Fictions and Theories of the Posthuman from Creature to Concept
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Université de Liège Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres Département de Langues Modernes : Linguistique, Littérature et Traduction Fictions and Theories of the Posthuman From Creature to Concept Thèse de doctorat présentée par Carole GUESSE en vue de l’obtention du titre de Docteure en Langues, Lettres et Traductologie sous la direction de Michel Delville et Björn-Olav Dozo Année académique 2019 - 2020 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a thesis may have been the most posthuman project that I have ever carried out; and I am not just relating this to how it has turned my computer into my unfailing memory, my faithful companion and, in the last few months, my main interface with the world. Reading daily about the refutation of the homogeneous, coherent, masterful, rational human subject has also made me more sensitive to the ways in which my interactions with human and non-human Others have been instrumental in bringing the present paper creature into existence. It truly takes a village. I want to express my sincerest thanks to my supervisor, Michel Delville, for unsparingly giving time, advice, trust and opportunities. Across this decade spent at the University of Liège, Pr Delville has steadily encouraged me to be curious, creative and confident in all my endeavours. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to my second supervisor, Björn-Olav Dozo, for opening me up to new horizons, for making me part of a vibrant community of researchers and for providing unwavering intellectual and moral support. His enthusiasm, trust and devotion never failed to lift me up and higher. Many thanks also to Christine Pagnoulle and Dick Tomasovic for their early interest in my project, their enlightened feedback and their encouragement; and to Katherine Hayles and Florence Caeymaex for agreeing to participate in its last stages. I am especially grateful for Andri Snær Magnason’s readiness to dialogue with me about his work and to provide me with precious documentation on his novel. I must also thank the University of Liège for making it all possible by providing not only funding but also competent staff; in particular, the librarians at the Langues et littératures germaniques, Langues et littératures romanes and Philosophie, information et communication libraries. I am also deeply grateful to Aurélie Scholl, librarian of the Bibliothèque des Littératures d’Aventures for her availability, advice and kindness. As I transitioned, these past few months, into new employment at the Haute École Charlemagne, I have also been lucky to count on the support and benevolence of my current director, Anne-Françoise Cardols, my co-workers and my students, all of whom I warmly thank. Like many theses, mine mostly developed on the road, upon contact with fellow scholars of the posthuman. Our conversations nourished my reflection in countless and, sometimes, unexpected ways. In particular, I want to thank David Doat and the entire team of the Éthique, Technologie et Transhumanisme chair at the Catholic University of Lille for their enthusiasm, openness and support. My warmest thanks also go to Stefan Lorenz Sorgner from the John Cabot University in Rome, who has been more than welcoming and has helped me navigate the theoretical meandering of the posthuman. My time abroad was also enriched by my residency at the Academia Belgica, whose staff and infrastructure made my own Roman Holiday slightly more productive than Hepburn’s. Back home, I have been blessed with selfless friends and colleagues who did not hesitate to devote long hours to reading my work or listening to me talking about it. Amongst them, Laura Gerday, Pauline Heyvaert, Cornélie Mathys, Sophie Potter, Élise Schürgers, Benoît Crucifix, Antoine Dechêne, Bruno Dupont, Remy Rizzo as well as my colleagues at the Liège Game Lab and the Modern Languages department, and, of course, Valérie-Anne Belleflamme and Fanny Lorent have helped me in more than one way, and for this, I am profoundly grateful. Lastly, my deepest thanks to my most committed and unconditional supporters, Claudine and Thierry Guesse, and to Arnaud Léva, who shared my burden while making sure I would laugh at least once a day. ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... I! CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................ III! INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1! PART I THE POSTHUMAN, PAST AND PRESENT ............................................................................. 11! CHAPTER 1 TRANSHUMANISM, FROM EXTROPY TO ACADEMIA ............................................................ 13! CHAPTER 2 POSTHUMANISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY .................................................................. 63! Before Posthumanism, After the Human ................................................................. 63! Posthumanism, Under Construction ....................................................................... 66! CHAPTER 3 THE POSTHUMAN IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ......................................................... 117! 1. Post-Humanism ................................................................................................. 120! 2. Aligning with Forerunners ................................................................................. 123! 3. Including Transhumanism ................................................................................. 130! 4. Posthuman-Ism .................................................................................................. 140! 5. The French Exception ....................................................................................... 142! PART II CONTAGIOUS HYBRIDITY .................................................................................................. 157! CHAPTER 4 THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: POSTHUMAN ONTOLOGY ................................................. 159! Fictional and Fictitious: The Posthuman as a Character ....................................... 161! Speculative and Rational: The Posthuman as a Science-Fiction Motif .................. 167! CHAPTER 5 FICTION IN THEORY ..................................................................................................... 175! Phase 1: The Inductive Approach ......................................................................... 179! Phase 2: The Deductive Approach ....................................................................... 187! Special Case: The Ideological Approach .......................................................... 192! CHAPTER 6 THEORY IN FICTION ..................................................................................................... 209! Posthuman x Fiction: Terms and Conditions ........................................................ 209! Persuasion, or Ideological Fiction ......................................................................... 234! Knowledge, or Philosophical Fiction ..................................................................... 254! CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 307! WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................................... 317! APPENDICES ....................................................................................................................... 337! iii iv INTRODUCTION Amongst the countless stages that have led to the existence of the artefact that now lies in your hands (or, most probably, appears on your screen), one of the most challenging has certainly been identifying its disciplinary affiliations. Its central topic, the posthuman, indeed stands at a disciplinary crossroads between Science, Philosophy, Sociology, Literature and the Arts. How, therefore, can one study and report on such an undeniably transdisciplinary topic from a perspective that is bound, by the practicalities and requirements of academia, to be partial? How, indeed, can one apply the framework of a specific discipline on an object that transcends this framework, forcing the disciplined scholar to follow it out of bounds? These issues have lingered at the back of my head throughout the elaboration of the present study and have surely been partly responsible for its current form. Indeed, as a literary scholar, I can hardly claim to have expertise in all of the areas that a comprehensive study of the posthuman should entail; nor can I, 1 therefore, contribute legitimately to the philosophical, sociological or scientific scholarship of the posthuman. Fortunately, my intentions lie elsewhere. In 2015, I attended the first of the New York Posthuman Research Group annual conference, presenting a highly literary paper amongst a group of philosophers and scientists, and I remember organiser Francesca Ferrando emphasising the relevance of literary studies by recalling the anteriority of literary posthumans to their theoretical and technological counterparts. Whether these counterparts have actually been offsprings shall be one of the issues debated in this study, as part of a more general reflection on the role of fiction in (the development of) non-fictional discourses about the posthuman. Ferrando must not have known that she would thereby give birth to the questioning that would guide me throughout the process whose result you