Product Description

As we enter the 21st century, technology promises to shape our lives more profoundly than ever before. Advances in medical, reproductive, genetic and information technologies all serve to confuse the boundaries between humans, machines and what we call nature. The category of the "posthuman" reflects the implications of such technologies on contemporary culture, especially in their capacity to reconfigure the human body and to challenge our most fundamental understandings of human nature. The debate about such issues is not only conducted within academic and scientific circles, but is also addressed in the realms of popular culture and the creative arts. From the myth of Prometheus, the Jewish legend of the golem, the Gothic horror of Frankenstein's monster, to contemporary postmodern science fiction, a gallery of fantastic creatures haunt Western myth, religion and literature. They serve to connect contemporary debates with enduring concerns about the potential, and the limits, of human creativity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1097230 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"'Well researched and fluently argued, this book makes an innovative and original contribution to contemporary debate.' Tina Beattie, Freelance Lecturer and Writer in Theology"

From the Author
When I started the research for this book I had relatively little interest in science fiction. As my interest in the subject grew, however, I became aware of how SF - in literature, film and TV - has become one of the most profound sources of contemporary thinking about life, death, what it means to be human, the use and abuse of technologies, and many other issues. One of the key themes running throughout "Representations of the Post/Human" is that whatever it means to be human, one thing that seems to set us apart is our powers of creative imagination. We are an inventive and curious species; but that inventiveness manifests itself in the legends, myths and narratives we tell, the religious worlds we build, and the cultural forms we create, as much as it is expressed in science and technology.
I hope people will read this book at a number of different levels: as individual case studies on works like "Frankenstein", or the legend of the Golem, or the feminist theory of Donna Haraway; or else as an exploration of what it means to be human in a technological age; or as an examination of the implicit religion that runs throughout much of our dealings with technology. I think people who teach courses on contemporary science fiction as utopian literature may also find much to interest them, especially in my discussions of Star Trek and Marge Piercy's "Body of Glass".

About the Author
Elaine L. Graham is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester