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Chapter 2 - The New Flesh

Vital Machines and Reimagining the Human

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2021

Sherryl Vint
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Summary

This chapter explores why the liberal humanist dispositif cannot initiate a better future. Returning to Wynter’s critiques of the human as a colonial category, it links her work with Lisa Lowe’s analysis of labor, empire, and humanization to argue that the human of liberal humanist tradition is fundamentally a category of whiteness. It reads two speculative fiction texts: HBO’s reboot series Westworld, which positions viewers to sympathize with robotic Hosts who are repeatedly traumatized by humanity’s violent fantasies in its empire-themed recreation parks; and Jo Walton’s Thessaly series that explores the related issues of how a culture determines personhood and that it requires someone to perform the labor traditionally done by slaves, by positing an experiment in which Plato’s Republic becomes a material reality. Contextualized within the real subsumption of life by capital, these narratives about the precarious lives of robotic entities are also about the lives of people who are excluded from the protections conferred by the status “human” and discourses of human rights. Thus, the chapter concludes, dehumanization remains a potent force in globalized neoliberalism.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • The New Flesh
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.003
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  • The New Flesh
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.003
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The New Flesh
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.003
Available formats
×