Beyond the Human: Transhumanist Negotiations and Posthuman Instantiations in Aldoux Huxley’s Brave New World and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
Beyond the Human: Transhumanist Negotiations and Posthuman Instantiations in Aldoux Huxley’s Brave New World and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

Summary/Abstract: In an age marked by intense technological modifications of the self, an attitude promoted through the optimistic program of transhumanism, fear for our future, with the posthuman specter looming at the ontological borders, leads to inhibition and reticence towards such formulas of human hybridization. My paper, therefore, tries to bridge the gap between transhumanist realities of now and posthuman potentialities of a then not so distant anymore, taking into account both the theoretical background proposed by critics and the literary modes of embodiment meant to encapsulate the tension inherent in the collaboration between our humanist framework and other modes of understanding, discussed in terms of technological excess and anxiety towards the encounter with radical alterities, as envisioned by Huxley in Brave New World and by Mitchell in Cloud Atlas.

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