Jharol F. Aguirre
May 8th, 2018
Glossary Entry
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Posthumanism in relation to “Frankenstein”
As defined by the Merriam dictionary and Wikipedia, posthumanism has many different definitions but the one that’s used the most associates posthumanism with anti-humanism. This joined definition is the opposition or rejection of the beliefs, principles, and assumptions of humanism. Posthumanism is evident in countless works of literature, but the one piece of literature that can be said to be based on posthumanism is Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. This horror story questions some of the key principles of humanism, principles that state that humans need to be born from another human and that humankind cannot act as god. The creature in “Frankenstein” was not born but assembled by a mad scientist, but we still witness how it’s able to develop human characteristics to an extreme level. The careless creation of a mad scientist pushes us to question what we as a society can and cannot consider human.
In our time, we have started to also question the very definition of what it means to be human because of our ever advancing technology. As the story of a living being created not by conventional reproductive means but by scientific endeavour, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” stands as one of the classic representations of the fears and hopes brought forward by humanity’s harnessing of technological power, and the notion of artificial intelligence, genetic modification, stem-cell research, prosthetic surgery and other interventions. All of these are connected to the modification of the definition of humanity and to the creature in some way, so much that the creature is now even considered a myth or a modern-day Prometheus. The creature has strong traces of posthumanist impulse that may have been inspired by Mary Shelley’s own upbringing. William Godwin was a political radical and free-thinker who took his daughter to many public demonstrations of scientific techniques such as Galvanism. Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote: “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792), now regarded as a founding text of modern feminism. Shelley’s depiction of the creature as the outcast, abandoned by his creator, is designed to excite the reader’s sympathies and challenge the conventions which separate the ‘human’ from the inhuman, or the ‘natural’ from the ‘unnatural’.
The creature may not be a myth in the conventional sense, but it nevertheless addresses primal and fundamental themes about what it means to be human and pushes the idea of posthumanism forward. It may be more appropriate to think of the creature in “Frankenstein” itself as a modern myth in its capacity to generate a wealth of interpretative themes in relation to science, technology, and the posthuman condition.
Work Cited
“Posthumanism”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumanism
“Antihumanism” Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antihumanism
“Core principles of Humanism”, Victor A. Gunasekara, http://www.vgweb.org/manussa/coreprin.htm
Posthumanism is categorized as a science fiction idea that you can either change humans to improve them, make them better with the use of technology or you can just get rid of them or the human part of a person and make them completely machine like. The definition is very vague, so it’s open to different interpretations since it is such a gray zone and my interpretation of posthumanism is what we are dealing with in the world today. We aren’t currently seeing the end of humanity, but we do see the evolution of new advances that are human like, such as the artificial intelligent robots. Post-humanism could be exactly what we’re starting to see now and this could be a new era of post-humanism that is on the brink of beginning. I believe this because we see such incredible innovations that help to extend a person’s life. If an individual loses their eyesight and go blind, there are now medical and technological advances that can give that person the ability to see. Giving vision to the blind is a remarkable advancement. I believe we headed into a post-humanist society when we started seeing drones deliver things (whether in person or on the news) and we start seeing devices that are in our home becoming more responsive and smarter–this is an era of post-humanism.
An example from our reading of post-humanism would be Oryx and Crake, where these metahumans called Crakers, were more invincible and were able to function and live without being affected by the elements of our world as easily as we are. Crakers were not like humans, but tried to appear human in form (excluding their blue skin tone) and by abilities, thus they were the perfect example. Frankenstein, in my opinion, depicts the beginning of a post-humanist world, where Victor Frankenstein creates a monster through medical advancements.
The word ‘ambiguity’ relates to post-humanism because it is a very ambiguous word, it’s something that can have many different meanings. Post-humanism is ambiguous because it can either mean the end of humanity, or it could mean humans evolving into partial robotic beings via medical innovations to alter a human. The concept of posthumanism is still far in my opinion, so until we haven’t gotten closer to that, we really wouldn’t understand the extent of the detrimental effects that can occur because of posthumanism. Darwinian is a related term to post-humanism because once you start seeing the evolution of new beings created and brought into society, then you’re going to see real competition because these beings will try to be human like, but are they really being human like if they are trying to exceed an average person’s abilities? Humans are meant to be able to walk, run, do certain activities, but they aren’t meant to do everything perfectly. So when you create a being or robot or whatever it is that’s able to perfect all of the functions a human can do, you create an extremely competitive environment where it is survival of the fittest, then you will see the darwinian theory come in.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Bloomsbury, 2003.
“Posthumanism | Definition of Posthumanism in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English,
Oxford Dictionaries, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/posthumanism.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Malvina G. Vogel. Frankenstein. Baronet Books, 1993.
Hi Sophia, Is this intended to be your glossary entry?
Yes, Prof. Walker.