Posthumanism in digital culture

Cyborgs, Gods and Fandom

Callum T.F. McMillan

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781800431089
• eBook ISBN:
  9781800431096
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book explores the theories of transhumanism and posthumanism, two philosophies that deal with radically changing bodies, minds, and even the nature of humanity itself. These fields are rapidly growing and gaining more exposure both in today's media, especially in video games and science fiction screen media, and the minds of their fans - the so called 'geek fandom' that follows this media with a passion.

The book covers the early days of humanist thought and the birth of 'anthropocentrism', and the history of trans/posthumanist thought from ancient times through to the modern day. It looks at the way in which video game and science fiction research has developed and presents case studies from video games and science fiction film (Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenoblade Chronicles X and EX_MACHINA). 

The author provides a unique insight into trans/posthuman theory, one of the most interesting theories the future of humanity, and demonstrates how the media – especially in the realm of science-fiction and video games - has been fixated on it. 

Chapter 1

Literature Review: From Human to Posthuman

1.1 Classical Humanism – Liberal and Secular/Social

For centuries, humanity has indulged in the study of itself, and before moving on to the greater ideas at work, it's important to remember where these studies began. And in this case, liberal and social humanism both serve as points of particular interest as far as this branch of philosophy is concerned, as well as in the later points of this work, where I discuss video game and film theory – it all returns to the idea of ‘enriching our lives’, and having the capacity to teach and help others. Indeed, the idea of ‘humanism’ of a philosophy centred around the influence of mankind on the world as opposed to any god or deity has been an idea discussed, criticised and distributed for centuries, and has taken many forms, eventually evolving into the transhuman and posthuman branches that take up the centrepiece of this work.

In this case, what we know now as ‘humanism’ went through various changes and schisms before the modern age, and its initial form was that of what is known commonly as ‘Liberal’ or ‘Renaissance humanism’ (Kristeller, 1978, p. 586). As Kristeller (1978) describes, it was a historical movement that originated in the fourteenth-century Italy, that developed for two centuries before eventually expanding across mainland Europe in the sixteenth century, being based on common ancient, medieval and Byzantine sources, it laid the groundwork for western civilisation as we know it today. It involved scholarly and literary developments, a reform of handwriting, and of education in general, and set up social and political prerequisites for concepts such as lay professions and of secular culture in general, finding new ‘cults’ that did not involve the Christian hegemony that had been dominant up to this point.

That said, this burgeoning idea of ‘humanism’ had its own issues too. For one, this system, being as it was created in the fourteenth century, was still steeped in the traditions of its time; girls and lower-class boys were still largely excluded from education, reflecting the sexism and classism of the time; and there was still an air of elitism about education that would remain for centuries to come, where there was ‘no room for those with no talent or property’ (Kristeller, 1978, p. 587). It's at this point Kristeller makes it clear that the ‘humanism’ is very much different from what is understood today, as the term does not really originate from that era at all (p. 588), instead being a nineteenth-century description of the morals and values that began to take shape during that period, where a ‘humanist’ was instead just being known as a ‘student of the humanities’, and implied an intellectual broadness rather than the autonomy of humanity.

To contextualise the idea as it came to be known, of the idea of humanitarianism, of cooperation between humans, and equality, as well as contextualise it in a way that fits thematically with the content of this work, consider Bernardi's (1997) look into the themes and ideals that helped create Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek series, which ran in the 1960s, during a time where these ideas were starting to take shape in forms such as the African-American civil rights movement, amongst other things. In his article, Bernardi posts a quote from Roddenberry describing the very humanistic motto of the series (p. 209); that ‘we must learn to live together, or most certainly we will soon die together’. Star Trek had been championed as a show which showcased an ‘egalitarian world’ (p. 210), one which was free of then-current rampant social issues such as racism, sexism and capitalism, imagining instead a future where everyone had equality travelling through the stars – Bernardi points to the episode ‘A Journey to Babel’ (1967) as an archetypal example of such an episode, in which we see not only a retelling of the ‘Noah's Ark’ story from the Bible but also the ideas of the difficulties of being a ‘half-breed’ when dealing with members of both races involved. In this case, it is the character Spock, who is both human and ‘Vulcan’, a fictional alien race from the series, and whose childhood was fraught with abuse from both humans and Vulcans.

That said, Bernardi (1997) also discovered that the series did have problems integrating these ideals, particularly when it came to race, finding it ‘disturbingly contradictory’ (p. 211), and failing to sufficiently embrace diversity even by the standards of the 1960s. For instance, several characters were still stuffed into very stereotypical roles and plot arcs, such as Jóse Tyler, a Hispanic character with an unfortunately archetypal ‘failed latin lover’ plot arc (p. 215). In addition, the much-celebrated interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Uhura was an incredible step forward for television, though as Bernardi notes, it was almost cut due to the controversy surrounding it at the time, having been inches away from being replaced with a Spock/Uhura kiss instead (p. 216), in order to avoid fallout from the southern state. Furthermore, Bernardi makes a point to state that despite that moment, Uhura is otherwise a token minority actor otherwise, with no significant plot roles or moments other than that stated above (p. 218). Ultimately, Bernardi concludes that despite visions of an egalitarian universe with equal rights for all, the creators could not escape the ‘paradox of the liberal-humanist zeitgeist’ which had the 1960s in its grasp.

Campbell (1998) also discusses the difficulties of liberal humanism in his work on humanitarian aid, and how it can be contradictory with the operation of aid and relief efforts in dangerous and polarising situations (p. 498) – specifically, Campbell looks at areas such as Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia and other places which at the time were in the most need of humanitarian aid. As the conflicts develop, it becomes more difficult to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’, or ‘aggressor’ from ‘victim’, leading to interesting moral dilemmas as humanitarianism becomes clouded and mired in ambiguous and ever-changing politics. As such, Campbell discusses that despite promises of a ‘new humanism’ being adopted by the EU parliament of the time, it would prove to be no different from the old one (p. 499), and thus aid agencies are left wondering if the Hippocratic oath of ‘do no harm’ can apply in these complex situations. This is compounded when the provision of assistance often ‘fuels’ the conflicts that said aid seeks to end, which diminishes neutrality and, at worst, could support tyranny and oppression.

Returning back to the 1980s, there were shades of a different, more radical humanism emerging in the United States, that of ‘secular’ or ‘social’ humanism, which stood in the midst of the highly conservative Christian USA of the time, and had similar facets to liberal humanism in its aim for universal human rights and equality, but with a decidedly antireligious stance, instead creating a ‘religion of man’. Naturally, this would be something that the establishment would rally heavily against, as this time there was a clear ‘target’, an ‘enemy’ disrupting the common way of life, so-called ‘communism’.

Melichar (1983) discusses this at length, of how right-wing fundamentalists worked at length to ensure that so-called ‘secular humanists’ would be ridiculed and discredited at any cost to preserve the status quo of education and social life in the United States. He notes an incident in November of 1982, in Jamul, California (p. 55), in which parents rallied against ‘journal writing’, a seemingly innocuous diary-keeping exercise for the young children at school, but was targeted by the right-wing as a means of creating so-called ‘change agents’, that children would ‘spill everything’ and that it was a ‘communist tactic’, blaming what they called ‘secular humanism’. This rather extreme hatred, Melichar continues, emerged when the ‘old right’ (who opposed sex and drug education) and the ‘Christian right’ (who opposed situation ethics, evolution theory and free expression of ideas) merged to become the ‘new right’. This ‘new right’ would aim to restrict liberal thought ‘in the name of God and family’, and any who disagree would be ‘secular humanists’, ‘atheists’ or ‘communists’. Depending on the context, or perhaps even lack thereof (p. 56), the term became synonymous with ‘evil’, its follower being ‘socialistic, hedonistic and antireligious’, but was never clearly defined, having become a new ‘bogeyman’ to sit alongside communism.

This fixation on education and the reformation back to the right-wing Christian basics is also touched upon by Toumey (1993), who discusses how in the past, evolution theory itself was seen as a heretical theory that causes not only ‘moral decay’ but also a ‘host of social vices’ (p. 275). However, once the scapegoat of ‘secular humanism’ entered public consciousness, evolutionary theory became a feature of this humanism, shifting the blame to an ‘organisation’ rather than a theory. From here, Toumey discusses the history of what would be known as ‘secular humanism’ (p. 276). After a long-standing hegemony of Protestant cultural values in US society, the 1950s saw the US senate decide that better sex education was needed due to moral panics surrounding divorce, birth control and the decriminalisation of homosexuality, which was swiftly throwing this order into disarray. Fast-forward to 1961 (p. 277), during a case involving freedom of religion, the term ‘secular humanism’ came about as a conspiracy to blame, ill-defined and insignificant though it was, before being named an ‘official religion’ in 1965 by the Supreme Court.

Finally, in 1978, a law review was written by John W. Whitehead and John Conlan (Toumey, 1993, p. 280), one which stated that ‘secular humanism is a religion whose doctrine worships Man as the source of all knowledge and truth, whereas theism worships God as the source of all wisdom and truth’, and that ‘along with the evolutionary theory, the centrality and autonomy of Man are the prominent features of Secular Humanism’. In this review, they had given ‘secular humanism’ a ‘real’ definition, something tangible, while also equating humanism with the likes of Hitler and Stalin, describing humanists as those who believe in ‘no morals’. Most damningly of all, perhaps, came in the 1980s (Toumey, 1993), where one Reverend Tim LaHaye wrote The Battle for the Mind, referencing the above review while adding ‘lurid references’ to pornography, homosexuality, drug addiction, abortion and other topics that would attract the disgust of the right-wing – even the act of ‘giving away the Panama Canal to communists’ was attributed to humanism.

Cimino and Smith (2007) later did a piece on the evolution of actual ‘secular humanist’ movements, or ‘freethinkers’ as they were sometimes called, in response to the constant criticism thrown against them by the US political climate. They begin by reminding the reader that as of the time of writing, laws in several states prevent ‘non-theists’ from taking up office (Cimino & Smith, 2007, p. 407), and states that this is just one of many laws proving that secularism is not even close to being widespread in the United States, and at the time, such a scenario was seen by many social scientists as highly unlikely (p. 408), which raised concern for ‘free-thought movements’ around the country. In addition, The Humanist Manifesto II (1973) had been found to have removed any links with religious humanism (Cimino & Smith, 2007, p. 409), and the leading humanist group changed names repeatedly, settling on the Council for Secular Humanism in 1980, and have since spent their time influencing politicians and the media to attempt to gain ground. The pair also engaged in research on student ‘secular humanist’ groups in universities such as the former Campus Freethought Alliance, interviewing people from these groups via meetings and performing content analyses on their magazines (p. 411). They concluded that the expansion of secular humanist and freethought groups are filling a niche that religious humanists have vacated, the latter having taken a higher interest in spirituality, and that despite the numbers of secular humanists not rising, the ‘culture wars’ between their groups and religious groups would continue for years to come. That said, in the present day, Torrance (2019) has noticed that many transhumanists have been reconnecting that old link between transhuman ideas of immortality and godhood with the idea of Jesus Christ and the idea of ‘theosis’, to become god-like (p. 178).

Finally, the discussion of what would come to be known as ‘social humanism’ is touched upon by Ellis (2012), who describes it as a ‘moral and political philosophy’. Here, Ellis describes it as requiring the establishment and development of a new welfare state (p. 1), and a framework for a series of agreements between states on ‘global, social and moral issues’, as well as the development of human rights, creating ‘universal assent’. Ellis also notes that it is very similar to Kant's theory of social idealism, but claims it to be metaphysically realistic, and based on the social ideals of ‘ordinary’ people, rather than ‘perfectly rational’ individuals. Similarly to what Melichar and Toumey discussed in their works, Ellis cites the stifling of progress towards this humanist goal as being the handiwork of figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose right-wing politics ended up damaging the welfare state that had spread around and been widely successful throughout the world, both economically and socially – remaining so to this day in the countries of Scandinavia and much of northern Europe. That said, the bogeyman of socialism once again could not be escaped, and by the 1970s, the ‘widespread suffering’ that necessitated the welfare state's existence was no longer as evident, and neo-liberal thinkers saw fit to remove it, deeming it unnecessary, as many thought that the only choices they had were ‘outright capitalism or socialism’ as Marx had originally defined them. Therefore, Ellis puts forward (p. 3) the ideas behind his version of ‘social humanism’, which requires social contractual utilitarianism, egalitarianism, as well as a ‘real equality of opportunity’, creating a society that ‘is compatible with the basic human values of compassion and honesty’.

The next section, however, deals with the truly modern interpretations of the word ‘humanism’ – and those who imagine a world where such ideals run rampant and have shaped not only society but the world itself. Indeed, Harari (2015) makes a point that connects these sections, that the evolution and change of humanism inevitably leads to humanity seeking only to perfect itself, and evolve (p. 319), with the main products of the twenty-first century being ‘bodies, brains and minds’.

1.2 The Birth of the Anthropocene and Humanity Losing ‘Humanity’

In order to provide further context for the so-called ‘human journey’ that the transhuman and posthuman theorists would prepare us for, it would be fitting to check in on more intricate ‘human’ theory, particularly in regard to ideas of the ‘anthropocene’ (the human-changed world), and ‘anthropocentrism’ (humans being at the centre of everything), which begins with even the earliest ideas.

In his recent work, Digital Materialism (2018), Baruch Gottlieb described the ‘anthropocracy’, discussing how we ascribe modern technology as being part of us constantly, while also ignoring the common workers, and the ‘human element’ that goes into creating said technology in the first place (Gottlieb, 2018, p. 1). From here, Baruch describes one of the earliest forms of ascribing ‘human meaning’ to objects we did not create – language. The example he uses first is the ‘apple’, first named to give a human expression for the apple fruit, it soon came to mean other things, such as Biblical ‘deception’ as seen in the story of Adam and Eve, as well as the company Apple; and its computers, phones and other technology. Therefore, words and language themselves were a way in which humans gained ‘power’ and ‘precision’ over nature; Gottlieb (2018) using the onomatopoeia we use for dogs ‘barking’ to detail our own comprehension of how dogs communicate and how many languages share this trait – in his words, ‘language is as much about control as it is about expression’ (p. 13). This is a view shared by Badley (2018, p. 422), as he also discusses the idea that language is our own construction, our own limitation of the world.

This kind of ‘technology’ itself developed as time passed, and people soon began to fear change and progress as a ‘loss of humanity’, or at least of human development, despite that very change being completely human. Communication itself had a contentious and staggered history, discussing the power the 2-D image has, paintings and pictures, and how early theorists such as Jewish prophets and pagan societies began damning the ‘image’ as ‘idolatry’, making real what was previously ‘mystical’ and inherently understandable by the ‘intellectual’ (Badley, 2018, p. 21). This cycle would be repeated with the spoken word and its transition into language and writing, a process which Plato famously feared for the same reasons as those prophets of old; that when knowledge stopped being discussed only amongst humans and became ‘static’, it would force people out of this ‘mythical world’, and as Gottlieb describes, into a ‘new age’ of freedom, individuality and one that stripped humanity of its ‘origins’ (Gottlieb, 2018, p. 24).

New developments like this brought with them a new shift in power, as more of the ‘common folk’ became literate – ideas such as ‘social justice’ and ‘fairness’ became prominent, as beforehand, knowledge was only in the hands of the powerful, and suddenly things were no longer ‘mystical’ and ‘as they are’ (p. 32), with more people able to control their own lives and stations through this new way of learning and communicating. Religion too developed as a result, as the Torah and other religious scriptures began creating ‘rules’ which governed how the universe was supposed to work (p. 26), and alternative means of understanding such as atheism and science partnered together as more was discovered about the world we lived in. And this development continues today, with Flusser (p. 50) claiming that there is a need for ‘new Humanisms’ which are based on things that we may not even have experienced yet, or things that we could experience which are far removed from the current state of ‘humanity’.

As such, throughout Digital Materialisms is a discussion on how exactly technology changed humanity, and how it changed technology in turn. For instance, Gottlieb describes that even the nature of computers is ‘human’ in design, as digital data need sensory input from people (p. 71), and without it, data are subatomic and invisible. Furthermore, due to the rules placed upon them, computers and their insides are not ‘free’; Gottlieb suggests that they instead make human life seem comparably ‘free’ due to the restraints that their coding places upon them. The digital age has also seen resurgence in Plato's idea of ‘static knowledge’, or ‘data’ in this case, not being what true knowledge is, a theory also shared by Alfred North Whitehead, the logician (p. 85). Furthermore, this idea of distancing humans from technology is purely aesthetic, and very transparent – digital devices such as modern mobile phones or tablets are ‘clean’, and ‘mysterious’ looking, with a futuristic edge (p. 90), but Gottlieb notes that ‘the last task of the labourer is to remove the traces of its labour’. As such, nothing remains that seems human, but people are largely aware that this is still a human creation.

As humanist thought continued, however, ‘extreme disciplines’ (p. 107), as Gottlieb puts them, would have the ‘rich and powerful's pockets overflow’, and people would go mad to achieve ends such as human immortality and mastery if possible, but the truth is that Humanist science would ‘first benefit industry’, perhaps ignoring personal transformation in the face of potential profit – Gottlieb also quotes Feuerbach here (p. 109), who states that ‘What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being’. Gottlieb then has posthumanism as a different entity to transhumanism, and maintains that it exists as a critique of humanism itself, framing it as a natural phenomenon which cannot be removed from the universe, therefore any attempts to remove oneself from humanity would be fruitless, as even technology and its creation are extensions of this idea – we have, in his words, created a ‘domesticated world’.

Jussi Parikka discusses the idea of the ‘Anthropocene’ in his chapter ‘Planetary Goodbyes’ (2017), beginning with the idea that SF works are an imagination of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Abstract
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Literature Review: From Human to Posthuman
• Chapter 2 Methodology
• Chapter 3 Body
• Chapter 4 Identity
• Chapter 5 Power
• Conclusion: A Future Transhumanism
• Appendix
• References
• Index