Connolly, Thomas
(2017)
Bio/Techno/Homo: a critical history of the human in Anglo-American science fiction.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
Science fiction (‘SF’) is often understood as a literature of radical possibilities—but to what
extent do SF writers break the mould of humanist thought that has informed much of the
western literary and cultural tradition? In this thesis, I will examine the concept of the ‘human’
as it has been incorporated into works of Anglo-American SF from the nineteenth century to
the 1970s. By ‘human’, I mean the diverse sets of beliefs, ideas, and qualities attached,
consciously or unconsciously, to the terms ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ in these texts. More
specifically, I will examine the diverse ways that SF writers have narrativised the human in
relation to technology and the natural world. As has been argued by a number of prominent
critics, including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, and Jacques Derrida, attitudes
and relationships towards technological systems and material nature have been fundamental in
determining the nature and meaning of the ‘human’ in western culture. These critics form part
of the field of posthumanism, a branch of critical studies which has been centrally concerned
with unearthing, investigating, and challenging what precisely is meant by the terms ‘human’
and ‘humanity’.
Deploying a model of posthumanism as a hermeneutical principle for deconstructing
the human figure in literary SF, I will stage the argument that, despite the radical ontological
and epistemological possibilities generated by SF’s speculative framework, SF texts have been
reluctant to embrace models of subjectivity and embodiment that move beyond the narrow
humanist tenets of scientific rationalism, biological and material transcendence, teleological
progressivism, and instrumentalist views of nature. Through an analysis of a range of human
‘archetypes’ found throughout the history of the genre, I will argue that SF has instead
consistently deployed a liminal conception of the human that is ambiguously situated between
‘assimilative’ humanist and ‘transformative’ posthumanist conceptions of the human and
nonhuman subject.
Repository Staff Only(login required)
 |
Item control page |
Downloads per month over past year
Origin of downloads
Altmetric
Altmetric