POSTHUMANISM AND THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN SELF: LESSONS FROM YA SPECULATIVE FICTION

Abstract

This research paper represents a holistic analysis and assessment of the ever-changing construct of human identity as examined through the critical lens of post-humanist theory, particularly in its most current context amongst young people adult (YA) speculative fiction. This study begins with the assumption that this specific genre of literature can offer us a look at the “possible” or the “imagined necessary cultural and philosophical space in which to question the manner in which accelerated technological integration dramatically changes fundamental ideas of selfhood, agency, embodiment, and social relations. Through the intensive literary analysis of the themes and concepts portrayed in the novel Nexus by Ramez Naam (2013), as a primary case studies, this paper makes use of a new analytical approach - "post human" trialism - mind, body, technology - in order to systematically deconstruct the complex processes of posthuman subject formation. The research analyzes ways in which speculative narratives have envisioned the future constructed at a fluid juncture marked continuously by human evolution and radical technological augmentation and argue that these narratives of fiction are not necessarily fantastic stories exercises in the hypothetical, but rather critically occupy and often prefigure real-world societal anxieties, ethical dilemmas, and emergent possibilities regarding the human condition in a new increasingly digital and networked age. The paper, by thoroughly examining the narrative tensions with regard to the biological essence and technological enhancement, sheds a light on a richly complex genre of artistic creation in the process of reaching a critical cultural engagement with culturally crucial concerns of consciousness and distributed entities of personality and freedom, as well as with a generally ontological status that defines the very essence of the concept of the Human within a context that had long defaulted the classical and modern boundaries and interruptions of the Cartesian split. The finding presented with regard to the results of the research relies upon the assumption that YA speculative fiction can be regarded as a mirrored reflection of the current technological uneasiness at one level and an imaginative space at the other.