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Open Dissertation.Pdf The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School TRANSHUMANISM: EVOLUTIONARY LOGIC, RHETORIC, AND THE FUTURE A Dissertation in English by Andrew Pilsch c 2011 Andrew Pilsch Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2011 The dissertation of Andrew Pilsch was reviewed and approved∗ by the following: Richard Doyle Professor of English Dissertation Advisor, Chair of Committee Jeffrey Nealon Liberal Arts Research Professor of English Mark Morrisson Professor of English and Science, Technology, and Society Robert Yarber Distinguished Professor of Art Mark Morrisson Graduate Program Director Professor of English ∗Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. Abstract This project traces the discursive formation called “transhumanism” through vari- ous incarnations in twentieth century science, philosophy, and science fiction. While subject to no single, clear definition, I follow most of the major thinkers in the topic by defining transhumanism as a discourse surrounding the view of human beings as subject to ongoing evolutionary processes. Humanism, from Descartes forward, has histori- cally viewed the human as stable; transhumanism, instead, views humans as constantly evolving and changing, whether through technological or cultural means. The degree of change, the direction of said change, and the shape the species will take in the distant future, however, are all topics upon which there is little consensus in transhuman circles. In tracing this discourse, I accomplish a number of things. First, previously dis- parate zones of academic inquiry–poststructural philosophy, science studies, literary modernism and postmodernism, etc.–are shown to be united by a common vocabulary when viewed from the perspective of the “evolutionary futurism” suggested by tran- shuman thinkers. Second, I provide a window on the rhetorically strategies and philo- sophical features of an increasingly pervasive cultural discourse around contemporary transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil and his politically influential followers. Third, I recover the works of several forgotten transhuman thinkers who have much to contribute to an ongoing and vibrant conversation about the future of humanity. Ultimately, my project provides a framework for thinking about the rhetorical argu- ments being made about the future of humanity during the 20th and 21st centuries while also arguing for the construction of the future as a rhetorical act itself. In this capacity, my dissertation can be thought of as a toolbox for scholars interested in further exploring the various topics covered by transhuman discourse. iii Contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgments viii Chapter 1 Introduction: One Or Many Transhumanisms? 1 Chapter 2 An Inner Transhumanism 13 Chapter 3 Deleuze/Guattari/Teilhard 82 3.1 The Three Stigmata of Raymond Kurzweil . 83 3.2 Interlude: The Future is Rhetorical or It Will Be Nothing . 103 3.3 Toward Omega: Transhumanism At the End of Time . 107 3.4 Conclusion: The Hybrid Networks of “The Future” . 139 Chapter 4 Amazing Transhumanism 144 4.1 From Superman to supermen . 144 4.2 Fans Are Slans: A.E. van Vogt & the Supermen Boom in Golden Age SF 146 4.3 General Semantics: Cybernetic System of Supermen . 160 4.4 The Persistence of Supermen: Campbell’s Legacy and Transhumanism . 176 4.5 Coda: The Automatic Writing of the Transhuman . 185 iv Chapter 5 Conclusion: The Transhumanities 203 5.1 Is Humanism Us? . 203 5.2 New Media–I Can Has Enlightenment?: Web 2.0, LOLcats, and the Emerging Global Brain . 207 5.2.1 From Birdsong to Birdbrain: Does the Internet Make You Dumb? 213 5.2.2 The Pink Noise: Turning the Right Brain Into the Write Brain . 219 5.2.3 The Intertwingularity Is Near: Moving From Hypertext to Hy- perhuman . 221 5.2.4 Laugh Out Loud Transhumanism: The Cat in the Machine . 226 5.3 Early Modern British Literature–“To prove, by wit, worth in simplic- ity:” Cyborgs, Women, and the Informatics of Domination within Love’s Labor’s Lost ............................238 5.3.1 “Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep:” fasting, feasting, and the politics of denial . 241 5.3.2 “The painted flourish of your praise:” Wit, Noise . 245 5.3.3 “I hear your grace hath sworn out housekeeping:” The tongue of the cyborg . 249 5.3.4 Coda: Preposterous Literary Studies . 257 5.4 Transhumanism as Cultural Dominant . 258 5.5 New Humans, New Humanities . 267 Works Cited274 v List of Figures 2.1 The first page of “The Reign of Super-Man” written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster. The story is emblematic of the classic misreading of Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch. In this early story (before the work on the Superman we know today), an unemployed man, granted telepathic powers by a scientist, uses them to try to take over the world. 16 3.1 The Lacanian L Schema: Lacan’s Simplified L Schema provides “a way of fixing our ideas” on questions of the relationship between individuals as a function of desire (Lacan, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan. Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955 243). 131 3.2 Work of Purification and Work of Translation: Latour’s Diagram Of The Critical Crisis of Modernity . 141 4.1 The Structural Differential, Korzybski’s model of consciousness . 164 4.2 A Planchette Used for Automatic Writing (note the Daemon) . 190 5.1 “O RLY?” – One of the earliest image macros to spread virally on the Internet. “O RLY?” is a condensation of “Oh Really?” and this image macro (and later variations) is often used to mock a ridiculous claim made in a forum post. 228 5.2 “I Can Has Cheezburger?” – The quintessential LOLcat image. The image itself, called “Happy Cat,” was an even earlier meme and was taken from the website of Russian cat food manufacturer, Happy Cat. 229 5.3 “Invisible Bike” & “Invisible Snowboard” – The “Invisible x” was one of the first LOLcat sub-memes. 232 vi 5.4 “I’m In Ur Fridge, Eatin Ur Foodz” & “I’m In Ur Couch, Steelin’ Ur Change” – Another example of a LOLcat sub-meme. 233 5.5 A LOLcat image produced by the author. 237 vii Acknowledgments A thesis on the emergence of the noösphere is of course going to be the product of a number of minds, perhaps least of all my own. Rich Doyle, as good a director as anyone could ask for, created a safe space for the inevitable failures that accompany figuring out how to think. Without his carefully timed and invaluable contributions, I would not have been able to figure out how to connect my disconnected, and probably insane, ideas to a larger community. This project would not even be half as good were it not for him. The other members of my committee (Robert Yarber, Mark Morrisson, and Jeff Nealon) all provided strategic advice when it was most needed, and for that I am very grateful. In addition, without Jeff Nealon’s pedgagogical brilliance and, especially, his insights into Fredric Jameson, there would be no current project. I cannot thank him enough for freely offering his genius both in and out of the classroom. Without Lisa Yaszek to show the way of the cyborg this project would not have happened. The community of minds that I was fortunate enough to participate in while a grad- uate student at Penn State nicely prefigured the global mind being discussed in this present volume. I would not have developed as readily and as keenly without the per- fectly timed singularity that was The Modernist Writing Group and the help and encour- agement of Amy Clukey, Liz Kuhn, Kelly Innes, and Verna Kale. The MWG may have only lasted for a moment, but it was quite a moment. Additionally, Holly Flynn taught me how to be a graduate student and Joshua Weiss showed me how to be an intellectual. Both of them pointed me in the right direction during my first year here. The pedagogical brilliance of Paul Youngquist and Patrick Chaney provided differ- ent, and yet equally invaluable, models for navigating the history of academic inquiry viii and inhabiting the position of professional academic at a moment when I was a lost and scared engineer. Kit Hume, also, provided, through the power of the negative, invaluable insight into the fact that the rhetorical, rather than the literary, was the path for me. The makers of the following technologies at least deserve some credit for the shape of this work: The Google Books Project and Amazon Search Inside, I’m not sure how people did scholarly research without you. Without the hard work of the numerous people producing LATEXand BibTex, this dissertation would have involved considerably more suffering. Additionally, to the anonymous army of pirates who scan academic books and post them as PDFs on the Internet, I think you for saving me the trouble of transcription. Finally, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin teaches us that “love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.” Without the love and the intelligence of Shawna Ross, this project would have missed the point entirely (in more ways than I would care to list here). More importantly than any academic argument, though, without Shawna, I would have missed the point of being alive. ix Epigraph ‘I believe in transhumanism’: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Pekin man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. –Julian Huxley, “Transhumanism” x Chapter 1 Introduction: One Or Many Transhumanisms? In an article for Foreign Policy entitled “The World’s Most Dangerous Idea,” the jour- nal’s editors “asked eight leading thinkers to issue an early warning on the ideas that will be most destructive in the coming years.” While many of the invited thinkers spoke of the U.N.’s inability to respond to global crisis or the forced spread of democracy by US foreign policy, Francis Fukuyama, author of the controversial The End of History and the Last Man, suggested that the world’s most dangerous idea was something called “transhumanism.” Fukuyama speaks of “a strange libertarian movement” whose mem- bers “want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints” (Fukuyama 42).
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