Figurations of posthumanity in contemporary science/fiction - all too human(ist)? (original) (raw)

Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "two cultures" divide and emphasises instead the interdependency between science and literature or, more specifically, between "real science" and "science fiction". It argues that technoscientific visions are indebted to narrative imaginings and that the promises of technoscience, in turn, influence individual and collective fantasies. The analytical focus is on imagineerings of the posthuman body or subject in various types of science/fiction. In order to challenge the orthodoxy of posthumanism's progressive trajectory, these figurations will be scrutinised in view of underlying liberal-humanist and, hence, androcentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric assumptions.