Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human: Mapping the Production and Reception of the Posthuman Body
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Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human: Mapping the Production and Reception of the Posthuman Body Scott Jeffery Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK September 2013 Declaration I declare that none of the work contained within this thesis has been submitted for any other degree at any other university. The contents found within this thesis have been composed by the candidate Scott Jeffery. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you, first of all, to my supervisors Dr Ian McIntosh and Dr Sharon Wright for their support and patience. To my brother, for allowing to me to turn several of his kitchens into offices. And to R and R. For everything. ABSTRACT The figure of the cyborg, or more latterly, the posthuman body has been an increasingly familiar presence in a number of academic disciplines. The majority of such studies have focused on popular culture, particularly the depiction of the posthuman in science-fiction, fantasy and horror. To date however, few studies have focused on the posthuman and the comic book superhero, despite their evident corporeality, and none have questioned comics’ readers about their responses to the posthuman body. This thesis presents a cultural history of the posthuman body in superhero comics along with the findings from twenty-five, two-hour interviews with readers. By way of literature reviews this thesis first provides a new typography of the posthuman, presenting it not as a stable bounded subject but as what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe as a ‘rhizome’. Within the rhizome of the posthuman body are several discursive plateaus that this thesis names Superhumanism (the representation of posthuman bodies in popular culture), Post/Humanism (a critical-theoretical stance that questions the assumptions of Humanism) and Transhumanism (the philosophy and practice of human enhancement with technology). With these categories in mind the thesis explores the development of the posthuman in body in the Superhuman realm of comic books. Exploring the body-types most prominent during the Golden (1938-1945), Silver (1958-1974) and contemporary Ages of superheroes it presents three explorations of what I term the Perfect Body, Cosmic Body and Military-Industrial Body respectively. These body types are presented as ‘assemblages’ (Delueze and Guattari, 1987) that display rhizomatic connections to the other discursive realms of the Post/Human and Transhuman. This investigation reveals how the depiction of the Superhuman body developed and diverged from, and sometimes back into, these realms as each attempted to territorialise the meaning and function of the posthuman body. Ultimately it describes how, in spite of attempts by nationalistic or economic interests to control Transhuman enhancement in real- world practices, the realms of Post/Humanism and Superhumanism share a more critical approach. The final section builds upon this cultural history of the posthuman body by addressing reader’s relationship with these images. This begins by refuting some of the common assumptions in comics studies about superheroes and bodily representations. Readers stated that they viewed such imagery as iconographic rather than representational, whether it was the depiction of bodies or technology. Moreover, regular or committed readers of superhero comics were generally suspicious of the notion of human enhancement, displaying a belief in the same binary categories -artificial/natural, human/non-human - that critical Post/Humanism seeks to problematize. The thesis concludes that while superhero comics remain ultimately too human to be truly Post/Humanist texts, it is never the less possible to conceptualise the relationship between reader, text, producer and so on in Post/Humanist terms as reading-assemblage, and that such a cyborgian fusing of human and comic book allow both bodies to ‘become other’, to move in new directions and form new assemblages not otherwise possible when considered separately. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: PRODUCING AND CONSUMING SUPERHEROES………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 2: POSTHUMAN BODIES…………………………………………………………………………………..11 CHAPTER 3: SUPERHERO COMICS AND READERS…………………………………………………………….38 CHAPTER 4: RHIZOMES AND DISCURSIVE PLATEAUS……………………………………………………….63 CHAPTER 5: METHODS AND METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………….82 CHAPTER 6: THE PERFECT BODY……………………………………………………………………………………..99 CHAPTER 7: THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL BODY ………………………………………………………………117 CHAPTER 8: THE COSMIC BODY……………………………………………………………………………………..139 CHAPTER 9: BODIES, TECHNOLOGY AND REPRESENTATION………………………………….….……163 CHAPTER 10: POSTHUMAN FUTURES: INEVITABILITY AND FUNCTIONALITY…………….…….179 CHAPTER 11: POSTHUMAN BODIES/POSTHUMAN MINDS……………………………………….……197 CHAPTER 12: TEXT-READER ASSEMBLAGES…………………………………………………………………...214 CHAPTER 13: DISCUSSION…………………………………………………………………………………………..…238 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………………………245 APPENDIX 1: CALL FOR RESPONDENTS………………………………………………………………….………283 APPENDIX 2: POSTER…………………………………………………………………………………………………….284 APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEW GUIDE……………………………………………………………………….……………285 APPENDIX 4: CONSENT FORM……………………………………………………………………………………….288 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The figures employed in this thesis are in copyright of their respective authors and publishers. They have been reproduced here for scholarly purposes. Sources can be found in the bibliography. Fig 1 Cover of Physical Culture Magazine. Fig 2 a) Charles Atlas advert: “The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac “ b) Origin of Captain America from Captain America Comics#1 Fig 3 a) Jack Kirby fight scene from Tale of Suspense #85 b) Still from Olympia (Dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1938) Fig 4 “Acquiring Super-Strength” from Action Comics #4 and 7 Fig 5 a) Dr. Strange Pin-up from Marvel Collectors’ Item classics #10 b) Dormammu versus Eternity from Strange Tales #146. Fig 6 Panel from Fantastic Four #50 Fig 7 a) “A Separate reality” from Doctor Strange #2 b) “Metamorphosis” from Captain Marvel #29 Fig 8 a) Merry Prankster’s Acid Test Poster featuring Thor b) Merry Prankster’s Acid Test Poster featuring Captain Marvel Fig 9 a) “Image Duplicator”, Roy Lichtenstein (1963) b) Marvel Pop Art Productions cover banner, c) “Myths Portfolio: Superman II.260“, Andy Warhol (1981) Fig 10 Michael Korvac Fig 11 “I can see you!” from Animal Man #19 Fig 12 a) Captain America Pin-up by Rob Liefeld b) Amazing Fantasy #15 Fig 13 Action Comics#1 Fig 14 “Bamf!” from X-Men #13 CHAPTER 1: PRODUCING AND CONSUMING SUPERHEROES Posthumanism seems to you a sudden mutation of the times, in fact, the conjunctions of imagination and science, myth and technology, have begun by firelight in the caves of Lascaux (Hassan, 1977:205) INTRODUCTION For as long as humans have had culture they have tended to use it to explore the posthuman. From the Classical myths of Icarus or the Minotaur, forms that blurred the line between the human and technology and the human and animal, through to the modern superhero comic, humans have entertained themselves with posthuman visions that called into question the very category of the human itself. The scientific advances of the last century, in plastic surgery and prosthetics; neuropharmacology and robotics; genetics and information technology have bought us ever closer to actualising these visions and are an increasing source of concern for philosophers, scientists and, increasingly, a topic of interest for politicians and policy makers (e.g. Nordmann, 2004; Bostrom and Sandberg, 2011; Roco and Bainbridge, 2001). New technologies continue to be produced, themselves producing ever more cyborgian realities. Meanwhile, the fictions of superhero comic books continue to migrate from their ‘ghetto’ in comic book fandom onto the big and screens of ‘mainstream’ audiences. The thirst for the posthuman, in both science and science fiction, has become popularised. This thesis set out to answer two key research questions: How has the figure of the posthuman developed in superhero comics? What sense did readers of superhero comics make of the posthuman? Although several books and articles have emerged addressing both the posthuman and superheroes in the last two decades very few have considered them in the light of each other, and none have addressed reader responses directly. To answer the first question, this thesis offers a cultural history of the posthuman body its 1 various guises; fictional (here dubbed the Superhumanism), philosophical (here termed Post/Humanism) and, crucially, material practices (here called Transhumanism). However, as Brown points out, any analysis of comic books, “…often comes down to a privileging of the critic’s own reading rather than a realistic consideration of how the text actually works for audiences”, and as such, “the intentions and practices of both the creators and the consumers must be incorporated into the inquiry” (Brown, 1997: 29). To address this issue the thesis also incorporates interviews with comic book readers about their views of the posthuman body, not only in the form of the superhero, but also in terms of Trans and Post/Humanism. WHAT THE THESIS DOES NOT DO It would be worth acknowledging two theoretical schools that are not fully elaborated upon within this thesis, but lie dormant within its theoretical approach and subject matter. As such, some brief words on the subject are worthwhile. Firstly, the field of queer studies has long played a role in the study of comics. Brooker (2001) has even playfully that queer readings of superheroes