Mapping Human-Nonhuman Biopolitics in Classic Gothic
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CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Mapping Human-Nonhuman Biopolitics in Classic Gothic Science Fiction By Fani Cettl Doctoral Dissertation Submitted to Central European University Gender Studies Department In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Comparative Gender Studies CEU eTD Collection Supervisor: Eszter Timár Budapest, Hungary June 2017 This dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institution, and contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographic reference. Signature: Date: June 25, 2017 CEU eTD Collection Abstract. If we take seriously Brian Aldiss's argument in Trillion Year Spree that science fiction, as it develops in its crossings with the Gothic, is essentially about “man in relation to his changing surroundings and abilities“ (Aldiss 1986, 34), we can understand the Gothic science fiction as a privileged cultural corpus to explore what the human is, and the ways in which it is defined, questioned, negotiated and re-defined. More recent scholarship continues to work with this premise, but emphasizes in particular the potentials of more recent and contemporary sci-fi to critically question the human and go beyond the human-centric politics, in relation to current issues such as animal ethics, overuse of technologies, pandemics or climate change. In this project I am interested to look at the ways in which the early, 19th century Gothic science fiction novels by Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells set up a framework for staging and interrogating the human. I argue that the classic Gothic science fiction sets up key cultural scenarios of biopolitical relations between the human and the nonhuman: predominantly positing and affirming the human against various nonhuman threats, but also allowing for some critiques of human exceptionalism to surface. These critiques raise issues around the treatment of nonhuman animals, the relationship with the environment, and the uses of technology, and when approached through the intersection of posthumanist/environmental/animal studies, they are seen to fall back on certain humanist assumptions. I identify five key scenarios through which the human-nonhuman biopolitics of the classic Gothic sci-fi is staged (and which persist to unfold in contemporary cultural CEU eTD Collection imagination): technological creation of the non/human, wonder/terror/horror at the nonhuman, alienation from (human) nature, disastrous extinction of the human species, and biological invasions of the human self. Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Technological Creation of the Non/Human............................................................ 25 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 25 Keep the Anthropological Machine Running ....................................................................... 29 Expendable Animal-Machines ............................................................................................. 38 Racialized (Noble) Savages .................................................................................................. 43 Postcivilized Vegetarian Human .......................................................................................... 48 Anti-colonial Anti-vivisectionism ........................................................................................ 53 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 58 Chapter 2: Wonder/Terror/Horror at the Nonhuman ............................................................... 60 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 60 Abjecting Animality Within ................................................................................................. 64 Centering Scientific Rationality ........................................................................................... 72 Welcoming Nonhuman Agencies ......................................................................................... 82 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 89 Chapter 3: Alienation of Humans from (Human) Nature ........................................................ 92 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 92 Improperly Technologized Humans ..................................................................................... 96 Visually Disorienting the Earth .......................................................................................... 103 Nature's Revenge or Indifference towards Humans ........................................................... 109 Postapocalyptic Land/Soundscapes of Mourning ............................................................... 115 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 122 CEU eTD Collection Chapter 4: Disastrous Extinction of the Human Species ....................................................... 124 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 124 Naturally Disastrous for the State Order ............................................................................ 128 War Between the State and the Agency of Nature ............................................................. 133 Violence by Nature or by Law ........................................................................................... 139 Survival of Civilized Cosmopolitans .................................................................................. 147 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 155 Chapter 5: Biological Invasions of the Human Self ............................................................... 158 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 158 Biomedico-political Defense of Self from Nonself ............................................................ 162 Colonial and Space Invaders .............................................................................................. 168 Auto/Immunitary Protection and Carnivorous Sacrifice .................................................... 173 Plant Takeovers .................................................................................................................. 184 Unconditonal Conditioned Hospitality ............................................................................... 187 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 191 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 193 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 201 CEU eTD Collection Introduction The impetus behind this PhD project is twofold: comes from both critical theory and popular culture, and more particularly, the ways in which they can help us think through what is meant by the human and humanity always in relation to that which is understood to be nonhuman, be it animals, environment or technology. I wish to bring together the current theoretical investigations into 'the human' and the popular genres of science and Gothic fiction, and propose that they can mutually illuminate one another, in order to examine how the relations, i.e., politics, between humans and nonhumans can be imagined and thought through. Critical theory has in the last few decades in the context of climate change, factory farming, pandemics or the uses of biotechnology, increasingly turned to the issues of ethics towards nonhuman animals, human treatment of the environment, as well as human relationship to advanced technologies. Theoretical inquiries of biopolitics, animal studies, environmental humanities and posthumanism have been interrogating what Jacques Derrida already in late 1960s referred to as “the ends of man,”1 i.e., they have been chipping away at the humanist assumptions behind the politico-philosophical conceptualization of the human in the Enlightenment tradition: the highest political value of human life and the primary agency on the planet of the human species. On the other hand, in western popular culture since the Enlightenment, certain modern genres CEU eTD Collection have developed specifically around imagining and interrogating the place and role of the human species on the planet – particularly that of science fiction – which, according to Brian Aldiss, emerged in the early 19th century developing from and transforming the earlier Gothic 1. Jacques Derrida, “The Ends of Man“, a lecture given in New York in October 1968 at an international colloquium. Translated by Alan Bass in Margins of Philosophy