San Junipero (original) (raw)

Reading »Black Mirror«, 2021

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the »transhumanist optimism of the »San Junipero« episode about mind uploading from the standpoint of critical posthumanism. The first thing that strikes one about the episode, given the apocalyptic nature of most of Black Mirror's episodes and especially with regard to the effects of technology on society in the near future, is how happy (perhaps too happy) and hopeful the ending of »San Junipero« is. The uploading of the minds of dead people to a digital simulation is openly presented as a virtual paradise wherein subjects, leaving their obsolete and transitory flesh behind, have their minds (consciousnesses? souls?) stored in a computer server room so as to finally be able to live a liberated, flawless life. This typically transhumanist perspective (see Hans Moravec, 1994), which believes that subjectivity is located in the mind and that it can be coded in terms of information, has been extensively analyzed and deconstructed by authors like Donna Haraway,...

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