DECSY-MOLDOVAN KRISZTINA SARA

AN III

LC-EN
From the Anthropocene to the Posthuman
and everything in between
In order to dive into the main focus of this paper, namely the concept of
anthropocentrism and its’ reach upon literature, a brief introduction upon my view regarding
the relationship between humans and technology is necessary. The way that I see it, is that
technology was first created to help people with physical labour and everyday tasks, simply
put, a means of facilitating our day-to-day lives. But the way that technology advances is so
rapid, that we don’t even have time to notice it, let alone be astounded by it, the advancement
of technology became something so natural, that people fail to keep up with it. Over time,
technology changed its’ function and started prying its’ way into our personal lives, creating a
so-called dependency, symptoms of drug abuse, so much so that it became our primary
source of access to information, that is free and unlimited.

Technology became frequently used in different fields or even corporations, being

able to perform any given task without demanding for a raise, unlike the human workers that
are becoming slowly, but certainly replaced by computers, their sole task remaining the
supervision of said computers. A good example could be the medical field, which started
encorporating technology into the human body- as an extention or a replacement, including
prostethic limbs, pace-makers and even the mechanical scenery that became of hospital
rooms, full of flashing lights, small screens and the beeping sounds that haunt you until your
last moments on the hospital bed, alone, surrounded by the intimidating screens that use
languages you can not speak. In today’s society you can not be certain that you exist, but you
can be certain that you are online, that is- if you have a good wifi signal.

As mentioned above, over time, the mankind became dispensable, the new Man
became the connected Man, thus corporality and connectivity started to become synonimous.
The Man is no longer a romantic genious, leading to a sort of bankruptcy of mankind. The
existence inside the World Wide Web shifts the accent on information, the man no longer
being a protagonist, and so, metaphorically speaking, the hacker became today’s Deity and
the Cyborg Manifesto became the posthuman Bible.¹ (Borbely). But who could blame people?
Take Facebook for instance.

¹Borbely,Stefan, Postumanismul,Facultatea deLitere, UBB, 29.06.2017

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 There are three main things you can do on Facebook: post meaningless selfies just because
your hair looked right that day, suspend death and recreate your identity. It is known that
Facebook is one of the biggest online cemeteries, having an unimaginable number of
accounts belonging to the deceased, making it so that even after death, you can still be
reached online, the evidence of your existence being only a click away from the world to see.

Now that the introducton is finished, we shall focus on the main topic of this
paper, starting with a few words about the concept of Posthumanism and its’ importance in
today’s society and for this, the paper will take into consideration Rossi Braidotti’s ideas
present in his work entitled The Posthuman,in which he defines the concept of the
Anthropocene, first used by the Noble Prize winner Paul Crutzen, to refer to our current
geological era, influenced by the power humans acquired through technology and its’ negative
consequences upon our lives, or, more specifically: “a philosophical viewpoint arguing that
human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world. This is a basic belief
embedded in many Western religions and philosophies. Anthropocentrism regards humans as
separate from and superior to nature and holds that human life has intrinsic value while other
entities (including [nonhuman] animals, plants, mineral resources, and so on) are resources
that may justifiably be exploited for the benefit of humankind”. ²

Braidotti also specifies that posthumanism is a result of the convergence of anti-

humanism and anti-anthropocentrism. The author then gradually brings into focus the “death
of Man”, as presented by Focault, which resulted in a series of questions upon whether it’s
just or not to place humans at the centre of history, thus it is advised to take a step forward
and distance ourselves from our species or as Braidotti mentioned: to disengage from the
anthropos, even if it may be difficult, it is not deemed impossible. If we discuss
posthumanism as a critical term, it shall be mentioned that “The word ‘critical’ in ‘critical
posthumanism’ names precisely this: the task of analysing the process of technologization,
based on the idea of a radical interdependence or mutual interpenetration between the
human, the posthuman and the inhuman”²(Braidotti 2016) It is to be noted, that post-
anthropocentrism carries a negative connotation to it, a certain anxiety promoted by popular
culture, an uncertainty regarding our future. Literature and film industry is known for their
interest in the post-apocaliptic scenarios, and the way they depict human-machine interaction
is certainly worrisome. If we take a look at some of the classic horror movies, it becomes
evident that directors have taken a great interest in the idea that either mankind will be wiped
out by cyborgs or scientists lose control over their experiment, creating mutant
bugs/dinosaurs/animals that will eventually lead to humankinds death. This idea of a creation
that loses control is also prevalent in literature, which shall be discussed further..
²Kallman,Alexandra, Short Master’s thesis in English literature, Centre for Languages and Literature Lund
University, Spring 2015.

³ BRAIDOTTI, Rosi, The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013

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 After the brief introduction, the paper should concentrate upon how the aforementioned
issues reflect through literature, focusing on the romantic novel entitled Frankenstein by Mary
Shelley.

The book raises a very interesting question: how would the world be like if man could
free himself from the biological limits, following the posthuman goal to go towards
overcoming the human limits towards something else, mixing it with the transhumanist idea
of inserting technology into the human body. Mary Shelley, along with her contemporaries,
shared an interest in the perpetual progression of mankind, taking advantage of technology to
its fullest, idea that is exploited by the transhumanist reflection. The endless chase of
knowledge that Victor Frankenstein takes part of results in his downfall and thus presents
evidence against the anthropocentric view of nature. This is due to Frankenstein’s desire to
create life from his research and gained knowledge, also, this desire to create life outside of
the natural process of birth through the female womb pushes the character into the pit of
hybris.

Victor Frankenstein could easily be viewed as the romantic genius, who just like
Faust, is not content with the limits of medicine and science, wanting to go much further,
sacrificing his health and sleep in the favour of his creation, but once the creature was
finished, the beauty of the dream faded away, and Frankenstein was horrified by the
monstrosity he created in his laboratory, a space of indistinction between life and death,
creation and curse, situated between the semi-private space of early modern labour. The
creator of the monstrosity was so consumed by gathering the perfect body parts (dead bodies
and animals), that he forgot to look at the bigger picture, forgot to view the monster as a
whole body, reffering to it as “wrech” and “monster”.

What a truly awful thing it is to be rejected even by your own creator, considering that
one of the things that makes us humans and distinguishes us from machinery is our free will, a
luxury that the Monster didn’t have, nor did it ask to be created. It is to be mentioned that
Viktor’s creation could represent the image of the posthuman: misunderstood, rejected by its
own creator, endlessly wanting to be accepted as fully human, or at least, something very
similar. As Kallman Alexandra points out in Short Master’s thesis in English literature,
Victor’s twisted imitatio dei references to the creation of Adam by Jehova, after the image of
God, this romantic tendency of artists to become the God’s of their own creation is evident
throughout the novel. Kallman also comments on the fact that the relationship they share is
most peculiar, as they never really seem to be able to distinguish the other as independent
objects, they always chase the other relentlessly throughout the novel, haunted by each others
image. Also very interestingly, the monster has no name, and there seems to be a popular
misconception that Frankenstein is actually the monster’s name, not the creators, which could
mean that the monster has a certain universality to it, meaning that each one of us could be
that monster.

The second novel that shall be discussed in relationship with posthuman ideas
is none other than Ballard’s Crash, a novel inspired by his own fascinacion of automobiles, as
the novel itself was written in the back seat of a car, and it is certainly very different from the

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above discussed book. For this discussion, the paper will mention some of the ideas presented
by Wes Dalton, who published a rather impressive article upon thiswork. The novel focuses
on death, technology, obsession and violence, all of which are taking place inside the locked
doors of cars. Everything that takes place in the novel, be it actions or emotions all revolve
around automobiles, and their effect upon the characters. The story’s main focus are the two
protagonists, Vaughan and James, sharing similar „passions” if I may call it like that, united
under the roof of a car. Vaughan dreams of a violent death through car crash, fantasising not
only about certain celebrities’ death, but also his own, in order to achieve the complete fusion
of his body and the automobile, meeting that takes place in the form of a crash, that crushes
the walls between the human and the machine. Just like Wes points out, what the author might
be trying to do here, is changing the readers’ perspective upon the human body, creating it to
be an object among all other objects which can be assembled and taken apart, rearanged and
modified, similarly to the components of a vehicle.

The novel also makes refferences to the desintegration of the Earth, the changing of its
eco-system and also tries to diminsh the human subjectivity in a world full of objects, and
may also warn readers about the eventual destruction caused by Global Warming.

Cars filled the suburban streets below, choking the parking lots of the supermarkets, ramped on to the
pavements I felt an undefined sense of extreme danger, almost as if an accident was about to take
place involving all these cars. The passengers in the airliners lifting away from the airport were
fleeing the disaster area, escaping from this coming autogeddon.”. (Crash, 49-50)

Interestingly enough, when taking a look at the characters behaviour regarding wounds, it
becomes evident that they do not respond in a normal way, instead of trying to cure the
wounds, covering them up, they choose to mutilate them further, by schratching and digging
further into them, in order to get to the anti-human core that reveals itself beneath the wounds.
For James, the geometries of human and machine configurations started to overlap, as he soon
forgot where his body ends and the machines begin, and so the violence of the sexual acts and
the brutality of the car-crash begin to merge.

To draw some conclusions that would mark the end of this paper, we shall
mention that the posthuman forces people to turn to a more critical view upon the role that
humans play on this planet, characterised by the elimination of the boundaries and limits of
the human nature, a concept that became present in literary works, movies and articles. The
two novels that were discussed above share the concerns of the same issue, showcasing the
power of humans and the impact that they have upon technology and the power that tehnology
exercits upon humans, and often this collision is of most brutal nature, it’s violent and often
confusing. Victor and the monster couldn’t distinguish each other, similarly James and
Vaughan had several difficulties distinguishing their own body from the automobile, seeing
the world through the rear view mirror of a recklessly speeding car, this shows just how far
the bond between our kind and technology has come, and simultaneously raising the
question:How far will it go?

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 WORKS CITED

1.- BALLARD, J.G. Crash. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973.

2.-Borbely,Stefan, Postumanism, Facultatea de Litere, UBB, 29.06.2017 (course on

posthumanism)

3.- BRAIDOTTI, Rosi, The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013

4.- Dalton,Wes, Conference literature, March 25, 2013.

surplusacademics.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/38/

5.-Kallman,Alexandra, Short Master’s thesis in English literature, Centre for Languages and
Literature Lund University, Spring 2015.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.- BALLARD, J.G. Crash. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973.

2.-Borbely,Stefan, Postumanism, Facultatea de Litere, UBB, 29.06.2017 (course on

posthumanism)

3.- BRAIDOTTI, Rosi, The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013

4.- Carretero,Margarita, The Posthuman that could have been Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein,
Universidad of Granada.

5.- Dalton,Wes, Conference literature, March 25, 2013.

surplusacademics.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/38/

6.- HERBRECHTER, Stefan. Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. London: Bloomsbury,

2013.

7.-Kallman,Alexandra, Short Master’s thesis in English literature, Centre for Languages and
Literature Lund University, Spring 2015.

8.-SHELLEY, Mary. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. London: Wordsworth

Classics, 1999