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Copyright 2015 Grant W. Shoffstall Copyright 2015 Grant W. Shoffstall FAILED FUTURES, BROKEN PROMISES, AND THE PROSPECT OF CYBERNETIC IMMORTALITY: TOWARD AN ABUNDANT SOCIOLOGICAL HISTORY OF CRYONIC SUSPENSION, 1962-1979 BY GRANT W. SHOFFSTALL DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Brian Dill, Chair Associate Professor Zsuzsa Gille, Director of Research Professor Norman K. Denzin Associate Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Professor Richard Stivers, Illinois State University ii Abstract This dissertation offers an interpretation of cryonic suspension, or “cryonics,” the practice of preserving human corpses by way of perfusing them with chemical protectants and gradually subjecting them, at the pronouncement of legal death, to extremely low temperatures (- 360◦ F, -196◦ C), which are then controlled and maintained over the long term by liquid nitrogen filled “cryocapsules.” Cryonics is ultimately motivated by the hope that medicine will at some future point achieve the requisite kinds and levels of technology to facilitate the rejuvenation and “reanimation” of the “deanimated,” those who lay in cryonic suspension. The interpretation of cryonic suspension that I set forth departs quite abruptly from existing academic engagements with the practice—it is rooted in a wealth of previously unutilized archival materials from the 1960s and 70s, all of which are virtually inaccessible to those operating outside the cryonics community. The interpretation cuts across, takes as its substantive focus, and is periodized with respect to three different though related moments in the history of cryonic suspension: 1) the emergence of cryonics in 1962 and the previously unexamined ties of the practice to the postwar science of cybernetics and NASA’s Cyborg Spaceflight Program; 2) the subsequent performance and material instantiation of cryonics, marked by the plights of those who froze and were frozen throughout the American 1960s and 70s; and, tied to and fomented by the lattermost especially, 3) catastrophic failure, marked by the collapse of the Cryonics Society of New York in 1974, and the discovery, in 1979, of several abandoned, thawed, and radically decomposed cryonics “patients” interned in the Cryonics Society of California’s underground “cryo-crypt” at the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California; what is infamously known in cryonics circles as the “Chatsworth Scandal.” The dissertation as such offers several novel interpretive claims about cryonic iii suspension, all of which take shape in sustained dialogue with cultural studies of science and technology, and especially the history of cybernetics. The dissertation’s principle theoretical intervention involves deploying these claims to offer an alternative to prevailing interpretations of cryonic suspension, both popular and academic, as an unintelligible pseudoscientific “anomaly.” I argue to the contrary that cryonic suspension emerged in a space produced by what Anthony Giddens and especially Zygmunt Bauman regard as the principle constitutive feature of modern social life—the ultimately futile yet pervasive modern impulse to sequester death, dying, and the dead from the realm of the living. I furthermore argue that the distinctly modern logic of sequestration is replicated in the reigning epistemic norms and practices that shape sociological theory and research proper, in that academic sociology, whatever its professed stripes and leanings, tends overwhelmingly to regard death, narrowly conceived in decidedly modern terms as an “end of life event,” as being only marginally important to apprehending the shape of the modern social, when in fact death’s sequestration constitutes the social realities upon which sociologists tend to train their analytical focus. The key to the intervention I make with respect to cryonic suspension’s intelligibility thus hinges upon recognizing that the otherwise seemingly “anomalous” practice emerged in a space produced by the institutional shortcomings death’s sequestration under western modernity, and thus presents a lived reality that places considerable strain upon the conceptual comfort zones of modern epistemology and historiography. It is in this sense that cryonic suspension, as I argue following Robert Orsi, evidences an abundant phenomenon. Instead of “passing over in silence” the epistemic discomfort presented by cryonic suspension’s abundance, the narrative accounts of cryonics that I develop are pressed into the service of countering those authorized ways of knowing that safely accord with modernity’s sequestration of death. I thus opt for an historical iv sociological treatment of cryonics, one centered about death’s sequestration—that is to say, an abundant sociological history of cryonic suspension. v Acknowledgements This study would not have come into being if not for the generosity of three committed veterans of the cryonics community—Mike Darwin, R. Michael Perry, and Max More—each of whom played a crucial role in facilitating my engagement with the early history of cryonic suspension. Mike Perry fielded questions, offered guidance, shared source materials early on and consistently throughout. Max More, CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, granted me permission to view droves of legal documents and photographs pertaining to the Cryonics Society of California (1966-1977). Mike Darwin deserves very special thanks. In addition to granting me unlimited access to his personal archive of cryonics materials, he was always remarkably generous with his time, willing to field my questions about cryonics for hours on end. Thank you all for helping and encouraging me, a cryonics outsider, to cast a critical eye upon the early history of cryonic suspension. It is my hope that you will find my treatment of cryonics to be something of an abrupt departure from the senseless abuse and confusion that has over the years been heaped upon the practice by academics, journalists, and scientific pundits alike. My odyssey into the world of cryonic suspension began during my undergraduate years at Illinois State University. My interest in the practice was encouraged and cultivated by professors of extraordinary talent: Diane Bjørklund, Frank Beck, David K. Brown, Nick Maroules, and Richard Stivers. In the course of pursuing graduate study in sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the project continued to take shape, and received encouragement and support from many in the UIUC Sociology Department: Cindy Buckley, Brian Dill, Tim Liao, Anna Marshall, Monica McDermott, Clarke McPhail, Ruby Mendenhall, Judith Pintar, Becky Sandefur, Markus Schulz, Dan Steward, and Assata Zerai. vi Their questions and commentary exerted a formative influence on my thinking. The project was brought to completion in the course of my first year as a visiting faculty member in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College. Never in my wildest dreams could I have wished for a better institutional space in which to finish writing. Nor could I have wished for a more kind and supportive set of colleagues. My thanks to David Edwards, Antonia Foias, Julia Kowalski, Jim Nolan, Marketa Rulikova, Olga Shevckenko, and Natalie Bump- Vena; Jason Ānanda Josephson, Keith McPartland, Julie Pedroni, James Pethica, Shawn Rosenheim, and especially Christian Thorne. Most of all, I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, who believed in this project and encouraged me to stay the course. I am grateful to Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi for opening my eyes to the world of historical sociology, and to Norman Denzin for helping me find my voice amid the positivist clamors. Zsuzsa Gille deserves special thanks. This project has a lengthy and somewhat tortured history. During those times it nearly went off the rails Zsuzsa trusted that I would correct course, and gave me the freedom to do so on my own terms. For her patience, generosity, and mentorship, I am forever in her debt. As for Richard Stivers, I shudder to think where I would be in life had I not wandered into his sociology of religion course all those years ago. He has been there for me since the beginning, unflinchingly: mentor, friend, and model human being. Thank you. During my years of coursework at UIUC, I benefited immeasurably from my affiliation with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and learned a great deal from participating in the radically interdisciplinary reading groups and seminars led by Norman Denzin, Fernando Elichirigoity, James Hay, Christopher Higgins, Brenda Farnell, Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Zsuzsa Gille, Robert Rushing, and Clifford Christians. Andrew Pickering departed UIUC just as I was arriving; I never sat in one of his classrooms. However, for the duration of my time in vii graduate school his posthumanist brand of science and technology studies remained a formidable presence in the UIUC Sociology Department and beyond. Indeed, his scholarship exerted a weighty influence on the angle of my engagement with cryonic suspension. (Maybe one day he’ll let me buy him a pint or two, just to say “thanks.”) I am also grateful to Fernando Elichirigoity, who offered numerous rounds of critical commentary at an early and quite crucial stage of my research. Fernando’s honesty and encouragement helped me to stay the course and ultimately see the project though.
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