pursue their need to know it all while devouring (their own) life in the act. Meanwhile, they remain unaware of the fact that they are not conscious beings any more but narcotized entities whose consciousness has been absorbed by the machines. Their technologically “enhanced capacities” have canceled not only their humanity but also any expectations of ever reaching the perfect transhumanist future that they seek. As the chase for Mercer comes to its end, it is obvious that Mae has also delegated her center of consciousness to a number of SeeChange cameras, of machines that serve the purpose of localizing her former boyfriend and make him panic. Mercer has become the “omega man” facing the new living-dead in the arena of The Circle’s technological traps: And while the cheers were growing louder, Mae saw [through the camera] something come over Mercer’s face, something like determination, something like serenity. His right arm spun the steering wheel, and he disappeared from the view of drones, temporarily at least, and when they regained their lock on him, his truck was crossing the highway, speeding toward its concrete barrier, so fast that it was impossible that it could hold him back. The truck broke through and leapt into the gorge, and, for a brief moment, seemed to fly, the mountains visible for miles beyond. And the truck dropped from view. (Eggers, 2013, 586)

6 Conclusion The fact that Mercer’s induced suicide, if not homicide, is not sufficient to make Mae recuperate her former humanity locates The Circle in the grounds of dystopic fiction, together with Shirley’s and Gibson’s tale. During the few decades that separate the first from the second narrative, the progressive numbness of developed societies has continued. If anything, the symbolic and more conceited arrangement of the cyberpunk text, which is open to denser interpretations, has given way to a remarkably “realist” depiction of human stupidity in The Circle, as if otherwise contemporary readers could not have followed complex narrative strategies in a story about the transformation of the human into the posthuman. It is also relevant to mention the fact that in both literary texts the protagonists hold degrees in higher education. They are learned persons who apparently could not be easily manipulated. However, the new condition of Coretti, Mae, and other highly qualified workers at The Circle is that of the “cogs and levers and rods” pointed out by Wiener. They are the slaves of the new social order—a pyramid in which a few people can climb up according to their position and their influence in the social net, but they will still be slaves, as symbolic easy prey for

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the shark that is at the top of the new network of (almost) total knowledge. Both works describe the formation of a new species—a fresh but unreflective slaved community that, as Bauman warns, is born as a mere wish to cope with the existential lack—“the main appeal of communitarianism is the promise of a safe haven, the dream destination for sailors lost in a turbulent sea of constant, unpredictable and confusing change” (2000, 171). The desire for plenitude, represented in the completion of the circle, seeks for its aim in the future. It lures people forward, to nowhere but their own self-destruction. As represented in the two literary works analyzed here, at the turn of the third millennium, the consumerist and, more recently, technological extensions of man have taken over the informational fluids that run our bodies. In both literary examples, such extensions are ultimately entropic, as they disguise or respond to an aspiration to get rid of bodily individualities in favor of a wish to know it all and live eternal lives. “The Belonging Kind” and The Circle unveil and describe Sterling’s human condition that “will be changed” in the near future, as the consumer and technological new versions of the old unattainable Lacanian sense of plenitude. In the course of the process, a higher ratio in fluid information seems to have accelerated our mental entropic condition (see Jackson, 1981, 61–91). As happened to Narcissus, such a condition means numbness, and it makes us easy prey to be controlled by the system, whatever or whomever the system might be. Ideologically, the new existential stage represented by the absorbing belonging kind and by the omnipresent SeeChange cameras stands very far away from the mythic Sea Change of the Jungian waters of primordial myth. The latter requires reflection and promises self-discovery, while the former represents the ultimate victory of the extensions over their human containers.

Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean. [1983] 1995. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Glaser. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Eggers, Dave. 2013. The Circle. Farmington Hill, MI: Large Print Press, Gale Cengage Learning. Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York, NY: Picador. Hayles, Catherine K. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Jackson, Rosemary. 1981. Fantasy, the Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen. Manganaro, Marc. 1992. Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority: A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Berkeley, CA: GINGKO Press. Miller, J. Hillis. 2005. “Henry James and ‘Focalization,’ or Why James Loves Gyp.” In A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 124–135. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Shirley, John & William Gibson. 1986. “The Belonging Kind.” In Burning Chrome, by William Gibson, 43–57. New York, NY: Ace Books. Sterling, Bruce. 1997. “Cyberpunk in the Nineties.” Sixth Interzone column. Available at: gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/00/Publications/authors/Sterling/interzone_six.txt. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. 2011. “Engaging Transhumanism.” In H+- Transhumanism and its Critics, ed. Gregory R. Hansell and William Crassie, 9–23. Philadelphia, PA: Metanexus Institute. Wiener, Norbert. 1954. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press.

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Subjects of the ‘Modem’ World Writing U. in Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island Margalida Massanet Andreu

1 Introduction: “Me? Call Me U.” In 2014 the American photographer John Stanmeyer managed to condense our hyper-connected modernity in just a picture. Signal (Stanmeyer, 2014) depicted a group of African migrants on the shore of Djibouti City seeking out the tiniest beat of wireless internet signal from Somalia to contact their families back home. While standing in a relay point between their past ordeals and their future hopes in Europe or the Middle East, all they seem to desire is an invisible link; a transient connection. Indeed, Signal shows, as Adam Greenfield brilliantly puts it, that technology is “every-ware” (Greenfield, 2010), omnipresent, and unrestricted. No wonder why World Press Photo awarded its Photo of the Year to such a vision. However, Stanmeyer also shed light on the pungent dichotomies resulting from the widespread of techno-scientific developments in a (dis)connected world. These individuals depict the magnitude of the process of globalization and symbolize the collision between the real and the digital, the present and the future, and what humans are and what we are to become. In other words, the symptom of the 2000s: a millennial uncertainty that results from the maturation of digital technologies and the relentless rhythm of the Internet. Such computational systems and their algorithmic induction seem to take the lead over humans, and the world that we once invented, now invents us in turn. Ellie Pariser manifests how “we’re now on the verge of self-fulfilling identities, in which the Internet’s picture of us becomes who we really are” (Pariser, 2011, 111). Beyond this, this feeling of dissonance has powerfully entered the bloodstream of Western capitalist societies and has imploded by means of right-wing populism, capitalist manipulation, and the widespread logic of a networked culture. Amid this rubble of digital and cybernetic technologies, posthumanism arises as a positive project that intends to question Western discourses on what it means to be human. Above all, in Elaine Graham’s words, it emerges as “a critical device designed to alert us to the choices and values inherent in our engagement with our tools and technologies” (Graham, 2004, 10). This philosophy is born in the depths of the millennial sensibility

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to map out our present and our presence in this world of contradictions, hence it implies a radical revision of the concept of the individual. But the sole fact of rethinking or rather “‘unthinking’ [it], requires the work of a madman, an alchemist’s imagination, and a pataphysical squint to carry out such dubious enterprise” (Bäckius, 2002, 281). The trustee for such a task could very well be the British novelist Tom McCarthy, who is preoccupied with global interconnectivity, borderless relations, and the scope of capitalism within everyday life and the field of the arts. His concerns are captured in the texts collected by the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious organization that the author founded in 1999. Just as Nicolas Borriaud notes in the introduction of the INS archive, “INS was cast in the dominant forms of its era—that is, the language of entrepreneurship, mass communication, and conspiracy theories” (McCarthy et al., 2012, 11). On account of these themes, McCarthy as the INS’s General Secretary, together with his appointed Chief Philosopher, Simon Critchley, and his peculiar cluster of thinkers whom he calls “Necronauts,” built an armory of documents that range from manifestos, interviews, and essays, to committee purges among others. These archives encapsulate reflections on avant-gardism, corporate culture, artifice and reality, and life and death that are ultimately mirrored in the author’s novels. In particular, Satin Island (2015) playfully makes a metafictional reflection on the importance of writing in a Networked present, and as James Elkins notes, if there were another novel that attends the issue of writing about writing, “it would consist of [one] that is concerned, generally speaking, with the Internet” (van den Akker et al., 2017, 204). In his novel, McCarthy distills the complexity of our era, and he proposes reflections on (1) contemporary subjects, (2) the increasing importance of corporation in Western capitalist societies, and (3) the dynamic role of literature to write the present and reformulate the future. Satin Island invites the reader to “meet U.—a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London” (Satin Island, blurb). This punctilious corporate anthropologist moves along the niches of the internet in an attempt to write The Great Report, “the Document … the Book. The First and Last Word on our age” (Satin Island, 56). Consequently, he surfs an endless stream of digital data while becoming obsessed with an array of apparently disconnected events like oil spills, parachuting accidents, or massive traffic jams. As he procrastinates in writing such a stoic project, U. portrays a world of unemotional selves, ongoing bufferzones, virtual (un)realities, and narratives that emanate from contemporaneity. In his endeavour, the protagonist also accounts for our deepest doubts: Are we more than bits of data? To what extent are we self-governing subjects? What do we write about in the Google era? What’s next? Knowing this, the objective of this paper is precisely to examine how McCarthy recasts subjectivity in U. first by conceiving him as a ‘dividual’—a relational being who stems from the embrace of techno-scientific developments.

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In inscribing the protagonist as a writer as well, the analysis moves to the second section, which tackles new modes of creativity that emerge from metamodern philosophies and their ways to resist our times. In connection to this, the last section points out how literature stands as a buffer-zone—a site that both gathers postmodern anxieties and pauses our timeless world to make U. and you active listeners of all current transmissions.

2 About U.(s): Contemporary Subjects Satin Island opens with McCarthy’s wink to the reader in having his character, U., stuck in Torino-Caselle airport in Turin—a scene that suspiciously resembles the African migrants at their stop-off point. Apparently, his flight has been delayed owing to a plane which, “ignoring all instructions, was flying in idiosyncratic patterns over Southern England and the Channel” (Satin Island, 4). While he waits for his flight, U. kills time “clicking through news and social pages” (Satin Island, 4) and around him, “more screens: of other laptops, mobiles, televisions. These last screens had tickers scrolling across them, text whose subjects included the air delay in which [he] was caught up” (Satin Island, 6). He portrays, in other words, the millennial phenomenon: uncountable network-addicts who are unanimously unaware of the human beings all around them. Digital technologies, as Gerda Roelvnik argues, make us “god-like” figures in a Godless reality and have radically changed “what ‘human’ means and what its relation to the world is” (Roelvink, 2015, 1). In view of this contemporary canvas of data and interconnectivity, it makes sense to have a man working for Man as the sole protagonist and narrator in Satin Island. As a corporate anthropologist in a large business, McCarthy’s hero analyses “structures of kinship; systems of exchange, barter and gift; symbolic operations lurking on the flipside of the habitual and the banal: identifying these, prising them out and holding them up, kicking and wriggling, to the light—that’s [his] racket” (Satin Island, 13). U. seems to have enough cultural background and critical capacity to scrutinize “patterns of behaviour and belief and so forth” (Satin Island, 97) and with these, shed light on a key contemporary dilemma: in the zenith of digitization, what are humans heading towards in the twenty-first century? The only certainty that we have at present is that the multidimensional networks that are meant to bring all of us closer are paradoxically tearing us apart and engendering fragmented subjects. McCarthy takes this modern feature as a starting point to create U., “a self who is split, ruptured, dispersed and interrupted” (McCarthy, 2010). Thus he rethinks the individual in a process that Zadie Smith labels “constructive deconstruction” (Smith, 2012); McCarthy deconstructs the traditional idea of an autonomous, independent, and self-expressive, yet inevitably fragmented individual by bringing U. down to the bare essentials: a subject solely left with ‘personhood’ (McCarthy, 2015c) and no emotions who is stuck in the atemporal limbo of

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the virtual—a space of pure facts and no events; “(events! If you want those, you’d better stop reading now)” (Satin Island, 13), he warns the reader. By contrast, the novelist constructs a “networked subjectivity” (McCarthy, 2015) that is understood through the Deleuzian notion of the ‘dividual.’ Gilles Deleuze understood the dividual as a fragmented subject which is, according to the philosopher, “endlessly divisible and reducible to data representations via the modern technologies of control, like computer-based systems” (Williams, 2005). Indeed, the concept of the modern (Western) individual is unimaginable without these fabulous data processors we have created; this is why in theorizing the dividual, affect theories play a crucial role. Dividualism is nourished from these theories in the sense that it both attends and sprouts from a set of impulses or “free-floating intensities” that arise, as Gregg notes, “in the midst of in-between-ness” (Gregg, 2010, 1). Yet, it is what affects do, rather than what they say what really matters (Garcia-Zarranz, 2017). They shape bodies and allow bodies to shape affects in turn, having the capacity to “act and be acted upon” (Gregg, 2010, 1) and converting affects per se into acts of (re)action and respons(a)bility: the responsibility to commit to an-other body and the ability to respond to the spirit of a particular sociohistorical moment. What it is being proposed is a fresh hermeneutical model to understand what humans are becoming in tandem with technological advances: beings in mutual co-dependency who have the potential to promote change. This power is precisely what inscribes the dividual within posthumanism; the new-born subject arises amidst a range of overwhelming ‘forces of encounter’ (Gregg, 2010), within the beats of advanced capitalism and extreme poverty, in between human or non-human interconnections. The protagonist is hyper-aware of the continuous flow of stimuli and the forces or intensities that emerge from the Internet; and precisely these are the ones which place U. “inside the universe of information and effectively of being, [a world that is] also incredibly anxious because you haven’t got it yet, it’s coming” (McCarthy, 2016). Furthermore, McCarthy also physically locates his peculiar ethnographer working right at the heart of this system, in a rather gloomy brick-and-plaster basement where U.’s office is situated. This is a site where he is actually wrapped around wires, cables, computers, and the ventilation system, through which he can hear: “voices hovered in the general noise—or if not voices, at least patterns, with their ridges and their thoughts, their repetition frequencies, their cadences and codas” (Satin Island, 15). This location grants U. with a privileged position from which he can observe the fuss of our modernity. Likewise, in the afterword of The Affect Theory Reader, Kathleen Stuart emphasizes the subject’s capacity to “sens[e] modes of living as they come into being” (Gregg, 2010, 340; emphasis added). This leads to acknowledge U. as a body-in-transit, an in-between subject that is able to adjust to and merge with forces of all kinds. On top of that, seeing digitalism through the lens of affect, the Internet is conceived as a fluid entity that “often transpires

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within and across the subtlest of shuttling intensities” (Gregg, 2010, 2). Only another fluid being, i.e. U. as a dividual, could possibly apprehend the scope of those intensities. Precisely U.’s job requires him to “garner meaning from all types of situation—to extract it, like a physicist distilling some pure, unadultered essence out of common-mongrel compounds” (Satin Island, 31). U. tries to recompose the mess of a reality in perennial transformation and he gradually becomes “the middle-man, the undertaker [who is] constantly grasping for the in-between-being, the intermezzo: the entrepreneur (from the Latin inter, between, and prendhere, to seize, grasp, capture)” (Bäckius, 2002, 290)—someone who (also) becomes data. In relation to this last point, there is a reason in having specifically a scientist as a sole narrator and protagonist describing a world in which we are the natives. Marilyn Strathern, who is also a social ethnographer, explains that anthropologists: route connections through persons, [so] they attend to the relations of logic, of cause and effect, of class and category that people make between things [and places]; it also means that they attend to the relations of social life, to the roles of behaviour through which people connect themselves to one another. (Strathern, 1995, 11) But far from finding the pattern of our age in his interconnections, U. rambles through apparently disconnected events like oil spills, parachuting accidents, old memories, or vague explanations about his major and only academic study about club culture. Despite U.’s emplacement within the system, there is still another element in the dividual equation. It is not only the fragmented ‘We’ which turns into a networked subjectivity; in Félix Guattari’s view, the ‘I’ also needs to be fragmented, dispersed and “a multiplicity with oneself’” (Guattari, 1996; in Gregg, 2010, 152). To make this last point clearer, the stylistic ingredients in Satin Island enable us to perceive how the ‘I’ is also a “We” when it comes to understand the complexity of the novel. The protagonist emerges in a double-tied narrative for he is an amalgam of people, meanings, and inputs that go beyond the borders of fiction. “Me? Call me U.” (Satin Island, 12) he announces in the manner of Melville’s hero in Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael” (Melville, 1986, 1). As McCarthy states, his character is also called “U. as in ‘you the reader,’ like Baudelaire’s hypocritical reader, the double, the brother. U. is the reader” (McCarthy, 2015c). Hence when Andrew Robinson in conversation with Crichtley argues that a dividual realizes itself as becoming part of someone or something else (Robinson, 2008), McCarthy’s U. might also become the reader or the other way round, in having the reader become part of the story itself, McCarthy eases the transmission of his radical ideas to resist our times. Gestures of micropolitical agency, as Braidotti so thoroughly points out in her multiple conferences, are precisely the means to rise to the challenge of

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recomposing the human. The emergence of the dividual, together with affective tenets regarding the capacity of bodies to “act and be acted upon” (Gregg, 2010, 1) pave the way for the creation of what I conceive as ‘Dividual affects’: a positive response to this sociohistorical context. In broad terms, the concept refers to those intensities that emerge from divided subjectivities and which have the capacity to transform the environment, including the subjects that inhabit it and to in-form (i.e. to reshape and report) about what is invisible beyond the screens and technological mirages. U. makes us agents of contemporary matters, he inscribes us within the system too and consequently endows the reader with the responsibility to act. In other words, (yo)U. catalyze(s) action. Let me illustrate the power of dividual affects with an example from the novel. About 30 pages into the book the protagonist finds out about his friend Petr having thyroid cancer: Hey, he said; you know that goitre they were going to take out? Yes, I replied. Well, he told me, they did; and then they cut it up to look at it, and it was cancerous. Shit, I said. Yes, he said. (Satin Island, 36–37) In view of this emotional wasteland of blunt monosyllables it is hard to believe that the reader empathizes with the protagonist; for this reason, William Deresiewicz tears U. apart when defending the numbness of such a character. He argues that he “does not experience emotions nor inspires them” (Deresiewicz, 2015, 42). In the critic’s view, this happens primarily due to his understanding of the dividual: “self-divided, self-opaque—empty at the center, inauthentic to the core” (Deresiewicz, 2015, 35); but there are several reasons why McCarthy chooses to devalue emotions in Satin Island. First, U. cannot be understood as an emotional individual. Emotions are, in fact, “narrativised, named and represented affects” (Vermeulen and van den Acker, 2015, 8). As McCarthy holds back any type of feeling, the only thing that remains is dividualism and U.’s potential to affect us. Second, his sharp comments must be framed within the confines of postirony. Lee Konstantinou sees ‘postirony’ as “a new emotional ground tone that succeeds that of postmodernism” and that “clashes with authenticity to render characters as flawed and complex subjects” (van den Akker, 2017, 85, 86). U.’s tactless manners do not imply that he does not commit to a human cause; quite the contrary, he commits to the real reader by exposing his antipathy towards his friend. But again, this is already occurring beyond the borders of fiction. Inherently human relationships seem to fray in the shadow of smartphones and computer interconnectivity. McCarthy brings these facts to the extreme in the portrayal of his character and the truth is that the more U. attaches to his impersonal principles, the funnier he is (Chancellor, 2015). Despite U.’s lack of empathy, he is a man who is hungry for reality and who is in a constant quest to make sense of the world around him. In view

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of the eagerness that U. displays for research, both for the company and for himself, Petr is only another knot in U.’s act of cartography. Consequently, when the expectations on recovery of this particular couple of friends thwart, U. becomes more interested in the origin of Petr’s odd treatment than on Petr himself: they shoot you full of orange juice? I asked. Not any orange juice, he said: they have to be Jaffa oranges, from Israel and the Lebanon, or Gaza, Palestine, the Holy Land—whatever you call that part of the world now. (Satin Island, 85) Again, the shift from the human to the banal has got an important connotation and “the thought of [Petr] being filled with Middle Eastern orange juice stuck with [him] for a day or two” (Satin Island, 85). So when he comprehends “all its hatred, all its violence, all its blackness, being injected into Petr, [he] knew—instinctively and with complete certainty—that he was going to die” (85–86). U. finally knows about Petr’s death through a text message that Petr’s wife sent “to everybody in the contacts file—taxi firms and takeaway restaurants and all” (137). Instead of U. thinking “at least he’s at rest; I’ll miss him; And so forth” he focuses, again, “[on] the message itself, its provenance” (137). His final hypothesis on his friend’s case is that if the network provider marked the sender as Petr, the contact on his phone was saved as Petr, “the sender was Petr” (137) and as long as users can “keep [their] network contracts running, and make sure a missive goes out every now and then” (137) they will have discovered the “Key to immortality: text messaging” (137). Death matters in U.’s world, but the matter of death seems not to affect him at all. In this view, it is hard to pin down such extreme human depiction in McCarthy’s novel, but the answer might lie in the provocations of digital technologies. The ongoing exposure to recurring images and inputs encompassing catastrophic kills, dismembered bodies, and drawn immigrants hand in hand with emotive love stories and acts of solidarity completely nullify human sensibility. U. only reacts to personal interrelations by making visible what is already occurring on a daily basis. Dividual affects however can prompt “connections that involve responsibility, commitment, and the relinquishment of some degree of freedom” (Deresiewicz, 2015, 42). U. strikes the reader as odd, but in doing so he makes us listen, and he makes us see the dormant problems in Western communities. U., then, takes a double-stand: on the one hand, while ridiculing our digitalised society, he paradoxically manifests that “who we are and who we can become transcends our data representations” (Williams, 2005) and on the other, by acknowledging the latent violence in the Middle East, he makes invisible matters matter. In fact, voicing the unspoken in hyperconnected societies might open the possibility for a future transformation of international

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politics. Moreover, he has exposed the information to the reader, and “whether we ask[ed] for it or not, the pattern is in our hands” (Haraway, 2016, 38). Here lies the potential of dividual affects; they ignite change, especially on account of the intense manipulations of present-day corporations and governments.

3 Buffer Zones: Hack or Sacked Satin Island does not develop as a “mania-inducing book” (White, 2015) for no reason. U. entraps the reader because he is inscribed within the current Western capitalist society as an individual, an employee and a writer. In fact, it is not a coincidence to have U. working for an elite corporation, the projects of which still remain a mystery. It is not an accident either that “the Company’s logo was a giant, crumbling tower. It was Babel, of course” (Satin Island, 43). The mythological tower is not only a source of conflicts and misunderstandings, as established in its myth, it is also a place of convergence that relates international communities and, in the neoliberal understanding, the site where consumer and anti-consumer tendencies are brought together and where transmissions really occur. As U. explains, anthropologists are needed in companies to analyse consumer patters across cultures and report back on common affinities. In other words, U.’s function in Babel is to “put culture in the service of capital” (McCarthy, 2016). In addition to that, by occupying such a position, McCarthy’s ethnographer is thrown into the abyss of inapprehensible loads of digital information, namely metadata or Big Data, and, in Matthew d’Ancona’s view, “the potential use of big data to manipulate financial markets and the political process is only now becoming clear” (d’Ancona, 2017, 48). In many ways, this recalls the Koob-Sassen Project that U. mentions in the opening of the novel. It is a project that the Company has pursued for some time and it “involved many hook-ups, interfaces, transpositions—corporate to civic, supranational to local, analogue to digital and open to restricted and hard to soft and who knows what else” (Satin Island, 12). It is an undertaking that everyone in the company talks about but nobody can fully understand. The truth is that the Koob-Sassen Project symbolizes the undertaking of digital capitalism as well as encompassing the ideology that is embedded, yet occult within the dogmas of a consumerist society; as reflected in the novel: it was a huge, ambitious scheme, he said, on the same scale as poldering and draining land masses of thousands of square miles, or cabling and connecting an entire empire—and yet, the most remarkable thing about it was that, despite its massive scale, it would remain, in an everyday sense, to members of the general populace, invisible […]. It was a feat, rather, of what he called network architecture. (Satin Island, 26–27; emphasis added)

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The architect or “the Company’s public face and poster-boy” (Satin Island, 41) in McCarthy’s novel is a “dusty-skinned man” called Peyman, who seems to fit the current CEO archetype. In his intentional pun regarding the name of U.’s boss, McCarthy portrays the man-in-power as well as the ideological inclinations of the present day society: while money stands as the ruling force within the social and the digital realms, the man-who-pays (i.e. Peyman) connects ideas, subjects, and institutions to the present; “and not just us: it worked the same way for the Company’s clients. That’s what they were buying into: connection and disconnectedness—to ideas, expertise, the universe of consequence, the age” (Satin Island, 41). In this sense, the most valuable investment of all is that of the future because “everything, as Peyman said, may be a fiction—but the Future is the biggest shaggy-dog story of all” (Satin Island, 84); it is the story that sustains power. Satin Island brings to light the myriad of fictions that revolve around us: advertisements, companies rebranding themselves under new mottos, narratives that involve the exploitation of Third World producers, and ideals that favor human isolation instead of physical connection. Indeed, McCarthy has a point in saying that we live inside a never-ending novel (McCarthy, 2017); one which is constantly written and re-written for the benefit of capitalism. All of these narratives become an essential part of The Great Report, U.’s vast and momentous task he has been entrusted to write. But in a time in which every movement that one makes, “each website that you visit, every click-through, every keystroke is archived by a binary-code software” (Satin Island, 123), the role of the writer and the place of literature seem to fade away. Regarding the writer, McCarthy is fascinated with the figure of the anthropologist because, on the one hand, he maps the diversity of human interactions and, on the other, he represents the writer without the embellished propositions and aestheticized moral lessons that liberal-humanist sensibility praises (Socken, 2013, 119). Thus, U. follows the principle in any science: to look at the world and report on it. In fact, from the initial chapters in the novel, U. clarifies that his official function is to extract meaning from a diversity of situations, yet what he does is exactly the opposite; he puts meaning in the world and, above all, he interprets it by rearranging the micro-systems of capitalism into a narrative. To do so, he conforms to the first commandment of the father of anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowsky, who claimed that the ultimate way to understand the mysteries of any culture (including our own) was to “Write Everything Down” and to “turn it all into data” (Satin Island, 69). Following these ideas, there is a reason to merge anthropology, capitalism, and literature; Mark Kingswell highlights that fiction is not just a medium to portray the complexity of the present, “it is an entire field of meaning without which such ideas would not be open to entertainment [and reflection]” (Socken, 2013, 118). Indeed, to harmonize the human and the non-human within the mainstream of cultural production also entails a major change in contemporary modes of writing. Some scholars propose to write through the

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lens of Metamodernism—a movement that involves a comprehensive reflection on the two literary titans that ruled over the last century: Modernism and Postmodernism. Metamodernism is conceived as a proposition that invests on a renewed meaning of the contemporary experience and it is characterized by “connectionism (as a mode of thinking), bootstrapping (as a way of identifying connections) and the principle of overlapping” (Dumitrescu, 2007). As the Greek prefix meta implies, this newborn tendency is historically located ‘with’, ‘among’, ‘between’ and ‘after’ previous sociocultural movements, those being Modernism and Postmodernism. But it also indicates that it is ‘about’ them. By defying and tackling these two tendencies at once, Metamodernism must be seen as a Post-Modern pendulum that oscillates between modern utopianism and postmodern doubt, “between sarcasm and sincerity, between eclecticism and purity, between deconstruction and construction” (van den Akker et al., 2017, 11), the human, and the digital. Given the verbal pyrotechnics used in Satin Island, it comes as no surprise to know that not only is U. an assemblage of literary (Modernist) voices, but so is the novel. McCarthy constructed Satin Island following the modernist legacy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and the avant-garde influences of Stéphané Mallarmé among others. What makes U. a metamodern character, however, is the fact that he is an active writer of the system, as well as a counter-writer who works right at the core of this machine, and thus he has got the power to disrupt its logic from within. Hacking the machine by one of its own operators is exactly what critics in posthumanism claim: to belong and to respond to the system. U.’s ways of rebellion however, are rather unconventional. In the opening of Satin Island, U. manifests the importance of what Peyman calls ‘The Great Report,’ because it is a project that will “sum the tribe up, speak its secret name” (Satin Island, 56). But knowing U.’s modus operandi in the Company, which is, succumbing to procrastination, it is easy to foresee that The Great Report will become a virtually endless endeavor. U. himself admits the vastness of such a project, and he reflects on how it is “present-omnipresent-and elusive: groping after its dimensions; trying, through mutual enquiry, to discern its composition, charge and limit” (93). Consequently, from his private and isolated bunker in the basement, U. spends time not writing his masterpiece because, of course: “The Great Report would not be something that was either to-come or completed, in-the-past: it would be all now” (72). When he realizes that he actually needs to note the Report down to bring it into existence, the greatest impediment that he finds is that it is “unplottable, unframeable, unrealizable; in short, … unwrittable” (117). This is no more than a fundamentally literary problem that echoes the dilemmas of postmodern and poststructuralist paragons: the collapse of Master Meaning, the attempt of writing an all-encompassing masterpiece, and the pervasiveness of literatureto-come. For this reason instead of actually working, U. spends time reading the news, watching videos of gigantic traffic jams with his colleague Daniel, or just staring at the buffering circle on his screen.

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Buffering moments are recurrent in the Company as a consequence of an apparent data overload, and they turn into ongoing handicaps which delay the process of production. No wonder why U. hears “Daniel swearing in the next room—Fucking Buffering!—and others shouting the same upstairs” (Satin Island, 67). But the situation does not seem to bother U. too much. In fact, these interruptions open up the space for the protagonist to analyze “the delays, the hiatuses that open up within the rhythm of the machine” (McCarthy, 2015, 140). But if the notion of buffering is carefully examined, three interesting definitions arise: it can be seen as “a temporary memory area in which data is stored while it is being processed or transferred”; “A person or thing that reduces a shock or that forms a barrier between incompatible or antagonistic people or things” and in chemistry, “a solution which resists changes in PH” (s.v. “Buffering”; emphasis added). Thus, the emergence of buffering or buffer-zones in Satin Island can have a threefold purpose: it can be conceived first, as a pause or a disruption of the ceaseless rhythm of the contemporary; second, as a pause and also a protection from the hostility of narratives to which we are exposed; and finally, as an act of resistance towards the agents of power. First, U. institutionalizes the moments of pause by writing and reporting on them; thus he is also pausing the rhythm of the corporate machine. In doing so, he steals time from a timeless world, he extends the notion of the present and holds in the abyss of time the idea of the future that is worth so much for Peyman and “which is always the ultimate trump card of dominant socioeconomic narratives of progress” (Matter, 2012, 270). Second, consciousness, according to the INS, moves in loops, “creating temporary bursts of ‘now’ness” (Matter, 2012, 272) and a moment for self-realization. With reference to this last point, U. takes pleasure in the act of pausing prior to an important event, such as meeting with Peyman, a figure of power. This instant is conceived as an Eden: “in the midst of all the overload and noise, a small, private act, and a small, private enclave for the act’s appreciation” (Satin Island, 47). As a protection, these moments of buffering detach U. from the rhythm of the Company, as he is unable to reach the information that he has been delegated. Furthermore, the so-called filter bubbles, those algorithms that customize our digital services and confine us to a particular kind of information determinism also stop working when the system collapses. Hence a buffer-zone is a twofold protection: one that avoids us entering in a loop and one that shelters us from the system. Finally, the buffering time-span becomes an act of resistance because it opens up a space for U. to fantasize about his role as a cultural pathfinder and his position in the Company. In these pauses, U. begins questioning Peyman and wondering “whether he wasn’t some kind of collective fantasy, a self-sustaining deity whose nature they didn’t really understand but in whom they still have to believe, because, well, if not him, then… what?” (Satin Island, 42–43). Slavoj Žižek sees illusion and fantasy as “simultaneously pacifying, disarming (providing an imaginary scenario which enables us to endure the

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abyss of the Other’s desire) and shattering, disturbing, inassimilable in our reality” (Žižek, 2002, 18). Following this, in Satin Island illusion and creativity merge into a double-edged weapon to use in contemporary times; as they are the means for corporations to construct our own reality, they are also the building block of literary works. In McCarthy’s view, literature entails an act of cartography that “bring[s] into sharp focus the trajectories of human lives, both singularly and in all their crowded multiplicity” (McCarthy, 2017, 203). To illustrate this last point, the author defends Michel de Certeau’s notion of society being a “giant scriptorium, a writing machine” (McCarthy, 2015a, 143) whose own data saturation has made the system completely illegible and meaningless. Given the fact that nobody and nothing can escape this huge scriptorium, as the totality of Western capitalists societies both transform and have been transformed into code. What de Certeau meditates is the possibility to break with “the logic of the machine” (McCarthy, 2015b) by conceiving reality as a text that needs to be analyzed and revisited by the writers and readers that form it. Buffer zones enable the space for U. to imagine and react to what he discovers along the way; but what if this giant structure was brought to a halt beyond the borders of fiction? The unprecedented pandemic caused by the Covid-19 crisis at the turn of the 2020s, together with the lockdown of most (Western) societies, has pushed us all into a reverberating buffer-zone: a noplace, a juncture in time that has paused and disrupted the restless corporate machine, a (sanitary) protection and also, a moment of collective realization. The conjoined forces of dividual affects have propelled a grand and communal gesture of micro and macro political agency over the globe. Paradoxically, connected (in)dividuals, that is “I” and “We” together, have unveiled what seems to be significant over bits and data: the lives that matter and the global urge for human contact over technology. Hence buffering has emerged in real life as a realization of what has been unaccounted-for and as an opportunity to rewrite human relations in a world flooded by mass production and capitalism. In a way, McCarthy instructs its readers how to understand the interruptedness, and he offers a proposal that teaches us how to apprehend a world which reveals itself in waves of matter, death, and fear, but also hope and (re)action.

4 U.topia: Writing YoU As stated in the previous section, We, like U., are active creators of the neoliberal world surrounding us. Ironically, the capitalist system shares with literature and anthropology the ongoing “investment in futurity and the hope of some sort of deliverance” (McCarthy, 2015). In this sense, the task of literature in a world where everything is already written is, according to McCarthy, “to make you listen … to a set of signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating in the airspace of the novel” (McCarthy, 2012b, emphasis added). Satin Island certainly demands a reader-reaction that is “responsively and responsibly aware of its [form and content]” (van den

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Akker et al., 2017, 153). As McCarthy understands it, form unsettles the novel’s content and “makes writing stir—not in the tranquil Wordsworthian guise of a fait accompli, but restlessly, as no more than potentiality and fragment” (McCarthy, 2017, 36). The potential to act and react is also where dividual affects lie. McCarthy unites the author, the writer, U., and the reader in the common project of constructing an alternative path to apprehend the political and social indifference of the present. This involves the writers’ reformulation not of fictional worlds, but of the real—what has been shrouded by a binary code because “fiction is already there [hence] the writer’s task is to invent the reality” (McCarthy, 2017, 57). In making visible what is behind our screens in networked societies, fiction attempts to claim back the idea of the Future which is constantly invented and reconfigured by corporations. Future, revolution, and fiction immediately recall Thomas More’s understanding of utopia: an individual and collective fantasy that moves us towards a “better place” but also towards a “no-Place” (Houston, 2017). On the first theorizations of Metamodernism, Vermeulen and van den Akker argued that the process of globalization under an ever-present capitalism has prompted the reappearance of utopian thinking (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010). In the formulation of utopia, however, one cannot dismiss the intrinsic connection of the term to its opposite, dystopia. In view of the scope of our own technological inventions and the politics that sustain them, it seems logical to see reality under this prism; dystopia implies a warning of what is to come—it is a story about the future, but so is utopia. It is hard to think of utopia nowadays because of its own nature: it is a project that is impossible by definition but at the same time, at present, it appears everywhere, just like ‘The Great Report.’ But this is precisely what metamodern writings defend. Paradoxically, if the worst case scenario is ruling the population, utopian thinking is the dogma for corporations and governments in the era of neoliberal globalization; ‘Make America Great Again’ was claimed during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, which would pave the way for mass inequalities, injustices, and a serious outbreak of racism. This is just an example of why it is so urgent to reclaim utopia in our writings or, as Chloë Houston insists, “we risk allowing others [i.e. free-market capitalism] to claim it instead” (Houston, 2017). The progression and hope inherent in utopias are precisely the same that bring U. to Staten Island at the end of the novel in an attempt to find the master pattern of the age and to discover the dull underbelly of the satin reality. Of course, he does not find an ultimate meaning; but what prevails is the action that he carries out after his final frustration: U. “start[s] walking, past the growing stream of people, out of the terminal and back into the city” (Satin Island, 173). He literally goes back to the heart of the matter to keep questioning the machine. He returns to his buffer-zones where fantasies occur because U. is a dreamer, an illusionary, flawed man that is still needed in literature. As Rutger Bregman notes in his Utopia for Realists, “without all

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those wide-eyed dreamers down through the ages, we would all still be poor, hungry, afraid, stupid, sick and ugly. Without utopia, we are lost” (Bregman, 2016, 29). And without U. and you there is nothing to hope for.

5 Conclusion: Back to YoU Professing an alignment with McCarthy’s witticism, it is necessary at this point to bring this paper down to its own moment of pause; a buffer-zone that will open a space for reflection. Satin Island brings to light how globalization, together with the increasing prominence of emergent economies and the rapid advances in digital technologies, has transformed the foundations of Western capitalist societies in the past decade. As a result, the prevailing networked culture is growing into an increasingly dehumanizing space in need of critical response—one that Postmodernism cannot longer grant. This is why some scholars advocate for a new millennial sensibility called Metamodernism—a proposal that resorts to modern enthusiasm and postmodern doubt to harmonize the conflicts in the current state of affairs. Humour becomes a weapon for writers to shape our notions of human relations, and it is a poignant playfulness that attracts readers to McCarthy’s Satin Island. U. is a convergence of characters, ideas, and also of all of us. The author detaches the readers from his character by making him appear a desensitized, arrogant, and tragicomic individual, yet in doing so, he also attaches us to each other. U. promotes collective thinking in inviting the reader to reflect and respond to shattered selves, to promote empathy, and to resist indifference in order to pave the way for different possibilities of social and cultural progress. He makes relations matter in a world of “apocalypse, when every fiber of our being is interlaced, even complicit in the webs of processes that must somehow be engaged and repatterned” (Haraway, 2016, 39). The protagonist certainly knows about the power of these patterns and of how Peyman’s narrative of the future needs to be yielded to a buffer-zone, an instant of implosion. Indeed, Satin Island hands us the knowledge and the relay of our present by enabling a space for imagination. Perhaps as new-born dividuals in this posthuman universe, we should start considering fiction as a site for revolution but also evolution and progress. So look at U. in his endeavor to portray this world of ironic contradictions: despite the dreamy trials and countless errors, he still tries to rewrite the present, and, in doing so, he accidentally writes all of us: subjects and objects of a digitalized, hyper-connected, modem world.

Bibliography Baciu, Ciprian, Musata Bocos, & Corina Baciu-Urzica. 2015. “Metamodernism—A Conceptual Foundation.” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 209: 33–38. Bäckius, Per. 2002. “Other Work: A Dividual Enterprise.” Ephemera, 2(4): 281–293.

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Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan, MI: Michigan University Press. (Kindle edition). Bregman, Rutger. 2016. “The Return of Utopia.” In Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek. The Correspondent. (Kindle edition). Chancellor, Will. 2015. “Terms of Endearment: Satin Island by Tom McCarthy.” Electric Literature. Accessed August 28, 2018. Available at: https://electriclitera ture.com/terms-of-endearment-satin-island-by-tom-mccarthy-c078a4491313. Critchley, Simon. 2010. How to Stop Living and Start Worrying. Cambridge: Polity Press. d’Ancona, Matthew. 2017. “Welcome to the Digital Bazar.” In Post-Truth, The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back, 46–51. London: Ebury Press. Deresiewicz, William. 2015. “Diminishing Returns.” The Nation. Accessed July 26, 2018. Available at: www.thenation.com/article/diminishing-returns. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dumitrescu, Alexandra. 2007. “Interconnections in Blakean and Metamodern Space.” Double Dialoges on Space, 1(7). García-Zarranz, Libe. 2017. “An Ethics of Sustainability for the Post-Truth Era: Response-ability in the 21st Century Canadian Fiction.” Paper presented at the Cultural Politics of In/Difference, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, November 2017. Gibbons, Alison. “Postmodernism is Dead.” The Times Literary Supplement. Accessed August 2, 2018. Available at:www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/postmodernismdead-comes-next/. Graham, Elaine. 2004. “Post/Human Conditions.” Theology & Sexuality, 10(2): 10– 32. doi:10.1177/135583580401000202. Greenfield, Adam. 2010. Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Gregg, Melissa & Gregory J. Seighworth. 2010. The Affect Theory Reader. London: Duke University Press. Haraway, Donna J. 2016. “Staying with the Trouble: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene.” In Anthropocene or Capitalocene, ed. Jason W. Moore, 34–77. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Houston, Cloë. 2017. “Good Place is No Place.” The Times Literary Supplement. November 22, 2017. Accessed September 8, 2018. Available at:www.the-tls.co.uk/ articles/public/utopia-dystopia-twenty-first-century. International Necronautical Society. 2014. “Declaration on Digital Capitalism.” Artforum, October 2014. Accessed September 8, 2018. Available at: www.artforum. com/print/201408/the-international-necronautical-society-48220. McCarthy, Tom. 2010. “In Conversation: Lee Rourke and Tom McCarthy.” The Guardian. Accessed June 18, 2018. Available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ books/11479806/Tom-McCarthy-a-Kafka-for-the-Google-age.html. McCarthy, Tom, et al. 2012. The Mattering of Matter Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society. Berlin: Stenberg Press. McCarthy, Tom & Simon Critchley. 2012. “On Truth (and Lies) in Literature.” Onassis Foundation USA. Video file (1:27:24). Available at: https://vimeo.com/ 116911004.

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McCarthy, Tom. 2012b. Transmission and the Individual Remix: How Literature Works. Vintage Digital. (Kindle edition). McCarthy, Tom. 2015. Satin Island. London: Penguin Random House. McCarthy Tom, James Corby, & Ivan Callus. 2015. “The CounterText Interview: Tom McCarthy.” CounterText, 1(2): 135–153. McCarthy, Tom. 2015b. “The Death of Writing- if James Joyce Were Alive Today He’d be Working for Google.” The Guardian, March 7, 2015. Available at: https:// www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/07/tom-mccarthy-death-writing-jam es-joyce-working-google McCarthy, Tom. 2015c. “Tom McCarthy (Event 2015).” Interview by Stuart Kelly. 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival, 30 August, 2015. Podcast audio. Available at: www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/tom-mccarthy-2015-event. McCarthy, Tom. 2016. Recessional—or, The Time of the Hammer. Zurich and Berlin: Diaphanes. (Kindle edition). McCarthy, Tom. 2017. Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays. New York, NY: The New York Review of Books. (Kindle edition). Pariser, Eli. 2011. The Filter Bubble or What the Internet is Hiding from You. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Robinson, Andrew. 2008. “Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance.” Contemporary Political Theory, 7: 451–456. Roelvink Gerda & Magdalena Zolkos. 2015. “Posthumanist Perspectives on Affect.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 20(3): 1–20. doi:10.1080/ 0969725X.2015.1065106. Schiller, Dan. 2000. Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Smith, Zadie. 2010. “The Two Directions for the Novel.” Changing my Mind; Occasional Essays, 72–96. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Socken, Paul. 2013. The Edge of Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age? London: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Stanmeyer, John. 2014. Signal in “Digital Storytelling Collection 2014.” World Press Photo. Accessed October 15, 2019. Available at: www.worldpressphoto.org/col lection/photo/2014/29628/1/2014-john-stanmeyer-ci1. Strathern, Marilyn. 1995. The Relation. Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press. Van den Akker, Robin, Alison Gibbons, & Timotheus Vermeulen. 2017. Metamodernism. Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield International. Vermeulen, Timotheus & van den Akker, Robin. 2015. “Utopia, Sort of: A Case Study in Metamodernism.” Studia Neophilologica, 87: 55–67. White, Duncan. 2015. “Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, Review: ‘Induces Mania’.” The Daily Telegraph. Accessed August 19, 2018. Available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/books/bookreviews/11436670/Satin-Island-by-Tom-McCarthy-review-inducesmania.html. Williams, Robert W. 2005. “Politics and the Self in the Age of Digital Re(pro)ducibility.” Fast Capitalism 1 (1). Last accessed August 15, 2018. http://www.uta.edu/ huma/agger/fastcapitalism/1_1/williams.html. Žižek, Slavoj. 2002. “Passions for the Real, Passions of Semblance.” In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 5–32. New York, NY: Verso.

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The Paradoxical Anti-Humanism of Tom McCarthy’s C Traumatic Secrets and the Waning of Affects in the Technological Society Susana Onega

1 Introduction Tom McCarthy came to public notice in the literary scene in 2006, after the re-publication of Remainder by the commercial publishers Alma Books (in the UK) and Vintage (in the US). Written in 2001, Remainder was first published in 2005 in a limited run of 750 copies printed by Metronome Press, a non-profit-making, experimental French organisation where avantgarde artists, writers and curators collaborate to produce printed projects, mixing art and literature. McCarthy’s first written novel, Men in Space, published by Vintage Canada in 2012, had also been published by Alma Books in 2007. This allegiance to avant-garde art is a salient aspect of McCarthy’s work. In 1999 he co-founded the International Necronautical Society, an art collective aimed at promoting conceptual art—that is, an art in which the concepts or ideas involved in the work take precedence over aesthetic, technical and material concerns. The concept around which the Society’s production develops is death, its members being “death-marked creatures, defined by matter” (Auerbach), or “necronauts.” Its etymology— from the Greek nekros (“corpse” or “dead”) and nautes (“sailor”)—suggests that necronauts are questers ready to undergo near-death experiences in order to explore the Underworld. The essay seeks to demonstrate that Serge Carrefax, the protagonist of McCarthy’s third novel, C (2010), perfectly responds to this definition. In an interview with another necronaut, the philosopher Simon Critchley, conducted by Tom McCarthy in the “Office of Anti-Matter” of the Austrian Cultural Institute in London, Critchley argued that the culmination of modernity, signalled by the proclamation of the death of God, led Nietzsche to theorise two forms of nihilism: the passive nihilism synthesised in Schopenhauer’s reflection: “nothing has any meaning, therefore I’ll affirm the void and I’ll affirm practices of the self—yoga, tantric sex…” (Critchley, 2002); and the active nihilism represented by the conflict within Russian culture between “a pro-Europe, liberal reformist view of Russia on the one hand, and on the other people who believed in the creative power of destruction through acts of violent insurrection to overthrow the stale

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liberal order” (2002). To this, Nietzsche added his own third position through the theory of eternal return or recurrence, “affirming that this universe is not for us, that we are here by sheer chance” (2002). The capacity to assert the complete meaninglessness of the universe again and again is a kind of moral test that makes one equal to the force of eternal return. These ideas about the modern condition are fully endorsed by McCarthy. In various reports, manifestos and media interventions made as General Secretary of the Necronautical Society, as well as in interviews, in conversations with artists and in his essays Tintin and the Secret of Literature (2006) and Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017), McCarthy has repeatedly expressed his strong anti-humanist bias, his abhorrence of middle-brow aesthetics, his admiration for romantic, modernist and postmodernist writers with a nihilist, an existentialist and/or a visionary stance, and his allegiance to experimental French movements like the nouveau roman and the OULIPO (Ouvroir delittératurepotentielle). After Remainder and Men in Space, McCarthy published C and Satin Island (2015). Although different in many respects, the four novels display the same bias against the traditional concerns with character, motive and authenticity of what McCarthy derogatorily calls “sentimental humanism” (McCarthy, 2010a), and respond to his conceptual outlook on art as they are romans à these, their characters illustrating the main idea in all his novels: “the death drive basically” (McCarthy, 2011b, 7). When Lee Rourke asked him why he abhorred sentimental humanism, McCarthy responded: I think culture should disrupt; it should be troublesome. If it’s a mirror, it should be the cracked one that Joyce talks about; or Lewis Carroll’s one that opens up on huge abysses; or the mirror in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée, where you look into it and you don’t see yourself reflected back, instead you see the void—you see death at work, “like bees in a hive of glass.” (McCarthy, 2010a) This answer situates McCarthy in line with visionary British writers like Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair or Jeanette Winterson, who firmly believes that: “If it doesn’t shock, it isn’t art” (Gerrard, 1989, 13). The main difference with her being that, while Winterson’s renewal of the novel involves taking the sentimentalism of the romance to a point of saturation and excess, McCarthy’s self-imposed task is to remove any traces of affective surplus from his fictional works. C is probably McCarthy’s most accomplished example of a conceptual novel developing around the idea that human beings in the technological age are necronauts. McCarthy situates its story time “between 1898—when Marconi was doing some of his earliest experiments—and 1922, which is the year the BBC was founded” (2010b). These dates mark the development of communications technology and the life span of Carrefax. As he explains, C

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was designed as “a cradle to grave nineteenth-century bildungsroman. But to me that was a kind of Trojan horse” (2010b, 7). This comment, which is typical of McCarthy’s fostering of inauthenticity, conveys a serious warning about the thematic complexity of the novel. He enhanced this complexity when he explained how he had the idea for the novel while setting up a project called “Calling All Agents” at the Institute of Contemporary Art: I was reading about Alexander Bell and Marconi and early radio and all these motifs kept coming back. Particularly dead siblings. Every inventor of communications technology—they’ve always got a dead sibling. Then I was reading Ada by Nabokov, which is a book about incest and telecommunications. Nabokov describes trunks in an attic as being like sarcophagi. So I started thinking about Carter and Carnarvon, who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb, which is another incestuous family crypt. And suddenly I got the idea, crystal clear, to write this kind of overlay of ‘The Wolf-Man’ and Carnarvon and Carter and Bell and Marconi. All these things came together and I saw the whole arc. (McCarthy, 2010b, 7–8) This description conflates two motifs related to trauma and death: the dehumanisation generated by the development communications technology that climaxed in the First World War; and the incest trauma that led to the suicide of Serge’s elder sister, Sophie, and Serge’s melancholic nihilism, modelled on Sigmund Freud’s case study of Serguéi Pankéyev, “The WoolfMan.” Carrefax and Pankéyev share first names and develop the same symptoms after the suicide of their beloved sisters. But while Serge’s melancholia is overtly described, the motif of incest is more covert and complex as, beneath Serge’s and Sophie’s incestuous attachment there lurks a more intractable incest and family conflict, detectable only in Mrs Carrefax’s drug addiction and melancholia and Mr Carrefax’s total disregard for his wife and children.

2 The Birth of the Technological Society and the Waning of Affects Serge’s life neatly illustrates McCarthy’s above-quoted comment that in Cocteau’s Orphée: “you see death at work, ‘like bees in a hive of glass’.” He is born in Versoie, a silk factory situated near the imaginary English districts of West Masedown and New Eliry (McCarthy, 2011a, 3), whose origins go back to the ancient loom brought by Mrs Carrefax’s Huguenot ancestors, exiled from Lower Saxony in 1796 (27). This establishes a symbolic connection between the mechanisation of human lives brought about by the industrial revolution and the massive raising and killing of silkworms. This connection is enhanced by the detailed description of Serge’s birth with a caul in the first section of the novel. McCarthy has fostered the idea— endorsed by various critics (Lanone, 2014, paragraph 9; Staunton, 2018,

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97)—that “Serge is born with a caul like Dickens’s David Copperfield” (McCarthy, 2013, 671). However, this statement responds to what Dennis Duncan acutely describes as McCarthy’s habit of planting references to canonical literary and critical touchstones “in the upper layers of the text, to test us by their illusion of depth” (2016, 12). Instead of delving into these obvious intertexts, Duncan recommends that we consider “their apparent moments of slippage” (12), when authorial intentionality is denied through a “slip” or “glitch” that “punctures the text’s mimetic performance” (13). Serge’s caul is a feature that he shares with Pankéyev (and with Freud). After Sophie’s suicide, Serge suffered from the same related ailments as the Wolf-Man: chronic constipation and “de-realisation, the sense that the world was hidden from him by a veil” (Ellmann, 2010, 70), and, as Maud Ellmann explains, “Freud traces this veil-delusion to the fact that Serge [sic] was born with a caul” (70). But the caul is also symbolically related to copper wires and cocoons. Dr Learmont, the GP assisting in the birth, had been summoned by Mr Carrefax with a (faulty) telegram sent from his workshop (McCarthy, 2011a, 6), and he arrived in Versoie in the same trap that was bringing the coils of copper wire (3, 9) Mr Carrefax was anxiously expecting for his experiments in telecommunication. This suggests that what links Serge with Dickens’ character is the latter’s family name: Copper-field. As Simeon Carrefax confides to the doctor, he “ha[d]n’t slept all night” (12), not, however, out of worry about his wife’s extremely difficult and lingering labour, but because he had been fixing the F and Q quirk in the telegram (12). When Dr Learmont says that the baby was born with “[a] caul. A veil around his head: a kind of web. It’s meant to bring good luck—especially to sailors.” (13), Mr Carrefax replies: “Sailors? […] get this damn thing working and they won’t need luck. There’ll be a web around the world for them to send their signals down” (13). Besides strengthening the symbolic relationship between Serge’s caul and the world wide web, Mr Carrefax’s answer constitutes an ironic metacomment, as Serge will survive numberless atrocities throughout the First World War through sheer good luck and he will die on the Borromeo, a Far East Liner (299), thus proving his condition as a necronaut. The association of Serge’s caul with copper wire foreshadows his obsessive recording and transcribing of random radio signals during his sleepless nights at Versoie; his efficient and deadly activity as aircraft observer during the war; and, eventually in Egypt, as “Pylon Man” (273) sent by his godfather, Samuel Widsun, to pave the way for the construction of the British Empire Wireless Chain (242). But the symbolism of the caul also extends to cocoons. Dr Learmont describes it as “a silky hood” (9), and when Sophie sees her mother feeding the baby while the maids unravel her hair, she associates them with “the Chinese women pulling at their strange dark balls in the silk tapestry above them” (13). This association provides a striking image of deafmute Mrs Carrefax-as-silkworm delivering the cocoon containing her child/ larva. Furthermore, when Dr Learmont goes to the workshop to report Serge’ birth, Mr Carrefax distracted replies: “Came out smoothly? The girl had to be

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dragged out” (13), thus suggesting that Sophie was also born with a caul. Given that the children in Mr Carrefax’ school are deaf-mute, the comparison between human beings and silkworms (and other insects like honey bees) reproducing themselves and being killed on a mass scale in the silk factorycum-school, can be applied to humankind in the technological society at large. This equation is foregrounded throughout the novel. For example, during Mrs Carrefax’s labour, the buzzing produced by her husband’s experiments in telecommunication invade her bedroom with an intermittent mechanical sound that the doctor compares to “the less agitated, less electrical” buzzing coming from the beehives (11). At the beginning of the novel, we see two-and-a-half-year-old Serge first playing with some wooden blocks with geometric figures and the figures of animals painted in profile (20) and then smashing a toy soldier with one of them in order to flatten its face (21). A few minutes later Sophie enters the room and forces him to remove his pants so that she can send a telegraph to the Admiralty “tapping his little penis with her index finger” (22). After his release, the discomfited child goes out in search of his mother and finds her in the Crypt Park in an apathetic drug-induced condition (8). In The Shell and the Kernel, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok argue that the child’s process of introjection, or successful transition from the maternal to the social realm, cannot take place without the constant assistance of a mother endowed with language (1994, 127–128). When this process is rendered impossible by some sort of traumatic relationship to the mother, the child reverts to the pre-linguistic stage of food-craving (128). Therefore, the fact that Mrs Carrefax is deaf and that, like the school children, she is forbidden by her husband to use the language of signs that would allow her to express her emotions (McCarthy, 2011a, 7), is rather significant. Disappointed with his mother’s lack of affective response, little Serge undertakes two destructive actions: he kills a wasp that had fallen into the honey pot (24); and throws the wooden blocks into the stream, with the result that he falls into the water (25). He is saved from drowning by Maureen, the affectionate, motherly maid, who does not hide her opinion about his parents: “Incapable and arrogant! Can’t even bother to look after what they’re lucky enough to still have…” (26). Their inadequacy as caretakers is a key psychological factor in the development of the children’s incestuous attachment. In this traumatic context, Sophie’s playful use of Serge’s penis as a telegraph becomes the starting point for his life-long association of technology with erotic desire and, after Sophie’s suicide, with death. During Sophie’s mechanically engineered burial in the family crypt, the hum of the steel rails conveying her coffin grows into “vibrations […] moving from the ground into his feet and up his legs, then onwards to his groin” (80). Covering his crotch with his hands to hide his erection, Serge wonders whether the crypt’s wall would be “the portal to beyond, the vicar’s heaven?” (83). He then feels “a heaviness enter his stomach, as though something foreign were being lodged there […] a pronounced, visceral sensation,” like that of “a pregnant woman” (83), but also like a “big ball of dirt” (90). In Abraham and Torok’s terms, this

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is the moment when Serge, unable to believe in the vicar’s heaven, creates a crypt in his unconscious for Sophie’s phantom. Soon after, he becomes ill with constipation and a blurring of vision that, like the Wolf-Man, he describes as “a veil” (91). He is sent for treatment to Klodeˇ brady Baths (85)—a fictional central European spa that has been compared to the sanatorium that inspired Thomas Mann to write The Magic Mountain (Lanone, paragraph 19), and is also clearly indebted to the clinic in Munich where Sergéi Pankejeff was treated of the same symptoms and (like Serge) fell in love with his nurse (Ellmann, 71). The specialist, Dr Filip, diagnoses Serge with what the ancients called “chole, bile—black bile, mela chole,” an illness provoked by “autointoxication” with “[m]orbid matter” (91, 95), which needs “a host to nurture it, and you are willing [… to] serve its needs, make them your own” (95). This suggests a struggle between Serge’s desire to keep Sophie alive in the crypt he has created for her, perceived as the weight of a child in a pregnant woman; and the morbid matter he feels as the weight of a lump of carbon, affirming her death as, according to Baudrillard, matter is the remainder of reality that limits the perfect murder the world (2002, 60–62). Serge’s contradictory perception of the weight in his stomach as an unborn child and as a lump points to the central role of carbon in the history of life and death. Serge’s fellow pilots associate it with death by fire and are, therefore, terrified of being “carbonisé[s]” (McCarthy, 2011a, 145, 164). However, Professor Falkiner, the chief archaeologist at Sedment, considers that the carbon saturating the earth of the catacombs is the “basic element of life” (292). This dual role of carbon is echoed by Serge’s association of sexual desire with death. Thanks to the murky mineral water of the spa Serge evacuates part of the ball of dirt and temporarily alleviates his blurred vision. But it is only after having sex with Tania, the nurse, taking her, like the Wolf-Man, from the back (114), that “the gauzy crêpe that’s furred his vision for so long is gone—completely gone, like a burst bubble or disintegrated membrane” (114). This description conflates the archetypal symbolism of the rending of the veils with the opening of the cocoon after the metamorphosis of the chrysalis, when the butterfly emerges ready to fly, as Serge does in the second section, “Chute,” after enrolling in the RAF. With its strong religious connotations (Gospel of Mark 15:39), the rending of the veils constitutes the stage in the hero’s quest that heralds his acquisition of prophetic or occult knowledge. H. P. Lovecraft explicitly associates this phase with insect metamorphosis when explains that The Necronomicon was originally entitled Al Azif—azif “the word used by the Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons” (Lovecraft, 1938, 1). In Isis Unveiled Mme Blavatsky places it in the context of cyclical time (Chapter 9) and the ancient Egyptian knowledge of electricity (Chapter 14, 528). The rending of his veils grants Serge the aweinspiring power to see “an endless space […] with piercing clarity. What he sees is darkness, but he sees it” (114). This description echoes McCarthy’s comment that Maurice Blanchot’s interpretation of the Orpheus myth

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expresses a desire for “death itself [… a] surrendering to a vertigo that can never be mastered, to an abyss that can never be commanded, or excavated or filled in” (McCarthy, 2010a).

3 Traumatic Secrets and the Derealisation of the World As a child and youth, Serge’s only salient characterological trait was his obsession with listening to, recording and interpreting radio waves. His psychological depthlessness—what Catherine Lanone calls “an unbearable flatness of being” (paragraph 13)—is echoed by his incapacity to make sense of three-dimensional images (McCarthy, 2011, 39), so that he sees the world with the two-dimensionality of maps, films, Egyptian art and the Realtor’s game that he and Sophie ended up playing in their minds. During the war, Serge increased his inborn capacity to create virtual images of reality directly, without technological equipment, by rubbing cocaine into his eyes (156), and combined it with his equally extraordinary capacity to interpret sound transmissions to create soundscapes marking enemy positions. His posthuman capacity to derealise the world into its virtual representations situates Serge in the position of Nietzsche’s active nihilist, a believer in science exerting the creative power of destruction through acts of violent insurrection. During the war, he massacred enemies with a chilling indifference comparable to Critchley’s description of the Nazi Holocaust as “the application of technology to mass murder” (Critchley, 2001). But his relationship to death is erotic, rather than dispassionate. The first time he takes cocaine before flying, he feels the urgent need to ejaculate “[a]s they dip low to strafe the trenches” (158); and, after a stupendous intake of several drugs provided to him by the army, he is flooded by euphoria in the teeth of death: He likes it when the bullets come close—real close […] when this happens he feels like he’s a matador being passed by the bull’s horns, the two previously antagonistic objects brought together in an arrangement of force and balance so perfectly proportioned that it’s removed from time […]. The sky takes on a timeless aspect too [… and], by extension, history itself seems to hang suspended. (158) As already suggested, Serge’s erotic attitude to death and his desire to stop time stem from his denial of Sophie’s suicide. His denial of death explains his lack of concern for his own safety and for the atrocities he commits. When he is told that he has killed a whole sector with his bombing, he murmurs: “I don’t see it this way” (159). As the narrator explains: What he means is that he doesn’t think of what he’s doing as deadening. Quite the opposite: it’s a quickening. A bringing to life. […] it’s an awakening. A setting into motion. In these moments, Serge is like the

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Eiffel Tower, a pylon animating the whole world, calling the zero hour of a new age of metal and explosive, geometry and connectedness—and calling it over and over again, so that its birth can be played out in votive repetition through these elaborate and ecstatic acts of sacrifice. (159) This consideration of himself as a communications pylon calling the zero hour of a new technological age endlessly repeating itself in a Nietzschean loop of eternal recurrence points to Serge as the agent of creation of the “new victim order” characterised by violence and mourning, general indifference and profound disaffection that, according to Baudrillard, is the corollary of the technological society. What prompts his endless massacres is his desire to commit “the perfect crime,” that is, the “murder of reality,” through “the actualization of all data, the transformation of all our acts and all events into pure information” (Baudrillard, 2002, 25). In the virtual world that Serge seeks to create there is no point of origin or differentiation between true and false, real and virtual; simply, the endless “acting-out” of his “phantasies by having them pass for the real” (35) that would allow him to escape from the “terrifying objectivity of the world” (37). This explains his indignation when his execution by a German firing squad is interrupted by the news of the war’s end (McCarthy, 2011, 189). In Serge’s virtual world, there is neither death nor distinction between human beings and machines: Of all the pilots and observers, Serge alone remains unhaunted by the prospect of a fiery airborne end. […] The idea that his flesh could melt and fuse with the machine parts pleases him. […] he imagines […] brain and connecting rod merging to form one, ultra-intelligent organ, his back quivering in pleasure as pumps and pistons plunge into it, heart and liver being spliced with valve and filter to create a whole new, streamlined mechanism. (164) Serge’s double function as product and agent of creation of his imagined technological society responds to the etymology of the word “technology.” While science belongs to the realm of reason, techne- belongs to the realm of epistemology. Thus, techne- allows for the transformation of the natural into the artificial in the double sense of technological innovation and artistic creation. By refusing to commit suicide and opting to embrace the darkness, Serge situates himself in the position of Agamben’s melancholy subject, as McCarthy himself explains: Giorgio Agamben, when describing melancholia (which Serge has in spades), says that the condition isn’t at all a detachment from the world, even though it may seem like it; in fact it’s an investment in the

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Like Serge, Sophie gave great importance to controlling matter and derealising the world. She killed Spitalfield, Maureen’s cat, to turn it into a mechanical dummy (McCarthy, 2011, 61), and she became an expert in chemistry, entomology, botany and the interpretation of codes, cyphers and encrypted messages (47). When Widsun gave Sophie some encrypted texts from the Ministry of Communications (47), she started making a map with the decoded information, but was soon appalled by her discoveries. As she told Serge little before killing herself, her activity had made her “sensitive” (75), she could feel the weight of the impending global conflagration predicted by Widsun’s encrypted messages. This made Serge think that she “had turned herself into a receiver” (74). That is, he recognised in Sophie a fellow communications pylon. The conversation took an unexpected turn when Serge casually referred to Mr Carrefax as “Father,” provoking Sophie’s snort: Father! […].“He is not your … It is the other. Monarch. Didn’t use paraphyletic. […] He taught me the transpositions. Then he’ll slink into my dormitory, and wreak carnage […] I’ll have to kill him in me or there’ll be more bodies: segments, on the battlefield. (74) Sophie’s inarticulate answer makes Serge shiver with “the sense that Sophie’s talking about things he’s simply not equipped to understand” (74). Referring to this episode, Derek Attridge has written: “For the first time, I find the enigmatic quality of the text a little frustrating […]. Does Sophie have sex with Samuel Widsun?” (24). This expression of uncertainty by such a gifted reader points to the extreme narrative elusiveness of something Serge suspects: Widsun’s harassment of teenage Sophie. But her incoherent words hide even more traumatic secrets. Her remark that Serge’s father was the “Monarch” signals Widsun as Serge’s real father, as Widsun was mistakenly crowned as Zeus—with Mrs Carrefax as his wife Ceres—at the end of the mystery of Proserpine and Ceres, the pageant played by the deaf-school children on June 25, 1911 (McCarthy, 2011, 50). The accidental transfer of the Olympian crown from Carrefax to Widsun acts as an emblem of the adulterous relationship between Widsun and his best friend’s wife. During her labour, Mrs Carrefax hinted as much when she had a chloroforminduced vision of “a river with a water snake, swimming towards [her]” (9) since, according to Freud, snakes symbolise repressed sexual desire or inner conflict about how to express or experience sexuality (Jung, 1961, 318). The idea that Widsun might be Serge’s father is also unwittily conveyed by Mr

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Carrefax when he calculates the date of Widsun’s earlier visit to Versoie: “When was it? ’Ninety-seven? ’Ninety-eight? Best part of a year before the boy was born at any rate” (McCarthy, 2011, 47–48). This disturbing message is prefigured by one of the ancient tapestries hanging in the Store Room of the silk factory, which shows “a throned king being handed a baby by his queen, or perhaps one of the palace servants, while courtiers whisper to one another in the background” (32). Serge misses these signals until Macaulay, his superior in Cairo, “tells him, in a voice that’s laced with fondness: ‘I can see your father in you’” (267), meaning Widsun, the Ministry of Communications high-rank officer who had sent Serge to Egypt. Although Sophie refers to Widsun only as Serge’s father, she also says that he “[d]idn’t use paraphyletic” (74)—a taxonomy term meaning that a group of organisms are not descended from a single ancestor. As her convoluted sentence is in the negative, she means the contrary, that Widsun’s relation to the Carrefax family is “monophyletic”—that is, that he is the common ancestor of the two children (Carr). Finally, Sophie’s interest in the reproductive pattern of several generations of plants “from a single parent flower” (McCarthy, 2011a, 40)—what Clair, the tutor, disapprovingly describes as “Endogamy” […] “Perversion of royal houses” (40)—provides symbolic confirmation that the harassment of teenage Sophie by “the Monarch” is a fatherdaughter incest. Sophie’s decision to commit suicide in order to “kill him in me or there’ll be more bodies: segments, on the battlefield” (74) combines, then, two intractable traumas caused by Widsun: her sexual harassment; and her prescient knowledge that the technological society that he is engineering will lead to the First World War. In an essay on Georges Perec’s La Disparition (1969), McCarthy indirectly provides an explanation for the elusiveness of the incest motif in C when he attributes Perec’s decision to write the novel without using the letter e, “not only the most common letter used in French (as English) prose, but also the core of the words père and mère,” to the fact that “Perec’s parents had fallen victim to the Nazis” (66). Lurking beneath the apparent playfulness of Perec’s Oulipian novel, McCarthy finds “the real” in the form of a traumatic event. As such, the real takes the form of a void involving “the violent rupture of the very form and procedure of the work itself […] the point at which the writing’s entire project crumples and implodes” (69, 70). This description of the traumatic real in La Disparition can be applied to C as the perception of Sophie’s unmentionable incest trauma ruptures and implodes Serge and Sophie’s overt erotic attachment. Her abhorrence of the impending war and her incapacity to change the atrocious future that she has predicted, shows Sophie overwhelmed, like Serge, by the “terrifying objectivity of the world” (Baudrillard, 2002, 37), with the difference that, while she commits suicide, Serge opts for the ultimate act of rebellion: to derealise the world. As Baudrillard observes: In a real world, death too becomes real, and secretes a commensurate horror. Whereas in a virtual world we dispense with death and birth

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In the third section of the novel, “Crash,” Serge takes a flat in Bloomsbury and enrols in the Architectural Association (McCarthy, 2011a, 200). The spectrality of this area of London after the war echoes Eliot’s Waste Land, Dante’s Limbo and the mythical Underworld. Its streets are crisscrossed by hordes of hollow men and sickly children evincing clear signs of suffering and/or post-traumatic apathy or euphoria (200). Serge is attracted by places like Mrs Fox’s Café in Little Newport Street, whose “clientele seems to be criminals of one sort or another […]. He likes the ambience: the sense of being in some kind of nether world whose air is rich with covert signals …” (201). When he meets Audrey, a music-hall actress, he immediately recognises the fellow cocaine addict in her (202). Together, they frequent seedy public places in search of drugs and participate in the general post-apocalyptic frenzy. Audrey has a mentor, Dr Arbus, a wealthy and powerful politician, who, as Serge eventually discovers, is nothing other than Samuel Widsun (237). Given the symbolic association of post-war London with Dante’s Limbo/the Underworld, this discovery points to Widsun’s true symbolic function as that of Hades, not Zeus. Like many Victorians, including Mr Fairfax, who had installed “a small transmitting aerial” (McCarthy, 2011a, 77) in Sophie’s coffin to record her signals from the beyond, Audrey firmly believed in the afterlife and regularly attended spiritualist séances with the hope of communicating with her dead brother Michael. The first time that Serge accompanies her, he is fascinated by the performance. During the part known as “table-talking” (226), he “can hear his heart beating […] fast, making his chest throb against his shirt” (229). However, he soon realises that what is making his chest throb is the ammeter that he has in his pocket, which is recording variations in electric current whenever the table tilts, thanks to some form of wireless control (229). The fraud makes Serge furious (230), much more so as he thinks that the information used by the medium to lure her desperate clients requires a network of collaborators outside the hall (232), with someone “behind it all, […] a ‘control’ […] sitting back at home, counting the proceeds of this remote manipulation of human automata” (232). This is the nearest that Serge is to developing a conspiracy theory based on the fraudulent use of the new technologies according to a secret plan devised by sinister and powerful actors to control the whole world, precisely Sophie’s shattering discovery about Widsun’s role at the Ministry of Communication. When Serge exposes the fraud in the next séance, Audrey becomes “catatonic” (McCarthy, 2011a, 234) with shock. Deprived of hope in transcendence,

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she is left in “this world, the only world, in which a table is just a table, paintings and photographs just images made of matter, […] and the dead dead” (235). But the effect is no less shattering for Serge, as the inexistence of an afterlife gainsays his determination to rescue Sophie from the realm of the dead. He attempts to deny this reality using the same suicidal mechanism of derealisation that he had employed throughout the war. After a huge intake of drugs, he starts driving faster and faster “to get things moving […] so that he can get them still again, re-find the stasis in the motion” (235). At last, the speed is so high that the landscape turns into a screen engulfing him, just before the car rotates and crashes, landing upside down on a ditch, with Serge trapped in its torn metallic structure, his mouth full of earth, feeling like “a mole being stuffed” and interred in his “own crypt” or “carapace” (236). Thus, instead of the exhilarating, erotic sense of arresting time that he used to achieve during the war in life-threatening situations, Serge is violently confronted with the ineradicable reality of the world. After a long convalescence, Widsun recruits him as expert to choose the site for a new communications pylon for the British Empire Wireless Chain (242). The fourth and last section, “Call,” takes place in Egypt. On the boat trip from Alexandria to Sedment, Serge meets Laura, an archaeologist with a thesis on the myth of Osiris, “the deity of death and resurrection”—or as Serge puts it, of “res-erection” (McCarthy, 2011a, 280). As she explains, after his sister Isis restored Osiris’s dismembered body and conceived Horus “with the one part of him that she couldn’t find and so was forced to remake for herself” (280), Osiris, swallowed the sun and rose “to inseminate each day,” thus “bringing about the repetition of creation, the timeless present of eternity. The ancient Egyptian cosmology had no apocalypse, no end: time just went round and round …” (281). This myth provides the model for Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return and for Serge’s nihilistic aim to assert the meaninglessness of the universe again and again. After listening to Laura, Serge says that “Isis was a coherer” (284), thus comparing her reunification of Osiris’s body parts with the gathering together of scattered signal particles by “old [radio] sets operated through coherence” (284), precisely the function Serge attributed to Sophie the night before her suicide (74). Laura explains that, in the chapter of the Egyptian Book of the Dead entitled “The Book of the Pylons,” Isis and Osiris’s incestuous son Horus is hailed as the “first pylon of the Still-Heart” (284; emphasis in the original), and that “[p] ylons were gateways—to both temples and the underworld” (284). This strengthens the association of Isis, the coherer of scattered body parts/signal particles, with Sophie, the interpreter of codes, cyphers and encrypted messages; and of Serge-as-Pylon Man with Osiris/Horus, Isis’s brother/son with the double task of arresting time and opening up the gateway connecting the worlds of the living and of the dead. The ancient Egyptians left scarabs with inscriptions in the heart cavity of the mummies as emblems of “Khepera, god of both the rising sun and matter—matter that’s on the point of passing from inertness into life” (286). Scarabs, then, symbolise reincarnation as a process of

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transformation from inorganic to organic matter. In Sophie’s chemical terms: the quickening of inert matter through the combination of carbon with other elements. In Serge’s experience at the spa, it is the difference between the carbon lump blocking his intestines and the mineral water that disintegrates it; and in entomological terms, it is the metamorphosis of the chrysalis into a butterfly. In the Greek myth, Orpheus descends to the Underworld to rescue his dead wife, Eurydice, who, in her desperate efforts to escape from satyrs assaulting her on their wedding day, had fallen into a nest of vipers and been mortally bitten on her heel. Like Orpheus, Serge descends to the catacombs in Sedment to rescue Sophie. Led by Laura, he traverses in pitch darkness a claustrophobic downward labyrinth of unprocessed burial chambers, covered in hieroglyphic writing and clattered with objects and bones (McCarthy, 2011a, 296), until they reach a chamber with a stele “showing two central figures, one male and one female, seated behind the other, the woman whispering something into the man’s ear” (296). After reading the hieroglyphics with difficulty, Laura concludes that they are Ra/Horus/Osiris and his beloved sister/mother/wife Isis. Echoing Freud’s view that pleasure is inherently intertwined with death, in the chamber Serge and Laura are seized by an uncontrollable erotic impulse that culminates with them having sex on the floor clattered with debris, bitumen and bones. During the act, Serge is overwhelmed by the feeling of being in “an orgy: as if the two of them, their bodies, had become multiplied into a mass of limbs, discarded wrapping and excreta of a thousand couplings, a thousand deaths” (297). Therefore, he pays no heed when he feels an insect sting on the ankle (297), although Laura had told him that the word “‘sarcophagus’ means ‘flesh-eating’” (290). This is the process initiated by the sting. As the flesh-eating poison enters Serge’s blood flood, he starts having hallucinatory reveries about “insects moving around a chessboard” (300); then he realises that “all the insects have combined into a single, giant one” and that he is the insect “connected to everywhere, to all imaginable places” (300), “a giant […] insect-radio mounted on a plinth or altar” (301). After relocating all cabin-stations and tuning in with a radio channel called “Incest-Radio,” Serge finds the special chamber he was looking for. As it opens itself up to him, he is “bathed in […] the source noise, the source signal, at the very point of origin” (304; emphasis in the original). In other words, Serge has accomplished both Horus’s task of opening up a gateway to the other world and Osiris’s task of arresting time and bringing the cosmogony back to its point of origin, the timeless now that would allow for its endless repetition. Finally, Serge finds himself in a ceremony combining his “coronation” and “marriage” (304) with Sophie (307), both wearing typewriters’ carbon ribbons on their foreheads (305–306), a pylon adorned with dead flowers emerging from his waist. That is, he becomes Horus-asgateway, or in ancient Greek terms, an embodied axis mundi or mediator between the two worlds, like Orpheus, the poet/prophet with the shamanistic task of healing the split between the spiritual and the material world through

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the sacrificial rituals of the imagination. However, unlike the transcendental world revealed to Orpheus, “the whole kingdom over which [Serge] and his new wife are being anointed is negative […] in the strict photographic sense” (306). In other words, it is just an endlessly reproducible carbon copy of the real world, like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or the emotionally flat, simulacral faces of stars expressing not only the waning of affects and the lack of agency brought about by commodification in the age of mechanical reproduction, but their traumatised condition as well. This simulacral and posthuman character of the new world imagined into being by Serge is made explicit by the combination of words and acronyms referring to myth, information technology and biology in the names given to Serge and Sophie by the priest crowning/marrying them: “Serge’s is ‘Ra-Osram-Iris.K4-CQD’; his bride’s is ‘CY-Hep-Sofia-SZGY’” (306). When Sophie utters the secret word that “contains all messages ever sent, and all words ever spoken,” the chamber’s walls blow up and the dead are “catapulted out of the earth” (308), carrying Serge along with them. The new world he enters is the abyss of darkness and death he had glimpsed after the rending of his veils and had sought to recreate as aircraft observer, as he finds himself “rushing backwards through a black and endless void. He’s merging with the void: seared, shot through, carbonisé” (308). This ending, with Serge’s body reduced to inert carbon residue, leaves the protagonist in the position of Cocteau’s Orpheus according to McCarthy’s interpretation; that is, in the position of ultimate melancholic rebel in the technological age.

4 Conclusion The futility of Serge’s sacrificial quest qualifies C as an example of “The Novel after Melancholia” (Vermeulen, 2011, 254), a type of novel emerging in the 1980s in response to the trauma paradigm, characterised by the articulation of subjectivity and identity “in relation to experiences of woundedness, survival and loss” (254). In contrast to traditional trauma narratives, which, following Freud, represent mourning as the normal, healthy response to loss, and melancholia as pathological and self-destructive, these novels tend to naturalise melancholia in order to articulate “a post-melancholic politics” (255). Vermeulen finds this endeavour problematic in various respects. One is the fact that, since melancholia “is accompanied by ‘self-loathing’ and ‘numbed disconnection’ from other people and the world” (257), it forecloses the novel’s traditional role of individualising the characters and presenting their environment in detail. Related to this is the melancholic subject’s incapacity to share his or her memories of loss or trauma, and so, of participating in the construction of group identities, thus precluding the promotion of intersubjective and intercultural bonds (257). As we saw in the Introduction, these are precisely the challenges McCarthy set himself when he rejected the contemporary cult of the individual and the representation of the absolute authentic self of sentimental humanism and chose instead to depict Serge, as well as Sophie, as

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emotionally flat and melancholic characters, suffering the effects of their technologically biased education. However, as the analysis has attempted to show, beneath Serge’s and Sophie’s melancholia there lurks a barely perceptible and intractable family secret that shows them as affectively starved and deeply wounded members of an alienating family, a deeply traumatised society and a reckless power-seeking capitalist and imperialist civilisation, silently soliciting the readers’ empathic unsettlement. While we are shocked and moved by the traumatic experiences that led teenage Sophie to commit suicide, our response to Serge’s nihilistic task to derealise the world provokes awe and admiration as it constitutes an emotionally charged and heroic attempt to bring Sophie back to life by arresting time and joining her in a virtual world of eternal recurrence where the difference between life and death does not hold, even if he can do so only at the cost of entering the void and condemning himself to live the same traumatic events again and again.

Bibliography Abraham, Nicolas & Maria Torok. 1994. The Shell and the Kernel Vol. I, edited, translated, and introduced by Nicholas T. Rand. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Attridge, Derek. 2016. “Tom McCarthy’s Fiction: A Reading Diary.” Études britanniques contemporaines, 50, 1–37. doi:10.4000/ebc.3015. Auerbach, Antony. 2000. “International Necronautical Society, INS.” Vargas Organisation, London. Available at: www.vargas.org.uk/artists/ins/index.html. Baudrillard, Jean. 2002 [1995]. The Perfect Crime. Translated by Chris Turner. London and New York, NY: Verso. Blanchot, Maurice. “Orpheus’ Gaze.” 1955. In The Space of Literature. 1989, 171–176. Translated and introduced by Ann Smock. Lincoln, NE and London: Nebraska University Press. Blavatsky, Helena P. 1877. Isis Unveiled. Theosophical University Press Online Edition. Last updated March 28, 2019. Available at: www.theosociety.org/pasadena/ isis/iu-hp.htm. Carr, Steven M. 2012. “Monophyletic, Polyphyletic, & Paraphyletic Taxa.” Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman. Available at: www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Taxon_ types.htm. Critchley, Simon. 2001. “Interview with Simon Critchley.” Interview by Tom McCarthy. March 23, 2001. Available at: www.necronauts.org/interviews_simon.htm. Duncan, Denis, ed. 2016. Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi Limited. Ellmann, Maud. 2010. The Nets of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Sigmund Freud. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Gerrard, Nicci. 1989. “The Prophet.” New Statesman and Society, 2 (65): 12–13. Jung, Carl C. 1961. “Freud and Psychoanalysis.” 1949. In The Collected Works of C. C. Jung Vol 4, 301–323, edited by Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham and Gerhard Adler. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Lanone, Catherine. 2014. “‘Only Connect’: Textual Space as Coherer in Tom McCarthy’s C.” Études britanniques contemporaines, 47. doi:10.4000/ebc.1769.

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Lovecraft, H. P. 1938. A History of the Necronomicon. Garman, AL: The Rebel Press. Available at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_the_Necronomicon. McCarthy, Tom. 2010a. “In Conversation: Lee Rourke and Tom McCarthy.” Interview by Lee Rourke. The Guardian, September 18, 2010. Available at: www.theguardian. com/books/2010/sep/18/tom-mccarthy-lee-rourke-conversation. McCarthy, Tom. 2010b. “To Ignore the Avant-Garde is Akin to Ignoring Darwin.” Interview by James Purdon. The Guardian, August 1, 2010. McCarthy, Tom. C. 2011a [2010]. London: Vintage. McCarthy, Tom. 2011b. “Interview with Thom McCarthy.” Interview by Fred Fernandez Armesto. The White Review, February 1, 2011. Available at: www.thewhitereview.org/ feature/interview-with-tom-mccarthy-2. McCarthy, Tom. 2011c [2006]. Tintin and the Secret of Literature. London: Granta. McCarthy, Tom. 2013. “An Interview with Tom McCarthy.” Interview by Matthew Hart, Aaron Jaffe and Jonathan Eburne. Contemporary Literature, 54(4) (Winter): 656–682. doi:10.1353/cli.2013.0048. McCarthy, Tom. 2017. “Get Real, or What Jellyfish Have to Tell Us About Literature.” In Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. Essays, 57–67. New York, NY: The New York Review of Books. McCarthy, Tom, Simon Critchley et al. 2012. The Mattering of Matter: Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society. Introduction by Nicolas Bourriaud. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Staunton, Ben. 2018. The Aesthetics and Ethics of the Absent Subject in the Novels of Tom McCarthy. Unpublished PhD thesis. University Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3. Vermeulen, Pieter. 2011. “The Novel after Melancholia: On Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten.” In The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern, ed. Martin Middeke and Christina Wald, 254–67. London and New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

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Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016) Transhumanism, Trauma, and the Ethics of Premature Cryopreservation Carmen Laguarta-Bueno

1 Introduction The possibility of reversing aging and, ultimately, overcoming death, are two of the most widely discussed subjects in transhumanist circles. British biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey has described ageing as a “deadly pandemic disease” (2007, 78) and has stressed the need to “develop ways to turn back the clock of ageing” (2018). For his part, transhumanist philosopher Zoltan Istvan—founder, in 2014, of the US Transhumanist Party—has even described death as “the first major challenge for the species to overcome to truly transcend our biology” (Istvan, 2018). Although slowing down (and, eventually, reversing) the aging process is something that still remains a long way off, Bostrom keeps his hope and believes that someday anti-aging medicine will become a real possibility. Meanwhile, he argues, “cryonic suspension should be made available as an option for those who desire it” (2005, 10), as future technologies will perhaps make it possible to bring the cryopreserved back to life, and cryonics, in any case, “carries better odds than cremation or burial.” As Courtney Weaver points out, cryonics first entered the public imagination in the 1960s, after the publication of Robert Ettinger’s The Prospect of Immortality—a work in which the American professor of physics and mathematics expressed his conviction that if a human being was frozen at the exact moment of death, he or she could eventually be brought back to life at some point in the near future. As Weaver explains, after the publication of Ettinger’s work, cryonics societies sprung up in California and Michigan, the first person to undergo cryopreservation being University of California psychology professor James Bedford, whose body was cryopreserved in 1967 (2015). Nowadays, companies such as Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the USA or KrioRus in Russia already offer customers the possibility of having either their whole bodies or just their brains cryopreserved for slightly less than US$40,000—even if with no guarantees. In the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of Alcor’s website, the foundation states that “cryonics procedures should ideally begin within the first one or two minutes after the heart stops, and preferably within 15 minutes.”

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Furthermore, the foundation makes it clear that, under current American law, cryopreserving a body that is not legally dead is “a crime regardless of what that person’s wishes may be” (Alcor). Thus, in order to start the procedures, Alcor must “wait for an independent authority to declare that illness or injury has caused the heart to stop, that further medical care is not appropriate, and that therefore legal death has occurred” (Alcor). This makes one wonder what would happen if future laws allowed freedom of choice in this matter, which is precisely one of Don DeLillo’s main concerns in his 2016 novel Zero K. The book, which has been described as DeLillo’s “most persuasive [novel] since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, ‘Underworld’” (Kakutani, 2016), offers an autodiegetic account of 34-year-old Jeffrey Lockhart’s traumatizing trips back and forth to the Convergence, a secluded cryonics facility where first his father’s dying wife, and then, his healthy billionaire father, await to have their bodies cryogenically suspended. Being strategically located in the middle of the desert between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, a place with a “harsh geography, beyond the limits of believability and law” (DeLillo, 2016, 254)—thus, free from any legal constraints—the Convergence counts with a special unit for patients who willingly decide to prematurely undergo cryopreservation: the Zero K unit. These people are referred to as “the heralds” in the story, and the unit that gives the novel its name is precisely predicated on their “willingness to make a certain kind of transition to the next level” (DeLillo, 2016, 112, 238,). Despite its recent release, Zero K’s thematic wealth, as well as its peculiar linguistic features, have already attracted the attention of a considerable number of academics, who have approached the novel from different perspectives (see Schaberg, 2017; Glavanakova, 2017; Maffey and Teo, 2018; Cofer, 2018; Ashman, 2019). Surprisingly enough, the critical framework provided by trauma studies has not been used, to this date, to analyze DeLillo’s novel. Nonetheless, the writer’s formal and thematic choices in Zero K point to the fact that an analysis from this framework might be both appropriate and necessary and might complement the study of the novel from the perspective of transhumanism, bringing to light DeLillo’s moral perspective in relation to some of the present debates that surround the idea of cryonics. Thus, this chapter argues that, while constructing a narrative of trauma, DeLillo adopts a critical posthumanist approach and denounces the disembodiment and dehumanization inherent in the idea of suspending our present lives—leaving behind our present embodied existence, our more intimate relationships, and our problems and responsibilities—with the uncertain hope of being brought back to life in the future to enjoy eternal life, with or without our loved ones. Ultimately, as this work examines, Zero K proves to be a novel that argues for the need to learn to cope with our problems and responsibilities in the present and to accept illness and death as integral parts of being human, enjoying the present moment and establishing strong relationships with those around us.

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2 Zero K as a Trauma Narrative In her seminal work How We Became Posthuman (1999), Katherine Hayles traced the origins of the posthuman condition to the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, a series of annual conferences that took place from 1943 to 1954 and which brought together well-known researchers of the time, such as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, and Warren McCulloch (7). What emerged from these meetings was a new theoretical model of communication and control that applied equally to animals, humans, and machines (Hayles, 1999, 7). Of special importance is the fact that, under the cybernetic paradigm, information began to be regarded “as an entity distinct from the substrates carrying it,” or “a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form” (Hayles, 1999, xi). In other words, the cybernetic paradigm enforced a separation between information and materiality. This separation allowed, according to Hayles, “the construction of a hierarchy in which information is given the dominant position and materiality runs a distant second” (1999, 12). The result of this was, as Hayles claims, “a new way of looking at human beings” (1999, 7). Thus, human beings started to be regarded as data, code, informational pattern, and its embodiment, the body, as “an accident of evolution” we were now in a position to correct (Hayles, 1999, 12). This (posthuman) view of identity allowed, in turn, for a perception of human beings as “essentially similar to intelligent machines” (Hayles, 1999, 7). According to Hayles, the problem with the “deconstruction of the liberal humanist subject” carried out under the cybernetic paradigm was precisely that it proceeded mainly “along lines that sought to understand human being as a set of informational processes” and left embodiment out of the equation (1999, 4). Because it reinscribed traditional humanist ideas and assumptions—more specifically, the Cartesian mind/body divide—the cybernetic version of the posthuman was regarded by Hayles as a continuation rather than a break with the liberal tradition (1999, 5–6). What was “lethal” was, according to Hayles, “not the posthuman as such but the grafting of the posthuman onto a liberal humanist view of the self” (1999, 286–287). In fact, for Hayles, that particular cultural moment, with its ongoing dismantling of the liberal humanist subject, showed an enormous potential to “put back into the picture the flesh” that had been erased under both the humanist and the informational paradigms, and envision instead an embodied posthuman subjectivity (1999, 5). In the following passage, Hayles sketched out her vision of the posthuman as an embodied being: If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates

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finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. (1999, 5) The need “to remind information of its forgotten or repressed materiality” would become, according to Stefan Herbrechter, a key concern of critical posthumanism (2013, 94). One of the tasks of critical posthumanism is precisely to engage in a process of “persistent deconstruction” (Herbrechter, 2013, 44) that prevents liberal humanist values from reinscribing themselves in “new forms within posthumanist and, in particular, transhumanist discourses.” Taking Hayles’s and Herbrechter’s ideas as its point of departure, this chapter argues that DeLillo adopts in Zero K a critical posthumanist approach, as he constructs a narrative of trauma to denounce the disembodiment and dehumanization inherent in the transhumanist idea of undergoing premature cryopreservation. Thus, Zero K is a novel that shows many of the features that are typical of the narratives of trauma, both formally and thematically, such as a traumatized autodiegetic narrator, a minimalist style of narration, and constant chronological disruptions. The novel is divided into two different parts separated by a six-page section entitled “Artis Martineau.” It opens with the protagonist and narrator Jeffrey Lockhart’s retrospective account of his arrival to the Convergence. From Jeffrey’s perspective, readers learn that he is there to accompany his father Ross, whose dying second wife Artis Martineau has decided to undergo cryopreservation. Suffering from several disabling illnesses, but being multiple sclerosis “largely responsible for her deterioration” (DeLillo, 2016, 8), Artis’s ailing body has reached a point of natural collapse. Upon the recognition that her days are numbered—and being apparently skeptical about the dogmas of any organized religion—Artis has decided to place her hopes of immortality in the Convergence’s technologies.1 She hopes to be brought back to life in the future, when, as her husband Ross Lockhart explains, “there are ways to counteract the circumstances that led to the end” (DeLillo, 2016, 8), that is, when there is technology available that can reverse the symptoms of her illness. Her husband Ross shows himself to be supportive and understanding; he does not seem to be bothered by the fact that she has renounced spending her last days with her loved ones. Jeffrey, by contrast, is more skeptical. From the very moment that he sets foot on the Convergence, he conveys his reservations regarding the cryonics facility and its endeavor. Thus, he claims to feel disoriented, to experience a “sense of enclosure and isolation” (DeLillo, 2016, 16) and even expresses his wish to get out of the complex. Ultimately, he shows himself to be uncertain about Artis’s decision to undergo cryopreservation: “I’d come to pay the briefest of visits and say an uncertain farewell” (DeLillo, 2016, 4). It is precisely the narrator’s inability to understand his stepmother’s decision to abandon everything that seems to propel the reenactment of several traumatic memories,

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all stemming from one traumatic event he experienced when he was very young: his father’s decision to abandon the family home when Jeffrey was just thirteen. In the introduction to the volume Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995), a seminal work in the field of trauma studies, Cathy Caruth claims that, although critics have provided different descriptions of post-traumatic stress disorder, most of them agree that: there is a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event, along with numbing that may have begun during or after the experience, and possibly also increased arousal to (and avoidance of) stimuli recalling the event. (4) Hence, trauma victims might develop symptoms not immediately but sometime after the traumatic event, which points to the existence of different stages in the experience of trauma. In this respect, psychiatrist Sandra L. Bloom discusses how the human body responds to traumatic events. Traumatic experience provokes, according to Bloom, a physiological overload that our brains and bodies are unable to manage properly. In order to cope with this physiological overload, Bloom argues, human beings count with a defense mechanism called “dissociation” (2010, 200).2 Bloom claims that although dissociation might be “a life-saving coping skill in the short run,” it provokes fragmentation of vital mental functions, the result being diminished integration and, therefore, impaired performance (2010, 200). Thus, after a traumatic event, victims might not be able to remember the terrible events that have just occurred, or they might remember the events but show no feeling about them (2010, 200–201). According to Bloom, it is precisely this problem with integration that propels “traumatic re-enactment” (2010, 207). In a similar vein, Luckhurst identifies a fundamental tension between “interruption and flow, blockage and movement” (2013, 79) inherent in the experience of trauma. On the one hand, trauma “issues a challenge to the capacities of narrative knowledge.” Thus, “in its shock impact,” Luckhurst argues, “trauma is anti-narrative.” On the other hand, it “generates the manic production of retrospective narratives that seek to explicate the trauma.” Cultural forms are, according to Luckhurst, particularly suited to address this contradiction, as they rehearse or restage “narratives that attempt to animate and explicate trauma that has been formulated as something that exceeds the possibility of narrative knowledge” (2013, 79). Luckhurst then points to the appearance of an international canon of authors and works which deal precisely with both narrative possibility and impossibility in the face of trauma,3 as well as to the emergence of “an implicit aesthetic for the trauma novel” (2013, 87).

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2.1. The Narrative Representation of Psychological Trauma There are some formal features that tend to recur in trauma narratives. In this respect, Laurie Vickroy argues that there are some experimental strategies that have proved to be particularly effective to reflect, formally, “the psychic defenses that pose obstacles to narrating and recovering from trauma” (2002, xi). More specifically, “textual gaps (both in the page layout and content), repetition, breaks in linear time, shifting viewpoints, and a focus on visual images and affective states” are all strategies used by writers to represent the victim’s troubled or incomplete relation to memory (2002, 29). In a similar vein, Anne Whitehead claims that “effective” trauma fiction needs to register “the shocking and unassimilable nature of its subject matter in formal terms” (2004, 83). The impact of trauma, Whitehead argues, can only be adequately represented by means of unconventional narrative techniques. Then Whitehead points to “intertextuality,” “repetition [at the levels of language, imagery or plot],” and “a dispersed or fragmented narrative voice” as three recurrent stylistic features in trauma narratives (2004, 84). Zero K is a novel that shows many of the features to which Vickroy and Whitehead make reference. DeLillo’s sparse, minimalist style, proves to be, on the one hand, a suitable means of conveying the troubled psychological condition of the protagonist and narrator. Thus, sentences are brief and straightforward and they tend to be grouped in short paragraphs, which are either pulled together or separated by gaps in page layout, formally mirroring the workings of Jeffrey’s traumatized mind. On the other hand, Jeffrey’s remembrance of some traumatic past events produces constant chronological disruptions. Readers learn about his unresolved past traumas by means of a series of flashbacks or intrusive memories, repetitions, and intrusive images which interrupt the main storyline—that is, Jeffrey’s account of his trips back and forth to the Convergence—at different points, giving rise to a fragmented narrative that formally mirrors the psychological fragmentation of the protagonist. Thus, at the beginning of Chapter Three, while Jeffrey is in the room where Artis awaits to be cryopreserved, waiting for her to wake up, his mind goes back in time to the moment when his father abandoned him and his mother: He left when I was thirteen. I was doing my trigonometry homework when he told me. He sat across the small desk where my ever-sharpened pencils jutted from an old marmalade jar. I kept doing my homework while he spoke. I examined the formulas on the page and wrote in my notebook, over and over: sine cosine tangent. (DeLillo, 2016, 14, emphasis in the original)

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This highly traumatic episode, which dates back to his early adolescence, eventually proves to be the main cause for his psychological fragmentation. All throughout the novel, but most remarkably during the time he spends at the Convergence, Jeffrey is revisited by this intrusive memory. However, it is only in Chapter Three that the narrator provides a more or less detailed account of what actually happened. From then onwards, it is the repetition of some words that evidences the narrator’s remembrance of his father’s leaving—repetition at the level of language is, as explained above, a typical feature of trauma narratives (Whitehead, 2004, 84). Three particular words, which appear repeatedly in the text and are presented in italics, seem to have stuck in his mind forever: “sine cosine tangent” (DeLillo, 2016, 14, 56, 234, emphasis in the original). These three words—which represent the main functions used in trigonometry—are associated by Jeffrey to that moment, as he explains later on: “Sine cosine tangent. These were the mystical worlds that I would associate with the episode from that point on” (DeLillo, 2016, 234). Another episode that Jeffrey keeps having flashbacks to throughout the story is his mother’s death. From Jeffrey’s perspective we learn that, after Ross’s decision to leave the family home, he and his mother Madeline developed a very close relationship. They used to go for walks together— “who does this, mother and teenage son, in the United States of America?” (DeLillo, 2016, 15), Jeffrey wonders—and, most importantly, she did not lecture Jeffrey on his “swerves out of observable normality” (DeLillo, 2016, 15). She was, as opposed to his absent father, “the loving source, the reliable presence” (DeLillo, 2016, 108). Thus, in the second chapter of the novel, while Jeffrey is reporting the first conversation he has with his father upon his arrival to the cryonics facility, his mind goes back to the moment of his mother’s death, an episode that he remembers in a very particular way: When my mother died, at home, I was seated next to the bed and there was a friend of hers, a woman with a cane, standing in the doorway. That’s how I would picture the moment, narrowed, now and always, to the woman in the bed, the woman in the doorway, the bed itself, the metal cane. (DeLillo, 2016, 9) As hinted at above, one of the narrative strategies used by writers to represent the victim’s troubled relation to memory is the focus on visual images (Vickroy, 2002, 29). In this respect, some critics refer to “the intrusive or recurrent image, the unbidden flashback that abolishes time and reimmerses you in the visual field of the inaugurating traumatic instant” as one of the most widely acknowledged symptoms of trauma, and argue that traumatic images might even replace narrative memory in a traumatized mind (Luckhurst, 2013, 147; Baelo-Allué, 2012, 71). The woman in the bed, the woman in the doorway, the bed, and the metal cane are things that Jeffrey associates with that particular moment, and they reappear several times throughout the story in the form of

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intrusive images, proving that this particular episode still haunts the protagonist. Later on, readers learn that, if there is a reason why this episode would stick with Jeffrey forever, it is because his father was not there with him when his mother died. We are, therefore, led to draw a connection between the two traumatic events. Further proof of Jeffrey’s traumatized condition is provided in two different sections in which his mental state is presented as a cluster of intrusive obsessive thoughts. The first section, which is seven pages long, is located towards the end of Chapter Five in Part One, after a conversation that Jeffrey has with Ross and Artis before the latter is taken to the cryonics chamber (pages 53 to 59). In this conversation, Artis declares that she is convinced of the step she is taking and even looking forward to it: “‘I’m so eager. I can’t tell you. To do this thing. Enter another dimension. And then return. For ever more. Say it. And say it. And say it’” (DeLillo, 2016, 53). Following Artis’s orders, and sharing in her confident attitude, Ross then pronounces, to Jeffrey’s surprise, the word “Forevermore” (DeLillo, 2016, 53). The second section, which is nine pages long, is located towards the beginning of Chapter Eight of Part One, once the narrator realizes that Ross has shaved his beard, an action that he interprets, in the light of his recent experience at the Convergence, as an anticipation that his father could be getting himself ready to depart this world, thus abandoning him a second time (pages 101 to 109). Artis’s and Ross’s deep faith in the Convergence’s endeavor, together with the realization that Ross could be considering the possibility of undergoing cryopreservation—a prediction that is eventually confirmed by Ross himself—propel the intensification of the narrator’s traumatic symptoms. This formally translates into two highly fragmented sections in which Jeffrey’s troubled thoughts are presented and intertwined without chronological order. Thus, Jeffrey’s traumatized mind shifts from one idea to the next, going back and forth, without following a logical pattern, which further evidences his troubled psychological condition. 2.2 Acting Out and Working Through Trauma As argued in the previous sections, from the very moment that he sets foot on the Convergence and, all throughout the story, Jeffrey shows symptoms of being traumatized. The flashbacks, repetitions, intrusive images, and other symptoms of his condition—which interrupt the narration of his trips to the Convergence at different points—prove that the narrator is still in the acting out stage of his trauma. Dominick LaCapra, a well-known theorist of trauma, uses the term “acting out”—which he borrows from Freudian psychoanalytic theory—to refer to this stage in which “the past is compulsively repeated as if it were fully present, resistances are not confronted, and memory as well as judgment is undercut” (1996, 48). In this stage, victims of trauma tend to “relive occurrences,” or at least find that those occurrences “intrude on their present existence” in the form of flashbacks, nightmares,

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or words that are instinctively repeated and that have apparently lost their ordinary meaning (LaCapra, 2001, 143). Then, also borrowing the term from Freudian psychoanalysis,4 LaCapra claims that the subsequent phase of the traumatic experience is the “working through” stage. This is the stage in which the victim begins to assimilate the traumatic memories or come to terms with the past, acquiring, at the same time, “some critical distance that allows one to engage in life in the present, to assume responsibility” (LaCapra, 2001, 148). In order to overcome trauma, victims need to move, according to LaCapra, from the acting out to the working through stage—even if he acknowledges that this movement “may never be totally or definitively accomplished” (2001, 148). For Jeffrey, it is precisely the impossibility to understand why Artis might have renounced tspending the time she has left with her loved ones, together with his father’s strangely supportive attitude, and the constant threat of being abandoned one second time by his father, that keep him trapped in the acting out stage, unable to move towards the working through stage and, thus, to overcome his trauma. Another character who shows a troubled mental condition—even if he is not, unlike Jeffrey, a victim of trauma per se—is Ross. This character’s existential dread becomes most evident towards the end of part one of the novel, once Artis is about to be cryopreserved. Thus, he fears not being able to live without her and he obsessively keeps recalling things the two of them used to do together. Part Two of the novel starts with Jeffrey recounting what his life and that of his father in New York are like after their return from the Convergence. Two years have passed since then and, from Jeffrey’s perspective, readers learn that, during this time, Ross has been finding it very difficult to live without Artis. He has become unmotivated and apathetic. Furthermore, he seems to be absent-minded all the time, thinking about the Convergence and everything he has left behind: Sometimes I follow along and stand a while in the doorway, watching the man stare at something that is not in the room. He is remembering or imagining and I’m not sure if he is aware of my presence but I know that his mind is tunneling back to the dead lands where the bodies are banked and waiting. (DeLillo, 2016, 168) Rather than trying to cope with his problems, Ross considers throughout the novel undergoing cryopreservation with the hope of being reawakened in the future to enjoy eternal life with Artis. The Convergence’s technologies promise to offer Ross, therefore, a way of escaping his existential angst. As opposed to what happens with Ross, who considers turning to the Convergence’s technologies to escape his existential dread, Jeffrey keeps throughout the story trying to overcome his traumatic symptoms and move towards the working through stage—even if to no avail. Hence, readers become witnesses to the narrator’s constant search for order, which dates

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back to his early adolescence. According to Vickroy, trauma victims tend to develop some strategies of resistance to counteract the negative effects of fragmentation (2002, 24). In her analysis of DeLillo’s Falling Man, BaeloAllué claims that, in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the protagonist Keith Neudecker and his wife Lianne repeat some actions in an attempt to imbue their lives with a sense of order. Thus, Keith performs “a program of exercises for his postsurgical wrist” two or three times a day, even after his wrist is fine again, “counting the number of times each day, the repetitions and the five seconds, as he also counts the days after the collapse of the Twin Towers” (2012, 71). Lianne, for her part, keeps counting down from one hundred by sevens. These repetitions provide the two traumatized characters, according to Baelo-Allué, “with some structure in their chaotic thoughts” (2012, 71). In a similar vein, in Zero K readers learn that, after his father abandoned him, Jeffrey kept trying to define some words—“I’d been doing this for a while, attempting to define a word for an object or even a concept. Define loyalty, define truth. I had to stop before it killed me” (DeLillo, 2016, 55, emphasis in the original), he confesses. In addition, upon his return to New York after his first and second trips to the Convergence, Jeffrey keeps compulsively checking the stove after turning off the burners and checking his pockets to make sure his keys or his wallet are there, yet another attempt at searching for order. Nonetheless, perhaps the most remarkable attempt on the part of Jeffrey to work through his trauma is when he finally decides to open up and put his condition into words, something which trauma theorists regard as a necessary step towards healing. In their work Studies on Hysteria—originally published in 1895 in German under the title Studien über Hysterie—the founders of psychoanalytic theory Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud already commented about the positive implications for trauma victims of putting their affect into words: Each individual hysterical symptom immediately and permanently disappeared when we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light the memory of the event by which it was provoked and in arousing its accompanying affect, and when the patient had described that event in the greatest possible detail and had put the affect into words. (2000, 6) Another critic who has more recently stressed the benefits of emotional expression in the process of recovery from trauma is professor of psychiatry Dori Laub. In his contribution to Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Laub claims that the testimony is “the process by which the narrator (the survivor) reclaims his position as a witness: reconstitutes the internal ‘thou,’ and thus the possibility of a witness or a listener inside himself.” Thus, “repossessing one’s life story through giving testimony is,” Laub argues, “a form of

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action, of change, which one has to actually pass through, in order to continue and complete the process of survival after liberation” (1995, 70). Two years after their return from the Convergence, Jeffrey and his father meet for lunch in an expensive restaurant. When Ross arrives at the restaurant, Jeffrey describes how “the vested gray suit and bright tie set off his wildman beard and halting stride” (DeLillo, 2016, 200). From Jeffrey’s perspective, readers also become aware of Ross’s nervousness and absentmindedness: “Here was Ross, eyes tired and shoulders hunched, right hand trembling slightly, […] the memory remained alive in his eyes. He was seeing Artis across the table, across the years, a kind of waveform, barely discernible” (DeLillo, 2016, 201–202). Ross’s restlessness, together with the fact that he has grown a beard again,5 are hints that may lead readers to think that he is about to make an important announcement. This suspicion seems to be shared by Jeffrey. In fact, it is precisely the feeling that Ross could be considering going back to the Convergence that seems to propel the protagonist to open up and finally put his trauma into words. Thus, Jeffrey lets his father know about the highly traumatizing episode of his mother’s death, an episode that he recounts in great detail:6 Then I told him a story that made him pause. I told him how his wife, the first, my mother, had died, at home, in her bed, unable to talk or listen or to see me sitting there. I’d never told him this and I didn’t know why I was telling him now, the hours I’d spent at her bedside, Madeline, with the neighbor in the doorway leaning on her cane. I found myself going into some detail, recalling whatever I could, speaking softly, describing the scene. (DeLillo, 2016, 202–203) Jeffrey’s primary intention is not to make his father feel bad about not being there when all this happened. He just needs a witness to his trauma. He could even be giving his father a second opportunity: “I think I wanted him to be touched. I wanted him to see the last hours as they happened. There was no dark motive. I wanted us to be joined in this” (DeLillo, 2016, 203). However, Ross does seem to feel, even if just for a moment, a little bit guilty: “Where was I when this happened?” Ross asks Jeffrey. Nonetheless, once again, Ross’s guilt for being absent in such a difficult moment for his son soon fades away. After Jeffrey’s confession, in a very inappropriate way, Ross announces his decision to go back to the Convergence to undergo cryopreservation. He cannot live without Artis. Instead of spending the time that he has left in this world with Jeffrey—and trying to compensate for the psychological damage he has caused on him—Ross decides to prematurely undergo cryopreservation, abandoning his son, therefore, one second time, with the uncertain hope of being reawakened in the future to enjoy eternal life with Artis. Jeffrey’s attempt to work through his trauma is, therefore, frustrated. Ross is abandoning him one more time and refusing to support him on his healing process.

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There is one last attempt on the part of the protagonist to work through his trauma. At some point before accompanying Ross in his final trip to the Convergence, Jeffrey feels the need to tell everything to Emma, the woman with whom he has started a romantic relationship. Emma works as a counselor in a school for children with different disabilities and developmental issues—“ranging from speech disorders to emotional problems” (DeLillo, 2016, 189)—and has an adopted son that she and her ex-husband rescued from a Ukrainian orphanage when the kid was just five or six years old. Emma and her son Stak are the only characters in the story with whom Jeffrey is able to connect. Nonetheless, even though Jeffrey and Emma undoubtedly get along well and complement and support each other, the couple avoids talking about the past, which might be one of the reasons why Jeffrey is not able to completely work through his trauma. However, towards the end of the story, Jeffrey seems to have accepted his father’s situation and got over the barrier that prevents him from talking to Emma about the past: “I needed to talk to Emma beforehand, tell her everything, finally, father, mother, stepmother, the name change, the numbered levels, all the blood facts that follow me to bed at night” (DeLillo, 2016, 226–227). Nonetheless, Emma is not there for him anymore. She has fled to Denver to join her ex-husband in the search for their son Stak, who has been missing for five days. Jeffrey’s attempt to work through his childhood trauma, once again, becomes frustrated. At the impossibility of talking to Emma, who disappears forever after this incident, Jeffrey even thinks about taking his life, which is yet another hint that he is far from recovering from his trauma. Chapter Nine of Part Two—the second to last chapter of the novel—is also key in this respect, as it is a highly fragmented chapter in which Jeffrey describes, in a stream-of-consciousness-like manner, what his life is like after his return from his second trip to the Convergence, once Ross has been cryopreserved. The chapter comprises eight pages in which we find a succession of 30 short paragraphs, visually separated by gaps in an attempt to restage Jeffrey’s flow of troubled thoughts and memories. Thus, Jeffrey admits, among other things, to be haunted by Ross’s and Artis’s decision to prematurely undergo cryopreservation and confesses having nightmares that he cannot easily remove from his head: “sometimes it takes an entire morning to outlive a dream, to outwake a dream” (DeLillo, 2016, 267). Readers also learn about his wanderings around Emma’s neighborhood and about his hope that she will someday call him “because she is out there somewhere, in the digital wilderness, and the ringtone, rarely heard, is her implied voice, an instant away” (DeLillo, 2016, 269). Overall, this highly fragmented chapter proves that, rather than progressively coming to terms with the past, Jeffrey is condemned to remain forever trapped in the acting out stage of his trauma.

3 Conclusion According to Vickroy, literature, particularly trauma literature, can shed light on the ways that human beings endure “the painful dilemmas we face

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in our culture, past and present,” and act as a “barometer of social life and contemporary culture.” This critic also claims that, despite their criticism of certain aspects of the present cultural moment, trauma narratives often promote a progressive hope that things might change. Consequently, she suggests that, when reading trauma literature, readers should pay attention to other more ethical, alternative behaviors suggested by the writers or the texts (2015, 180–183). Nonetheless, as this chapter has set out to demonstrate, trauma literature also proves to be a suitable means for predicting—and validating or rejecting—possible future scenarios. In his 2016 novel Zero K DeLillo constructs a narrative of trauma in order to address the complex ethical dilemma human beings could face should we be given the possibility of ‘suspending’ our present lives to undergo cryonics. Should we embrace the possibilities that technology offers to escape our present problems and existential anxieties (such as the fear of death or the loss of a loved one) and place our hopes in the future? Or should we learn to live with these problems and face death as an integral part of being human, enjoying the here and now and building strong relationships with those around us? As this chapter has argued, by making use of a series of narrative strategies that are typical of the narratives of trauma—such as a minimalist style of narration, flashbacks, repetitions, or intrusive images—DeLillo reenacts in Zero K the workings of the autodiegetic narrator’s traumatized mind, a man abandoned by his father when he was just 13 years old, who reenacts his childhood trauma as soon as he sets foot on the Convergence. By conveying the psychological damage that Ross inflicts on his son with his eventual decision to undergo cryopreservation, the writer voices some critical posthumanist concerns—more specifically, the fear that premature cryopreservation will bring about disembodiment and dehumanization. Rather than turning to life extension technologies as a way of leaving behind our problems and responsibilities—as Ross does to escape the feelings of emptiness derived from Artis’s death and his responsibilities toward his traumatized son Jeffrey—Zero K argues for the need to learn to cope with them in the present and to accept illness and death as integral parts of being human, enjoying the present moment and establishing strong relationships with those around us. The last chapter of the novel is key in this respect. There, Jeffrey describes a bus ride across Manhattan upon his return from the Convergence, after Ross’s cryopreservation. He recounts how he finds his place in the bus, “midway, looking nowhere in particular, mind blank or nearly so” and then notices “a glow, a tide of light” (DeLillo, 2016, 273). “Seconds later,” Jeffrey narrates, “the streets were charged with the day’s dying light and the bus seemed the carrier of this radiant moment” (DeLillo, 2016, 273). Suddenly, he hears “a human wail,” which comes from a boy who, despite being “impaired in some way, macrocephalic, mentally deficient,” is “on his feet, facing the rear window,” uttering “howls of awe,” “unceasing and exhilarating,” and bouncing “slightly in accord with the cries” (DeLillo, 2016, 273). Jeffrey puts an end to his narration with the following passage, which

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suggests that not even illness should lead human beings to turn to technology and cut their lives short in the hope of a better future: The full solar disk, bleeding into the streets, lighting up the towers to either side of us, and I told myself that the boy was not seeing the sky collapse upon us but was finding the purest astonishment in the intimate touch of earth and sun. I went back to my seat and faced forward. I didn’t need heaven’s light. I had the boy’s cries of wonder. (DeLillo, 2016, 274) This passage stresses instead the existential need to enjoy the present moment and find the beauty of every situation—something that both Jeffrey and the boy manage to do, despite their own troubled physical or psychological conditions. Furthermore, the fact that the novel ends with Jeffrey going back to his seat and facing forward suggests that he might someday be able to forget about the past and eventually work through his psychological trauma. Ross and Artis, by contrast, are doomed to remain forever trapped in their cryonic pods, living in a constant frozen present, a constant ‘acting out,’ as they are suspended waiting for a “wishful future” that might never come (DeLillo, 2016, 256).

Notes 1 The Convergence’s life extension technologies help this character to overcome her fear of death or, to use trauma theorist Dominick LaCapra’s words, her structural trauma. In his 1999 work “Trauma, Absence, Loss,” LaCapra establishes a difference between historical trauma, which is related to a feeling of loss usually derived from a specific traumatic event, and structural trauma, which he connects to an absence or “a gap in existence” not necessarily “reduced to a dated historical event or derived from one” (727). Regarding structural trauma, Collado-Rodríguez argues that, for LaCapra, this type of trauma “results from the realization of the intrinsic mortality of the human condition” (2012, 47). 2 French psychologist Pierre Janet was a pioneer in the study of the phenomenon of dissociation (1973; 1984). Two other important contributors to the explanation of this phenomenon are psychiatrist Bessel A. van der Kolk and psychologist Onno van der Hart (1995). 3 Luckhurst regards Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) as a “formative text in literary trauma studies,” as it helped establish some of the “basic narrative and tropological conventions of trauma fiction” (2013, 90), but also mentions other texts by writers such as Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, Anne Michaels, Binjamin Wilkomirski and W. G. Sebald which show similar narrative patterns. 4 The concepts of acting out and working through were first introduced by Sigmund Freud in his 1914 essay “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.” 5 This seems to take Jeffrey back to his first journey to the Convergence and, more specifically, to the moment when, just after shaving his beard—a beard that he seemed to have grown for the occasion—his father first announced that he was planning to undergo cryopreservation. 6 As opposed to those critics who argue that trauma is something that cannot be fully grasped or remembered (see Caruth, 1995, 4; van der Kolk and van der Hart,

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1995, 160; Bloom, 2010, 200–204), recent psychological research suggests that, after a traumatic event, memory is enhanced rather than undercut. Thus, trauma victims might be able to provide detailed accounts of their experiences (see McNally, 2003, 62; Pederson, 2014, 333–340).

Bibliography Alcor Life Extension Foundation. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Accessed 15 June, 2020. Available at: https://alcor.org/FAQs/index.html. Ashman, Nathan. 2019. “Death Itself Shall Be Deathless”: Transrationalism and Eternal Death in Don DeLillo’s Zero K.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 60(3): 1–11. doi:10.1080/00111619.2018.1553845. Baelo-Allué, Sonia. 2012. “9/11 and the Psychic Trauma Novel: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.” ATLANTIS: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 34(1): 63–79. Bloom, Sandra L. 2010. “Bridging the Black Hole of Trauma: The Evolutionary Significance of the Arts.” Psychotherapy and Politics International, 8(3): 198–212. doi:10.1002/ppi.223. Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “Transhumanist Values.” Journal of Philosophical Research, 30(1): 3–14. doi:10.5840/jpr_2005_26. Breuer, Josef & Sigmund Freud. 2000. Studies on Hysteria. Translated by James Strachey. New York, NY: Basic Books. Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Introduction.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth, 3–12. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cofer, Erik. 2018. “Owning the End of the World: Zero K and DeLillo’s PostPostmodern Mutation.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59(4): 1–12. doi:10.1080/00111619.2017.1412936. Collado-Rodríguez, Francisco. 2012. “Trauma and Storytelling in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and The Road.” Papers on Language & Literature, 48(1): 45–69. De Grey, Aubrey. 2018. “Aubrey de Grey: Treating Ageing as a Curable Disease.” BBC News, March 19 2018. Available at: www.bbc.com/news/av/technolo gy-43402894/aubrey-de-grey-treating-ageing-as-a-curable-disease. De Grey, Aubrey & Michael Rae. 2007. Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. DeLillo, Don. 2016. Zero K. London: Picador. Ettinger, Robert. 1962. “The Prospect of Immortality.” Available at: www.cryonics. org/images/uploads/misc/Prospect_Book.pdf. Freud, Sigmund. 1914. “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 12), 147–156. Translated by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Glavanakova, Alexandra K. 2017. “The Age of Humans Meets Posthumanism: Reflections on Don DeLillo’s Zero K.” Studies in the Literary Imagination, 50(1): 91–109. doi:10.1353/sli.2017.0007. Hayles, Katherine N. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Herbrechter, Stefan. 2013. Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Istvan, Zoltan. 2018. “Q & A: Zoltan Istvan.” Interview by Sarah Souli. Journal of Beautiful Business, October 17, 2018. Available at: https://journalofbeautifulbusiness. com/q-a-zoltan-istvan-253a74f67277. Janet, Pierre. 1889 [1973]. L’automatisme psychologique. Paris: Société Pierre Janet. Janet, Pierre. 1919–25 [1984]. Les médications psychologiques. Paris: Société Pierre Janet. Kakutani, Michiko. 2016. “Review: In Don DeLillo’s ‘Zero K,’ Daring to Outwit Death.” Review of Zero K, by Don DeLillo. The New York Times, April 25, 2016. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/books/review-in-don-delillos-zer o-k-daring-to-outwit-death.html. LaCapra, Dominick. 1996. Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca, NY and New York, NY: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, Dominick. 1999. “Trauma, Absence, Loss.” Critical Inquiry, 25(4): 696–727. doi:10.1086/448943. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Laub, Dori. 1995. “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth, 61–75. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Luckhurst, Roger. 2013. The Trauma Question. New York, NY: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203607305. Maffey, R. & Teo, Y. 2018. “Changing Channels of Technology: Disaster and (Im) mortality in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Cosmopolis and Zero K.” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings, 6(2): 1–23. doi:10.16995/c21.74. McNally, Richard J. 2003. Remembering Trauma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pederson, Joshua. 2014. “Speak, Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory.” Narrative, 22(3): 333–353. doi:10.1353/nar.2014.0018. Schaberg, Christopher. 2017. “Ecological Disorientation in Airline Ads and in DeLillo’s Zero K.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 24(1): 75–91. doi:10.1093/isle/isw090. van der Kolk, Bessel A., & Onno van der Halt. 1995. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth, 158–182. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Vickroy, Laurie. 2002. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Vickroy, Laurie. 2015. Reading Trauma Narratives. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Weaver, Courtney. 2015. “Inside the Weird World of Cryonics.” Financial Times, December 18, 2015. Available at: www.ft.com/content/d634e198-a435-11e5-873f68411a84f346. Whitehead, Anne. 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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A Dystopian Vision of Transhuman Enhancement Speciesist and Political Issues Intersecting Trauma and Disability in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split Miriam Fernández-Santiago

1 The Transhumanist Promise The advocates of transhumanism typically present it as an evolutionary enhancement of the human species through the use of technological prostheses, including “regenerative medicine […] nanotechnology, radical life extension, mind uploading and cryonics, among other[s]” (Ferrando, 2013, 27). Its enlightened anthropocentric agenda premises a reason-based value system that qualifies technological development as a human enhancement in evolutionary terms, which is paradoxically justified by the fact that technologically enhanced humans would better adapt to an increasingly technological environment through the implementation of eugenics, prostheses, and information technologies (Diéguez, 2017, 5). In the context of the (post)war, twentieth-century West, this technological development can be understood as either ideological justification of national supremacy (eugenics), instrumental advantage in war strategy (computer technologies), or damage control for war victims (prosthesis). It could thus be argued that the late twentieth-century development of a transhumanist discourse and aesthetics obeys the need of adapting human ontology1 to this new environment (i.e. the industries, sociopolitical structures, geopolitical distributions, and scientific discourse, to mention a few) as it faces the contradictions arising from conflating the material and discursive origins of transhumanism to both its present context and future promise. In its most popular and visual form, the transhuman being is represented through the figure of the cyborg—a blending of the natural or biological human being and technological prostheses. But as developed by Donna Haraway in the context of gender studies, the cyborg is a metaphor that advocates for the human right of self-determination while conceding that to a large extent, this self-determination is limited by the already existing socio-discursive elements (and merely organic givens) that human beings can however combine in order to “compose” or “construct” their individual embodied identities.2 It is in this context that for transhumanism, technological prosthesis (understood as

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embodied discourses) is not only considered an integral part of the transhuman being, but an end in itself (rather than a supplement), disconnected from, or in Haraway’s words, “unfaithful to” its origins (1985, 68), or original context (syntax) of each socio-discursive element integrating the transhuman cyborg— that is; the naturalized, organic self, premised by the humanist paradigm.

2 Intersecting Transhumanism and Disability In its claim for the individual right of self-determining embodiment, transhumanism projects an extreme ableist, self-sufficient ideal as the supremacist norm against which the merely organic, natural(ized) human being is rendered as disabled. In the same fashion as Christianity promises eternal salvation on the premise of universal human sinfulness, transhumanist perfectibility involves premising humanity as an underdeveloped state in human evolution (Diéguez, 2017, 6; Pepperell, 2003, 183). The very prosthetic “nature” of transhuman individuals already indicates the presumed disability of merely human beings by pointing to the fact that the prosthetic addition that makes transhumans of human beings exists as a supplement for some loss or absence in the human self. But although the rhetoric of loss underlying trauma-inflicted mental or physical disabilities (Caruh, 1996; LaCapra, 2001) intersects well with the transhumanist celebration of prosthetics, the idea of what constitutes a whole human being is radically different in both cases. On the one hand, trauma studies premise the humanist norm of a natural, healthy (whole) human being, that justifies implementing restorative prosthesis on people who experience some disability because they have suffered the traumatic loss compromising its organic wholeness. On the other hand, from a transhumanist perspective, however, disability is displaced towards the “natural” human, who becomes actually traumatized by the loss of their humanist supremacy, and by its subsequent becoming a different underdeveloped species in the continuum of sapiens evolution because it fails to adjust to the new cyborganic norm. It would seem contradictory, in this transhumanist context, that speciesist concerns nowadays developing the field of ecocritical studies denounce anthropocentrism as the enlightened discourse causing the extinction of infrahuman species (Latour, 2014; Haraway, 2003). Yet still more interesting are the speciesist implications that disability studies find in mainstream ableist biomedical discourses involving chemical, prosthetic, or eugenic technologies as they intersect with transhumanism. Current criticism on disability often portrays mainstream normative ableism as a form of supremacist speciesism depriving people who experience a form of impairment as infrahuman or below the status of humanity (Michalko, 2009, 110). Within this ableist paradigm, impairment is perceived in terms of traumatic loss, absence or deviation from the healthy, natural human being (Pfeiffer, 2002, 3) even in cases when people are born with such impairment. Thus, although both coincide in their speciesist approach, while mainstream ableist discourse considers prosthesis as the technological supplement signalling

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the natural infrahumanity of disabled people, transhumanism celebrates technological prosthesis as the sign of evolutionary supremacy. Although both discourses propound speciesist supremacy by signalling a loss or absence in the inferior species, they are radically opposite in determining which category (the natural or the technological) stands as the superior one. Transhumanism and disability studies also intersect in their alignment with the constructivist paradigm. Yet, while disability studies aligns with new materialisms (Ferrando, 2013, 31) in challenging the ableist norm as a “culture-bound” (Garland-Thompson, 2009, 63) discursive technology used to oppress people who do not match a changing standard of human normalcy because they experience any form of impairment (Davis, 2017, 1–2; Michalko, 2009, 91; Pfeiffer, 2002, 5–6),3 transhumanism celebrates the freedom that discursive technologies provide in the self-determining construction of the self when compared with the normative constrictions imposed by the naturalized humanist paradigm. As they challenge the ableist norm of the humanist Vitruvian self, disability studies do not actually challenge its speciesist approach, but merely demand a change in the configuration of the human paradigm that acknowledges equal status to the different embodiments of natural human experience as well as equal opportunities to participate in and contribute to social life. From this perspective, impaired persons are presented as natural human beings who are dispossessed of the human status by a competing naturalized technology (namely, biomedical discourse) that inflicts disability on them through the institutional enforcement of the ableist norm.

3 Political Analogies and Sociopolitical Implications It has been suggested that the construction of a normative national identity within the collective cultural consciousness is heavily grounded in the corresponding representation of diverse forms of disability as they intersect with other culture-bound categories of oppressed otherness such as “race, gender, class, ethnicity and sexuality” (Garland-Thompson, 2009, 63, 65). Dolmage has provided sound evidence that US immigration policies in the early twentieth century were based on the exclusion of certain bodily traits, supposedly signalling mental and physical impairments which included racial, ethnic, and gender difference as forms of impairment (Dolmage, 2017). Such policies conceived the American Republic as a metaphorical body politics, the real term of which were the actual bodies of its citizens, whose abled uniformity would guarantee the national cohesion of the Union. In order to prevent the internal dissent that George Washington saw as the main threat to this Union in 1796, the discursive construct of patriotic, normative ableism is metaphorically embodied in the Vitruvian version of the Hobbesian Leviathan (see Figure 9.1), whose superhuman power makes him indestructible and indivisible. The same argument has been used over centuries to deny not only political, but also spiritual participation to

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Figure 9.1 Frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan, by Abraham Bosse (1651). Public domain, from the British Library’s collections, 2013.

those deemed inferior to the full human status, i.e.; animals, children, women, slaves, pagans, and the mentally disabled. This metaphor of the humanist body politics as a uniform, organic, wholeness imposes a eugenic national norm on the masses, who become oppressed by means of imposing

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disability (incompleteness, abnormality, impairment, diversity) on their humanity or infrahumanity. Yet the political reality that triggered the composition of Hobbes’s treatise in the first instance (the English Civil War), already made the destructibility of the Leviathan model a most self-evident truth. In 1790, as he discussed the threats of the American and French Revolutions, Edmund Burke also recurred to a humanist metaphorical comparison between the human body and the body politics when he referred to the unruly multiplicity of a mob as a “many headed monster” (Botting, 1991, 140) in clear Biblical reference to the Beast in Revelations (see Figures 9.2 and 9.3). The

Figure 9.2 “The Revelation of St John: 12. The Sea Monster and the Beast with the Lamb’s Horn” by Albrecht Dürer (between 1497 and 1498). Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.

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Figure 9.3 “General Jackson Slaying the Many Headed Monster” (1836). Public domain, from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division (digital ID cph.3a05364).

political metaphor that is used to control public behaviour on the grounds of sociopolitical health is grounded on the imposition of a eugenic model of the human being that perceives any mental deviation from the model (visualized as many heads signifying multiple, dissonant reasoning) as abnormal or diseased. Conversely, while Burke’s Biblical reference focuses on its apocalyptic resonance, it seems to obscure that the context of its generation is grounded in restoring (divine) justice to an unruly state of human affairs, implying the revolutionary argument that a sort of regenerative medicine was applied to a Leviathanesque body politics disabled by injustice. Like the transhuman individual, the Beast in Revelations is a composite self that implies transcending human imperfections (sinfulness) and promises the advent of a new era after the end of humanity. Also like Leviathan, the Beast’s power is so superior that no human being would dare confront it. Yet unlike any of them, the functions of the Beast in Revelations are not restricted to making a utopian promise, but also include a cautionary tale involving a threat and a warning. In medical terms, one would hesitate to qualify its pharmaka as either restorative medicine or harmful poison. In political terms, the hesitation lies between restorative justice and the mere perpetration of violence. Disability pride—a particular branch within disability studies—suggests that physical and mental impairment gives disabled people a different (enhanced)

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experience of reality that transcends normative human experience (Swain and French, 2000, 6–9). According to this view, it is precisely because of their impairment that disabled people are granted access to experiences exceeding the possibilities of natural human perception. Although critics within the field of disability studies who see “disability as ‘desirable’ in the context of communities disabled by state violence or structural inequality” (Kafer, 2016, 11) do not go as far as to claim that such positive perception of disability would in any way lead to an improved human species, it is not difficult to see a connection between the utopian celebration of disability and the promise of transhuman transcendence. Despite the advantages that such an arguable challenge of the ableist paradigm might bring to theoretical disability studies, the social model of disability studies has noticed that this implied refusal to acknowledging the drawbacks that are experienced daily by impaired people, prevents them from receiving the social help that would provide them with equal access and participation in social life (Pfeiffer, 2002). Because these drawbacks are not only caused by mental or physical impairment, but also by the structural oppression that a negatively constructed image of disability inflicts on disabled people by preventing them from fully and actively engaging in their social environment, addressing both sources of distress would thus involve sociopolitical systemic reforms beyond the individual address of disability supported by the mainstream biomedical approach (Garland-Thompson, 2009, 64–65). This approach is essentially ableist in considering disability an individual problem that can be solved or ameliorated by medical treatment, which not only perpetuates the social structures of oppression by means of the often enforced seclusion of disabled people in healthcare institutions, but also by rendering substantial benefits to the chemical industries and biomedical system that provides the prescribed care and treatment. By restricting accessibility to the physically impaired and by withholding from the mentally impaired the capacity to fully participate in politics, the political possibilities for structural change that guarantees the civil rights of disabled people are clearly diminished (Kafer, 2016, 17). For both terms of the metaphor (medicine and politics, health and justice), the sense of retribution or compensation for traumatic loss that perpetuates the normative, ableist, unified identity of the human body (politics), is constructed by oppressing peoples, life experiences, and world visions that deviate from the norm by labelling them as disabled, and therefore, inferior. Although present institutional (political, biomedical) discourses do not go as far as to claim that these oppressed communities are a completely different species altogether, in practice, people who are disabled by their exclusion from the (often intersecting, socio-political and biomedical) norm are denied certain civil rights and social practices that are also denied to inferior species only: political participation, reproduction, economic independence, seclusion, education, and the right to make decisions about their own life (Doe and Ladoceur, 2009; Malacrida, 2009; Rioux, 2009; Lewis, 2017).

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However, it has also been noted that one of the main obstacles for the political activism of the disability movement rests precisely on the diversity (many-headedness) of (sometimes confronting) needs, interests, and demands of people experiencing a wide range of disabilities (Kafer, 2016, 11). Kafer has recently noticed the minimal attention received by trauma studies within the larger scope of disability studies (2016, 4) and advocates for the need to consider the causes, and not only the effects, of disability within this field. Because trauma-inflicted disability actually involves loss (rather than absence or deviation from the norm) as the cause of impairment and often focuses on its tragic dimension, it precludes the celebration of disability as a natural, alternative experience (Kafer, 2016, 12) through which crip communities empower themselves. Even if positive for crip activism, this celebration not only involves the further oppression and exclusion of disability experiences that actually involve traumatic loss by naturalizing or unfaithfully silencing their causes (origins), thereby perpetuating their effects. It also disregards and perpetuates the traumatic effects of the normative infliction of disability upon people who experience impairment. However, although missing the community-building, celebratory approach to disability of crip activism, it has been noticed that the presence of loss in tragic narratives of trauma-inflicted disability often triggers a different type of community-building celebration through the advocacy of retributive justice (LaCapra, 2001) that would operate as a sort of regenerative medicine for the humanist political metaphor that compares a healthy government with an organically unified body. Between Leviathan and The Beast, the humanist and transhumanist paradigms do not seem to be able to elude perpetuating structures of oppression of individuals or species that become inferior under the norm of supremacist, (trans)humanist eugenics or the restorative/regenerative embodiment of discursive prosthesis. When developing this metaphor along the intersecting narrative lines of transhumanist, trauma, and disability studies, a political allegory of the democratic system is revealed that addresses the problems of democracy in the new technological context. Supposedly inclusive, as it develops humanist ideals, democracy also creates its own oppressed minorities by either constructing patriotic cohesion at the expense of trauma-inflicted disability, or by appealing to the ableist supremacist discourse of transhumanism. Similarly, it has been remarked that disability is often used as a literary device for plot complication or development at the expense of perpetuating social stereotypes that emphasize strangeness and therefore prevent the social inclusion and participation of disabled people (Orlando, 2018, 324). Garland-Thompson has remarked that such heightened strangeness is frequently conveyed in literary narratives of disability by forms traditionally “grounded in the conventions of the spectacle” (2009, 68). In disability narratives, the spectacular can take the form of tragic intensity—especially when representing trauma-inflicted disability—(Craps, 2013, 7), gothic terror (with disability standing as reminder of human mortality), or as it intersects with prosthetic technologies (as in the case of transhumanism) and

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even utopian or dystopian science-fiction. Still, it could be precisely because of this heightened sensationalism that disability narratives can make an appropriate allegorical frame to explore the anxieties that a changing human ontology brings to current Western discourse. In particular, understanding trauma-inflicted disability as the result of institutional oppression of the individual can gain a political dimension when representing the individual embodiment of disability can be extended to signify the structural oppression of social minorities in general.

4 Split: A Political Allegory Intersecting Trauma and Disability M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016)4 renders a dystopian vision of transhumanity that results from inflicting mental disability on a human identity that is pathologized as fragmentary and dysfunctional. In Shyamalan’s film, the transhumanist interpellation to evolve from this physically and psychologically incomplete, merely human condition results in a transhuman superhumanity that is dystopically portrayed as a monster. However, while indulging in an overt sensationalism that combines the gothic conventions of madness and gross carnage, the movie also addresses more complex issues involving the entanglement of personal and structural traumas in causing mental impairment and enforcing institutional disability on the individual. Following recent critical interest in the construction of disabled embodiment, the movie also elaborates on the metaphor of the democratic body politics in order to allegorize a national pathology addressing the political causes and consequences of structural traumas inflicted on the population. In Split, transhumanity is depicted as the evolutionary result of a psychological disability caused by or causing child trauma in one Kevin Wendell Crumb, a middle-aged man who suffered child abuse by his obsessive-compulsive mother. However, following Lacan’s theories on the split subject, the image of a coherent and cohesive Kevin is almost absent from the movie and can only become a whole, embodied human presence when invoked by an-Other subject (Lacan, 2006, 650, 698, 704–705); in this case, his psychiatrist. What the audience sees instead are some of the 23 personalities that Kevin has developed as a consequence of this abuse. Under the Cartesian mind-body paradigm ruling contemporary psychology, Kevin’s split personality is considered a mental disorder in need of treatment, since according to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Vitruvian model of the human being, a single body must correspond to a single, unified, coherent, and cohesive mind. However, Kevin’s psychiatrist Karen Fletcher, whose diagnosis disagrees with the mainstream biomedical approach, contends that instead of the manifestation of a split personality, each of these “personalities” is rather a different “person” corresponding to a different embodiment of such personalities—including different gender and sexual orientations, ages, professions, and even health conditions. Moreover, as would happen with different people, each of them has no access to the memories or motives of the others.

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In consonance with Fletcher’s diagnosis, the movie represents Kevin’s identity as a community of individuals with different and often competing needs and interests. This community is organized inside Kevin’s mind around a circle of chairs functioning as a kind of counsel where the interests and policies ruling the community are debated and where it is democratically decided which personality is to be physically embodied in order to implement such policies. Gaining control of this counsel, which in the movie is expressed as “being in the light,” is what allows each personality to become temporarily embodied as a material person, while the interests of the others are either represented by him/her (democratic majority), or remain silenced and oppressed (democratic minority). While, as individuals, most of these personalities would not present any psychological pathology, when considered as a community sharing Kevin’s comprehensive identity, their mere existence (their many-headedness) is diagnosed as a pathology and treated accordingly, targeting their repression, or in case of Kevin’s total cure, their termination. Although Kevin developed a split personality as a consequence of the ongoing trauma of his childhood abuse, not all of his subsequent 23 personalities are the result of such abuse. Instead, the movie suggests that some of them have appeared as the effect of institutionally inflicted trauma operating through the diagnosis, reclusion, and treatment of the pathologized identity that the APA forces upon Kevin’s already abused sel(ves). In order to resist the institutional infliction of disability upon them, the community sharing Kevin’s “frame” self, develops a redemptive myth with apocalyptic overtones in the Biblically symbolic 24th personality of “The Beast,”5 Which would liberate Kevin’s 23 oppressed personalities through Its vengeful embodiment of superhuman qualities. Because the democratic rules governing the community’s parliamentary activity are predetermined by the external infliction of a pathology repressing their multiplicity under the label of psychological disability, the members of this community who are most repressed by its democratic norms lead a sort of coup within the counsel with the ultimate purpose of enforcing their assumed right of becoming full individuals within Kevin’s “frame” self, which is to be realized through the extra-ordinary, superhuman, qualities of The Beast. Although Its superhuman ableism would suffice to justify The Beast’s embodiment in evolutionary terms, it is the traumatic cause (rather than the target) of Its existence that provides the moral logic of Its violent behaviour. In a final monologue at the end of the movie, The Beast explains that Its becoming an altogether superior species is the result of the ongoing (individually and institutionally inflicted) traumas that Kevin and his 23 personalities have endured throughout their lives. Following a most traditional Christian logic, The Beast “rejoices” that some human beings transcend mere humanity (become “pure”) through suffering, which makes them superior to those “normal” human beings who remain “untouched” by it. An ethics and aesthetics follow that celebrate trauma-inflicted disability as instrumental in the evolutionary road towards a transhuman crip community.

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According to the retributive justice of Its redemptive discourse, the personalities of Miss Patricia, Dennis, and Hedwig (ambiguously represented as The Beast’s minions and/or engineers) agree to perpetrate the kidnapping of three young, female, “untouched” victims who would be offered in sacrifice for The Beast to devour in the night of Its becoming embodied. However, as the plot discloses Kevin’s story and the mechanics of his split personality, as well as the preparations for the ritual, one of the human offerings (Casey) is revealed to the audience as another victim of child abuse. It is only after realizing that Casey’s body is extremely scarred that the Beast spares Her life following the moral logic ruling Its existence. The implication is that the transhuman “pure” already exist as a different species integrated by all Those Who have evolved as a result of Their suffering individual and/or institutional, structural oppression. The speciesist allegation is subtly suggested at the end of the movie, when it is revealed that the girls had been held captive in the abandoned subterranean facilities of a zoo. As Casey is led outside the zoo, the audience can see the different animal species that are held captive by the institution because of their infrahuman status. A connection is clearly established between the ableist and human supremacist discourses that threatens the systemic ongoing oppression suffered by those deemed inferior on a speciesist/ableist basis. While she walks outside the zoo, Casey watches and is watched by the “beasts” there incarcerated in a sort of silent, mutual recognition of their shared oppressed condition. The Beast’s celebration of the disability inflicted upon them as the traumatic cause triggering the positive outcome of their evolution is founded on the notion of retributive justice that often accompanies narratives acting out traumatic redemptive discourses (LaCapra, 2001, 22), which in the case of Kevin’s psychological trauma cannot be distinguished from restorative medicine. As in the Biblical text narrating the preparations for Christ’s Second Advent, the redemptive discourse that puts the system to rights by means of retributive justice operates by perpetuating systemic violence and inflicting trauma on others. Therefore, while its evolutionary discourse is presented as utopian for oppressed communities, it implies a dystopian perpetuation of the ableist and speciesist paradigms that it supposedly intends to challenge. Shyamalan’s movie explores this complex situation by which the personal experience of trauma and the institutional means used to address this problem individually (by restoring Kevin Wendell Crum’s original mental health) are projected as a national allegory that not only considers the structural causes unaddressed by the mental institution in order to perpetuate the rational paradigm supporting the biomedical status quo, but also considers its political implications in developing civil-rights activism. The metaphor relating Kevin’s split subject to a parliamentary body politics puts forward the dangers of democratic systems that construct national unity on the ongoing, politically disabling oppression of its social minorities. Although national unity is justified by the projected image of a naturalized, homogeneous, coherent and cohesive

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body politics that supposedly precedes any ulterior, undesirable deviations from its normative balance, it is in fact the repression of a national multiplicity and diversity (which, in the case of the USA, constitutes its very foundational feature) that allows for the production and perpetuation of a tyrannical embodiment of democracy. While Fletcher envisions Kevin’s split personality as a form of multiple human embodiment, granting each of them the right to exist as full— although traumatized—individuals, mainstream psychiatric discourse (represented in the movie as an international conference on psychiatry) refuses to consider this split personality otherwise than as a pathology. Accordingly, mainstream biomedical discourse enforces the diagnosis of mental disability on all of Kevin’s personalities, who must be suppressed in order to restore the rational rule of Kevin’s single identity—unified under a single mind-body norm that would qualify as healthy. Although there is no denying that Kevin did in fact suffer from child abuse that caused him a traumatic disorder, it is still significant that the cause of such trauma was his mother’s own obsessive-compulsive disorder, consisting precisely on the normative imposition of a rule of extreme order. Paying attention to the causes of trauma, as Kafer (2016, 6) suggests, reveals that the normative home-rule of the Crumbs is not only the root of his traumatic disorder, but a psychological disorder itself that becomes naturalized as normative rule by inflicting disability on the rational and physical infrahumanity of a child. This fractal iteration of structures of oppression also triggers a comparison and a relationship between the spiralling social circles of individual, family, health institution, and state. In Shyamalan’s movie, the dystopian effect is conveyed through a most conventional gothic aesthetics; the dark illumination of the dungeon, the young female victim(s) of a most villainous and vaguely supernatural male, the sexual overtones, and the gross carnage (including cannibalism) with its underlying touch of speciesist, colonial exoticism. But also through the political metaphor of The Beast as a body politics, the movie develops two classical gothic motifs: an extension of the doppelganger into its excessive psychoanalytical version of the split subject and the moral decadence of a status quo that justifies the retributive (r)evolution of the masses (Botting, 1996, 125; Baldick, 2001, 15, 20–22). As for transhumanism, the appeal of this violent, terrible Sublime (as Burke defined it in 1757) also rests on the promise of transcending the merely human. The film depicts The Beast’s violent character by showing how It dismembers and consumes human bodies. The passages in the movie where The Beast dismembers and eats Its victims raw (and even alive) strike the audience as gross cannibalism; and by human standards, also as a form of primitive, amoral animal behaviour characteristic of infrahuman existence. Yet when the Beast spares Casey’s life because Its diet includes only the “impure” or “untouched” humans who have not experienced suffering in their lives, the humanist standards ruling the audience’s initial judgement of The Beast are

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replaced by a transhumanist standard of normalcy that requalifies human beings as an inferior species. As the consumption of this inferior species cannot possibly count as a form of cannibalism and The Beast shows a humanist, speciesist code of moral and social behaviour, It cannot be considered an amoral, animalistic being any more. On the contrary, according to this new transhumanist paradigm, The Beast’s eating habits are perfectly civilized; superior in fact, to the merely human ones. This motif is not a new one, though. It draws from a long literary and filmic tradition including famous titles such as The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel and Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film) or The Time Machine (H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel and David Duncan’s 1960 and Simon Wells’ 2002 films), where superior human beings (psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and the Morlocks) regard the human species as a form of food (lambs and Eloi). But The Beast as an apocalyptic motif that signals the end of human time is directly taken from Revelations 13:4. While Unbreakable (released in 2000) uncannily precedes the heroic characters of the fire- and policemen constructed by the US media in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, interpreting Split as a national allegory of the causes, discourses, and policies developing around this national trauma renders a complex dystopian image blending trauma, disability, and transhumanist discourses that show certain affinities with critical posthumanism. Following the metaphorical comparison of the USA as a body politics, the causes of its 9/11 national trauma were diagnosed by Osama Bin Laden’s letter (The Guardian, 2002, 3) in relation to the repression of dissent (split nature) underlying American democracy. In his letter, which can be read as an ironic parody of the American Declaration of Independence in both its content and accusatory structure, Bin Laden justifies the slaughter of innocent victims in the World Trade Centers by means of their participation in the American democratic system that inflicted ongoing oppressive international policies on the Middle East (3, a−f): 1

You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake: a

This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

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The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq […]. Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us. The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us. This is why the American people cannot be innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us. Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. 6 Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back […].

Even though Bin Laden’s description of the US democratic system is most accurate, his diagnosis of the illness of its body politics feels wrong, and not only because his claim for retributive justice is based on religious authority (as retributive justice is also applied in non-confessional political systems). It becomes most obvious that although American citizens have actually “chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for” the ongoing oppression of the Middle East, the assumption that representative democracy is the political embodiment of a homogenous, coherent, and cohesive, or even rational or healthy body politics, is utterly wrong. Its very federal organization and the relevance that lobbies and pressure groups have in parliamentary activity, together with the many identities resulting from their complex historical heritage, picture a quite different national identity that rather adjusts to Dr. Fletcher’s description of Kevin’s diagnosed split personality as different individuals who become alternatively embodied in different physical and psychological realities. If this is a more accurate description of the democratic body politics, and according to Dr. Fletcher’s argument, there is nothing inherently pathological in it, it follows that the pathology attributed by Bin Laden to American democracy emerges from a diagnosis that considers its enlightened body politics as a normative one. Yet Bin Laden’s mistake is not just Bin Laden’s, as when he indistinctly refers to Palestine, the Arabian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan as a homogenous “we,” disregarding the different social, economic, and historical differences among their political realities, he is in fact pointing to the same political assumption ruling US international policies both before and after the 9/11 attacks. Disregarding these internal differences between the diverse embodiments of complex political bodies perpetuates the perpetration of structural oppression on these diverse political bodies by either denying their right to exist or pathologizing their existence as “unpatriotic” (the most obvious symptom of a dys-abled body politics).7

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However, while the diagnosed pathology is hyperreally inflicted on an otherwise naturally “healthy” plural (e pluribus) national identity (unum), the trauma that institutional oppression inflicts on individual citizens as well as the democratic body politics, cause quite real impairments. These impairments result from traumas caused not just by the loss of individual lives or injuries, nor just by the individual experience of survivor guilt; but also from traumas resulting from institutionally applying the 10/2001 Patriot Act as enforced treatment of the American body politics—a treatment that operates by the suppression of individual liberties in order to restore its Leviathan federal health. One would hesitate to determine what the real term is for the allegorical character of “The Beast” in Shyamalan’s movie. For The Beast is not a Satanic, evil character, nor an amoral or immoral one disturbing the peace of America as Eden. Rather, The Beast is the instrument of divine retributive justice—a monster not only in its destructive powers, but mainly in the superhuman split or composite “nature” of Its many-headed embodiment. Its split, evolving nature follows the model of the international terrorist cell, the US body politics or the international corporation in their many embodiments; all of which share the transhumanist promises of retributive justice through social, political, or economic eugenic and/or prosthetic means, as well as the eradication of the corresponding pathologies of merely human species whose impairment lies precisely in not having suffered yet, as restorative justice is granted only to the ones who suffer. The “normates”–those who have never suffered injustice, impairment, or disability, are either guilty of supporting institutional oppression by con-forming to it, or simply morally inferior to (or lacking the moral authority of) those who have suffered it. Thus, they are to be either sacrificed to The Beast as inferior species or, in case they survive, evolve into a superior one through the traumatic experience of survivor’s guilt. The intersection of transhumanist and apocalyptic promises does not occur only at the advent of a utopian Second Kingdom to be enjoyed by those who are chosen because they were purged through suffering, but also in the violent eradication of the impure ones. A traumatic dystopia precedes both—one that enforces treatment on a human species that is pathologized as dysfunctional according to the normative physical and political projection of a future evolution. Thus this apocalyptic utopia is always already the humanist dystopia. As propounded by Kafer, considering the cause of disabling trauma is important in the construction of a crip community if this community is committed to the inclusion, rather than the exclusion of its internal diversity. To the extent that Kafer’s approach to disability studies is profoundly selfreflexive (Kafer, 2016, 5, 17), it is aligned with the philosophical vision of critical posthumanism which, while remaining critical of humanist premises based on normative binary exclusions, is also wary of the consequences possibly resulting from its alleged dissolution, including the perpetuation, if not intensification of such exclusions (Herbrechter, 2013, 29). The utopian

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transhumanist promise, founded as it is on the natural absence of new transhumanist qualities that become imposed traumatic impairments (losses) by virtue of normative desirability (be they aesthetic, functional, political, social, and/or technological) involves furthering the embodied oppression embedded in the Vitruvian perfection of the humanist paradigm. Its ableist approach to evolution requires not only the construction of the corresponding disabilities (technological, genetic, physical, psychological, economic, communicative, environmental, political, racial, sexual, etc.), but also the structural trauma through which ongoing institutional oppression denies access to social participation for the persons who experience such forms of disability. Because its traumatic origin rests in the deprivation (loss) of access (to evolution, to salvation), rather than the critical, self-reflective distance from these experiences that would prevent full identification with either victims (pure) or perpetrators (impure), it advocates for a notion of redemptive justice and apocalyptic closure precluding an ethical and political response in the “here and now” that LaCapra relates to processes of working through trauma (2001, 22, 41) following the spirit of critical posthumanism. Politically speaking, these dystopian accounts of transhumanism propound a self-reflective vision of the humanist project that questions the perpetuation of some of its premises in the transhumanist paradigm. While drawing mainly on social disability studies, Shyamalan’s film also develops interesting connections with structural trauma studies through the socio-political metaphor of Kevin’s identity as a body politics constituted by the paradigmatic representations of 23 forms of social oppression resulting from structural trauma. It also includes issues relating to medical ethics and the tyrannical threats inherent to certain democratic policies considered at the institutional level, as well as their multiple, individual physical embodiments.

Notes 1 It has been argued that rather than confronting humanism, transhumanism is a continuation of the humanist ideals (Ferrando, 2013, 27; Clarke and Rossini, 2017, xiv; Vint, 2007, 178), including not only anthropocentrism (replacing the theocentric model) and human supremacy over other species, but also its humanist democratic correspondent. 2 The constructivist paradigm underlying the prosthetic and eugenic branches of transhumanism subscribes to a multiple identity politics that is sometimes represented by the physical image of the articulated/prosthetic cyborg (Haraway, developing the medical idea of La Mettrie’s “Man Machine”), the global information network of Singularity (Kurtzweil, 2005), the flickering or fluid material identities of different forms of social or gender mobility (related to Hayles’s code switching versus Cixous’s Marxist appropriation), and on recent findings in neuroplasticity (Deppermann et al., 2014, 172–173), or the eugenic projects uncannily blending the Aryan version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Fanon’s utopia of cosmopolitan hybridity, and the normative, homogeneizing control of human genetic production by multinational corporations such as Monsanto. These many forms of the transhumanist political promise involving the evolution of gender, race, class, or species identity are all based on the programmed obsolescence (Diéguez,

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2017, 93–94; Vint, 2007, 177) of the human species through the deconstruction of the humanist discourse. According to the social model of disability, “impairment” is defined as a functional (mental or physical) limitation, while “disability” is a “socially generated system of discrimination” (Meekosha and Shuttleworth, 2017, 177). Split is the second movie in a trilogy also including Unbreakable (2000) and Glass (2019). Like the transhuman self, The Beast’s identity is ambiguous under the humanist paradigm. Although It is embodied as an independent individual, It does not operate (like other embodied personalities previously did) as the political representative of Kevin’s split mind, but as its composite evolved self that embodies their diversity. The Beast would also qualify as merely instrumental, discursive prosthesis if considered as a mythical construct developed by Kevin’s split mind, but Its embodiment is represented as natural in Vitruvian terms (a superVitruvian man), while Its partial nakedness and cannibalistic practices suggest a certain sense of animality in It. Short of a better pronoun, I chose the capitalized “It” to refer to this transhuman ambiguity between the human, the animal and the instrumental object. All italics are mine. While discussing the 9/11 attacks in 2002, Pfeiffer compares US imperial ontology with ableist ontology in that both are based on “false dichotomies” and the exclusion of otherness as an expression of manifest destiny (Pfeiffer 2002, 18).

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Deppermann, S., H. Storchak, A.J. Fallgatter, & A.C. Ehlis. 2014. “Stress-Induced Neuroplasticity: (Mal)Adaptation to Adverse Life Events in Patients With PTSD— A Critical.” Neuroscience, 283: 166–177. Diéguez, Antonio. 2017. Transhumanismo: la búsqueda tecnológica del mejoramiento humano. Barcelona: Herder Editorial. Doe, Tanis & Barbara Ladoceur. 2009. “To Be or Not To Be? Whose Question Is It Anyway? Two Women Discuss the Right to Assisted Suicide.” In Rethinking Normalcy. A Disability Studies Reader, ed. Tanya Titchosky & Rod Michalko, 120–131. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Dolmage, Jay. 2017. “Disabled Upon Arrival: The Rhetorical Construction of Disability and Race at Ellis Island.” In The Disabilities Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 43–70. New York, NY: Routledge. Ferrando, Francesca. 2013. “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms. Differences and Relations.” Existenz. An International Journal on Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts. 8(2): 26–32. Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. 2002. “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetoric of Disability in popular Photography.” In Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. S.L. Snyder, B.J. Brueggemann, & G.R. Thomson, 56–75. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. 2009. “Disability, Identity, and Representation.” In Rethinking Normalcy. A Disability Studies Reader, ed. Tanya Titchkosky & Rod Michalko, 63–74. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. The Guardian. 2002. “Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’.” November 24, 2002. Haraway, Donna. 1985. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs.” Socialist Review, 80, 15 (2 March−April): 65–107. Haraway, Donna. 2003. A Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Others. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press. Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Herbrechter, Stefan. 2013. Posthumanism. A Critical Analysis. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. Kafer, Alison. 2016. “Un/Safe Disclosures. Scenes of Disability and Trauma.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 10(1): 1–20. Kurtzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity Is Near. When Humans Transcend Biology. London: Viking. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. Écrits. The First Complete Edition in English. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York, NY and London: W.W. Norton & Company. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2014. “How Better to Register the Agency of Things.” In Yale Tanner Lecture, 1–36. Available at: www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/ 137-YALETANNER.pdf. Lewis, Bradley. 2017. “A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism.” In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 102–118. New York, NY and London: Routledge.

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Malacrida, Claudia. 2009. “Discipline and Dehumanization.” In Rethinking Normacly. A Disability Studies Reader, ed. Tanya Titchovsky & Rod Michalko, 181–195. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Meekosha, Helen & Russell Shuttleworth. 2017. “What’s So ‘Critical’ About Critical Disabiltiy Studies?” In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 175–194. New York, NY: Routledge. Michalko, Rod. 2009. “Coming Face-to-Face with Suffering.” In Rethinking Normalcy. A Disabilty Studies Reader, edited by Tanya Titchosky and Rod Michalko, 91–114. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Orlando, Monica. 2018. “Neurodiverse Self-Discovery and Social Acceptance in Curious Incident and Marcelo in the Real World.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 12(3): 321–335. Pepperell, Robert. 2003. The Posthuman Condition. Consciousness Beyond the Brain. Bristol and Portland, OR: Intellect Books. Pfeiffer, David. 2002. “The Philosophical Foundations of Disabilty Studies.” Disability Studies Quarterly, 22(2): 3–23. Punter, David. 1996. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present. London: Longman. Rioux, Marcia H. 2009. “Bending Towards Justice.” In Rethinking Normalcy. A Disability Studies Reader, ed. Tanya Titchovsky & Rod Michalko, 201–216. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Shyamalan, M. Night. 2016. Split. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Produced by Marc Bienstock. Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. Swain, John, and Sally French. 2000. “Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability.” Disability & Society, 15(4): 569–582. Vint, Sherryl. 2007. Bodies of Tomorrow. Technology, Subjectivty, Science Fiction. Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press.

10 The Call of the Anthropocene Resituating the Human Through Trans- & Posthumanism. Notes of Otherness in Works of Jeff VanderMeer and Cixin Liu Justus Poetzsch 1 The Anthropocene—New Relations Between Man and World The beginning of the third millennium was not only the highly anticipated and sometimes anxiously expected start of a new chronological chapter, referring back to man’s religiously embedded history, but also marked the emergence of a new time concept relating to the geological timeline of the planet. It was 2,000 years after the boundary-crossing event of a supposedly divine entity becoming incarnate in a human form, when chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer echoed the plea for a new epoch in the Earth history: a new epoch that would represent another extraordinary epistemological transformation. After two millennia, another fundamental boundary between man and world was about to fall. But this earthshaking crack in the conception of the planet started only with a small rumble in the rather specialized discourse of geosystem science. At first glance, the short article in the Global Change Newsletter did not look like much. In it, Crutzen and Stoermer suggest that: considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales, it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch. (2000, 17) But this condensation of planetary transformation, the disruptions in Earth’s atmo-, hydro-, bio- and lithosphere owing to the intensification of man’s lifestyle represented an irresistible concept. Mankind’s growing influence around the globe is unprecedented. As a result of their growing population, humans are increasingly transforming the Earth’s surface and its ecosystems on land and water in a fundamental manner. The extraction of natural resources, species extinction, urbanization, agriculture, burning of fossil fuels, and causation of the greenhouse effect are just some of the deep marks that humanity has left on the planet (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000, 17). Over

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the following period of 16 years, which it took the Geological Society to examine and officially accept the notion of a new era, the epistemological vibrations of “mankind’s actions becoming a significant geological [and] morphological force” (2000, 17) had already gone viral throughout academic disciplines and society. Once the idea spread beyond the circle of geoscience, its global triumph seemed unstoppable: [T]he concept took flight. Environmental scientists latched on to what they saw as a useful catch-all term for the changes to the natural world— retreating sea ice, accelerating species extinction, bleached coral reefs— that they were already attributing to human activity. Academic articles began to appear with ‘Anthropocene’ in the title, followed by entire journals dedicated to the topic. Soon the idea jumped to the humanities, then newspapers and magazines, and then to the arts, becoming a subject of photography, poetry opera and a song by Nick Cave. (Davison, 2019) The severity of this new epoch becomes obvious by attuning oneself to the theological undertones of the emerging narrative. It seems as if humans are now fulfilling their much-longed for dream of bringing their heavenly heritage to light by using science and technology to finally free themselves from the shackles of a naturally bounded existence. As a result of this new geological concept of humans being the first name-giver and prime-mover of the earth, mankind seems to become the “creator of a new earth […] taking the position of god” (Scherer, 2015, 106; after Dürbeck, 2018, 13). The Anthropocene is thus defined as a moment of potentially almighty man now being inseparably entangled with the planet’s destiny. But this divine narrative is by no means unchallenged, and already the geochronological debates about the specific starting date and significant markers reveal the inherent ambivalence of the current man−planet relationship. Jan Zalasiewicz, head of the Anthropocene Working Group, who is one of the strongest promoters of the idea that humans are having an unprecedented influence on the planet, accumulates chronostratigraphical evidence about the uniqueness of the current geological epoch. His research unveils that considering the most significant primary markers for the start date of the Anthropocene apparently “anthropogenic radionuclides associated with nuclear arms testing are the most promising; potential secondary markers include plastic, carbon isotope patterns and industrial fly ash” (Zalasiewicz et al., 2017, 1). Thus, the development of nuclear power —the potential to shatter the fundamental particles on which the world is built upon—is defined as the starting point for “the beginning of a new geological epoch ripe with human-directed opportunity” (Ellis, 2011, 43). Atomic energy—a technology derived out of the horrors of the Second World War—led to the creation of weapons of mass destruction, which then became a constant existential threat for the global human population during

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the postwar period. This technology should now mark the ‘glorious’ beginning of the manmade planet. The obvious contradictions about this new human-derived planetary concept seem even greater, if one turns to the secondary geochronological markers. Plastic, carbon, and fly ash turn the idea of mankind being an all-powerful creator into the deadly reality of a planet that is being burned, choked, and deserted by the techno-industrial actions of a human race out of control. In contrast to the notion of a potentially omnipotent humanity arises the discourse of a planetary collapse, a geosystemic crisis, and climate change, which opposes the divine qualities of an almighty human agent by highlighting the mainly destructive and deadly anthropogenic impact on eco- and geosystemic processes. By following that trail of destruction, it becomes apparent that humanity has unintentionally been accumulating negative effects on a finely tuned planetary system, which appears to be unbalanced and will most probably mutate in ways that are threating for an innumerable number of lifeforms but will at last be hazardous for human life. Owing to mankind’s actions, the sixth great mass extinction is unfolding—a “biological annihilation, [which…] suggest[s] that as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of populations” (Ceballos, Ehrlich, and Dirzo, 2017). But even though humans are responsible for the extinction of an unfathomable number of species and continue to increase their deadly actions, it is most probably their own species that is about to vanish from the Earth. By ignoring the living kin relation and structural interdependence of all lifeforms on the planet, bringing harm to other “companion species” (Haraway, 2003) and the environment is turning out to be suicidal. In this respect, considering the long-term history of the planet, life will most probably persist in various other than current and thus other than human forms, as it did for millions of years before. By zooming out of the short geological timeframe, since homo sapiens was roaming the Earth, man’s exceptional transformative and mainly disruptive activities will in the end only mark a couple centimeters of radioactive blackened strata under the planet’s surface. From this perspective, the concept of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene as a condensation of manmade climate and planetary change also indicates a posthuman reality, echoing Zalasiewiczs’s 2009 book title: The Earth After Us. What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? But no matter if one follows the narration of an omnipotent or a moribund human being, the current situation does, in any case, require a redefinition of man’s relation to the world. Because in human history, these changes of geosphere, ecosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere represent a severe challenge for the modern conception of human subjects being separated from and in opposition to natural objects (Latour, 1993). The intrinsic dualisms, which have so far structured Western epistemology and politics, are being radically questioned, as climate change and global warming, the higher frequency of natural disasters and extreme weather events, the

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omnipresence of microplastic, and radioactive fallout and other waste materials, in addition to a potential human extinction, are eradicating the difference between nature andculture, human life and non-human life, and species and planet: In little over two generations—or a single lifetime—humanity (or until very recently a small fraction of it) has become a planetary-scale geological force. Hitherto human activities were insignificant compared with the biophysical Earth System, and the two could operate independently. However, it is now impossible to view one as separate from the other. (Steffen et al., 2015, 14) This liquidation of boundaries in the Anthropocene constitutes a fundamental upheaval of elemental notions such as time, space, and agency, and thus stimulates the need for readjustments and the reframing of the very human category. As a result, as the role of Anthropos—his general place and significance—becomes questionable, new forms of anthropological conception arise accordingly.

2 The Human Being in Dissolution: Trans- and Posthumanism These redefinitions of the human can generally be distinguished into two opposing theoretical movements, loosely following the two different tendencies of interpreting the Anthropocene, which were just laid out. Even though the modern conception of man has always experienced a more or less intensely articulated critique and was constantly confronted with growing anti-, in- or over-human theoretical and political pressure, especially since the second half of the twentieth century, the current far- and deep-reaching tendencies of deand reconstruction seem to have reached a critical threshold of radically redefining the Western notion of ‘the human.’ Over the past two decades several disciplines in the natural sciences and humanities have raised questions about the status of man, owing to ever more powerful non-human actions and agents emerging in the fields of technology and environment. The rise of a “technoecological” (Hörl and Haff, 2016) mode of thinking thus reflects the diffusion of mankind on an ever faster transforming world. Attempts to resynchronize humans with their transforming technological and ecological environments allow new concepts to emerge that reframe the anthropological situation. The unstable situation of humans in their planet is planned to be rearranged through an intensification of “planetary stewardship” (Ellis, 2011, 42) as Erle Ellis puts it. However, the growing human powers present an “opportunity to create a planet that is better for both its human and nonhuman inhabitants” (38). To increase “human resilience on an artificial earth” (Ellis, 2011), the planet can be managed through “large-scale geoengineering projects, for instance to ‘optimize’ climate” (Crutzen, 2002) as already suggested by Paul Crutzen. Modifying and optimizing the planetary

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as well as the human nature by massive, far-, and deep-reaching technological enhancements outlines one way to outbalance the anthropological insecurity that has arisen. Yuval Harari uses the term “Homo deus” (Harari, 2017) to describe this potentially apotheotic transformation of man, who uses science and technology to strive for immortality, everlasting happiness, and divinity. Those calls for technological transcendence and the optimization of the imperfect and maladjusted human form are most prominent in the movement of Transhumanism. Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Aubrey de Grey, and other transhumanists share the following self-definition: [Transhumanism is] the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (Humanity+, n.d.) The drive for transgression and accelerated progress is inherent in transhuman philosophy, which is also shown by their 2009 declaration, where it states: “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth” (H+pedia, 2018). Transcending any kind of limitation, be it body, lifetime, or planet, is the transhuman way to deal with the anthropological diffusion of the current age. But in opposition to technological transgression arises a strong philosophical movement, which highlights the other-than-human forms of agency and brings the resistance, creativity, and power of non-humans to light. Microbes, plants and animals, atmosphere, and vital and planetary forces, as well as artefacts, chemicals, technological objects, infrastructure, or matter in general are emphasized as being the major if not dominant part in shaping reality. This posthuman turn resonates in several disciplines, bringing natural sciences and humanities into a fruitful dialogue again. Social scientists are becoming more and more interested in the material powers that are constituting reality besides solely discursive practices. Thus quantum physics (Barad, 2007), biochemistry (Haraway, 2016), and geology (Latour, 2017) are turning into scientific playgrounds for researchers who were previously limited by an unquestioned anthropocentrism. Matter also becomes socialized, as humans are perceived as being truly part of the material world. Correspondingly, the natural realm no longer ends at the boundaries of society. Concepts like Darwinian evolution (Grosz, 2005), geological stratification (Yusoff, 2017), and environmental epigenetics (Kenney and Müller, 2017) are being investigated as relevant structure-forming mechanisms of the more-than-human world. Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolf, and other posthumanist thinkers focus on the vital power of thus far ignored,

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reduced, or suppressed agentiality in human epistemology, ontology, and politics. Thus, posthuman critique fights on multiple levels against a structural anthropocentrism, which has so far overemphasized man’s role and measure as the starting and endpoint for understanding and creating the world. By deconstructing the historical and epistemological universalism of the human as a contingent category which narrows Anthropos as being European, male, rational, heterosexual, white, and able-bodied, the other-than human entities turn from being passive objects to active subjects (Braidotti, 2013). In fact it is the numerous non-human agents who appear to constitute human agency in the first place. A posthuman perspective demonstrates a more realistic account of reality by stressing the dynamic collective and relational entanglements, which are shaping the world and humans in an ongoing process of becoming. Following Braidotti’s terminology, humans are “nomadic subjects […] as embodied and socially embedded assemblages” (2012, 66), only a temporary crystallization in the flux of matter and energy. Exploring the potentially other forms of a more-than-human reality makes storytelling and the development of utopian, fictional, and fabulous narratives a crucial undertaking. Therefore, Haraway highlights the present necessity of generating multilevel SF, as science-fiction/fact and string figures, which both create relational and interdependent accounts of a no longer possible anthropocentric world (Haraway, 2016, 31). Martha Kenney supports this call for alternative understandings of human−world relations and comes up with her shared but very own “fables of response-ability [which are about] cultivating the capacity for response” (Kenney, 2019, 7) in these transformative times. Correspondingly, the following presentation of two fictional novels tries to shine some light on the always evolving and never fixed future, stimulating alternative thinking about the more-thanhuman world. The works of Cixin Liu and Jeff VanderMeer will be interpreted as two different approaches to deal with the transgression of the human−environment boundary, suggesting two opposing concepts to rethink the inherent entanglement of homo sapiens on Planet Earth.

3 Trans- and Posthuman Visions in the Works of Cixin Liu and Jeff VanderMeer The opposing visions of trans- and posthumanism, which can be understood as emerging frameworks to make sense of our current global transformations, are also present and prominent in literature, especially in the innovative genre of science fiction. Those different notions of human beings in the sense of a radical open-ended process of becoming will be exemplified in two trilogies, which both use the figuration of extra-terrestrials to highlight the alienness of potential trans- or posthuman entities. Cixin Liu’s series Remembrance of Earth’s Past (Liu, 2014, 2016, 2017a) and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach-trilogy (VanderMeer, 2014) exemplify how future scenarios of more-than-human and other-than-human modes of existence could

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be depicted and what challenges arise from communicating with or even becoming a maximum other, “the strangest stranger” (Schetsche, et al., 2009). To trace the opposing concepts of trans- or posthumanism, a short summary of Liu’s and VanderMeer’s work and story plots will be given before immersion into their rich writing, which offers various conceptions of the nonhuman in alien encounters. 3.1 Cixin Liu’s Transhuman Triad Cixin Liu’s trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past was released in China between 2008 and 2010 and was first published in 2014 for the Englishspeaking market. Liu situates his work in the genre of hard science fiction, which makes him mainly interested in depicting the potential outcome of accelerated technological progress remaining within the laws of natural sciences. Cixin Liu’s most popular work, the novels The Three Body Problem (Liu, 2014), The Dark Forest (Liu, 2016) and Death’s End (Liu, 2017a) are telling a story about the human future and emancipation from their home planet. In the ethos of Russian father of space travel, Konstantin Tsiolkovski, who claimed that “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever” (Tsiolkovski; in Hagemeister, 2005, 59), Liu develops a chronological story line mimicking the linear structure of historical materialism, which begins with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and ends with a manmade utopian rebirth of the universe. Within the narrative, human history turns out to be closely linked and interrelated with the destiny of the cosmos, which becomes revealed through several contact scenarios with other extraterrestrial civilizations and thus expands space, time, and human agency to its uttermost limits. Liu presents a threefold story about humanity’s voyage into space, spanning ever bigger spatial and temporal distances with each successive book. He lays out an explorative and evolutionary narrative of mankind transforming itself in relation to the changing cosmic environment and influence owing to contact with several alien civilizations. But extra/terrestrial life in the universe, even though not rare, is described as being in a permanent state of endangerment, framing those interstellar communications and interactions solely in modes of mistrust, hostility, and fear of extinction. Throughout the trilogy, Liu outlines existence in the universe as being ruled by the rigid concept of cosmic sociology, following two adamant axioms: “First: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant” (Liu, 2016, 6). According to those axioms of cosmic sociology, intelligent lifeforms in the universe do always represent a current or potential threat for each other, as exponential growth and exploration will automatically make them fight for scarce resources of matter, energy, and space. Liu spells out his theoretical concept by depicting the clash of an earthly and an alien civilization, in which the latter is fleeing from the threatening environment of their

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TriSolarian home world—a world being at the mercy of three unpredictable stars, making the remnants of the alien society looking for a new planet to thrive again. This destined planet to rekindle the alien civilization is Earth. Thus the conflict between humans and Trisolarians unfolds, which is characterized by ruthless strikes and devious maneuvers trying to foresee and counteract the deadly moves of the opponent. The extraterrestrial contact scenario therefore becomes a galactic game of chess for survival of both of the competing civilizations. Technological progress providing the means for power over matter, time, and natural laws in addition to psychological warfare to outsmart and foresee hostile activities are presented as the crucial elements in this cosmic fight. Even though hard-won compromises and a cautious coexistence between the Trisolarian and human society seem to be temporarily possible, both worlds are finally destroyed by technologically more advanced galactic civilizations. The hostility between Earth and Trisolaris turns out to be representative for the general mode of being in the universe, letting every cosmic civilization fight for the limited developmental space in a finite cosmos. This merciless war of all worlds endangers every new-born civilization that is making its first steps into the cosmic void, but seems to threaten even the physical structure of the universe itself. As the universal struggle for existence causes irreversible damage in the fabric of space-time the destiny of intelligent life as well as the cosmos remain uncertain at the end of the space saga. Liu’s picture of life in the universe is thus pitch-black: The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. (Liu, 2016, 521) Owing to those threatening universal rules, the universe has become a hostile place, in which even physical laws are being corrupted through the effects of a merciless cosmic struggle for existence—a struggle becoming ever more precarious for the already few remaining human representatives by the end of the trilogy. The last hope for human life and cosmic intelligence in general to prevent eternal extinction remains the slight chance of inducing a restart of the universe by initiating a second Big Bang and thus starting the cosmic cycle again. Leaving behind only memories and blueprints of the civilizations which once populated the cosmos, Liu’s future history of the universe ends.

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It is striking how Cixin Liu’s vision about the distant future of humanity can be interpreted through the tension of ideologies shaping today’s Chinese society. The teleology of communism expresses itself through faith in constant advancement and the inherent law of historical materialism, which makes humanity pursue the inevitable path of scientific and social progress to rule the Earth, the solar system and beyond. Early Soviet or other communist fictional and non-fictional writing is strongly influenced by this idea of history’s inherent progress, inevitably letting humanity pursue the path of “Immortality and Interplanetarity” (Aleksandr Svjatogor [Agienko]; in Hagemeister, 2005, 25). Those motifs are prominent in works of Soviet fiction authors such as Ivan Jefremov or the Strugatzki brothers1 and also shape Liu’s progressive history about rapidly evolving humankind. But this narrative is in fact much older, rooted deeply in the ideology of Enlightenment humanism, which translates the heavenly history of theological salvation into a worldly mission of bringing a political paradise to realization. The history of ideas shows that instead of hoping for a better world to come after the profane earthly existence, a utopian project was undertaken in this material realm by forming man and society into an ever better and finally transcendent state (Bloch, 1986). This teleology of mankind’s destiny culminating in omnipresent and omnipotent potentiality is also present in China’s ambitious space projects, broad implementation of artificial intelligence, and boundary-crossing genetic engineering. Owing to the enormous technological power of the People’s Republic of China, overcoming planetary and natural limits in a transcendent way anticipates the almost Godlike responsibilities of Liu’s last human protagonists: They realized that even their individual life choices affected the fate of the universe, or even the fate of multiple universes. They really felt like God. […] And now we know that this is the journey that must be made by every civilization: awakening inside a cramped cradle, toddling out of it, taking flight, flying faster and farther, and, finally merging with the fate of the universe. (Liu, 2017a, 715) However, this narrative of eternal and almighty human progress is endangered and unfolds only in a deadly struggle for existence with other competing civilizations. This could be interpreted as a representation of the merciless economy and calculated destruction of ecosystems, lifeforms, and relations through China’s ruthless state capitalism. Furthermore, in Liu’s cold, competitive world, the limited resources of the cosmos create a fatal space race ultimately endangering all life in the universe. This cosmic competition and the cruel laws of a cosmic sociology represent the brutal laws of nature that confine the development of species and civilization in an economically informed world model of social Darwinism. Competition as the motor of evolution throughout the universe puts natural pressure on all emerging life

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forms, letting only the fittest ones survive. This Malthusian law of exponential population growth in conflict with limited resources creates a “horrid system of multiple hecatombs known as natural selection” (Gould, 1990, 14), legitimizing a merciless form of social Darwinism as an universal rule. And likewise the adamant axioms of unlimited growth within a limited universe shape Liu’s cosmic civilization, letting only the most secretive and ruthless of life forms survive—a deadly rule risking a final extinction of all living beings. The picture of a human future painted by Liu remains ambivalent. Even the destiny of humankind is strongly interlinked with the cosmos, and the permanent looming danger of extinction makes the God-like response-abilities of mankind seem very double-edged. Nonetheless, this narrative remains a typical anthropocentric worldview, making man the struggling hero of a universal tragedy. Haraway’s critique of this archetypal story to reframe the outbalanced human−environment relationship applies to the Anthropocene discourse as well as to Liu’s tragic space saga: The story of Species Man as the agent of the Anthropocene [as well the universe] is an almost laughable rerun of the great phallic humanizing and modernizing Adventure, where man, made in the image of vanished god, takes on superpowers in his secular-sacred ascent, only to end in tragic detumescence, once again. (Haraway, 2016, 47) In that sense, Cixin Liu tells a story, which is in fact the sequel to typical human-centered, teleological myths, which already proved to be inefficient to deal with the emerging irreducible and powerful non-human agents of a very near future. Liu’s Remembrance of the Earth’s Past is thus retelling a transhuman narrative, which is limited to perceiving the human in only two ways: being either gloriously all-powerful or becoming tragically extinct. Following that transhuman logic, typical motifs of techno-transcendence are being developed in Liu’s story, giving humanity the ability to perform cryonics, whole-brain emulation, interstellar travel, the transformation of whole planets and in the end maybe even the ability to change the nature and fate of the universe itself, but never being able to perceive human or other life forms in a fundamentally cooperative, co-constitutive, and relational way.2 Therefore, let’s turn to alternative ways of perceiving and engaging with the alien other, which might not ensure a permanent existence for humankind, but will at least open up more complex ways of seeing and interacting with the world. 3.2 Jeff VanderMeer’s Posthuman Area X In contrast to Cixin Liu’s transhuman tale of extraterrestrial encounters, Jeff VanderMeer develops a narrative of life beyond anthropogenic control and even understanding. In 2014 VanderMeer published his most famous literary

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work yet, the ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy (VanderMeer, 2014), presenting the three novels Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance in short succession. The first book, Annihilation, was adapted for cinema and became a Hollywood movie in 2018, directed by Alex Garland. VanderMeer includes elements of horror, speculative, and weird fiction in his archetypical SF plot of an alien encounter, thus creating a complex contact scenario of multiple layers, diverse characters, and uncanny landscapes. The Southern Reach trilogy deals with the mysterious events related to the unexpected appearance of an unearthly Area X, which seems to be enclosed by some membranous border, confining a different world with unforeseeable laws and terrifying nature—a border to an area beyond comprehension but one that starts to grow and becomes more and more permeable. VanderMeer’s story unfolds through the perspective of explicitly liminal characters. It stages protagonists like the cloned doppelganger Ghost Bird, who is replicated from an already spectral biologist—a scientist who prefers the presence of tidal pools and the marine creatures roaming within those shallow waters over human relationships; or the Lighthouse Keeper, a lookout at the edge of the world who hosts a radiating splinter of another realm within himself, writing his inexpressible life story with contagious letters on the walls inside a twisted tower which stretches far into the depths of another sphere. Those characters are crossing the demarcation line between almost unrelatable dimensions of time, space, and rationalities, which transform them in irreversible manners. The three novels can be read as a logbook about a failing contact scenario with an alien life form, which depicts unprepared, unqualified, and insufficient diplomats, who are neither really aware of their task nor able to find a suitable mode of communication with that extraterrestrial entity. An entity that is so monstrously different that every encounter becomes a threat for mind and body. But paradoxically, giving up the human form of thinking and embodiment turns out to be the only possible way to make contact. It is also the only possibility to uphold one’s existence in the alien environment. Shedding the unsuitable human form of mental and physical impersonation becomes the condition for continuity, but a continuity that is not more than a weak echo of a past identity. Thus VanderMeer describes how formerly human characters and the earthly environment are being irreversibly altered by forcefully merging with a contagious alien entity which results in hybrid modes of existence—a structural liminality that enables sustainability only in form of an emulsion, a vital but never coherent assemblage relying on the interpenetration of the other. Interacting with Area X requires embracing the brightness of another world to accept the substantial changes that are forced upon them, to pursue the painful path of becoming other: Unable to escape the sensation of interference and transmittal, a communication pressing in on the edges of his brain. [… A] universe was opening up in his head, filled with images he didn’t, couldn’t understand. […] It

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The inability to experience one as being part of something bigger, something so much vaster than the singular, self-centered human individual becomes the core problem depicted by VanderMeer when interacting with fundamental different entities and environments. Owing to the limited capacity of man to put himself in the position of other living beings that have already cohabitated this natural world since the very beginning, a successful encounter with even stranger forms of life, having evolved on unearthly worlds, seems more or less impossible: Right now, if the outside world existed, it would still be sending radiowave messages into space and monitoring radio-wave frequencies to seek out other intelligent life in the universe. But Ghost Bird didn’t think those messages were being received. Another way people were bound by their own view of consciousness. What if an infection was a message, a brightness a kind of symphony? As a defense? An odd form of communication? If so, the message had not been received, would probably never be received, the message buried in the transformation itself. Having to reach for such banal answers because of a lack of imagination, because human beings couldn’t even put themselves in the mind of a cormorant or an owl or a whale or a bumblebee. (VanderMeer, 2014, 490) In that sense, the human contact with Area X demonstrates that we have not even begun to understand or relate to the fellow creatures that have surrounded us since our very beginning. At least the Western narrative of modernity and Enlightenment results in a worldview where humans fail to acknowledge and attune themselves to the constitutive non-human beings which are sharing the same world as them. But ignoring, suppressing, or annihilating natural and environmental others proves to be an inadequate practice for our current global changes spanning from the molecular to planetary scale. Therefore, VanderMeer gives a critical demonstration on anthropocentric encounters with other forms of life. At the end of the trilogy, Area X seems to extend indefinitely, having engulfed probably all of the outer world and thus made the border between alien and familiar spheres unrecognizable. However, the last human or once human characters see themselves “in a world that was so rich and full” (VanderMeer, 2014, 587)—a world bursting with generative vitality, so that experiencing the potential loss of the formerly human dominated realm appears as an evolutionary outcome, which might rather be welcomed than bemoaned.

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Jeff VanderMeer’s narrative about the human world being overwhelmed by a proliferating alien entity termed Area X forces us to overcome the limited anthropocentric perspective on environment and other forms of life. In that sense, the Southern Reach trilogy could be understood as a call for different modes of being and differentiated forms of becoming. The accumulating planetary transformations and the concept of climate change stimulate a thinking, which acknowledges that the extent and complexity of the formerly nonhuman world pushes the manmade boundaries to the limits of constraint. Instead of a dominating and disconnected humanity, which for/sees itself above and beyond earthly restraints, the vital environmental forces depicted in VanderMeer’s story represent the inherent connectedness and interdependence of all life forms, by emphasizing the multiple, unescapable, and not necessarily benevolent ties between microbes, plants, animals, humans,s and ecosystem. Timothy Morton develops the notion of “hyperobjects” (Morton, 2013) for those phenomena, which radically transcend the human categories of time, space, and understanding as a “traumatic loss of coordinates” (Morton, 2013, 22). In that sense, climate change is probably one of the most pressing disruptions that are forcing the formerly human centered coordinate system to a fundamental readjustment. Similarly, VanderMeer sensitizes for the agency, resistance, and power of natural and other non-human entities by increasing the alienness and intimidation of an extraterrestrial ecosystem which is forcing its reality onto the hitherto man mad/e world: Area X has been created by an organism left behind by a civilization so advanced and so ancient and so alien to us and our own intent and our own thought processes that is has long since left us behind, left everything behind. (VanderMeer, 2014, 503). This excessive, non-human agency comes into reality via contagious, viral, and miasmic metaphors, transgressing the boundaries between bodies but also between textual and material spheres. Within the narrative, it is the inhalation of spores from “symbiotic fruiting bodies […] forming words” (VanderMeer, 2014, 18) that initiate the transformation of the protagonist— a contamination making her resilient to human threats but which invites the alien environment to begin the altering process of a no longer human body and mind. This transgressive vitality resonates strongly with posthuman philosophy, as boundary crossing perspectives, focusing on “material semiotic” (Law, 2019) or “material-discursive” (Barad, 2007, 132) performativity to describe the unfolding of the world bring the equivalence of text and thing power, of cultural and natural structuralism to light. Thus VanderMeer’s depiction of a human biologist becoming impressed, imprinted, and overridden by the posthuman ecosystem that she is supposed to study, dissolves binaries such as observer/observed, inside/outside, subject/object, species/environment, and laboratory/reality.3 The concept of proliferating,

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unbound, and generative life, which constitutes but always exceeds the human being, is central to VanderMeer’s narrative about posthuman realities. In affirming the neo-vitalist impulse of Gilles Deleuze, in his interpretation of Bergson and Spinoza, the notion of life as a force of generative difference and effervescent transgression provides a fruitful insight in the alien ecology of Area X. In one of his very last texts, Immanence. A Life…, Deleuze writes: A life is everywhere, in all the moments a certain living subject passes through and that certain lived objects regulate: immanent life carrying along the events or singularities which do nothing more than actualize themselves in subjects and objects. This indefinite life does not itself have moments however closer together they might be, but only meantimes, between-moments. (Deleuze, 1997, 5) This notion of a life, in the sense of pure and eternal vitality instantiating itself in always new and changing shapes, but never becoming fully defined or finally determined, is exactly the alien quality of VanderMeer’s Area X. A quality that expresses itself in all life forms, but appears to be several orders of magnitude stronger in an unearthly environment. Instead of anthropogenic logic or control, Area X offers an opportunity to engage the otherthan-human forms of existence within the human. It is an “ek-sistence” (Heidegger, 1978), to use the Heideggerian term, or “eccentric positionality” (Plessner, 2019, 267) following the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner—a being that is never really tangible and always exceeds the rational human ways of thinking, permanently transgresses man’s attempts to establish boundaries, order, and control. VanderMeer creates a posthuman narrative by using organic motifs and blooming metaphors, building on the inherent excessiveness of growth, illustrating the proliferating drive of vital forms of life. In doing so, he finds a similar way of approaching the posthuman modes of being as Braidotti, who is proposing a non-human and “[…] dynamic, self-organizing structure of life itself, [which] stands for generative vitality. It is the transversal force that cuts across and reconnects previously segregated species, categories and domains.” (Braidotti, 2013, 60), or like Elisabeth Grosz, who also perceives living entities as an expression of excessive evolutionary forces, “a fundamentally open ended system which pushes toward a future with no real direction, no promise of any particular result, no guarantee of progress or improvement, but with every indication of inherent proliferation and transformation” (Grosz, 2005, 26). In that sense, VanderMeer’s story attempts to make an approximation on the posthuman through engagements with the unfathomable Area X and the wild and transgressive forces within. He gives evidence for the need to overcome an anthropocentric world view and indicates the necessity for theoretical and practical readjustments, since our shared reality has never

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only been and will always be more than human. Facing the global disruptions of epistemology and geology owing to manmade climate change and techno-ecological transformations requires, more than ever, other ways of engaging with the world. Remaining in our current anthropocentric perspective, categories, and corporeality seems not to be adequate for the radical transformations of ecosystem and planet lying ahead.

4 A Summary of Unknown Futures The intensifying disturbances of the human−environment relationship caused by climate change as well as the notion of a new geological epoch highlighting the growing influence of mankind on the planet stimulates a diffusion of the modern categories, most prominently the hu/man. This short excursion into the dynamic and liquefying processes in times of the Anthropocene tried to exemplify two opposing approaches of two different authors to resituate the Anthropos within an ever faster changing world. Following Haraway, SFstorytelling proves to be a useful tool to develop new forms of perceiving humanity and ecology by generating much-needed concepts of response-ability. While Chinese writer Cixin Liu struggled with the potential loss of human control and power in the face of other non-human forces, which could only be regained through accelerated technological progress and thus transform man into a transhuman technological deity, Jeff VanderMeer depicted a different scenario by increasing awareness for the other-than-human forms of living, which are exceeding contingent anthropogenic structures and rationalities. While the transhuman perspective remains in an anthropocentric, all-powerful, and overconfident mindset, the dark forest universe turns into a deadly jungle, where every other lifeform becomes predator or prey, leaving no space for an unprejudiced engagement. However, the posthuman narratives grant the current human way of living no guarantee of survival or preservation. Instead of anthropocentric exceptionalism that leads either to techno-transcendent hegemony or tragedy, posthumanism teaches that the cosmic forest and all that roams within is life. It has been life before it developed an anthropogenic form, and it will be life after it outgrew the entity that currently calls itself human. Thus the vital drives of evolution are still directed into an ever changing future, making homo sapiens and Planet Earth await new forms of becoming, no matter how their relation might currently be shaped.

Notes 1 Especially Yefremov’s The Bull’s Hour (1968) and Strugatzkis’s multiple stories situated in their Noon Universe are depicting a technologically and politically advanced spacefaring humanity that spreads peace and freedom throughout the cosmos but always struggles with the linear laws of historical materialism. 2 This holds not for the entirety of the trilogy, as love and solidarity of the few and remaining intelligent entities are offering at least the minimal chance of a utopian rebirth but stand almost no chance against the looming dark forest principles.

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3 “My sole gift or talent, I believe now, was that places could impress themselves upon me, and I could become a part of them with ease. Even a bar was a kind of ecosystem.” (VanderMeer, 2014, 73) See also “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) and “apparatus” (Barad, 2003) for post-dualistic, performative scientific knowledge production.

Bibliography Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3): 801–831. doi:10.1086/345321. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope. (Vol. 2). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Braidotti, Rosi. 2012. Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity. Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, & Rodolfo Dirzo. 2017. “Biological Annihilation via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30): E6089. doi:10.1073/pnas.1704949114. Crutzen, Paul J. 2002. “Geology of Mankind.” Nature, 415(January): 23. doi:10.1038/ 415023a. Crutzen, Paul J. & Eugene F. Stoermer. 2000. “The ‘Anthropocene.’” International Geosphere-Biosphere Newsletter, 41(May): 17–18. Davison, Nicola. 2019. “The Anthropocene Epoch: Have We Entered a New Phase of Planetary History?” The Guardian, May 30, 2019. Available at: www.theguardian. com/environment/2019/may/30/anthropocene-epoch-have-we-entered-a-new-phaseof-planetary-history. Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. “Immanence: A Life…” Theory, Culture & Society, 14 (2): 3– 7. doi:10.1177/026327697014002002. Ellis, Erle. 2011. “The Planet of No Return: Human Resilience on an Artificial Earth.” Breakthrough Journal, 2(Fall): 37–44. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1990. “Darwin and Paley Meet the Invisible Hand. The Price of Perfect Design Is Messy, Endless Slaughter.” Natural History, 99 (11): 8–16. Grosz, Elizabeth. 2005. Time Travels. Feminism Nature Power. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. H+pedia. 2018. “Transhumanist Declaration.” Transhumanist Declaration. November 4, 2018. Hagemeister, Michael. 2005. “Unser Körper Muss Unser Werk Sein.” In Die Neue Menschheit. Biopolitische Utopien in Russland Zu Beginn Des 20. Jhd., ed. Boris Groys & Michael Hagemeister, 19–67. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Harari, Yuval Noah. 2017. Homo Deus. Eine Geschichte von Morgen. Munich: C.H. Beck. Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575–599. doi:10.2307/ 3178066. Haraway, Donna. 2003. Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

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Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1978. “Letter on Humanism.” In Basic Writings: Nine Key Essays, plus the Introduction to Being and Time. London: Routledge. Hörl, Erich & Peter K. Haff. 2016. “Technosphere and Technoecology.” Technosphere Magazine. November 15, 2016. https://Technosphere-and-TechnoecologyqzjFDWgzxX2RDEDg9SN32j. Humanity+. Transhumanist FAQ.” Humanity+ (blog). Accessed October 19, 2018. Available at: https://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-faq. Kenney, Martha. 2019. “Fables of Response-Ability: Feminist Science Studies as Didactic Literature.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5(1): 1–39. doi:10.28968/cftt.v5i1.29582. Kenney, Martha & Ruth Müller. 2017. “Of Rats and Women: Narratives of Motherhood in Environmental Epigenetics.” BioSocieties, 12(1): 23–46. doi:10.1057/s41292016-0002-7. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2017. Facing Gaia : Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime / Bruno Latour. (1st ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Law, John. 2019. “Material Semiotics.” Heterogeneities: 1–19. Available at: www. heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2019MaterialSemiotics.pdf. Liu, Cixin. 2014. The Three-Body Problem. New York, NY: Tor. Liu, Cixin. 2016. The Dark Forest. London: Head of Zeus. Liu, Cixin. 2017a. Death’s End. London: Head of Zeus. Liu, Cixin. 2017b. “The Wandering Earth.” In The Wandering Earth. London: Head of Zeus. Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Posthumanities, 27. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Plessner, Helmuth. 2019. Levels of Organic Life and the Human. An Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Schetsche, Michael, René Gründer, Gerhard Mayer, & Ina Schmied-Knittel. 2009. “Der maximal Fremde. Überlegungen zu einer transhumanen Handlungstheorie.” Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 19(3): 469. doi:10.1007/s11609-009-0102-3. Steffen, Will, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, & Cornelia Ludwig. 2015. “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” The Anthropocene Review, 2(1): 1–18. doi:10.1177/2053019614564785. VanderMeer, Jeff. 2014. Area X. The Southern Reach Trilogy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Yusoff, Kathryn. 2017. “Geosocial Strata.” Theory, Culture & Society, 34(2–3): 105– 127. doi:10.1177/0263276416688543. Zalasiewicz, Jan. 2009. The Earth After Us. What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Zalasiewicz, Jan, Colin N. Waters, Colin P. Summerhayes, Alexander P. Wolfe, Anthony D. Barnosky, Alejandro Cearreta, Paul Crutzen, et al. 2017. “The Working Group on the Anthropocene: Summary of Evidence and Interim Recommendations.” Anthropocene, 19(September): 55–60. doi:10.1016/j.ancene.2017.09.001.

11 “Am I a person?” Biotech Animals and Posthumanist Empathy in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne Monica Sousa

1 Introduction As the genre of science fiction continues to develop and gain more attention in our contemporary age, stories that depict the connections between animals and technology continue to arise. Readers are captivated by potentially non-anthropocentric narratives where the organic and the inorganic collide, from the electric animals in Philip K. Dick’s mid-twentieth-century century novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the genetically modified animals in Margaret Atwood’s twenty-first-century MaddAddam trilogy. Since the turn of the century, there has been an increased attention directed towards genetically modified animals and other organisms. These animals (henceforth referred to as “biotech animals”) are animals that have been exposed to molecular biology techniques to genetically engineer them for animal husbandry, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and sometimes aesthetic or artistic purposes. While we seem to be easily fascinated by animals engineered through biotechnology, we tend to associate biotech animals with what is disturbingly unnatural, and we are unsettled by our increasing collective control over animal bodies. As Emily Anthes notes in her work on animal biotech, “biotechnology is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, and many an apocalyptic scenario has been constructed around crazy chimeras or world-conquering cyborgs” (Anthes, 2013, 7). Science fiction often depicts experiments with biotech as an unsettling nightmare and emphasizes the “Frankenstein complex,” a term coined by science fiction author Isaac Asimov to refer to a human fear of robots replacing or dominating humans.1 However, we can also extend this definition to refer to the fear of any technologically produced creation betraying and usurping humans. While science fiction focused on biotech draws our attention to the ethical implications and potentialities of producing biotech animals, rather than only warning us against this practice or solely capturing the Frankenstein complex, science fiction can also encourage us to empathize with our creations. Science fiction, then, must also ask us to explore what it means to empathize with biotech animals. Jeff VanderMeer’s 2017 novel, Borne, allows us to explore an idea of posthumanist empathy. Borne is a biotech

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apocalyptic novel that explores human connection with the nonhuman body and human interaction with animal biotechnology. The protagonist, Rachel, who lives in the ruins of a nameless future city, upon scavenging finds a sea anemone-shaped creature (who she names Borne). Rachel feels an indescribable attachment to Borne. Throughout the novel, Borne’s body and mental capabilities rapidly evolve, resulting in Rachel blurring the boundaries between plant, animal, and person. N. Katherine Hayles writes that “the posthuman offers resources for rethinking the articulation of humans with intelligent machines” (Hayles, 1999, 287). Animals already have a history of being perceived as more machine than organism, even prior to biotechnology. According to Descartes’ views about animals, animals are to be perceived as “automata” and “void of reason” (Discourse on the Method). While the field of animal studies has, for the most part, progressed beyond Cartesian perspectives towards animals, the topic of animal biotechnology still leaves people disconcerted. Seeing as biotech animals have their bodies directly intermingled with or engineered by technology, it is no surprise that one might be inclined to wonder if a biotech animal is more animal or more machine. Our confrontations with these creations also allow us to consider the ethical implications (for humans and animals alike) of playing God with animal bodies. Throughout Borne, the title character is consistently concerned about whether he (Rachel deems him as male) is a machine, an animal, or a person—and whether he should have been created at all. While Borne invites us to consider how biotechnology can have dire consequences for humans, animals, and the environment, a larger focus of this chapter considers human responsibility towards these creations once they have been created. It is not compassionate or even entirely rational to state that we should simply discard these creatures because of a belief that they should not have been created to begin with. Practicing empathy is a crucial element in trying to understand these contemporary creatures. Empathy has the power to stimulate humans to want to change their attitudes towards the value of bioengineered creatures because of how it calls for attention, awareness, and proper care. To even begin to consider whether a biotech animal is animal or machine, we must first return to the key question of what it means to empathize with biotech animals. I noted earlier that Borne offers posthumanist empathy. It is important to first indicate what posthumanist means in this chapter. From a philosophical standpoint, posthumanism is a general exploration into the ethical implications of extending our moral concern and ideas of subjectivity beyond the human species. This chapter’s ideas about posthumanist empathy stem from the explorations of scholars such as Rosi Braidotti and Cary Wolfe. In Braidotti’s work on posthumanism, she connects her approach to posthumanism with “postanthropocentrism” (anthropocentrism is a philosophical stance that views human beings as the central holders of moral standing and ethical concern). Braidotti approaches post-anthropocentrism as positing that life is “far from being codified as the exclusive property or the unalienable right of one

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species, the human, over all others” (Braidotti, 2013, 61) and that postanthropocentrism “displaces the notion of species hierarchy and of a single, common standard for ‘Man’ as the measure of all things” (67). To remove hierarchies and ontological dualisms that allow us to justify viewing a being as unworthy of life, she states we must ask ourselves “what understandings of contemporary subjectivity and subject-formation are enabled by a postanthropocentric approach? What comes after the anthropocentric subject?” (2013, 58). Wolfe is also interested in human responsibility towards how we approach the nonhuman (and essentially post-anthropocentric) subject. Wolfe has written about both animal studies and posthumanism and states that because “nonhuman subjects” occupy the same planet as we do, then “posthumanism means not the triumphal surpassing or unmasking of something but an increase in the vigilance, responsibility, and humility that accompany living in a world so newly, and differently, inhabited” (Wolfe, 2013, 47). However, how do we practice vigilance, responsibility, and humility? Wolfe argues that to be posthumanist, the concept of subjectivity must be transformed in a way that does not privilege the human. He also clarifies that it is not the human who must be eliminated but anthropocentric ideals. Wolfe also dismisses ideas of personhood, suggesting that we should dismantle the concept in order to rethink subjectivity. This chapter will approach personhood and what it means to be a person as not only the condition of being an individual, but also as being worthy of being the receiver of empathy. Helen Riess describes empathy as a scenario “when people understand the plight of others and respond appropriately even if they do not themselves feel the exact same emotion but are able to access an experience cognitively through imagination” (Riess, 2018, 47). While empathy is the ability to understand or share the feelings of another, posthumanist empathy is not exclusive to humans and must abandon anthropocentric habits and inclinations and embrace empathy even in the face of uncertainty. For an example of this uncertainty, let us consider Wolfe’s writings about the mysterious quality of biotech when he uses the glow-in-the-dark rabbit, Alba, as an example. Alba was a genetically modified glowing rabbit created by contemporary artist Eduardo Kac for an artistic production.2 With regards to Alba, Wolfe explains: the harder you look, the less you see. Alba’s ‘meaning’, if we want to put it that way, is not to be found in the brute fact of the glow of her coat; in fact, one might well say that the meaning of the work is everywhere but there. (Wolfe, 2013, 165) The more we look at biotech creations, we realize the more we actually do not know about them. However, even in our realization that we cannot know them or understand them entirely, this realization should not hinder

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our attempts to make connections with them and take accountability for them. Braidotti considers Dolly the sheep and genetically modified animals in general, explaining that, while we live in an era where mass “corporate brands and manufactured and patented bioproducts” are replacing natural offspring, then “the ethical imperative to bind to them and be accountable for their well-being remains as strong as ever” (Braidotti, 2013, 80). As a result, empathy is paramount for accountability for their well-being. Our ability to empathize and form bonds with them means that we cannot place them as Other, or as invalid, or as socially and subjectively inferior to biologically “natural” offspring. We can start to form empathy for biotech by realizing that they, too, can be individuated and seen as more than just a collective. However, seeing them as individuals does not meaning only seeing the parts of them that we want to see—to see them as individuated, we must embrace all their parts, and see them not as animal or machine, but having properties of both. After asking “What comes after the anthropocentric subject?” Braidotti adds “How one reacts to this change of perspective depends to a large extent on one’s relationship to technology” (2013, 58). Borne not only emphasizes this idea when it comes to nonhuman animals but suggests that we should also see ourselves, humans, in this way. I argue that VanderMeer’s novel demonstrates how the relationship between technology and biology outlines the mandatory duality of posthumanist empathy—to rethink and transcend what it means to be a person in a biological sense and an ethical sense. This chapter will focus on Borne and capture the presence of posthumanist empathy in the novel’s written images. The novel is not a strictly visual medium and thus instead encourages an empathetic imagination through written word. There is a lot about animals and biotech animals that are unavailable to us, and the mode of the novel emphasizes this productive absence by allowing us to embrace emotion and imagination rather than only accepting what we see before our eyes. In studying posthumanist empathy in VanderMeer’s novel, I will explore Borne’s appearance, Rachel’s conflicting emotions towards Borne, the symbiosis and symphysis between Rachel and Borne, and Borne’s concern about whether he is a person.

2 What is Borne? Borne’s Enigmatic Appearance Throughout the novel, Borne’s appearance constantly shifts. The first description that we encounter of Borne’s appearance resembles that of a sea anemone; Rachel explains his appearance as “dark purple and about the size of my wrist … a half-closed stranded sea anemone… he strobed emerald green across the purple every half minute or so” (VanderMeer, 2017, 3). We soon learn that Borne is a piece of hyper-advanced biotech who rapidly grows and changes form—he moves from plant-like to animal-like, as he starts out as resembling a sea-anemone, to taking the shape of a “large vase or a squid” (2017, 43), and is then soon able to metamorphose into any

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shape/form he wants. Borne’s ability to continually change shape and the unpredictability of the direction of his development might suggest to us that he occupies all his modes of being at once—in doing this, he is then many creatures at the same time. Braidotti explains that “A posthuman theory of the subject … aims at experimenting with what contemporary, bio-technologically mediated bodies are capable of doing” (Braidotti, 2013, 61). Yet how are humans supposed to approach this unpredictability in the bodily capacity of biotech animals? It is hard for us to imagine what Borne looks like, partly because his image is constantly shifting and because we are not accustomed to actually encountering in our own world naturally born or genetically modified animals with Borne’s exact ability. As we also know that Borne is a piece of advanced biotech, we might be left wondering whether Borne, with his everchanging appearance, is an enhanced animal or an enhanced machine. Although we are aware that Borne, being a piece of biotech, is born from technology, we also see how he is an animal from the way his appearance adapts eyes and a face. Immediately after Borne first talks to Rachel, Rachel observes that: Borne had developed a startling collection of eyes that encircled his body. Each eye was small and completely different from the others around it. Some were human—blue, black, brown, green pupils—and some were animal eyes, but he could see through all of them. (VanderMeer, 2017, 43) At first, Borne’s body encompasses both human and animal eyes, indicating that he is not yet deeply influenced by the human gaze. In critical theory, “the gaze” is a philosophical term that is used to describe the act of seeing and the act of being seen. Lisa Cartwright and Marita Sturken claim that “the gaze is integral to systems of power, and ideas about knowledge” (Cartwright and Sturken, 2009, 94). To practice the gaze is to enter some form of relationship with the subject being looked at, and often it is a relationship defined by social and cultural hierarchies. Borne enters a relationship with Rachel by looking back at her, and with this act he is influenced by human conceptions of knowledge. Rachel explains: When Borne saw me staring at him, he would make the sound like the startled clearing of a throat, and his flesh would absorb all of the eyes except two, which would migrate higher on his body and away from each other … He must have thought he looked more normal that way. (VanderMeer, 2017, 44) As John Berger explains, “The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary…. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look” (Berger, 2015, 4–5).

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Borne, however, is certainly aware of himself returning the look. VanderMeer is suggesting here that Borne, with his many human and nonhuman eyes, is responding to the stimuli that is Rachel with two eyes, and purposely places only two eyes near the top of his body to mirror her back to her as a form of communication. As Berger also explains, “The animal scrutinizes [the human] across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why the man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal—even if domesticated—can also surprise the man” (Berger, 2015, 5). Before Borne builds himself a face with only two eyes, Rachel, after commenting on his collection of eyes, admits her incomprehension over this mysterious being that she brought into her home: “[The eyes] perplexed me because I didn’t know what they meant” (VanderMeer, 2017, 43). In this exchange of a gaze between Rachel and Borne, we see a moment of learning between human and biotech animal; Borne is learning the physical qualities of the human being staring back at him, as well as the capabilities and potentialities of his own body, and Rachel is hoping to learn something about Borne by looking at and contemplating his collection of eyes. However, by acknowledging that she does not know what his many eyes mean, Rachel might already be starting to understand that the meaning of biotech animals is not easily found by looking at their exterior. Nonetheless, while she might be looking across an “abyss of non-comprehension” (Berger, 2015, 5) she continues to try to learn more about Borne. While Borne responds to Rachel’s look by mirroring back to her two eyes instead of a collection of them, we must question if this response is only reinforcing anthropocentric ideals by reinstating the human face. In the looking back of the animal, Wolfe asks, “How can the looking back of the animal—and the ethical call harbored by that look—be disengaged from the humanism for which the face (and faciality generally) is perhaps the fundamental figure?” (Wolfe, 2013, 148). While faciality (the quality or state of possessing facial characteristics) is certainly a fundamental component of humanism and what it means to be human, we must also question whether the animal has a face. Can Borne be considered having a face when his body is covered with many different types of eyes—or does he only acquire a face when he absorbs most of them and keeps two and places them higher on his body? Furthermore, is it that animals do not have faces or is it that it is just difficult for humans to tell animals (in the same species) apart from each other by looking at their face? One might perhaps believe that animals do not have unique facial characteristics because humans do not have an evolutionary reason to distinguish them like they do with their own species. Yet certainly, with his many eyes, Borne does have a distinct face. What are the consequences and implications of seeing animals as not having unique faces? Donna Haraway adopts Levinasian concepts about the ethical responsibilities that the face holds to form her ideas on the animal face. She explains, “The animals in the lab … have face; they are somebody as well as something.” (Haraway, 2013, 76). Borne, in his post-laboratory life, is

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still a something because he cannot be rid of his past as an animal being used as an object. However, Borne, with two eyes or his array of eyes, must be perceived as a somebody as well. When Rachel looks into his many eyes and acknowledges that she cannot understand what they mean, she is implying that there is something to be understood about this creature—or, at least, that she wants to understand something and wants to see Borne as more than just an unfeeling object. As Haraway also notes, “Respect is respecere—looking back, holding in regard, understanding that meeting the look of the other is a condition of having face oneself” (2013, 88). What comes after the human, then, is an acknowledgment that the concept of the face must be reassessed in order to accept animals as having face and an animal as being somebody.

3 Rachel’s Attachment to Borne During the early days of having Borne in her home and in her care, Rachel is conflicted between her habit of seeing biotech primarily in terms of practicality and use-value and seeing Borne as a being she simply wants to love and nurture. Soon after thinking that Borne might be more plant than sea-anemone, she explains “I upgraded Borne from plant to animal, but still did not reclassify him as ‘purposeful’” (VanderMeer, 2017, 18). While Rachel is mostly content with not trying to uncover Borne’s purpose, her partner, Wick (who works with biotech) does not agree with this line of thinking; he tells Rachel that they should “know its purpose” and “If you give it to me, I can at least break it down into its parts … Discover more that way. Make use of it” (2017, 14). For Karl Marx in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, use-value refers to the value of a commodity, where “A use-value has value only in use and is realized only in the process of consumption” (Marx, 1859). Wick does not understand Rachel’s compassion towards Borne and thinks that a biotech animal should be viewed only as a potential for economic exchange. Animals, even before biotechnology, are already often seen in terms of use-value. Most animals are given the legal status as property, from pets to working animals. Biotech animals, created by the hands of humans, cannot escape use-value. And so, as seen in our Western culture’s pragmatic attitude towards biotech animals, as well as in Wick’s anthropocentric attitude and Rachel’s internal conflict, the livelihood and the needs of biotech animals are not typically brought to the forefront when the human is part of the equation. As the novel progresses, Rachel refuses to see Borne in terms of use-value and is committed instead to seeing him as a being worthy of love and compassion. Even before Borne learns human language, she admits: I liked Borne too much. I knew this in my bones, knew I really should give him up. But I also knew it would take something catastrophic for me to do so. The more personality Borne showed, the more I felt attached to him. (VanderMeer, 2017, 23)

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Rachel’s ability to recognize and appreciate the personality in Borne indicates an understanding that biotech animals can be individuated and not only seen as commodified objects/machines. Another key element of Rachel’s attachment to Borne is her viewing him as her quasi-child. She explains, “Sometimes, when my parents had looked at me in an adoring way, I felt the weight of their love and stuck my tongue out like a brat. Now I looked at Borne the same way” (VanderMeer, 2017, 71). It would not be entirely fair to say that Rachel viewing Borne as her child is anthropocentric or anthropomorphic because she never completely forgets that he is not human. While there are moments in the novel where she admits to wanting his shape-shifting form to capture “the full human” (VanderMeer, 2017, 55), Rachel also becomes acutely aware of his biotech animal being. It is also not uncommon for pet owners—more commonly women (Grauerholz and Owens, 2018, 9)—to view themselves as a parent to their pet. This chosen role of being a parent to an animal is less about anthropomorphizing the animal and more so drawing to our attention a posthuman view of parenting, where there is an understanding that it does not only have to be humans who are worthy of being recipients of human parental (or parental-like) nurturing. Rachel not only willingly embraces her role as mother and extends her parental love to an animal, but she extends this love to a biotech animal, even when this animal greatly confuses her. While she asks herself, “In how many species did the transformation become radical, the parent so different from the juvenile?” (VanderMeer, 2017, 24), she does not let their differences hinder her love for Borne. To Rachel, Borne’s status as a biotech product does not equate to a necessity to destroy him and tear him apart for study. To Rachel, Borne’s status as a biotech product does not weaken his right to be treated with empathy. Rachel also recognizes when she is not being fair to Borne or when she is projecting anthropocentric notions on to him, and with this recognition she feels remorse for her behavior. Randy Malamud argues that when looking at animals in films “the angels (the good animals) are pets and helpers, adulating their human keepers: Lassie; Flipper; Old Yeller; Sounder; Elsa; Rin Tin Tin; Francis the Talking Mule” (Malamud, 2012, 7). While his discussion focuses on animals in film, this observation can be seen when looking at animals in other mediums of fiction as well. One could argue that Borne is cast as the role of angel—he is Rachel and Wick’s powerful helper who saves them by fighting and beating Mord, the tyrannical, gigantic, flying biotech bear. As Malamud further notes, “These characters develop alongside animals, but they are still ultimately very much human identities” (2012, 7). While Borne is certainly seen adulating and protecting Rachel, she soon recognizes that she cannot only see Borne with ideas of human identity. For example, throughout the novel, Borne kills other animals in order to eat, and Rachel persistently tries to teach him that he has to stop because killing is immoral. Rachel would, of course, know that animals in the wild need to kill other animals in order to survive. Yet, with these instructions she gives

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to Borne, Rachel is only seeing Borne as a human and measuring him by human standards. However, Rachel eventually comes to acknowledge that her mindset is human-centric. She asks herself, “would you make a wolf feel guilty for eating its prey?” (VanderMeer, 2017, 225). While we are more understanding of predator animals needing to hunt prey, it is easier for Rachel to want to project human ways of living onto Borne because he is an advanced biotech animal with an understanding of and ability to use human language. Nonetheless, she realizes her shortcoming: In so many ways, Borne had told me ‘I can’t stop.’ I can’t stop growing. I can’t stop who I am. I can’t stop killing people, and I had shut him out, ignored him, tried to pretend he was something other than he was, and in doing so I had betrayed him. (VanderMeer, 2017, 191) In this moment, Rachel realizes that posthumanist empathy must go beyond anthropocentric notions of what is right or moral and what should be. When Rachel first realizes that she loves Borne, she explains: I realized right then in that moment that I’d begun to love him. Because he didn’t see the world like I saw the world. He didn’t see the traps. He made me rethink even simple words like disgusting or beautiful. (VanderMeer, 2017, 56) Posthumanist empathy, then, can make us rethink our notions of the abject (disgusting) and the culturally accepted (beautiful).

4 Touch, Symbiosis, and Symphysis In her moments of accepting Borne as he is, Rachel embraces other ideas about interaction that do not necessarily align with humanist thought. For example, Rachel recognizes the power of touch as a form of communication, even with the absence of spoken word. When Borne is hurt by another animal, Rachel inspects his body for wounds. She explains that: it was through touch that I began to understand his complexity … With each new unfurling, Borne was letting me get closer to the heart of him, while he spoke not a word but let me find the wounds for myself. (VanderMeer, 2017, 149) In this moment, Rachel does not need human language to try and understand Borne—in fact, it might be the lack of human language and only the sense of touch that allows her to realize the complexity of this biotech animal. Haraway asks “What obligations ensue from the experience of entangled lives once touch has been initiated?” (Haraway, 2013, 280). Rachel’s and Borne’s

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lives become entangled in this moment of touch through mutual trust and care—Borne places his trust in Rachel helping him, and Rachel uses her bodily abilities to take care of him, which consequently results in her embracing forms of communication beyond human language. She ponders to herself, “Was this what it was like to touch something that no one had ever touched before, or rarely? … To understand that beyond the seeing eye, the knowing eye, there was such a wealth of unique touch?” (VanderMeer, 2017, 149). While Rachel understands that there is a lot that she cannot see in or know about Borne by observing his exterior, she knows that that does not mean that moments of physical encounter are worthless. With this physical touch, there is affect and an acceptance and appreciation of the fact that there will be elements of this biotech creature that might always be a mystery to her, but that these encounters are important in realizing that we do not have to feel threatened by this uncertainty. As Sherryl Vint notes in her study on animals and science fiction, “Both take seriously the question of what it means to communicate with a being whose embodied, communicative, emotional and cultural life … is radically different from our own” (Vint, 2012, 1). An important scene in the novel that shows codependency and mutual understanding between Rachel and Borne is found in their moment of symbiosis and symphysis. The word symbiosis refers to a close bodily relationship and interaction between two or more organisms (of the same or different species) that live closely together. Regarding symbiosis, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guarttari explain, “it is in the domain of symbiosis that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation” (Deleuze and Guarttari, 1987, 238). Ralph Acampora uses the term symphysis (similar to symbiosis) to refer to an understanding between two or more beings based on shared bodily experiences, and to demonstrate that “cross-species compassion is mediated by somatic experiences” (Acampora, 2006, 23). Symbiosis and symphysis occur when Rachel asks Borne to shapeshift into a form that can hold her inside of his body so that they can both hide from Mord proxies (feral biotech animals): she asks him “Can you pretend to be a rock, with me inside—with room for me to breathe inside?” (VanderMeer, 2017, 101). Borne agrees, and she explains that he “unfurled, uncurled, and rose high and came down like a crashing wave, and me tumbling in the middle of it all, bent over and crushed by cilia and rubbery flesh” (2017, 102). In this moment of Rachel being “cocooned inside” Borne, as she describes as “a living organism that still defied explanation, that was, no matter how I loved it, a mystery to me” (2017, 103), a cross-species somatic unity occurs that allows both beings to rely on each other, both physically and emotionally. While cocooned inside Borne’s body, Rachel and Borne share mutual experiences. For example, Rachel explains “I could feel the vibration of Mord proxy paws and Mord proxy jaws biting into Borne” (VanderMeer, 2017, 103). Also, when Rachel feels that her “claustrophobia would have sent [her] over the edge” (2017, 103), she explains that:

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When Rachel answers this make-shift telephone formed from Borne’s flesh, he answers and tells her “You don’t even have to make a sound. I’ll hear you if you mouth the words” (VanderMeer, 2017, 103). Cross-species compassion is found in Borne sympathizing with Rachel’s claustrophobia and communicating with her in the hope of calming her down. In also telling Rachel that he will hear her even if she only mouths the words, Borne opens Rachel to an understanding that there are forms of communication that exist beyond humanist, symbolic thought and beyond what is readily accessible. On the flaws of humanism, Vint explains that “humans are neither properly divine or fully animal, suspended between celestial and terrestrial states and forever at risk of degenerating into animal being” (Vint, 2012, 19). While it is common in human-animal narratives to view the revelation of animality in a human as an act of degeneration, it would be imprudent to use the word degeneration to describe this moment of Rachel’s encounter with animality. Rachel’s symbiosis and symphysis with Borne is not a degeneration because she does not see Borne as an inferior being or as socially below her. Rather, she embraces his forms of practicing communication, what he can do with bioengineered body, and she accepts that she can learn new knowledge and experiences from this creature. This communion between Rachel and Borne leans towards tenants of critical posthumanism offered by Pramod K. Nayar. In his work on posthumanism, Nayar explains that critical posthumanism sees the human as part of a collection and states that critical posthumanism “favours co-evolution, symbiosis, feedback and responses as determining conditions rather than autonomy, competition and self-contained isolation of the human” (Nayar, 2014, 20). Thus, rather than viewing their close bodily (and emotional) encounter as Rachel who is the human in competition with Borne who is the nonhuman, or seeing their encounter as her undergoing a human ontological decline, what we can instead see is the potentiality for working towards bodily and emotional intimacy and posthumanist empathy.

5 “Am I a person?” Borne’s concerns about whether he is a person or not lead us to consider the distinctions between human, animal, and machine. Cartesian notions of animal cognition enforce the idea that animals do not respond, but only react. A reaction is typically quick, without much thought, while a response is thought out and with consideration. Aligned closely with Cartesian thoughts, Heidegger explains that “animals are lodged in their respective

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environments but are never placed freely into their clearing of being which alone is ‘world’” (Heidegger, 2008, 230), and he views animals as “[living] without access to the Being of other beings or to their own Being” (Calarco, 2008, 50). For Heidegger, animals react only to immediate perceptual stimuli and cannot see themselves as separate from their environment. VanderMeer’s novel seems to suggest that we must see Borne as an example to think beyond Cartesian thoughts that dismiss the animal’s ability to respond to humans and the rest of the world. For example, when Rachel tells Borne that a machine is “A made thing. A thing made by people” (VanderMeer, 2017, 45), a “puzzled” Borne responds “You are a made thing. Two people made you” (2017, 45). Rachel, then, has to clarify what she means, as she responds “I mean something made out of metal or of flesh. But not through natural biological means” (2017, 45). In this exchange, Borne is not only responding to Rachel’s words, but he is also suggesting that a different origin of creation does not necessarily make a human being less of a “made thing.” Braidotti explains an idea of “becoming-machine” which “cracks open the division between humans and technological circuits, introducing biotechnologically mediated relations as foundational for the constitution of the subject” (Braidotti, 2013, 67). The relationship between Borne and Rachel forces Rachel to reconsider her constitution. If Borne is a made thing, subject to technology and programming, Rachel is a made thing subject to the organic programming of her body. However, it is Borne who points out to her the inaccuracy in her statement and tells her that she is indeed a made thing. As Haraway notes, contemporary machines can make “thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert” (Haraway, 1991, 152). Rachel’s responses to Borne’s concerns about whether he is a person (and his general status as a being) are important observations in grasping posthumanist empathy. When Borne asks Rachel if everything has a purpose, Rachel, while not entirely convinced that everything does, explains “But I was trying to be a good parent, a good friend, to Borne, so I said, ‘Yes, everything has a purpose. And every person has a purpose, or finds a purpose.’” (VanderMeer, 2017, 64). Upon hearing this, Borne asks “Am I person?”, and Rachel explains she “didn’t hesitate” with her answer: “Yes, Borne, you are a person” (2017, 64). Throughout the novel and through her insistencies that Borne is a person, we learn that Rachel does not view the status as being human as a requirement for personhood. When Borne gives up on trying to refrain from killing and accepts that he was made to do so, he tells Rachel, “I’m not built like you. I’m not human. I’m not a person” (2017, 261). In response, Rachel does not insist that he is a human, but insists to him “You are a person” (2017, 261). Rachel does not try to equate human and person as being synonymous with each other, because she understands that Borne is not a human being. She thus adopts a notion of

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personhood as individual beings deserving of empathy, regardless of the quantity of machine or organic matter within the being. She also decides to acknowledge Borne’s individuality and unique qualities. When Borne asks her if he is a fox and her response is that he is not, he then asks her “Then… am I a… Borne?” (2017, 88). Rachel then tells him “Yes. …. You are a Borne” (2017, 88). Borne, then, is individuated and a being. Vint explains the power of animals in science fiction to challenge ontological dichotomies, explaining “In many examples of animals in sf texts, the animal subject becomes a product, a technological intervention, a cyborg being that challenges taxonomic divisions among humans, animals and machines” (Vint, 2012, 188). Borne helps Rachel to recognize the need to rethink personhood, and so does her partner, Wick, when she learns that he is not fully human but also a product of genetic engineering. However, she insists that both Borne and Wick have personhood, even if the concept of personhood might not be universally agreed upon: Wick never believed he was a person, was continually being undone by that. Borne was always trying to be a person because I wanted him to be one, because he thought that was right. We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means. (VanderMeer, 2017, 320) Nonetheless, although she accepts that she might not know what personhood really means, she accepts a position where she knows that she does not know but also welcomes her own idea of personhood that is not species specific—and, as a result, posthumanist and empathetic. At the end of the novel, after Borne defeats Mord (the flying biotech bear antagonist) and reverts into a plant-like organism, Rachel engages with a final act of posthumanist empathy. Rachel later finds him (or what she believes to be him) again on another scavenging trip. Even though she does not have any factual evidence that this being is indeed Borne, she trusts her belief that he is. Rachel then takes him, brings him home, places him on her balcony, and explains, “Wick could see him, and I promised myself that if Borne ever grew, if he ever spoke, I would end him. That if Wick wanted to take him, Wick should take him and use him for parts” (VanderMeer, 2017, 322). One might be inclined to argue that Rachel’s readiness to give him up and allow him to be taken apart if he starts to exhibit more power is revealing of her loss of empathy. However, we must keep in mind the dystopian setting that Rachel and Wick are stuck in, and the situation that they are dealt where they cannot help but have survivalist mindsets at the forefront. Also, as Haraway notes, it is not the command “Thou shalt not kill” that we should prioritize, but “Thou shalt not make killable,” as she explains: There is no category that makes killing innocent; there is no category or strategy that removes one from killing. Killing sentient animals is killing

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someone, not something; knowing this is not the end but the beginning of serious accountability inside worldly complexities. (Haraway, 2013, 106) Haraway thus suggests that our consumption and killing practices should not be accompanied by a destructive mindset that reduces the animal to being killable. The mindset of the subject doing the killing should always be aware of the damage that killing creates and be mindful of the animal's origins as a living being. Rachel’s recognition, then, of needing to take apart Borne if he starts growing and speaking becomes a lesson to her that empathy does not have to mean never killing—rather, in this moment, an empathy can still be found when the intentions behind one’s behavior are void of ill harm and malice. However, Borne never does evolve beyond his plant state. As Rachel explains, “Borne did not move on his own; he was just a kind of plant, taking sustenance from the sun. Borne never spoke again, although I spoke to him and maybe I wished he could respond, but only a little” (VanderMeer, 2017, 322). While it is only to be expected that Rachel would miss having Borne engage in conversation with her, the story does not prioritize anthropomorphism at the end because Rachel still chooses to keep him and nurture him. Borne is allowed to exist, be cared for, and loved, even in his plant-like state where he is not offering tangible use-value. Rachel realizes that empathy is a choice and realizing the non-tangible worth of other species is what allows it to be posthumanist.

6 Conclusion Animal biotechnology should allow us to embrace a “rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine” (Haraway, 1991, 176). We should not turn our head at the ethical implications of creating biotechnology (such as animal welfare and the anthropocentric tendency to “play God”), but once biotech animals have been created, we must acknowledge our responsibility to them and learn how to empathize with our creations. This chapter explored VanderMeer’s Borne to argue that forming a posthumanist empathy means acknowledging that they, too, (like humans and other naturallyborn animals) can be individuals, and that seeing them as individuals means not turning a blind eye to parts of them that we might not be inclined to favour (be it the organic body or the engineered components). This chapter likewise argued that Borne reveals how the connection between biology and technology allows us to recognize a required relationship present in posthumanist empathy, where we must think both in terms of biology/species and ethics in order to rethink what it means to be a person. As Haraway notes, “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints” (1991, 154).

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The medium of the novel is an effective tool in capturing posthumanist empathy not only because it encourages an empathetic imagination, but it parallels what Haraway calls “the struggle against perfect communication” with our required acceptance that a “perfect” language between animal, human, and machine, is unrealistic. Haraway explains “Writing is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs … Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly…” (Haraway, 1991, 154). The novel provides us with imagery through words and yet allows us to be content with not having the answers immediately visualized before our eyes. Such written imagery on biotech is subject to our ability to choose empathy, and to do so means acknowledging that while there is a lot about animals and biotech that we might never know about, the desire to want to know more should still be continuously practiced.

Notes 1 The term “Frankenstein Complex” is derived from the title character Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1918). Victor fears that his “monstrous” creation will turn on him and the rest of humanity. 2 Alba was produced by Kac in collaboration with French geneticist Louis-Marie Houdebine, who uses a GFP gene found in a jellyfish (aequorea victoria) that fluoresces green when exposed to blue light. This protein is often used in standard biological experiments that involve fluorescence. When Alba was exposed to this light, she would glow green.

Bibliography Acampora, Ralph. 2006. Corporal Compassion. Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press. Anthes, Emily. 2013. Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts. London: Oneworld. Berger, John. 2015. “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking. London: Bloomsbury. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Calarco, Matthew. 2008. Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Cartwright, Lisa & Marita Sturken. 2009. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guarttari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Descartes, René. 1637. Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Project Gutenberg. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm. Grauerholz, Liz & Nicole Owens. 2018. “Interspecies Parenting: How Pet Parents Construct Their Roles.” Humanity and Society. Haraway, Donna J. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.

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Haraway, Donna J. 2013. When Species Meet. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, Martin. 2008. “Letter on Humanism.” Basic Writings. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Malamud, Randy. 2012. “Animals on Film: The Ethics of the Human Gaze.” An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Marx, Karl. 1859. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Project Gutenberg. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/files/46423/46423-h/46423-h.htm. Nayar, Pramod. 2014. Posthumanism. Cambridge: Policy Press. Riess, Helen. 2018. The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences. Louisville, CO: Sounds True. VanderMeer, Jeff. 2017. Borne. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Vint, Sherryl. 2012. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Wolfe, Cary. 2013. What is Posthumanism?Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

12 Posthuman Cure Biological and Cultural Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Esther Muñoz-González

1 Introduction “MaddAddam,” as a title, is at first sight an evocative palindrome suggesting multiple interpretations. Thanks to the metaphor implied in the readability of a palindrome, the word can also suggest a possible circularity of human history and “eternal return.” Thus, if there is no distinction between the story’s beginning and end, could it be setting the implicit message of the trilogy in just a word? To put it differently, is there not any possibility of redemption for humanity and are the posthuman descendants of the humans—the Crakers— doomed to repeat completely human history once and again? Conversely, Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return is not a return of the same to the same; it is “Repetition, but the Repetition that selects, the Repetition that saves. Here is the marvelous secret of a selective and liberating repetition” (D’Iorio, 2014, 4). In MaddAddam (2013), Atwood provides an ending to the two previous unfinished stories—Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009). Whether the ending of the dystopian trilogy supposes an eternal return or a hopeful “Repetition that saves” is what this chapter seeks to discern. Thus, it focuses on how the novel represents the mad-scientist, the “successful” posthuman beings—the Crakers—and the effects of biotechnology, particularly on the female human body. Moreover, special attention will be paid to the issues of fertility and motherhood, which are recurrent topics for Atwood that were already central in her most canonical work, The Handmaid’s Tale. If in The Handmaid’s Tale the story was rendered by one of the few still-fertile women—Gileadeans were mostly infertile for biotechnological reasons—MaddAddam concludes the trilogy mostly in the voice of the only female survivor who is infertile, together with the voice of the first literate Craker.

2 The Posthuman Body Glenn/Crake is a contemporary version of the mad scientist, a believer in the superiority of the sciences over the humanities. He thinks that the combination of human body and brain is the main constituent of identity. Thus, by means of re-engineering and mixing human/animal genes in a new

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colorful and handsome species, he expects to change and expel from the Earth (destructive?) humanist thinking forever. However, “Man is by definition imperfect […] but those who would perfect him are themselves, by their own definition, imperfect. And imperfect beings cannot make perfect decisions” (Atwood, 2011, 140). Crake dismisses the humanist/Cartesian idea that our individual identity or subjectivity relies on a place other than our bodies: the intangible “‘mind.’ […] God is a cluster of neurons, he’d maintained” (Atwood, 2003, 157). The importance of embodiment to subjectivity is a position held by critical posthumanism; however, Crake’s lack ofconcern for all those humans who would not have the opportunity to “posthumanize” would embody an extremely radical position more similar to that of the techno enlightenment/transhumanist project, like Hans Moravec’s, when he says: “It doesn’t matter what people do because they’re going to be left behind” (Moravec, 1988, 307). Furthermore, Crake aligns himself with MacCormack’s model of posthuman ethics (see MacCormack, 2015), which considers human self-extinction as ethical action. The Crakers are technically designed posthuman beings. Crake modelled their bodies and modified their frontal lobes, trying to develop non-aggressive, non-hierarchical subjectivities (Atwood, 2003, 305). If The Handmaid’s Tale was a parody of a “women’s society,” the feminist dream becoming a nightmare, the Crakers embody a witty parody of the physical perfection pursued and sold by our consumerist patriarchal society: sexual power, youth, and beauty. They possess the traditional visual attribute of sexual power: large penises, perfect bodies that still follow the Vitruvian/humanist model of proportion, and “eternal” youth. However, all the Crakers’ “gifts,” as a parody, come with negative sides. The Crakers’ sexuality is unbound from pleasure and desire. Craker women are linked to nature’s cycles and “turn blue” when they are ready to reproduce, accepting a polyandrous relation with four of the men offered. Craker women, “the women who can’t say no” (Atwood, 2014, 43), have lost any power of decision about their sexuality and reproduction. This is made even clearer when a group of Craker men “rape” two young human women, Amanda and Ren, in what is described as “a major cultural misunderstanding” (2014, 13). When the group of Craker men smell a fertile human woman, they ignore her rejection: “She smells blue! She wants to mate with us!” (2014, 12; emphasis in the original). Thus, Amanda, after being repeatedly raped by the “inhuman” Painballers,1 is—whether consciously or not—raped by the male “posthuman” Crakers. This passage is particularly telling when trying to consider whether the Crakers fail, even more so when they were designed so as to avoid sexual abuse, rape or unrequited love (2003, 165). Male Crakers do not understand a human woman’s refusal to have sexual intercourse. However, in what seems to be a contradictory gap within the plot, they feel the Painballers’ unrest for being tied and liberate them: “This rope is hurting these ones. We must take it away” (2014, 13). Thus, in the first encounter with their creators, the male

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Crakers are unable to empathize with a woman’s anguish, but they do perceive the suffering of the (male) evil Painballers. Crake was not the only scientist working in the “Paradice Project”2; the surviving MaddAddamites were part of the laboratory group that originally worked in the profitable business of creating “babies à la carte.” But these other actual “parents” of the Crakers do not see their creation as “perfect.” The Crakers are called “Frankenpeople” (Atwood, 2014, 19), both to remark their artificiality equated to monstrosity, from the human point of view, and with the intention to underline the evident intertextuality between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and MaddAddam. Gibert claims that MaddAddam is a rewriting of Frankenstein and discusses in her essay the extent to which Crake coincides with and departs from “the stereotype of the mad scientist” (Gibert, 2018, 43). However, it seems that precisely the differences between Frankenstein’s monster and the Crakers are more determinant for the denouement of MaddAddam: while Frankenstein shows delusion and failure, MaddAddam’s Crakers apparently inspire hope and success in the evolutive step (Newitz, 2013; Roberts, 2013; Chaplinsky, 2013). Carretero-González points to the fact that in Frankenstein the source of failure was the encounter between the creature and his creator and the latter’s inability to ethically recognize the creature’s humanness. That is, it was an aversion to the monster’s ugliness and grotesque features that prevented the creator from “becoming with”3 what would have been the transition between the transhuman to the posthuman.4 Thus, the Crakers’ arrival at the human survivors’ camp involves the first real encounter between the creatures and their creators. In contrast to Shelley’s monster, the Crakers are all attractive and “eternally” young—the price that they have to pay for never being old and suffering any kind of illness is that they are designed to suddenly die at the age of 30 (Atwood, 2003, 303). Whereas Victor F. was horrified in the meeting with his creation, the MaddAddamites feel something between indifferent and curious about how their creatures have evolved outside the Paradice Dome.5 The Crakers are seen by their creators as beautiful as “of a low intelligence” (Mohr, 2007, 20), they are “creepo […] walking potatos” (Atwood, 2014, 19). Jimmy, the person whom Crake chose to be the sole human survivor and the Crakers’ guide in the external world, did not develop a relationship of equality with them. Although Jimmy/Snowman did not feel for the Crakers the same aversion as Victor F. for his creature, he discriminated against them because of their belonging to a species that was unrecognizable as human enough for him; this is why he cried for a female companion: “How come I’m alone? Where’s my Bride of Frankenstein?” (Atwood, 2003, 169). However, Toby did not participate in the Crakers’ creation and development,6 and when she meets the Crakers for the first time, her reaction is one of awe (Atwood, 2014, 36). Moreover, she is the first one who shares with them the notion that they are not “quasi humans” but people: “I think they’re people” (2014, 34). It is a woman then the first person that, borrowing Haraway’s words, starts to “become with” the Crakers and builds a

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bridge between them and the last humans. If the MaddAddamites eventually learn to live in community with the Crakers, it is not when they accept them as ethical subjects, “in spite of” their belonging to a different race—the posthuman—but it is precisely when the human survivors are able to see them as posthuman but still “human enough.” This assumption is related to a notion of the posthuman subject as defined by the critical posthumanist frame of thinking, fabricated human but still human: “a posthuman being is still human” (see Rossini, n.d; Wennemann, 2016). It is when the human survivors learn that Craker/human reproductive abilities are still possible and they start to share their memories and culture that the bonds between the posthuman and the human are created. Moreover, female humans, both in terms of physical reproduction and cultural evolution, build the bridge between the posthuman Crakers and the human survivors: Toby’s role as the cultural/spiritual mother for Blackbeard and the fertile young women’s miscegenation with the Crakers. Critical posthumanism is, according to Herbrechter and Callus, a “caring paradigm after all but also a paradigm for care” (Herbrechter and Callus, 2008, 109). Borrowing their rationale, I would say that the “cure” and hope in MaddAddam precisely comes from “care,” from “posthuman motherhood,” when the female human survivors shift from the idea that the Crakers are less than humans, to accepting them as their fellow [post]human beings, and their metaphorical and real offspring. Toby “bypass[es] the dialectics of otherness” (Braidotti, 2009, 526) through her relationship with Blackbeard, eventually her “child of the heart.” At the end of the MaddAddam trilogy, Toby is the oldest woman and the only one who is infertile. She sold her eggs in the prepandemic times, caught an infection, and lost her womb. Survival in the shape of money drove her to renounce to her own maternity, as happened in The Handmaid’s Tale with Offred, in favor of the maternity of the powerful ones. Although Gibert, in her analysis of Oryx, claims that the novel “does not imply a rejection of technology itself, which is neutral” (2018, 46), MaddAddam does not seem to share this aseptic view. As McLuhan affirmed already in the 1960s, there is not such a thing as a “neutral” use of technology; in our embracing and acceptation of technologies “we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms” (1994, 46), and they have the potential to change the human nature. The effects of technology are stronger in women’s bodies, especially regarding reproductive technologies (Dickenson, 2018, n.p.). Fertile women in precarious economic or social conditions become a McLuhanean “extension” of other women’s and men’s bodies, at the same time suffering a “selfamputation” that produces a state of “numbness.”7 In the present of the narration, Toby is in love with Zeb, but deprived from her fertility, Toby does not feel she deserves his love and attentions: “he should be […] passing his genes along via females who can actually parturiate” (Atwood, 2014, 89). Toby, who ironically lost her fertility in the pre-pandemic times by acting

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metaphorically as a handmaid—giving the gift of maternity to other women—now behaves like a “commander’s wife.” In the small community of human survivors, where the other women are much younger than she is, Toby thinks her love for Zeb must be seen as “comic” (2014, 89), whereas Zeb would still be worthy, as sexual partner, for the younger women. Technology, for Toby, did not imply the “enhancement” of her body but the other way around. She is traumatized both physically—she has “scars inside [her]” (2014, 91)—and psychologically with “all of her future children precluded” (2014, 91). During the years before the pandemic, she lived in a state of “numbness” to endure the pain, but in the post-apocalyptic time, she is reenacting her loss, her trauma. As in The Handmaid, fertility and reproduction seem to determine women’s worth. Toby frequently thinks of human children, all of whom disappeared in the Waterless Flood (Atwood, 2014, 201–220). In her first encounter with Blackbeard—the Craker child—he does the things that “a normal human child might do: idle fiddling, curious handling […] as real children—as children do” (2014, 93–94). Blackbeard becomes Toby’s shadow (2014, 214, 221), and not only does Toby care for him but the Craker child also shows real affection for Toby. She teaches him to write and read, but besides this, it is through her conversations with him that she starts to understand the Crakers’ close relationship with any kind of animal and how they can communicate with them. Eventually Toby becomes Blackbeard’s spiritual mother, creating the first sentimental bond and respect between the posthuman and human communities. Besides, the source of real success and the possibility of physical continuity of the human race come from the young fertile human women: the “Beloved Three Oryx Mothers” (Atwood, 2014, 386), who eventually give birth to Crakers’ hybrid babies. Moreover, miscegenation has a double effect: it is a demonstration that the Crakers are still genetically close to the human body, and it also makes the Crakers accept and respect humans as “post-human enough.” The fertile women and their hybrid descendants constitute the definite link between the human and the posthuman: “our Beloved Three Oryx Mothers who showed us that we and the two-skinned ones [humans] are all people and helpers” (2014, 386). Survivors and Crakers are both incorporated into the new community in which the concept of “personhood” is more inclusive—who or what is considered to be a person will include not only all biological or enhanced humans but also non-human persons (Wennemann, 2013, 4–9).

3 Human Voice The first chapter heading in the novel functions as an introduction for the whole book. It summarizes the Crakers’ myth of creation—largely based on the Bible and impregnated by religious rhetoric—and beyond this it is also a summary of the trilogy’s whole plot and the Craker’s history:

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The Story of the Egg, and of Oryx, and Crake, and how they made People and Animals; and of the Chaos; and of Snowman-the-Jimmy; and of the Smelly Bone and the coming of the Two Bad Men. (Atwood, 2014, 3) In MaddAddam the Earth is still wasted by a harsh climate—a reminiscence of the effects that the exploitation of nature have had over the environment. The Earth’s degeneration, the corrupted and unequal workings of capitalist society, and the loss of moral values in general were the reasons behind Crake’s radical and controversial “punishing-God-like” reaction: a pandemic that almost eliminated the human race. The place is also inhabited by some bloodthirsty Painballers—former convicts who, owing to their isolated imprisonment, were unaffected by the pandemic—and dangerous bioengineered animals like the pigoons—intelligent pigs biogenetically bred as suppliers of transplant organs. However, Apocalypse and survival are not the only subjects and narrative threads in MaddAddam. As Lennon remarks, the novel’s central narrative lines are two: Zeb’s back story and the Crakers’ evolution from an oral culture to a literary one (see Marks de Marques, 2013; 2015; 2017). Through Zeb’s memories, the reader gathers, at the end of the trilogy, a detailed narration of the causes, agents, and motives that triggered the Apocalypse. The other line follows Toby’s recollections of the God’s Gardeners’ rituals and festivities, the “adaptations” she makes of Zeb’s stories and delivers to the Crakers at night, and the “chronicles” that she keeps of everything that happens each day around the community created by human survivors and Crakers. When a male teen Craker, Blackbeard, learns how to write, helps, and eventually replaces Toby as the official “chronicler,” readers also become witnesses of how oral stories and the mastery of the written word trigger the birth of the Crakers’ sense of origin and history. Ferrando underlines the need of a posthumanist methodology avoiding dualisms that should include “the human experience in its full spectrum,” as well as non-human experience and knowledge (2012, 13). MaddAddam, even if only in fictional grounds, echoes Ferrando’s debate about “the difficulty of including non-human voices” (2012, 13). If Toby’s account can be considered a “last woman narrative” because she, even if not the only human survivor, is the only one still writing on Earth, what she depicts is not the total apocalypse or human extinction. As Callus affirms, “[t]he most literal posthuman state, humanlessness, is unavailable to representation” (Callus, 2012, 299). Toby is the chronicler of the narrative present—the post-apocalyptic time—and the keeper of human memories from the past, but my contention is that given that the last voice, the last narrator, is not a human being but a Craker, Blackbeard, MaddAddam becomes an exercise of imagining and a way of recording the posthuman voice and experience. As a result, the novel would be an example of posthuman narrative praxis—an attempt to overcome the difficulty to imagine the world without us, through the strategy of giving voice to the new inhabitants of the Earth: neither humans nor animals, but eventually hybrids, a new

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species. The narrative novelty that MaddAddam presents in contrast with its predecessors in the trilogy is that Toby’s human voice progressively gives the baton to the posthuman voice of Blackbeard in an exercise of imagination ultimately aimed to decentralize the human and to portray life after the Anthropocene. The majority of the chapters of MaddAddam are introduced by a heterodiegetic narrator, in Genette’s terminology (see Genette, 1983), that delegates focalization in Toby. The narrative time moves from the present of the narration to the past, through analepses focusing on Zeb’s life before the pandemic. Within Toby’s narration, Zeb’s embedded stories are essential to give coherence to and details of the pre-apocalypse time. However, there are nine stories inserted within the main narrative that, together, present a different narrative approach. These stories, entitled “The story of […],” are followed by a brief description of the events they narrate and written in the simplistic and direct ‘Craker’ style such as: “The Story of When Zeb was lost in the Mountains, and Ate the Bear” (Atwood 2014, 53), “The Story of Zeb and Fuck” (Atwood, 2014, 163), or “The Story of the Two Eggs and Thinking” (2014, 289). All of them compose the mythology that Toby creates for the Crakers following the style that Jimmy/Snowman inaugurated in the first novel, Oryx. The Crakers were told the same story day after day by Jimmy, but now that he—unconscious for days—is unable to tell it again, Toby is chosen as their new “prophet” and has to perform the same ritual that they were used to attending: “They already know the story, but the important thing seems to be that Toby must tell it” (2014, 45). MaddAddam opens with a chapter entitled “Egg.” Eggs are, in many cultures, symbols of rebirth and fertility—in sum, new beginnings. In the first page of the novel, Toby’s speech is directly reported when she is telling the Crakers the story of their origin. They are the explicit recipients—the narratees. The whole book is eventually an exercise of communication between Toby and the inheritors of her words, the Crakers. The omniscient narrator disappears in these exchanges between Toby and the Crakers, there is no mediation between Toby’s words either to the reader, or to the Crakers. There is an effect of immediacy—a direct witnessing of the birth of a new myth of origin/religion. The Crakers avidly wait every night for Toby’s words, and they believe everything she says as a new “faith dogma.” In this first story for the Crakers, we start to learn about their concerns and the way they see the world, but mediated by Toby’s filter. The reader does not have direct access to their words, only Toby’s responses to their comments give a clue about what they think: “Yes, there was a bone in the soup. Yes, it was a smelly bone” (Atwood, 2014, 4). Paraphrasing John’s words in the Bible (Coogan, 2007, 1:1): In the beginning, there was the word and the word was human, because the “owner,” the focalizer, of the story is a woman: Toby. The organization of the narrative constitutes a solid foundation for the understanding of the novel: it parallels the plot, the evolution from “human history” to “Craker history” passing through a period of shared “writing” of history when Blackbeard, with his own

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handwriting, starts to contribute to creating the chronicle of the post-pandemic world. “The Story of when Zeb was lost in the Mountains, and ate the Bear” is the title of the second story that Toby addresses to the Crakers. They want to know what the world looks like far away from their surroundings. However, once Toby has finished this tale for the Crakers, the omniscient narrator reminds the reader of that postmodern questioning of objective truth: “There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too (Atwood, 2014, 56). The narrator’s reflection reminds of the artificial and partial nature of knowledge and the unreliability of narratives. The new posthuman civilization after the pandemic will be forged upon one convenient version—for the Crakers—of human nature, history, and culture initially controlled and censured by Toby: “She doesn’t like to tell lies, not deliberately […] but she skirts the darker and more tangled corners of reality” (2014, 105). She consciously creates a new hero for the Crakers’ mythology: Zeb. She displaces the focus of the Crakers’ interest and contributes to creating a new kind of “god.” If “a posthumanist methodology does not recognize any primacy to the written text” (Ferrando, 2012, 11), Toby’s tales would constitute the bases for an oral culture for the Crakers, but she also starts to write down on a note book about the God’s Gardeners’ rites, Zeb’s stories of the past, and all the events that happen in the post-apocalyptic present. Bone, sanctioning the humanist idea of language—reading and writing—as the site drawing the frontier between humans and non-humans, still places Toby within the humanist tradition because of her writing. Moreover, Bone claims that Toby breaks a Craker child’s innocence, Blackbeard’s, by means of teaching him to read and write (Bone, 2016, 634). However, in contrast with the oral tales that Toby tells every night, her writings were not initially intended for the Crakers, but for the possible humans of the future. She starts writing “for the future, for generations yet unborn” (Atwood, 2014, 135) because “[m] aybe acting as if she believes in such a future will help to create it” (Atwood, 2014, 136). Thus, her writing is a conscious chronicle of her time, culture, and memories; in other words, writing could help her to survive and to save the world by creating a future. Writing is the main source of hope in the novel beyond the creation of the Crakers. Toby’s survival—and with hers the survival of the human race— depends on the possibility of being known and remembered in the future. Through her writings, Toby works for the future, even if the readers are not humans, if they know humans’ names and history, humans will survive through memory. Her written chronicle is part of her life instincts: survival, pleasure, and reproduction—an attempt at keeping her version of human history that may help to create a different [post]human future. Toby does not find any purpose in a life such as the life of the Crakers’ with “no festivals, no calendars, no deadlines. No long-term goals” (Atwood, 2014, 136)—in sum a

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life without shared beliefs, history, or a sense of cultural community. Furthermore, through her writing Toby embodies the voice for the whole of humanity. In her writing, she witnesses human agency and responsibility in the apocalypse through the recalling of the events that led to it. Besides this, Toby links writing with her own infertility. She has inner scars, “writing on your body” (Atwood, 2014, 91), that tells about her longing for a child that she would never have. Now, in the present of the narration, writing will be the only guarantee of “human” reproduction in the future. Without Toby’s writings there would not be any human or posthuman culture, at least, in the foreseeable future of the novel. The other young women ensure the survival of the [post]human bodies through the hybrid bodies of Crakers’ and humans’ descendants. These newborns embody “the rise of the posthuman bodies […] that reconceptualize the ‘nature’ of the humans” (Nayar, 2014, 33)—a new species derived from an artificially created “gene-spliced quasi-humans” (Atwood, 2014, 11), that, however, makes life in an intimate relationship with the environment possible and repairs any exclusion of the other who did not fit into the ideal humanist model.

4 Posthuman Voice In The Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway underlines, in her cyborg model, how the body is the site where the transformation from human to posthuman is fulfilled (2016, 33). However, Hayles defines human subjectivity as intimately connected to and formed from language. She understands the posthuman as “a literary phenomenon” (1999, 247). Without Toby, only one part of the human would have survived and turned into posthuman: the body, which is an unknown part of human genetic information in the miscegenated descendants. However, Toby is the only “mother” and responsible for the survival of the [post]human mind, language, and culture in a posthuman future. She is the human chronicler, who registers the events before the pandemic, the history of how people lived in the compounds, how some of them—Zeb and the God’s Gardeners—fought against the status quo and tried to transform the Earth back to a better former state, and how Crake decided in solitude to exterminate the whole human race. She is responsible for the overcoming of humanist dualisms by making possible the blending of the lessons of the human past and culture with the [post]humans of the future. In the chapter entitled “Cursive,” Toby starts teaching Blackbeard to write and read. Cursive is the traditional font for the writing of the historical, foundational texts. In the pre-pandemic world of MaddAddam, cursive is the main tool for creating history, Toby’s legacy for the new generations. Toby is at work on her journal when a Craker child, Blackbeard, expresses curiosity for her task. Toby teaches him the basics of writing and immediately after she worries about the possible consequences of keeping written

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registers for the future: “Now what have I done?” (Atwood, 2014, 204). In this reflection, Toby expresses a concept of culture that links all knowledge and gives prevalence to written cultures, but “Pandora’s box” was already opened. Toby forgets about the stories she has been telling the Crakers every night, the stories that have already created myths and dogmas for the Crakers. Only the medium changes: from an oral culture to a written one. Furthermore, the oral stories are as important as their written versions. It is a scene repeated throughout human history: a group of people gathered and listening to someone telling a story. As Nancy explains: “our beliefs, our knowledge, our discourses, and our poems derive from these narratives […] [and they are] the origin of human consciousness” (1991, 44–45). The Crakers initially used language only for communicative purposes: “When they have something they want to say” (Atwood, 2003, 306). Crake did not want them “to invent any harmful symbolisms, such as kingdoms, icons, gods, or money” (2003, 305), but thanks to Jimmy/Snowman first and to Toby later on they have their own new myth to create a new post[human] community: “there can be no humanity that does not incessantly renew its act of mythation” (Nancy, 1991, 51). These oral stories at night, together with Toby’s and Blackbeard’s written chronicle, conform the foundation of a new civilization that departs from Crake’s ideas of “perfection.” Toby gives the Crakers their own voice: “you need to be the voice of the writing” (Atwood, 2014, 202), but also the “gift, the right, or the duty to tell. It is the story of their origin” (Nancy, 1991, 43). When Blackbeard eventually replaces Toby in both roles of “oral prophet” and “official writer,” Crakers’ voices are heard, and it is the end of “humans [imposing] upon other creatures whatever image or identity they deem appropriate” (Hamilton and Taylor, 2017, 62). Agency shifts in the post-pandemic world, decentralizing humans from it. In “The Story of the Battle” (Atwood, 2014, 357), which is the ninth oral story of the novel, Blackbeard takes Toby’s place for the first time as the speaker for his people. Toby never again tells a tale for the Crakers. “After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers” (2014, 373), a euphemism for their execution, she shows to be very tired, and Blackbeard offers himself to be the new voice in her written account: “next time I will write the story” (2014, 375). Blackbeard and with him all the Crakers’ voices are not mediated or filtered through any human voice now: “This is my voice, the voice of Blackbeard that you are hearing in your head. That is called reading. And this is my own book, a new one for my writing and not the writing of Toby” (2014, 378). The final words in the book belong to Blackbeard as homodiegetic narrator, without any mediation. He is the hero of his own story and the cultural evolutionary step has been completed: now it is the [post]human who occupies the former human place. The “most literal posthuman state, humanlessness,” borrowing again Callus’s words, has been imaginatively reached in the diegesis. Nonetheless, the human voice does not disappear from the narrative level: Toby’s voice will remain in the process

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of storytelling. If we recuperate the opening words in the novel, we can infer that the [post]human voices have been present all through the book and could have been interacting with the human’s. Eventually, Blackbeard becomes also the “owner” of Toby’s words: “Now I have added to the Words” (2014, 385), and he chooses, as Toby did before, the story he wants to tell: “That is the best answer […] and I have written it down” (2014, 390). Furthermore, the final chapter in the novel is “The Story of Toby,” told by Blackbeard and edited by himself: This is the end of the Story of Toby. I have written it in this Book. And I have put my name here—Blackbeard—the way Toby first showed me when I was a child. It says that I was the one who set down these words. (Atwood, 2014, 390; emphasis added) In the final page, Blackbeard claims ownership over the whole narrative. He asserts his voice, and thus MaddAddam’s narrative accepts the challenge of posthumanity—that is, to include the voice of the posthuman subject that “is neither totally Same nor totally Other” (Gomel Source, 2012, 180). Besides, the reader may wonder who has written the words that are the beginning of the whole book: “The Story of the Egg, and of Oryx, and Crake, and how they made People and Animals; and of the Chaos; and of Snowman-the-Jimmy; and of the Smelly Bone and the coming of the Two Bad Men” (Atwood, 2014, 3; emphasis in the original). The syntax is very simple, the repetition of “and of” instead of more elaborate connectors and the use of vocabulary like “smelly bone […] Bad Men” give some clues about the possibility that it is Blackbeard who has eventually edited the whole book. According to Ferrando, a posthumanist methodology “finds its rhizomatic outlines in the postmodern critique of objective knowledge and absolute truth” (2012, 11)—that is, there is an openness to different possibilities, multiplicity, and uncertainty. If in The Handmaid’s Tale the reader discovers at the end of the book that the novel rendered is not the direct account of the narrator, Offred, but the random and arbitrary story noted down by a male academic from a collection of disordered cassettes, in MaddAddam Atwood uses a similar strategy. At the end of the book we eventually discover that Toby’s account could have been reedited by Blackbeard.

5 Conclusion MaddAddam suggests circularity and return in its palindromic title. Whether this circularity is an eternal return of the same cycle or a repetition that leaves aside the most negative aspects of the old one is the question that this chapter has tried to discuss. Crake is an updated version of the mad scientist who satirically embodies the most radical ideas of deep ecologism, transhumanism, and critical posthumanism in a practical and ironic demonstration of how

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similar extremisms are. The Crakers—his “Frankenstein creatures”—are a quite humoristic version of the old dreams always pursued by humanity: powerful sexuality, physical perfection, and eternal youth. However, like the gifts given by a witty genie, “perfection” at first sight comes with enormous losses: the loss of desire, intelligence, and a longer life span. These modern Frankenstein creatures eventually succeed in the encounter with their creators, and it is through human women that community and understanding are made possible. Women, after being more negatively affected by technology than men, are the creators of a new hybrid civilization closer to nature. In other words, the cure for dehumanization comes from posthumanism—a paradigm for care, borrowing Herbrechter’s and Callus’s words. However, care in MaddAddam is associated, as is traditional in patriarchal societies, with women and more specifically with women’s bodies. Women, through their traditional roles as mothers and caretakers, set out the bases for the new [post]human community. The ending is interpreted as “hopeful” by some critics, in the sense that there is continuity of (posthuman) life—a new race supposedly without humanity’s old faults. However, it seems that the post-human miscegenated society born in MaddAddam does not show real reasons for believing in any “hope” other than the demonstration of the futility and the defeat of the mad scientist’s plan. The Crakers develop abstract thinking, “religious” beliefs, and sentimental bonds with human beings in opposition to Crake’s plans when he designed them. Then, his bio-scientific project of “enhancing” human nature takes an unexpected turn. It seems that the tenets of the transhumanist project, based on scientific human enhancement, are put into question. Moreover, the Crakers are created sexually homogenized—heterosexual—and their gender roles are still clearly divided between men and women: women are in charge of rearing children, and fertility and procreation are seen as the main source of “hope.” Thus, the posthumanist “perfect” model to take over the imperfect human being reproduces from its very basis the solid binarism of humanist/patriarchal society; even more so, MaddAddamites only understand and accept the posthuman being, as Janicaud explains, “in direct relationship to [their] own humanity” (2005, 29). The narrative poetics of the novel parallels MaddAddam’s diegetic world in which hybridization is the proposed solution. There is no option of “human purity” either in the plot or in the narratological construction, because the ending generates considerable uncertainty regarding whose voice corresponds to what part. Toby and Blackbeard share responsibility for the creation of both the new myths/stories and chronicle/history that will conform this new [post]human future. Moreover, all the chapter headings are written in italics and cursives—the style Blackbeard was taught by Toby. There is hope for a future in MaddAddam, as Toby’s notes are first intended to keep memories, maybe to remind the humans of the future that certain things should not happen again. However, her memories are unreliable

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in the sense that they are not only subjective but also consciously manipulated to offer not the truth but the version that she thinks should be remembered. Moreover, it seems in her satirical portrait of this new ideal society that Atwood implicitly defends the ideals that she should be satirizing. Thus, she links survival to the same old values that led to apocalypse: writing—the first technology, basis of humanist thinking, and the way to keep ancient human knowledge for the future; amyth, as the origin of religions and abstract thinking; and heteropatriarchy as the only model of society. As happened in The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the epilogue points to the reconstruction of the values behind Gilead, MaddAddam has in its hopeful and utopian ending the seeds for the original dystopia in its narrative, so the only solution is trying to do it better this time. It seems that without human extinction, repetition is unavoidable, even for the posthuman beings, which are human at their core after all, but this time it can be a “repetition that saves.”

Notes 1 Violent convicts in the pre-pandemic time. They were forced to fight each other to death and as a result they became dehumanized to a reptilian level. 2 Laboratory group that was apparently dedicated to the profitable business of creating “babies à la carte,” customizing DNA information for the prospective parents. However, it was the test field for Crake’s secret project: to design and develop the new race, the Crakers. 3 Carretero-González uses Haraway’s phrase “becoming with” (2008, 17), as a combination of Levina’s ethics of alterity—firmly based on the recognition of the other ethical status after the human face to face encounter—and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “becoming animal”—we humans are ethical only when we overcome the repulsion produced when the face of the other is perceived as different in any aspect. “Become with” is used then “to discern the epistemological position required to grant the Creature [Frankenstein’s monster] the ethical status it deserves” (2016, 62). In this way, becoming with other-than-human “will be looking at the world in the post-dualistic, post-hierarchical, post-human terms” (2016, 63). 4 Carretero-González acknowledges in Frankenstein the coexistence between transhuman and posthuman discourses. While Victor Frankenstein initially departs from a transhumanist desire to enhance human race through technology, the result he obtains is an other-than-human, a new species that he sees as monstrous posthuman, a “catastrophe” (2016, 55–58). 5 Isolated artificial environment where the Crakers were born and raised before the pandemic. The name “Paradice,” a witty modification of the biblical “Paradise,” plays with the idea of indeterminism and uncertainty. When Einstein studied the behavior of the quantum particle, he involuntarily opened room for two different interpretations of the universe. In Einstein’s view “God does not play dice with the Universe,” that is, he believed in Spinoza’s formulation of God, indistinguishable from nature, determinist and strictly following the lawful principles of cause and effect. In sum, a Good who did not leave room for free will. In contrast, Danish physicist Niels Bohr claimed that “it is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concern what we can say about nature” (Baggot, 2019, n.p.) However, Einstein could not accept Bohr’s

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interpretation that brought “indeterminism and uncertainty, with effects that can’t be entirely and unambiguously predicted from their causes” (Baggot, 2019, n.p.). The debate is still unresolved, and it seems that Crake chooses the name of the project as a further demonstration of his hubris, as he takes both God’s and Einstein’s side in the debate. 6 Toby is one of the few woman survivors, a former high rank member of the God’s Gardeners—a deep ecologist religious group—and main focalizer in MaddAddam. 7 This state of numbness is, according to McLuhan, a reaction of self-defense of the body or the mind when it cannot locate or avoid the cause of discomfort and a way to confront the physical and psychic trauma and to endure the pain of the situation (1994, 41–45).

Bibliography Atwood, Margaret. 2003. Oryx and Crake. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Atwood, Margaret. 2011. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. London, Hachette. Atwood, Margaret. 2014. MaddAddam. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Baggot, Jim. 2019. “What Einstein Meant by ‘God Does Not Play Dice’—Jim Baggott | Aeon Ideas.” Aeon. September 30, 2019. Available at: https://aeon.co/ideas/ what-einstein-meant-by-god-does-not-play-dice. Bone, Jane. 2016. “Environmental Dystopias: Margaret Atwood and the Monstrous Child.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(5): 627–640. Braidotti, Rosi. 2009. “‘Animals, Anomalies, and Inorganic Others: De-Oedipalizing the Animal Other.’” PMLA, 124: 526–532. Available at: www.academia.edu/ 854903/_Animals_Anomalies_and_Inorganic_Others_De-oedipalizing_the_Animal_ Other_. Callus, Ivan. 2012. “Reclusiveness and Posthumanist Subjectivity.” Subjectivity, 5(3): 290–311. Carretero González, Margarita. 2016. “The Posthuman That Could Have Been: Mary Shelley’s Creature.” Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism, 4(1): 53–64. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2016-001-carr. Chaplinsky, Joshua. 2013. “Starting From Scratch: Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy | LitReactor.” Litreactor. September 3, 2013. Available at: https://litreactor. com/columns/starting-from-scratch-margaret-atwoods-maddaddam-trilogy. Coogan, Michael D. 2007. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dickenson, Donna. 2018. “Women’s Bodies in the Biotechnology Market.” InGenere. June 2018. Available at: www.ingenere.it/en/articles/womens-bodies-biotechnologymarket. D’Iorio, Paolo. 2014. “The Eternal Return: Genesis and Interpretation.” Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas: 1–43. Ferrando, Francesca. 2012. “Towards a Posthumanist Methodology: A Statement.” Frame: Journal For Literary Studies, 25(1): 9–18. Genette, Gérard. 1983. Figures III. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gibert, Teresa. 2018. “The Monster in the Mirror: Margaret Atwood’s Retelling of the Frankenstein Myth.” In Frankenstein Revisited: The Legacy of Mary Shelley’s

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Masterpiece, ed. Borham Puyal, Miriam, 33–49. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. Available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/329911006_The_ Monster_in_the_Mirror_Margaret_Atwood%27s_Retelling_of_the_Frankenstein_ Myth. Gomel Source, Elana. 2012. “Posthuman Voices: Alien Infestation and the Poetics of Subjectivity.” Science Fiction Studies, 39(2): 177–194. Hamilton, Lindsay & Nik Taylor. 2017. Ethnography after Humanism. Power, Politics and Method in Multi-Species Research. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna. 2016. A Cyborg Manifesto. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Herbrechter, Stefan & Ivan Callus. 2008. “What Is a Posthumanist Reading?” Angelaki, 13(1): 95–111. doi:10.1080/09697250802156091. Janicaud, Dominique. 2005. On the Human Condition. London: Routledge. MacCormack, J. W. 2015. “Margaret Atwood’s Wonderfully Trashy Dystopia.” The New Republic, October 2, 2015. Available at: https://newrepublic.com/article/ 122995/margaret-atwoods-wonderfully-trashy-dystopia. Marks de Marques, Eduardo. 2013. “God Is a Cluster of Neurons: Neo-Posthumanism, Theocide, Theogony and Anti-Myths of Origin in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Niterói, 35: 155–169. Marks de Marques, Eduard. 2015. “Children of Oryx, Children of Crake, Children of Men: Redefining the Post/Transhuman in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Ustopian’ MaddAddam Trilogy.” Aletria, Belo Horizonte, 25(3): 133–146. Marks de Marques, Eduard. 2017. “Human after All? Neo-Transhumanism and the Post-Anthropocene Debate in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy.” Revell, 3(17): 178–190. McLuhan, Marshall. 1994. Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Mohr, Dunja M. 2007. “Transgressive Utopian Dystopias: The Postmodern Reappearance of Utopia in the Disguise of Dystopia.” Zeitschrift Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik/A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, 55(1): 1–25. Available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/270478294_Transgressive_Utopian_ Dystopias_The_Postmodern_Reappearance_of_Utopia_in_the_Disguise_of_Dystopia. Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1991. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Available at: www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-i noperative-community. Nayar, Pramod K. 2014. Posthumanism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Newitz, Annalee. 2013. “Atwood Imagines Humanity’s Next Iteration In ‘MaddAddam.’” NPR.Org. September 13, 2013. Available at: www.npr.org/2013/09/13/ 215749337/atwood-imagines-humanitys-next-iteration-in-maddaddam. Roberts, Michelle. 2013. “Book Review: MaddAddam, By Margaret Atwood.” The Independent, August 16, 2013. Available at: www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/books/reviews/book-review-maddaddam-by-margaret-atwood-8771138. html.

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Rossini, Manuela. Manuela Rossini.” ResearchGate. Accessed June 27, 2019. Available at: www.researchgate.net/profile/Manuela_Rossini2. Wennemann, Daryl J. 2013. Posthuman Personhood. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Wennemann, Daryl J. “The Concept of the Posthuman: Chain of Being or Conceptual Saltus?” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 26: 16–30.

13 Posthuman Transformation in Helen Marshall’s The Migration Sherryl Vint

Helen Marshall’s The Migration is a story of multiple and intersecting crises that are overdetermined in the Althusserian sense of this word; that is, each element in the totality that produces social reality is mutually determined by all the others, and none can be understood in isolation as the single or prime cause (Althusser, 2005). The main plot involves the emergence of a new disease among adolescents, Juvenile Idiopathic Immunodeficiency Syndrome (J2), in which a novel hormone “rewire[s] the way [the] body works” (Marshall, 2019, 207), resulting in autoimmune malfunctions and death. Yet as researchers gradually learn, the bodies continue to change after the official pronouncement of death, and, left undisturbed, a new kind of entity emerges after a period of transformation inside a chrysalis, the biological materials of one stage of the species rearranged into a new form, just as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. This threatening disease, J2, emerges as the world struggles with flooding, disrupted agriculture, and other consequences of climate change, events which at first appear unconnected. Eventually we learn the J2 mutations are epigenetic responses to the environmental shifts of climate change, and thus disease, environment, and new human species are complexly intertwined—overdetermined—in a narrative about our urgent need to change how humanity lives on this planet. The new kind of human stage or kind of human that emerges from the chrysalis speaks figuratively to the need to reimagine “the human” philosophically in recognition of the damage done by anthropogenic climate change. The Migration explores both how necessary and how difficult it is to move beyond the human as we currently know it, into a posthumanist ethos that is more attentive to humanity’s dependence on and consequences for other living organisms. It is also a novel about the power of stories. Teaching John Wyndham’s novel The Day of the Triffids (1951), Mr. Coomes, the protagonist’s English teacher, tells the calls, “This is important. … When writers imagine apocalyptic futures, they’re trying to illuminate what’s already embedded in their own society beneath the surface” (Marshall, 2019, 115). The triffids are carnivorous plants, presumably bioengineered, harvested for oil. A meteor shower blinds most of humanity, and the triffids, no longer easily contained, and a threat to the survivors. Wyndham’s novel is

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mainly about the struggle between decency and authoritarianism as humanity establishes a new social order in the wake of the disaster. The 2009 BBC miniseries adaptation, which focuses on the triffids as an exploited species to reorient the narrative as warning against humanity’s exploitative extraction methods in the service of an oil economy, provides better insight into Marshall’s allusion. As Mr. Coomes explains to the class, apocalyptic fictions are about the present, about uncovering something that needs to be recognized and addressed: the Greek meaning of the word is an “uncovering,” similar to the Latin root of the word revelation, “to lay bare,” the opposite of “valare, to clothe or conceal” (Marshall, 2019, 114). Marshall’s apocalyptic future seeks to uncover our need for a new model of “the human” in the face of anthropogenic climate change. In the immediate context of this scene, Mr. Coomes’ lecture is heard by Sophie, our adolescent protagonist and first-person narrator. Sophie’s younger sister, Kira, died of J2, and Sophie is troubled by a video of another young man who succumbed to the disease, Liam Barrett. He was “clinically dead, yet his body showed signs of enough cellular energy for certain genes to become active” (Marshall, 2019, 26)—a disturbing incident that becomes a viral online video. Medical officials admit that “J2 seems to be inducing biological processes we still don’t fully understand” (26), but rather than accept the radical idea of reanimation, they make cremation mandatory for all victims of the disease. Fearing this fate for Kira, Sophie switches the identification on Kira’s body with another and, aided by an orderly who is also infected with J2, hides Kira’s body in the woods and allows it to continue its post-mortem transformation. She thinks of Kira’s body as she hears Mr. Coomes’s lecture on the revelatory purpose of apocalyptic visions, connecting it with research she has conducted to aid her medieval historian aunt, Irene, about the Black Death in England during the fourteenth century. Sophie recalls a fragment from a fourteenth century account, “In the same year, a remarkable thing was noticed for the first time: that everyone born after the pestilence had two fewer teeth than people had had before” (Marshall, 2019, 115; emphasis in the original). Both Sophie and Irene have begun to wonder if J2 is not a new disease, but rather the return of something that also occurred during the outbreak of the Black Death. To be clear, Irene’s theory is not that the Black Death was J2, but rather that during the time that bubonic plague ravaged the country, some of the deaths attributed to the plague were actually caused by J2. She examines contemporary narratives and mass grave sites dated to this period, finding morphological anomalies among the remains, and proposing to read more literally the accounts than historians had previously done. This section of the novel opens with an epigraph from Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker’s medieval “General Observations” that reads in part: “Nature is not satisfied with the ordinary alterations of life and death, and the destroying angel waves over man and beast his flaming sword” (Marshall, 2019, 7). Irene begins to consider what it might mean to take such a statement not as metaphor for the supernatural power of God, but as a material account that

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the line between life and death had altered. Perhaps fourteenth-century descriptions of what seem to be angels or demons moving among the living and the dying were instead chronicles of things experienced, like the video of Liam Barrett. The point, in reference to both Irene’s new way of reading the fourteenthcentury material and Marshall’s novel, is what these “alternations of life and death” uncover or reveal. In both cases, the answer is the interdependence of the human species with the environment—ecosystems, other species, and climate itself. As Irene notes, the world experienced “the same confluence of events back then, … the changing weather patterns and shifts in the climate” (Marshall, 2019, 30). As she educates Sophie, Irene offers a theory of disease as itself a kind of uncovering. As she explains, at a biological level the human species has been shaped by evolutionary changes and encounters with other organisms that could be called disease but which involve relations of both conflict and of mutualism: “Our genome is riddled with the debris of ancient viruses, invaders, colonizers who inserted their genes into our own. They changed us, and we changed them in return” (2019, 33). As theorized by Lynn Margulis, this symbiogenesis theory has been an important component of feminist science and technology studies (STS) and feminist ecological thought. From this point of view, we cannot view microbes as merely agents of disease, but rather as the primary form of living matter, constituting a significant part of the biomass of human bodies, among other things. This way of understanding humans as messily co-constituted with and by multiple species and environments lies at the heart of Donna Haraway’s work, particularly her theorization through “companion species” in When Species Meet. She explains that in Margulis’s theory, “ever more complex life forms are the continual result of ever more intricate and multidirectional acts of association of and with other life forms. Trying to make a living, critters eat critters but can only partly digest one another” (Haraway, 2008, 31). Playfully extrapolating this image of the incorporation of microbial cells into more complex organisms as “eating,” Haraway reflects that such complex encounters entail “indigestion” as well, a recognition that such encounters are not always beneficial for all, that we need to move beyond fantasies of always beneficent Mother Nature to understand and engage the reality of environmental entanglements across species both historically and today. Indeed, what is required of a materialist politics is precisely recognizing that death and killing are among these entanglements, as we strive to find ways that “might nourish mortal companion species who cannot and must not assimilate one another but who must learn to eat well, or at least well enough that care, respect, and difference can flourish in the open” (Haraway, 2008, 287).1 Haraway is resistant to the term posthumanism, but Stefan Helmreich links such materialist microbiopolitical thinking to posthumanism when he further points out that it refuses the foundation of human exceptionalism that previously shaped understandings of evolutionary theory: far from being the pinnacle of some

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teleology, humans are merely one species among the always ongoing biological transformations of matter through which microbes sometimes aid us and sometimes make us ill. From this point of view of “life itself,” the microbes are the primary unit (Helmreich, 2018). Marshall’s novel engages in this kind of thinking about species entanglements, biological transformation, and the horizon of death through Irene’s theorizations about disease. Disease also reveals much about social structures, she explains: But diseases have a history as well. […] Think about this: it was only when people began to gather in larger communities, during the Neolithic period, that the opportunities for diseases to spread increased dramatically. Diseases require people to be in close proximity to one another, to domesticated animals. That’s when they become endemic, or perpetually present. (Marshall, 2019, 33) Irene’s analysis points toward the posthumanist way of thinking of the human as comprised of multiple microbial species that also reveal a history of larger social entanglements—agriculture and animal domestication, urban living patterns—bringing us back to J2 as an epigenetic response to climate change. Epigenetics is the study of how gene expression is regulated by environmental factors and, as Susan Squier argues, it was important to shifting biology away from genetic determinism and toward understanding of life’s capacity for plasticity (2017).2 The crisis in The Migration emerges from the challenge of thinking these two frameworks together: humans as part of a biology of symbiogenesis that requires us to negotiate difficult entanglements that involve digestion and death as much as they do mutuality and symbiosis; and epigenetic plasticity that pushes us to recognize that the current form of the human is not some ahistorical and unchanging pinnacle. Most of the plot is about Sophie’s realization that her sister is not dead but rather transformed and her struggle to come to terms with what this means. Kira remains uncommunicative in her chrysalis for much of this time, and Sophie ricochets between extremes of anticipating a reunion with the sister she has been protecting and dreading that what will emerge from the chrysalis will not be her sister but something else, perhaps something sinister. When Sophie resists the idea of Kira being cremated, the doctor insists that what remains is “not her” but just “her body” (Marshall, 2019, 50); later as she sits by Kira’s body and watches it change, Sophie observes the emergence of more and more nonhuman characteristics: Thin silver lines radiate across her temple where the skin has already been stretched. Her eyes are larger than I remember. A corona of white circles the pupil. The amber rim of her iris is dappled with

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As this eye seems to open, Sophie’s anticipation turns to fear as she remembers, “It won’t be you anymore, Dr. Varghese had told me. It will be something else” (Marshall, 2019, 92). And yet, Sophie still feels a connection and—unlike Victor Frankenstein who fled as soon as his creation showed autonomy and animation—Sophie finds a way to accept that this new being is both a version of her sister and yet also something else, something new. From its opening pages, The Migration prompts us to think differently about death: one of the earliest memories Sophie recounts is how she and her sister used to “play” at being dead, and a description of walking in the woods offers a prophetic tableau. Her aunt points out that the trees are filled with starlings, and Sophie is suddenly aware that until that moment they had been invisible to her, “I hadn’t seen them on the trees, or I hadn’t understood what they were. Just leaves, dead things” (Marshall, 2019, 11). Sophie understands that “death is a doorway” but at first tells us that she does not want to know what is on the other side. By the novel’s end, however, she is able to conceive of death as a transformation of living matter into something else—a way of thinking consistent with “the Hindu attitude to death,” as Sophie is told, “The body is shed just as one might throw away clothes that are too worn-out to wear” (2019, 62).3 In another encounter, her friend Liv tells Sophie that she finds the idea of an eternal and unchanging heaven frightening rather than reassuring: as a child Liv was told that her dead kitten had gone to heaven and thus everything would be perfect for the kitten forever—an idea that horrifies her: the attempt to turn death into something it wasn’t. Death is simple, the end of one set of biological processes. Our bodies disappear and the cells that once we were made of decompose and feed new life. It seemed beautiful to me. (Marshall, 2019, 150) Sophie learns to see life and possibility instead of only death—this is what is uncovered for her during the J2 apocalypse—and the novel portrays how difficult it is to embrace this new way of perceiving. As Sophie attempts to convey her understanding to others, to get them to stop the cremation of infected bodies and the violent police attacks on the posthuman creatures that emerge from the cocoons, the novel conveys how counterintuitive it is for us to accept this way of thinking about death. We are offered a logical reason to reject Sophie’s view, namely that J2 affects the adolescent brain in a way that is similar to infection by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which inhibits fear and thus compromises good judgement (Marshall, 2019, 79). For much of the novel, both Aunt Irene and Sophie’s

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mother remain committed to conventional ways of thinking about life and death, convinced that Sophie takes unnecessary risks with her own health because of the effects of J2 on her brain. They also take Sophie’s conviction that Kira is alive and changing as another sign of mental defect. The novel itself, however, provides verification of the truth of what Sophie contends via medical records of continuing experimentation on a J2 patient, Martin, after his body expired and then reanimated. Martin is treated with a drug that stops further transformations, and thus never enters the chrysalis stage, but instead is something akin to a zombified body, animate but inarticulate—at least at first. Documentation of the experiment proves that Martin regained some of his memory and his ability to speak over the course of a few weeks, before his officially deceased body was cremated, as per policy for J2 victims. Martin’s narrative suggests that a new way of thinking about life, death, and the human’s place in a larger ecology is foregrounded in this novel, but at the same time so is the seeming impossibility to think beyond the individual within conventional Western philosophy and religion. One of the doctors on the project becomes sympathetic to the views Sophie expresses precisely because she recognizes that Martin came back, not merely the body that was once Martin. Similarly, despite her willingness to embrace change and the other side of the “door” of death, Sophie’s own desire that the creature that emerges from the chrysalis should be her sister, Kira in a new form, demonstrates how deeply we are attached to individuality, how difficult it is to think in posthumanist terms beyond the particular individual and a desire for a particular life to continue as long as possible. The Migration both pushes us to think the necessary of a changed ideal of the human that must be rooted in collectivity rather than individuality, and yet indulges the desire to see specific individuals continue in the memories of the new posthuman creatures, called nymphs. I point to this contradiction not to fault the novel, but rather to emphasize that it thus embodies a true and urgent problem for human culture in the era of the Anthropocene: our need to be able to think beyond the immortality of particular individuals and thus embrace an ethos that privileges future generations and sustainability, at the same time as we inevitably feel grief at the loss of a loved individual. Indeed, as I write this chapter, the world is in a kind of global stasis owing to the risks of COVID-19, and many countries are under “stay at home” orders designed to slow the spread of a microbial disease that has already resulted in a death count that one struggles to comprehend. In this context, it is all the more challenging to embrace generative ways of thinking about posthumanist change, and indeed impossible to think of death as transformation rather than disaster. The struggle that Sophie faces coming to terms with the change that Kira undergoes and her failure to convey that perspective to the culture at large, speak to the scale of the transformed thinking that is required. Yet even though this is difficult, it is nonetheless valuable. It is important to underline here that the novel offers the literal

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posthuman nymphs as a metaphor for new ways of thinking about humanity as part of a larger ecology (including the climate), as a prompt to tell us that we need imaginatively and ethically to live the human in a new way.4 This is not a philosophical perspective that implies that we should just accept human death by disease as an event of little importance. And yet there are issues of materiality at work here as well. On the one hand, we consider what the science-fictional posthuman emblematizes about new philosophical and political ways of understanding “the human”; on the other, these conceptual figurations are informed by the materiality of humanity’s biological embeddedness within other living systems. In The Microbial State, Stefanie R. Fishel notes the centrality of the metaphors of the body politic and the state as (individual) person in shaping Western political systems as we know them. However, these metaphors emerged in concert with early modern understandings of humanity in hierarchical relationship with other species and liberal humanist ideals of the individual as an autonomous and closed entity. Biology today shows the human organism to be a far more complex affair, consisting of its own organs and DNA, to be sure, but also scores of microbial cells with their own DNA, some of which are harmful, of course, but many of which have become incorporated into our bodies and integral to their function. Contra the old models, Fishel argues for a new “bodies politic” (Fishel, 2017, 43) as a multiple rather than singular entity, for the organism as a “lively vessel” (2017, 15) rather than closed unit, thereby compelling us to recognize how species can be intertwined and codependent, not only in antagonistic competition. Fishel points out that this metaphor of bodies politic allows us to conceptualize the state beyond notions of homogeneity and purity of singular identity—discourses that fuel divisive racialized politics. Stacy Alaimo draws on similar biological research and feminist materialist perspectives in her theorization of trans-corporeality, “in which the human is always inter-meshed with the more-than-human world, [which] underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’” (Alaimo, 2010, 2). Just as these theoretical figurations seek to reshape how we conceptualize and thus inhabit ways of being human among other species and within environments, so too do Marshall’s J2-created nymphs point to a need to think differently about the human, especially in relation to questions of lifestyles that have resulted in anthropogenic climate change. The parallels that Irene uncovers between J2 and the period of the Black Death are not only about the morphological similarities between the transformed humans and medieval accounts of supernatural creatures, but also between changing climate patterns that disrupted agriculture during the medieval period, paralleled by evidence of intensified climate change that shapes the novel’s setting. Sophie discusses with Irene her concerns about the way mainstream adult culture reacts to J2 and, during this conversation, Irene admits “sometimes

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it feels difficult to be an adult. To know the right thing to do” (Marshall, 2019, 225). The medical establishment wants to confine those undergoing J2 changes to institutions, but Sophie argues that instead of trying to stop the changes, they should let them happen, that “Nature finds a way when it’s threatened, doesn’t it? It changes itself so the next generation will survive and have a better chance” (2019, 225). Sophie suggests that Irene might also be indulging in an unhelpful way of thinking, tricked by her brain’s habits just as much as J2 influences Sophie’s responses. Irene’s commitment to trying to stop the changes and restore normality, Sophie contends, is misleading nostalgia, “thinking things were better before when they weren’t. The planet was in a tailspin before my diagnosis. There isn’t safety in the way things were. So what if there’s an answer here, something radical and new?” (2019, 228). It is important to keep in mind here that J2 is a phenomenon that affects adolescents, and thus its metaphorical embodiment of new ways of thinking and being is attached very specifically to the young, to a next generation who will have to find ways to live in a world necessarily made different by climate change. Similarly, this next generation will have to find new ways to organize human practices of living so as not to perpetuate the ways we are creating a climate that can no longer sustain human life. As Sophie passionately puts it, “This … can’t be forever. Maybe the world worked one way for our parents, for their parents—but not for us. It isn’t the same” (2019, 256; ellipsis in original). Sophie’s friend Liv makes a similar statement regarding a new conception of death—being open to the radical and new—as part of their discussion about Liv’s rejection of the concept of heaven. Liv suggests that, from one point of view, we can think about the components of a body being transformed into something new (that is, what happens in the chrysalis) as similar to conception and childbirth: Energy transferred from thing to thing, the cellular material passed on from generation to generation, never truly dying. We privilege one form—our form—simply because we’re hardwired that way. But science is always showing us the world is richer, more fantastic than we believed possible. (Marshall, 2019, 151) This perspective is profoundly non-anthropocentric, requiring us to recognize that, from the point of view of “life itself,” the human form has no particular claim over any other. Yet this need not necessarily mean that we must reject such hardwired patterns entirely, but rather that we think carefully and more reflexively about the ethical choices that we make, in recognition of the fact that the human is entangled with other living systems. We can no longer simply by default prioritize human life continuing as currently configured—a default in which we always prioritize our own “kind”; instead, we must ethically

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engage with the complex, uneven, and always difficult politics that Haraway characterizes as eating “well enough” with an attention to “care, respect, and difference.” Indeed, as work on the human as a racialized category— what Sylvia Wynter calls the overrepresented Man of Western modernity— demonstrates, the default privileging our own “kind” reveals the fractures by which the human was never a fully inclusive category in the first place, but rather a discourse that produced the humanity of privilege white, European subjects at the same time as it dehumanized colonized peoples of color (Wynter, 2003). This point is vital in connection with the novel’s framing of the posthuman transformation as a response to climate crisis as well. A number of scholars reject this term and favor other formulations—Jason Moore’s capitalocene and Haraway’s chthulucene are two of the most prominent alternatives—precisely because the word Anthropocene suggests that all humans have equally contributed to environmental damage and climate change (Moore, 2015; Haraway, 2015).5 Yet a more careful analysis, rooted in the values of care and respect for difference that Haraway champions, would require us to recognize that both the causes and the consequences of climate crisis are unevenly distributed among people, along lines of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographical location in the Global North or South. The novel’s dual focus on embracing the transformed new humans— the nymphs—yet also honoring family and other attachments important to the former humans, strives to achieve a balance between the necessity of prioritizing some forms of living over others, yet remaining attentive to the fact that this is an ethical choice, that it brings with it consequences, entanglements, and indeed responsibilities. We cannot simply continue to prioritize those most like us without reflection. By the novel’s end, Sophie herself has developed J2 symptoms and enters the chrysalis stage, while her mother—having learnt to accept that change is inevitable rather than trying to cling to the past—smuggles Sophie’s body out of the hospital so that the transformation can continue, which is something that she refused to do with Kira. They are simultaneously forced to leave their home owing to floods caused by climate change, and thus the novel ends on this note of the new in two registers: Sophie’s embodied form and the lifestyle that she and her family will pursue. Metaphorically, this enables us to frame the needed changes as transformation rather than loss. It is from this point of view that I think the novel—and other figures of posthumanist and multispecies entanglements—can valuably illuminate something embedded beneath the surface of our culture, to return to the language of my epigraph, even as we live through a pandemic in which the microbial and multispecies reality of the human seems especially frightening. Yet this is precisely what we must do, Rosi Braidotti argues, in her theorization of what she terms affirmative posthumanism. Although “the process of confronting the thinkability of a Life that may not have ‘me’ or any ‘human’ at the centre” is challenging and perhaps frightening, nonetheless such a shift is “the necessary start for an ethics of sustainability that aims at re-directing

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the focus towards the posthuman positivity of zoë” (Braidotti, 2013, 122). It is especially important to keep in mind that thinking Life in the framework of decentering the human is not the same as thinking Life without the human, or the same as devaluing the human. Rather, it is a project of imagining what the human might be and do if the metaphors through which we understand our species emphasized relationality, responsibility, and entanglement, rather than autonomy, individuality, and hierarchy. Here it is also important to recall the novel’s careful reminder that, etymologically, apocalypse is about unveiling, about the emergence of the new not merely the destruction of what was. Braidotti similarly reminds us that an ethics of sustainability necessarily envisions a future and that precisely its point is “a sense of responsibility for ‘passing on’ to future generations a world that is liveable and worth living in” (2013, 138). A real future has the capacity for change—the vital future that Sophie sees in the nymphs and the “radical and new” (Marshall, 2019, 228) modes of living that they portend, contra the nostalgic clinging to the version of humanity that drove anthropogenic climate change, which recoils with fear and violence from what the nymphs represent. As well as their new morphology, the nymphs have a psychic link among themselves that is shared with the young people whose bodies are preparing to make the transformation, further emphasizing a new model of humanity that embraces embeddedness and connection, refusing the isolated autonomy of the liberal human. In language that echoes the discourse on the human as microbiome that Fishel uses to articulate a new kind of bodies politics, Braidotti argues that “A people is […] a heterogeneous multiplicity that cannot coalesce into unity on pre-given grounds” (Braidotti, 2019, 52). Both suggest that new metaphors of identity as multiplicity are necessary corrections to a political imagination still rooted in the model of the nation-state as homogenous and pure, attached to an immunity politics of borders as sites of war against difference.6 Braidotti emphasizes mutuality in the collective subject that she puts at the center of affirmative posthumanism, but she also stresses that it is “a ‘we-are-(all)-in-this-together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same’ kind of subject” (2019, 54). Braidotti uses this framework to caution against the kinds of binary dualisms that were so central to producing the Western human subject as we know it, particularly the human/animal division that is foundational to biopolitical rethinking of governance today. In the COVID-19 context, one cannot help but hear an echo of the ubiquitous reassurance “we are all in this together”—a sentiment that is intended to convey solidarity, but which could clearly benefit from the kind of reflexivity modelled in Braidotti’ and Haraway’s styles of posthuman thinking about entangled relations (Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 2008, 2016). The virus reminds us that the human body is not an autonomous and isolated unit, but it is continually traversed by its environment, and also that we are interconnected with one another in a larger community and ecosystem, in ways that are not always beneficial, as Haraway notes. COVID-19’s identity as a zoonotic

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disease also points to entanglement with other species, and how our ways of interacting with them as food sources or displacing them through development that destroys habitats puts multiple species into proximities that involve physical exchanges. Not all of these exchanges are maleficent of course—although it is easy in our current context to forget about beneficial and needed microbes—but nor are all relations innocent, to use a term frequently evoked by Haraway. Finally, the very uneven impact of the virus on different communities, around the world and within nation states, points to differences linked to socioeconomic status, often mapped to ethnicity, age, and geography, and frequently along lines of exclusion that mirror the racialized politics of the Western liberal “human” as political category. Poignantly, “we-are-(all)-in-this-together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same” provides an understanding of how such differences have come to matter in a context in which the uneven politics of life and death are starkly visible, even as all humans are, in theory, a privileged form of life. To return to Marshall’s novel, it suggests that the epigenetic changes prompted by climate change are akin to a speciation within humanity. Epigenetics is the study of changes in the organism as a result of gene expression, and the central mechanism for this is environmental factors that trigger (or fail to trigger) the expression of certain segments on the genetic code. Aunt Irene collaborates with scientists who are working to understand the genetic triggers that are expressed in J2, and they learn that: the fertilised human egg contains the hereditary programming for two very different and specialised patterns of body development. Humans have typically developed upon a singular path as witnessed by the standard phases (zygote, blastocyst, fetus, neonate, pre-adolescence, etc.) but this transition indicates a possible “branching” during puberty in which the secondary form might be triggered if certain conditions are fulfilled. (Marshall 2019, 213) This literal branching of biology points to a metaphorical need for a branching of the philosophical discourse of the human, away from the hierarchical model of autonomous liberalism and toward something similar to Braidotti’s affirmative posthuman. Most centrally, the posthuman figuration in the novel is a powerful argument for our need to be open to change—a suggestion that a sustainable future is possible only if we can embrace such change. In addition to Sophie’s classroom education about the purpose of apocalyptic narrative, the novel is framed by two mythological stories about birds—an important symbol, as the posthuman nymphs emerge with wings. The first is a story about a lark that Sophie read to Kira as a child: It described a time when the world was underwater—no land to be found anywhere, just endless ocean and endless sky. And birds—hundreds of

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them, thousands of them, filling up the empty space with their song. Birds like smoke, birds like weather. Among them was a lark. When her mother died, there was nowhere to bury her body. No earth, only water. And so the lark lived in grief, idly circling. Her path was a knot of sorrow. On the third day she buried her mother in the back of her head. (Marshall, 2019, 108) Sophie explains that what she loves about this story is “the memory of what you loved, kept safe inside you” (Marshall, 2019, 108), and at first she finds it difficult to separate the idea of keeping what she loves safe from the idea of physically keeping Kira as she is. Later, the transformed Kira reminds Sophie of this story as a way to understand transformation through a framework other than grief. The bodies of the posthuman nymphs have changed, Kira says, but they remember, they have buried the human past within them, just as the lark buried her mother—that is, buried the ethos of a previous generation even as the new one embraces change: “We bury it all inside of us: memories of disaster, memories of joy, shored up against loss. And from those memories, comes what? Change, I think, a way to survive when all hope seems lost. A fresh start” (2019, 275). Through the perspective of this story, Sophie is able to look out at the world transformed by flooding—“a vast ocean stretching toward the horizon in every direction”—and see beauty, not disaster; “The light is extraordinary, clear and unimpeded” (Marshall, 2019, 274). Although the familiar world is “vanished, all else sunk beneath the waves,” Sophie can conceptualize this as, “A vision of heaven—but not weightless, not changeless. The sky is teeming with life: great feathered bodies, their wings made to tame the storms” (2019, 274). The word heaven here recalls Liv’s earlier refusal of a static idea of heaven in which her kitten would never change; this heaven is a world of humans able to find new ways to live in a world marked by anthropogenic climate change—literally the winged nymphs who produce this vision of beauty for Sophie, but also metaphorically what they represent as images of humanity imagined through new logics and ethics. The final section of the novel, entitled “After,” is narrated by Sophie’s mother after Sophie enters the chrysalis stage. She recalls another story about a mythological bird that the girls read—the tale of the Bennu deity from Egyptian mythology (termed a heron here) believed to be an early form of the Phoenix myth: It was about the world, how it was submerged. And when the land rose the first thing to appear was a heron. And the heron created the universe. It made the gods and the goddesses, it made the men and the women, everything. It made them all anew. (Marshall, 2019, 288) The novel ends as the girls’ mother reflects on this myth, waiting for Sophie to transform, ready for a new future for both human and posthuman alike. The hope for change and the possibility to thrive through renewal are

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palpable in the air in these stories’ common imagery of new worlds emerging from the water, which are precisely the circumstances that Sophie and her family now face in a Britain largely underwater. In Imagining Extinction, Ursula K. Heise argues that the choices that we make in relation to biodiversity, endangered species, and extinction “are primarily cultural issues, questions of what we value and what stories we tell” (2016, 5). Through her analysis of extinction narratives, she develops a theory of “multispecies justice and multispecies cosmopolitanism” (6) that can reorient our values in ways that enable us to respond meaningfully to the ongoing crisis of extinction. Stories of posthuman transformation offer similar resources for philosophically transforming what we value about the human as we anticipate its future. Marshall’s The Migration provides both a narrative of the necessity to change in the face of anthropogenic climate change and a reflection about the importance of stories—apocalyptic unveilings and mythological resources of hope—for helping us to navigate the difficulty of such change, a condition that is necessarily also one of loss. The novel demonstrates the importance of speculative fiction to the project of affirmative posthumanism, to enable us to see in new ways through the framework provided by the story. Braidotti contends that “it is important to be worthy of our times, the better to act upon them, in both a critical and a creative manner,” but cautions that achieving this standard requires “drastic changes to our familiar mind-sets and established values” (2019, 3). The Migration explores the difficulty of moving beyond such mindsets and values alongside a vision of why we must, if we want to migrate into a sustainable ecological future.

Notes 1 Haraway is also responding here to Derrida’s interview, entitled “Eating Well,” in which he discusses how the human/animal boundary—and thus carnivorism or eating of the nonhuman—has been a philosophical foundation of Western subjectivity. This is part of why she glosses incorporation as eating. 2 One of the main interventions of Squier’s book is to analyze how this promise of plasticity has often been undermined by directions the field itself has taken, which reinforce determinism. She thus calls upon feminist STS scholars to “learn about epigenetics so we are able to contest the way the field has been and is being redirected and narrowed in scientific research and medical practice; that we should do so to recapture the potential of the epigenetic landscape as a methodological prompt crafted at the intersection of art and science that can, when used creatively, amplify the options we have for exploring the complex network of interactions that is biological development” (Squier, 2017, 207). This feminist vision of the possibility of epigenetics is what Marshall evokes in her novel. 3 Sophie also encounters a countercultural version of similar ideas in the mother of her best friend in Toronto, Jaina: “She loved crystals, burning sage and incense, ley lines and Ouija boards. ‘Every part of the world touches every other part,’ she used to tell us, clad in a long, loose-fitting skirt redolent of sandalwood. When Jaina and I were alone we’d laugh about it but we let her read our fortunes. ‘The gentle wind roams the earth. The superior person expands her sphere of influence as she expands her awareness,’ she would intone’” (Marshall, 2019, 22).

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4 I argue this point about the figurations of new posthuman embodiments in science fiction as arguments for a new philosophical and ethical way to conceptualize and thus live a “proper” human identity in Bodies of Tomorrow—a formation I call “ethical posthumanism” in that work (Vint, 2007). 5 See Haraway’s “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin” (2015) for an analysis of this problem of naming. She also takes up these questions in her Staying With the Trouble (2016). 6 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore these ideas in detail, but Roberto Esposito’s philosophical oeuvre is devoted to this project of developing a new immunity theory of politics that understands the immune system as negotiating rather than destroying difference, which is consistent with current biomedical research. Fishel draws on his work as well as on biomedical sources. See especially Esposito’s A Philosophy for Europe for an analysis of how we must understand the return of nationalist and racist authoritarian politics as part of an autoimmune disorder of the contemporary biopolitical paradigm (2018).

Bibliography Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment and the Material Self. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Althusser, Louis. [1962] 2005. “Contradiction and Overdetermination.” In For Marx. Translated by Ben Brewster, 87–128. London: Verso. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity. Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity. Esposito, Roberto. 2018. A Philosophy for Europe: From the Outside. Translated by Zakiya Hanafi. Cambridge: Polity. Fishel, Stefanie R. 2017. The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities Vol. 6: 159–165. Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Heise, Ursula K. 2016. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Helmreich, Stefan. 2018. “Microbes.” In Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies, ed. Lynn Turner, Undine Sellbach, & Ron Broglio, 354–366. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marshall, Helen. 2019. The Migration. Toronto, ON: Random House Canada. Moore, Jason. 2015. Capitalism in the Webs of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Squier, Susan Merrill. 2017. Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Vint, Sherryl. 2007. Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: Centennial Review, 3(3): 257–337.

Conclusion Towards a Post-Pandemic, (Post)Human World Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual

In the months that it has taken to put together this book, many things have happened that have made us wonder at times if we are not living in a dystopia produced by a pandemic (of COVID-19) that comes from the human and nonhuman animal interaction spreading rapidly through the world. As a result of this global sanitary crisis, the labor market has changed, and our everyday life has been greatly altered. Changes range from a boost in remote working, digitalization, credit card use, and private transportation, to temporary suspension of civic and commercial activity, international lockdowns, social distancing, support bubbles, and self-isolation if showing coronavirus symptoms. Hand sanitizer gel and face masks are the new compulsory prostheses. Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, in their timely study COVID-19: The Great Reset (2020) claim that the post-pandemic era will bring a societal reset that will lead to “massive wealth redistribution, from the rich to the poor and from capital to labour” and, given how badly neoliberal countries like the US and the UK have fared in the crisis, the possible abandonment of neoliberal policies which usually include “favouring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare” (78). Should their prediction come about, the world as we know it would be greatly transformed. Whatever the future might bring, it is undeniable that it has already changed as a result of the pandemic. In the Introduction to this book we dealt with the fourth industrial revolution and its social, cultural, and economic consequences in the twenty-first century. The pandemic has accelerated some of its effects and boosted (bio)technological innovation. As a result of confinement, the digital world has expanded in a permanent manner, not only regarding the use of the Internet, social media, streaming, and digital content in general, but also in the way that companies operate, owing to the remote services necessary to maintain the required social distancing. There has been an impressive leap in digital activity and, as Schwab and Malleret claim, many companies “in terms of tech take-up fast-forwarded by several years” (2020, 153). Consumers are also now more willing to rely on digital platforms for personal contact, entertainment, education, exercising, and consumption, which have become safer, cheaper, and—at first sight—more eco-friendly options. Luciano Floridi’s concept of ‘onlife’ (2014, 43) is even

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more relevant now, as the infosphere has become our natural environment and as reality and the virtual seem to dissolve at times. According to Schwab and Malleret, regulations have also been relaxed, and the “contactless economy” has accelerated, as seen, for example, in the development of telemedicine, drone delivery, and mobile payments (155). Automation is also due to accelerate in order to reduce human contact, even if this means increasing unemployment, especially in service and entertainment industries. The introduction of Robotic Process Automation has also accelerated, reducing costs and facilitating the compilation and validation of data (159). In this sense, the introduction of contact tracking and tracing apps to fight COVID-19 has also raised concern about surveillance practices. Digital surveillance is predicted to increase as new measures will be introduced by companies to control their workforce: “from measuring body temperatures with thermal cameras to monitoring via an app how employees comply with social distancing” (Schwab and Malleret, 2020, 165). Facial-recognition cameras, location-detecting smartphones, and the harvesting of biometric data are not unlike the techno-totalitarian corporate surveillance that we find in Dave Eggers’s The Circle as we saw in Chapter 5. Like U in Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, we run the risk of turning into ‘dividuals,’ to use Massanet’s term in Chapter 6, relational beings with networked subjectivities who have carelessly embraced techno-scientific developments. We might also become ‘necronauts,’ as in Tom McCarthy’s C, dehumanized by rapidly changing communication technologies. As Fernández-Santiago considers in Chapter 9, will those refusing to comply with these surveillance technologies be considered disabled humans that lack something that the prosthetic, transhuman, surveillance carriers have? Maybe we should rather accept illness and death as part of life and learn to enjoy the here and now, as the main character in DeLillo’s Zero K learns the hard way. At the same time, the radical alteration of everyday life in Western countries, especially the unusual sight of literally empty cities, roads, and international airports, resulting in an unprecedented decrease in carbon dioxide emissions, especially during the lockdown in early 2020, has provided the grounds for much discussion about the global need to rethink contemporary human exploitation of the environment. The unexpected and undesired circumstances have forced us to face the reality of the Anthropocene and to what an extent our accelerated, consumerist (Capitalocenic) way of life is to blame. Already in 1798, in the initial steps of the first industrial revolution, Thomas Malthus warned against the risks of the overexploitation of natural resources, owing to the geometric nature of population growth and the Earth’s self-regulatory mechanisms, like the “premature death” that “must in some shape or other visit the human race,” including “sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague [which] advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands” (1999, 61). Now, in the middle of the fourth revolution, the pandemic that has brought the whole world to a halt and killed people by the hundreds of

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thousands has also demonstrated that we can live on less and promote the sustainability of the planet. In this sense, it is significant to notice that in 2020 the Earth Overshoot Day, which signals “the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year,” according to the data gathered by the Global Footprint Network (Earth Overshoot Day, 2020a), has been significantly delayed for the first time in the past forty years. In other words, the planet’s resources for 2020 were consumed by August 22, whereas in 2019 the date was July 29 (Earth Overshoot Day, 2020b). Regarding the origin of the pandemic, some people and media have spread conspiracy theories of varied types and with different social/political agendas: is COVID-19 a laboratory-created virus designed to decimate the Earth’s population, much like the Waterless Flood in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, or to impose a world-wide surveillance system that deprives us of any privacy whatsoever? Others might take a cue from Patricia MacCormack’s views on human extinction as the cure for an ill-treated planet and take up a more environmentally radical stance: is COVID-19 the Earth’s revenge, or its self-defense mechanism against an abusive anthropocentric humanity gone wild, along the lines of Malthusian catastrophe? What seems to be undeniable is the inevitable interconnection between the human and the animal, and the human and the natural, as suggested in the works by Jeff VanderMeer analyzed in Chapters 10 and 11. Perhaps in a clearer way than ever, we need to acknowledge the relevance of humanimal transcorporeality, as a coronavirus of animal origin is causing havoc in human bodies that scientists and physicians can barely understand. As Sherryl Vint points out in the chapter that closes our volume, the zoonotic quality of COVID-19 exposes not only the reality of human entanglement with nonhuman species, but also the effects of anthropocentric intervention in nature, as the spread of coronaviruses seem to stem from using animals as sources of food. Furthermore, as she states: the very uneven impact of the virus on different communities, around the world and within nation states, points to differences linked to socioeconomic status, often mapped to ethnicity, age and geography, and frequently along lines of exclusion that mirror the racialized politics of the Western liberal ‘human’ as political category. (2021, 220) In this line of thought, and from a positive angle, it is useful to recall what Rosi Braidotti asserts while discussing the role of the humanities and its crisis: As far as the posthuman debate is concerned, there are no grounds for plunging into melancholy metaphysical ruminations about the end of the world. We need energizing projects that express generative narratives and do not wallow in the rhetoric of crisis. Especially when the crisis in

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question is to a certain extent the lament of white European cultures feeling vulnerable after they have become aware of how anthropogenic global risks are likely to affect them. (2019, 69) To conclude, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified many of the trends that were described in the Introduction to this book. As Marguerite Koole claims, the pandemic: raises awareness, in a startling fashion, of the complexities and interdependence of humans and non-humans not to mention the interplay of power, politics, and capitalism. A posthumanist affirmative ethics might help us to reconceptualize a more just post-pandemic world. (2020) Critical posthumanism might give us the tools to navigate this changing world that can bring out the best and the worst in us. Literary fiction can help us to understand the sudden changes taking place as a consequence of the fourth industrial revolution and the post-pandemic, (post)human world that emerges. Whether this world will be closer to the transhuman utopia that many envision or the dystopian society that critical posthumanism warns against remains to be seen.

Bibliography Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. Earth Overshoot Day. 2020a. “Past Earth Overshoot Days.” Available at: www. overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/. Earth Overshoot Day. 2020b. “How the Date of Earth Overshoot Day 2020 Was Calculated.” Available at: www.overshootday.org/2020-calculation/. Floridi, Luciano. 2014. The 4th Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koole, Marguerite. 2020. “Review of Rosi Braidotti (2019). Posthuman Knowledge.” Postdigital Science and Education: 1–5. doi:10.1007/s42438–42020–00139-y. MacCormack, Patricia. 2012. Posthuman Ethics. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Malthus, Thomas. [1798] 1999. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwab, Klaus & Thierry Malleret. 2020. COVID-19: The Great Reset. Geneva: Forum Publishing. Vint, Sherryl. 2021. Posthuman Transformation in Helen Marshall’s_The Migration_Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative, eds Sonia Baelo-Allué & Mónica Calvo-Pascual. London & New York, 210–223. NY: Routledge.

Index

ableism 143, 144, 151 Abraham, Nicolas 114–15 academic performance 65 Ackroyd, Peter 111 active nihilism 110 additive manufacturing 2 aesthetics 21, 111, 142, 151, 153 affirmative posthumanism 218–19, 222 AI see artificial intelligence (AI) Alaimo, Stacy 8, 216 Alcor 126–7 Alexander, Patricia 53 Alma Books 110 Alpha Research Agency 52 alternative humans 25 altruism 33, 38–39 Amazon 56 American body politics 156 American democratic system 154 American Psychological Association (APA) 150 analytical skills 14, 35, 57 anamnesis 21 anarchical reading 59 ancestrality 21, 23–5; logic of 23 androcentric knowledge 42 animal biotechnology 179 animal cognition, Cartesian notions of 188–9 Anthropocene 9–11, 161, 218; Cixin Liu’s transhuman triad 167–70; era 41; human being in dissolution 164–6; Jeff VanderMeer’s Posthuman Area X 170–5; liquidation of boundaries in 164; new relations between man and world 161–4; notion of 9; signals 9; trans- and posthuman visions 166–7 Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) 9

anthropocentric intervention in nature 226 anthropocentric knowledge 42 anthropocentric perspective 175 anthropocentric principle of projection 28 anthropocentrism: critique of 28; denunciation of 10 anthropogenic climate change 221 anthropology: Kantian 27; modern 27; stripping process 29 anti-humanist bias 111 APA see American Psychological Association apocalypse 107, 121, 199, 202, 214, 219 apocalyptic resonance 147 Apple’s Siri 3 Aquinas, Thomas 43 archaeological anthropology 44 arche-fossil 23–4 archetypal symbolism 115 Art Deco decoration 84 artificial intelligence (AI) 2, 6, 80; creation of 1; rise of 25 artistic production 180 Asimov, Isaac 178 asynchronicity 21 asynchronous collective reading 56 Attridge, Derek 118 Atwood, Margaret 178, 204 Audrey 120–1 augmented reality 2 Austen, Jane 58–9 authoritarian, foundations of 39 autointoxication 115 automation 225 AWG see Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) Badmington, Neil 12 Baelo-Allué, Sonia 1, 135, 224

Index Bailey’s plan of “transparency” 89–90 Barrett, Liam 211 Barrett Browning, Elizabeth 40 Baudrillard, Jean 82, 117, 119–20 Bauman, Zygmunt 81, 86–7 becoming human 26–7 becoming in/human 25–31 Bedford, James 126 before humanity 25, 29–30; ancestral understanding of 24; idea of 23 Benioff, Marc R. 10 Benjamin, Walter 35; conception of life 35–6; spirit of remembering and embracing 36 Bentham, Jeremy 33, 38 Berger, John 182–3 Bieber Lake, Christina 43 Bin Laden, Osama 154–5 bioconservatives 69 bioconversatives 68 bioethical debates on human enhancement 67–70 biohacking communities 65 biological domain 2 biological transformation 213 biology, literal branching of 220 biotechnologies 2, 4, 25, 179 Blackbeard 197–205 Blake, William 34 Blanchot, Maurice 115–16 Bloom, Sandra L. 130 body politics 157 book 50–3; reading 57; reviews 55 Borne (VanderMeer) 183, 189; enigmatic appearance 181–4; human language 184–5; individuality and unique qualities 190; Rachel’s attachment to 184–6 Borriaud, Nicolas 95 Bosse, Abraham 145 Bostrom, Nick 5–6, 14, 71–2 Braidotti, Rosi 7–8, 41–2, 48, 98–9, 179, 181, 218–19, 226 Bregman, Rutger 106–7 British Empire Wireless Chain 113 British Romanticism 37 Brynjolfsson, Erik 1–4 Buchanan, Allen 66 buffer zones 105 Bulgaria 52–3, 55, 57 Bulgarian Science Fund 52 Burke, Edmund 40 Cadava, Eduardo 27–8 Calarco, Matthew 29

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Callus, Ivan 199 Calvo-Pascual, Mónica 1, 224 Campbell, Heidi 42–3 cannibalism 153–4 capitalism: micro-systems of 102; natural resources by 11 Capitalocene 10–11 Carrefax, Serge 122–3; double function 117 Carrefax, Simeon 111–14 Cartesian dualism 7 cartography 58, 100, 105 catastrophic kills 100 center of consciousness 83, 89, 91 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 11 Christianity 143 chronostratigraphical evidence 162 chthulucene 218 circle of geoscience 162 circle social network 87 civil rights 148 civil-rights activism 152 Clare, John 39 Clarke, Bruce 12 climate change 1, 163–4; concept of 173 cognitive mastery 74 cognitive modes, enslaving system of 34 collaborative meaning-making 14 Collado-Rodríguez, Francisco 14, 79 collective cultural consciousness 144 collective online reading, study of 59 collective reading 55–6; role of 60 collective realization 105 colonial exoticism 153 communication 3, 117; forms of 186–7; mode of 171; network of 3; technology 111–12 communitarianism: ideas of 89; mechanical attraction of 88 communities 50–1 compassion 33 computers 2 conception 217 Connor, Steven 30–1 conspiracy theory 90, 95, 120, 226 constructive deconstruction 96 consumerism, circle of 87 consumerist patriarchal society 195 consumerist society 101 contactless economy 225 contemporary society, fluid condition of 87 contemporary subjects 96–100 continuous partial attention 51 conversion rate 89–90 Copernicus, Nicolaus 4

230

Index

Coretti 83–7, 90; fluid conversion 87 corporate surveillance 225 COVID-19 215, 219, 224–6 COVID-19: The Great Reset (Schwab and Malleret) 224 Crakers 195, 197; sexuality 195 creative literature 83 creative power of destruction 110–11 crip activism 149, 151, 156 Critchley, Simon 110 critical awareness 34 critical posthumanism 5–9, 11, 13, 21, 129, 157, 188, 197, 226; bases of 7; versions of 7; vision of 9 critical thinking 14, 33; capacity for 51–2 critical utilitarianism 37–41 crowd-writing platforms 57 Crutzen, Paul J. 9, 161, 164–5 cryopreservation 127, 129, 133–4, 137 cultural production 102 CureTogether 65 cybernetics: development of 80; history of 43; posthumanism 6; technologies 94 cyberpunk 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 91 cyborg 142, 178, 190, 191, 192, 202 The Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway) 202 d’Ancona, Matthew 101, 202 Darwin, Charles 4 Darwinian evolution 165 da Vinci, Leonardo 7 de Certeau, Michel 105 de Grey, Aubrey 126 dehumanization 1, 127, 129; processes of 1 Deleuze, Gilles 97, 174, 187 DeLillo, Don 129, 131, 135, 225; moral perspective in relation 127 democratic body politics 155 democratic system 149 derealisation: suicidal mechanism of 121; of world 116–23 Deresiewicz, William 99 De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (Copernicus) 4 Derrida, Jacques 22 Descartes, René 4 despotism of custom 39 dia-chronicity 24 Dick, Philip K. 178 digital computing and electronics 1; digital devices 5; digital domain 2; digital environment, reading modes in 48; digital fatigue 50–1; digital media

21; application of 34; digital medium 50; affordances of 54; digital natives 54; digital network 4; digital reading 55; digital screen 54–5; digital surveillance 225; digital technologies 2, 56, 94, 96; dualistic view of 56; maturation of 94 digitalism 97–8 digitization 49 direct democracy 90 disability 149; illnesses 129; literary narratives of 149; movement 149; oppression and exclusion of 149; pride 147–8; social model of 148; transhumanism and 143–4; utopian celebration of 148 disconnected humanity 173 discursive technology 144 disembodiment 127, 129 disenfranchisement 34 dissociation 130 dissolution, human being in 164–6 distant reading 58 distinct media 54 dividualism 97 dominant digital ecology 54 dualisms 199 Duncan, Denis 113 durability 70–1 dystopia 106 eccentric positionality 174 ecocriticism 11 ecofeminism 11 ecological change 13 ecology re-visited 41–4 education 48 “effective” trauma fiction 131 effects of technology 82 Eggers, Dave 81, 88 electricity 1 electric technology 81–2 electronic literature 50 Elkins, James 95 Ellis, Jason W. 11 embodied being 128–9 embodiment, importance of 195 emotionless self 84 emotions 99 empathy 179; experience of 14; lack of 99–100; posthumanist 180 enclosures 39, 40 endurance 70–1 enhanced capacities 91

Index enhancements 74 environmental change 9; environmental damage 10; environmental devastation 10; environmental entanglements 212 epigenetic plasticity 213 epigenetics 220 epistemic questions 67 epistemological universalism 166 epistemology 21, 117, 163, 166, 175 Escudero-Alías, Maite 13, 33 ethics, terms of 20–1 Ettinger, Robert 126 eugenic technologies 143 evolutionary theory 212–13 existential risk 70 exponential trends 72 extraterrestrial ecosystem 173 Falling Man (DeLillo) 135 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe 26, 30 Fernández-Santiago, Miriam 225 Ferrando, Francesca 5, 199 fertility, symbols of 200 fictional works, collaborative writing of 55 fiction, critical evaluation of 14 Filip, Loredana 14, 65 Finlayson, Clive 25 Fishel, Stefanie R. 215, 219 Flanagan, Victoria 12 Fletcher, Karen 150–1; envisions 153 Floridi, Luciano 2–4, 224–5 focalization, strategies of 83 Fourth Industrial Revolution 1–5 Frankenstein, Victor 214; complex 178 freedom 13, 34 free voluntary reading 59–60 Freudian psychoanalysis 134 Freud, Sigmund 112 Fukuyama, Francis 69 functional literacy 52 geosystemic crisis 163 gestures of micropolitical agency 98–9 Gibson, William 14, 79, 84, 86–7 Glavanakova, Alexandra K. 13–14, 48 Global Change Newsletter 161 globalization, process of 106 global transformations 166 global warming 69, 163–4 Google Assistant 3 Graham, Elaine 94 Greenfield, Adam 94

231

Grosz, Elizabeth 7–8, 174; approach to body 8 Guattari, Felix 98, 187 hand-written manuscripts 56 Haraway, Donna 10, 183–4, 191, 196–7, 212, 219–20 Harrison, Jennifer 12 Hassan, Ihab 6 Hayles, N. Katherine 8, 12, 34–5, 43–4, 51, 79–80, 128, 179; critical posthumanism 7; interrogation of Cartesian dualism 7 Hecker, Friedrich Carl 211 Heidegger, Martin 188–9 Heise, Ursula K. 222 Helmreich, Stefan 212 Herbrechter, Stefan 7, 13, 20, 48, 129 Holocene 9–10 hominisation 26, 30 homodiegetic narrator 203 Homo Homini Lupus 90–1 homo sapiens 49, 163, 175; inherent entanglement of 166 Hornborg, Alf 11 Houston, Chloë 106 How We Became Posthuman (Hayles) 79–80, 128 human affect system 37 human behavior 73, 90 human consciousness, simulation of 82 human difference 20 human dignity 69 human enhancement 11; bioethical debates on 67–70; desire for 74; narrative of 66, 70, 73; prospect of 66, 70–1; rhetoric of 70; subject of 65; TED talks and 70–5; topic of 67; and transhumanism 65–7; understanding of 67 human-environment relationship 175 human epistemology 166 human evolution, precariousness of 25 human exceptionalism 28, 212–13 human extinction 10, 71, 164, 199, 206, 226 Human Genome Project 72 human history 200, 203 human identity 69 human imperfections 147 human individuality 88 humanism 22, 49; criticism of 5; deconstruction of 20–1; flaws of 188; "regenerating" of 30 humanist body politics 145–6 humanist idea of language 201

232

Index

humanist supremacy 15, 143 humanities 13, 21, 146, 194–5, 210–11; before 22; conceptual threat to 26; contemporary debates in 11; future of 5, 48, 86; intrinsic to 70; modern understandings of 215; notion of 5; of privilege white 218; redemption for 191; rewriting 21; speciation within 220; Sterling's analysis of condition of 79; uncertainty about 20; universal notion of 20 Humanity+ 65–66, 165 humankind, future of 79 human language 186 human memories 199 human mental power 1 human nature 68–9; mythical form of 26 human “neoteny” 30 human-nonhuman relations 8 human race: physical continuity of 198; survival of 201 human responsibility 180 human retraining 28–9 human sacrifice 91 human traits, mental augmentation of 65 human visual cortex 51 human voice 198–202 Hume, David 38 Huxley, Julian 5–6 hybridity, levels of 80 hyper attention 35, 51 hyperconnected societies 100–1 hyper-humanism 6 hyperobjects 173 idea of humanity 25 imagination 75 impairment, forms of 144 industrial revolutions 1 infertility 202 inforg 2, 4 informational environment 4–5 information, spaces of 2–3 information technology (IT) phenomena 3 information theory 1 infosphere, consequences of 2–3 infrahumanity 146; level of 80; natural infrahumanity 143–4 infrared sensors 75 inhumanism 29 INS see International Necronautical Society (INS) Institute of Contemporary Art 112 institutional oppression 150, 156

International Commission on Stratigraphy 9 international communities 101 International Necronautical Society (INS) 95, 110 International Student Assessment (PISA) survey 52 Internet 59, 74, 82, 94, 97–8 Internet of Things (IoT) 3; implementations 3 interpretation of codes 118 intrusive images 132–3 IoT see Internet of Things (IoT) James, Henry 83 Johnston, Justin Omar 12 Joyce, James 103 Kac, Eduardo 180 Kafer, Alison 156 Kantian anthropology 27 Kaplan, Nora 57–8 Kelly, Kevin 150–1; single identity 153; split personality 153 Kingswell, Mark 102 Kiossev, Alexander 55 knowing, creative process of 81–2 knowledge: circle of 87–90; eclectic boundaries of 42; human conceptions of 182 Koob-Sassen Project 101 Koole, Marguerite 226 Kurzweil, Ray 14; logarithmic graphs 72; synthetic neocortex 74 LaCapra, Dominick 133–4 La Disparition (Perec) 119 Laguarta-Bueno, Carmen 15, 126 laissez-faire economic policies 37 Lanone, Catherine 116 Laub, Dori 135–6 Lestel, Domique 28 Latour, Bruno 143, 163, 165 Leviathan (Bosse) 145 Leviathan model 146 liberty 13, 39, 42 life, self-organizing structure of 8 lifestyle changes 21 liquid modernity 86; concept of 81 literacy 48, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59 literary fiction 11–12, 226 literature online 48–60 Liu, Cixin 166–7, 175; transhuman tale of extraterrestrial encounters 170–1; transhuman triad 167–70

Index Lockhart, Jeffrey 127, 129–30, 134, 136; flashbacks 132; intrusive memory 132; symptoms of being 133; traumatized condition 133 Lovecraft, H. P. 115 Lyotard, Jean-François 29, 30 machine intelligence 3–4 Machine to Machine communication (M2M) 3 MaddAddam 16, 178, 197–200, 202, 204–7 MaddAddamites 196–7, 205 Malamud, Randy 185 Malleret, Thierry 224–5 Malm, Andreas 10–11 Malthus, Thomas 225 Mangen, Anne 54 mania-inducing book 101 Mann, Thomas 115 Marshall, Helen 212 Marx, Karl 184 Massanet Andreu, Margalida 15, 94 mass destruction 25 materiality of printed text 59 McAfee, Andrew 1–4 McCarthy, Tom 95–6, 100, 102–3, 105–7, 110–12, 117–18, 225; fostering of inauthenticity 112; habit of planting references 113; interpretation 123; technological society and waning of affects 112–16; traumatic secrets and derealisation of world 116–23 McLuhan, Marshall 56, 81–4, 87–8, 90; human electrode 88; theories 89 mechanical power 1 mechanization of society 37–41 Meillassoux, Quentin 22–3 Melville, Herman 50 mental disabilities 143, 150, 153 mental impairment 147, 150 metamodernism 103; theorizations of 106 metaphor 70, 71, 142, 144–8, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 157, 173, 174, 197–8, 211, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221 Metronome Press 110 The Microbial State (Fishel) 215, 216 micro-systems of capitalism 102 The Migration (Marshall) 210–22 Mill, John Stuart 13, 38; emphasis on duty 39 mirrored images 84–5 M2M see Machine to Machine communication (M2M)

233

Moby Dick (Melville) 50 ‘modem’ world, subjects of 94–6; buffer zones 100–5; contemporary subjects 96–100; U.topia 105–6 modern anthropology 27 modernism 103 modernity, culmination of 110 molecular nanotechnology 6 Moore, Jason 10 More, Max 5–6, 66 More, Thomas 106 Morin, Edgar 30 Muñoz-González, Esther 16, 194 mutuality 213 narratives: hostility of 104; memory 132–3 national supremacy 142 Nayar, Pramod K. 188 neoliberal globalization 106 network analysis 58 networked subjectivity 97–8 Neudecker, Keith 135 neurotechnologies 2, 4 Nietzsche/Nietzschean 111; concept of superhuman 73; injunction 30; revaluation of values 13, 33–4; theory of eternal return 121 nihilism, forms of 110 non-anthropocentric narratives 178 nonhuman animals 28 nonhuman subjects 180 normates 156 normative desirability 157 nuclear power, development of 162 OECD Program see Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Program Olivier, Gérard 54 Onega, Susana 15, 110 Ong, Walter 56 online book clubs 56 online collective reading 55–6 online literary text 58 online reading 51 online social networking 55 ontological dualisms 180 open-mindedness 33 optimistic transhuman approach 80 Ord, Toby 196–7, 202–3 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Program 52 originality 39 Orwell, George 1984 83, 88

234

Index

paleontology 22 Pankejeff, Sergéi 115 Pankéyev, Serguéi 112 paper-based reading 53–4 Pariser, Ellie 94 passive nihilism 110 Perec, Georges 119 personhood 16, 43, 96, 180, 189–190, 198 Peyman 102–4 philosophical rationalism 38 physical disabilities 143 physical domain 2 physical impairments 144, 148 physicality, role of 54 physical power 1 PISA survey see International Student Assessment (PISA) survey planetary stewardship 164 planetary transformation 161 Poetzsch, Justus 16, 161 political analogies 144–50 political metaphor 146–7 politics of location 7 post-anthropocentrism 21, 179–80; posthuman dimension of 8 post-anthropological environment 27 posthuman cure 194; human voice 198–202; posthuman body 194–8; posthuman voice 202–4 posthumanisation 13, 21 posthumanism 5–9, 13, 20, 48, 97, 156, 212; claim 103; cybernetic 6; disciplines of 5; expressions of 6; transformative potential of 21; in twenty-first century narrative 12–17 posthumanity 13, 21; challenge of 204; proliferating ideas and visions of 21 posthuman numbness: forge of 81–3; Homo Homini Lupus 90–1; implosion of human 87–90; pre-millennium community 83–7; transhuman and symbol of circle 79–81 posthuman/posthumanist 11–13, 21; body 194–8; civilization 201; climate 20; cultural, social, and representational implications of 12; ecosystem 173–4; empathy 178–80; ethics 41–4; futurism 21; methodology 199; modes of reading 48–60; motherhood 197; subject 197; subjectivity 128; times 22; transformation 222; voice 202–4 postmodernism 103 postmodern, Lyotard's logic of 21 post-traumatic stress disorder 130 potentiality 30

power 97; of imagination 75 pre-millennium community 83–7 “primitive” materialism 25–6 print: books 56; fiction 50; physical dimensions of 54; reading 50 printed texts: collective reading of 55; materiality of 59; physical and fictional nature of 50 process of becoming 30, 166 production, process of 104 The Prospect of Immortality (Ettinger) 126 psychological fragmentation 131 psychological trauma, narrative representation of 131–3 public domain 57 published research 53 pursuit of happiness 66 quasi humans 196–7 queer ecologies 11 Rachel 179, 182, 185–9, 191; internal conflict 184; symbiosis and symphysis 188 rational thinking 75 reading 203 reality: always-mediated approach to 85; virtual images of 116 reanimation, radical idea of 211 reason-based value system 142 rebirth, symbols of 200 redemptive discourse 152 reflexivity, definition of 43–4 re-humanisation 29 reincarnation 121–2 religious belief 86 religious rhetoric 198–9 representative democracy 155 reproductive technologies 197 resistance, strategies of 135 Revelation of St John: 12 146, 146–7 Rich, Adrienne 7 Riess, Helen 180 right-wing populism 94 Robinson, Andrew 98 robo sapiens 49 robotics 2 robots 2 Roelvnik, Gerda 96 Romanticism 37, 39 Romantic poetry 40 romantic relationship 137 Rossini, Manuela 9, 12 Rourke, Lee 111 Ruskin, John 40

Index Sandel, Michael 68 Satin Island (McCarthy) 102, 103, 105–6 Savulescu, Julian 14, 73 Schmidt, Eric 3 Schwab, Klaus 1–4, 224–5; emerging technologies 2 science, contributing to human enhancement 5 science factional 22 science fiction 178–9 Second World War 162 Sedgwick, Eve K. 36 self 2; evolutionary transformation of 37; self-determining construction of 144 self-amputation 82–3; theory of 81 self-condemnation, form of 29 self-determination 142 self-help ethic 72–3 self-improvement 13 self-interest 41–2 self-recognition, anthropology's crisis of 27 self-reported well-being 43 self-sufficiency argument 68 sensationalism 150 sentimental humanism 111 sentimentalism 111 sentiment analysis 58 sexuality 118–19; and reproduction 195 shared reading 57–8 shared “writing” of history 200–1 Sheehan, Paul 30 Shirley, John 14, 86–7 Shyamalan, M. Night 15, 150, 152, 156–7 Sinclair, Iain 111 Singer, Laura 53 Singularity 66–67, 76 skeuomorph 44–5 Smith, Adam 13, 37 Smith, Caleb 35 Smith, Zadie 96 social commitment 40 social inequality 1 social life, access and participation in 148 social media 21; tools of 50 social minorities 152–3 social platforms 60; for reading 59 social reading 55–6, 58–9 social reality 210 social welfare, altruistic reconstructions of 33 sociopolitical systemic reforms 148 software programs 74–5 Sophie 114–16, 123, 214–16, 220 Sosa, Jason 14, 75

235

Sousa, Monica 16, 178 ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy 171 speciesism 13, 20–21, 143 Spinoza, Baruch 8, 42 split personality 150–3, 155 Stanmeyer, John 94 Stein, Robert 55 Stoermer, Eugene F. 9, 161 storytelling communities 57 Strathern, Marilyn 98 structural change 148 structural oppression, perpetration of 155 structural traumas, political causes and consequences of 150 Stuart, Kathleen 97 superhuman intelligence 66 sustainability: ethics of 218–19 symbiosis 186–8, 213 symbolism 113 sympathy 33, 38; enactments of 13; notion of 40 symphysis 186–8 Tarr, Anita 12 technological/technologies 2, 4, 49; change 13; contributing to human enhancement 5; effects of 197; environment 142; eugenic 143; innovation 49; intervention 190; prosthesis 142–3; reliance on 33; simulation of consciousness 81–2; society 112–16; transcendence 165; transforming potential of 56; traps 91 technophobia 48 techno-scientific developments 95–6 technoutopianism 21 TED talks 66, 70, 72; analysis of transhumanist 71; in Barcelona 73; and human enhancement 70–5 temporality, alternative understanding of 36 text technologies 49 Thacker, Eugene 10 Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) 37 Thoreau, David 35 Tomkins, Silvan 36–7 topic modeling 58 Torok, Maria 114–15 touch 186–8 traditional methodologies 60 traditional publishers 57 transcendence, sense of 71–2 transgression 165, 166, 174 transgressive vitality 173

236

Index

transhuman enhancement, dystopian vision of: political allegory intersecting trauma and disability 150–7; political analogies and sociopolitical implications 144–50; transhumanism and disability 143–4; transhumanist promise 142–3 Transhumanist Declaration 65 transhumanists 66; context 143; disagree 68–9; notion of enhancement 6; promise 142–3 transhumanity 80, 150; dystopian vision of 150 transhuman/transhumanism 2, 5–9, 13–14, 28, 33–7, 65, 80, 142–3; academic acceptance of 42–3; advocates of 142; crip community 151; critiques on 36–7; cyborg 143; and disability 143–4; disciplines of 5; dystopian accounts of 157; idea of 42; individuals, "nature" of 143; intersect with 143; material and discursive origins of 142; perspective of 127; in twenty-first century narrative 12–17 trauma: acknowledged symptoms of 132; disabling 156; experience of 130; process of recovery from 135; stylistic features in 131; victim of 134 Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) 130 trauma-inflicted disability 149 traumatic impairments 157 traumatic memories 134 traumatic re-enactment 130 traumatic secrets 116–23 trauma victims 135 Twitter fiction 50 Ulysses (Joyce) 103 uncertainty, expression of 118 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McLuhan) 81, 82 unemployment 1, 225 unlimited perfectibility 11–12 US Transhumanist Party 126 Utilitaniarism, critical approach to 36 Utilitarian doctrines 35–36 utilitarianism 33–7; doctrine of 33 utopia 106; formulation of 106 values, revaluation of 33–4 van den Akker, Robin 8, 106, 188

VanderMeer, Jeff 166–7, 174–5, 178–9, 181, 189; narrative 173 Velay, Jean-Luc 54 verbal pyrotechnics 103 Vermeulen, Timotheus 106 Vickroy, Laurie 131 Vintage 110 Vint, Sherryl 7, 187 violent insurrection 110–11, 116 virtual reality 2 Vita-More, Natasha 14, 69, 73, 75, 76 Vitruvian/humanist model of proportion 7, 144, 150, 157, 158, 195 Walden (Thoreau) 35, 50 waning of affects 112–16 Warhol, Andy 123 Waterless Flood 198, 226 Wattpad 57–8; reader-writer interaction on 58 weapons of mass destruction 162–3 Weaver, Courtney 126 webpages 50–1 Wellmon, Cad 27 Western epistemology 163 Western narrative of modernity 172 Western superiority 42 White, Donna R. 12 Whitehead, Anne 131 Widsun, Samuel 113, 120 Wiener, Norbert 79–80; centralization of information 89 Winterson, Jeanette 111; renewal of novel 111 Wolfe, Cary 179–80 Wolf, Maryanne 35 word vectors 58 World Economic Forum 1–3 World Trade Centers 135, 154 writers/writing 79; contemporary modes of 102–3; contests 57 Wynter, Sylvia 218 Yaszek, Lisa 11 Zalasiewicz, Jan 162 Zemlicka, Kurt 69 Zero K 126–7; acting out and working through trauma 133–7; thematic wealth 127; as trauma narrative 128–30; writer’s formal and thematic choices in 127 Žižek, Slavoj 104–5 zoë 219