Of iron men and green monsters

superheroes and posthumanism

Dan Hassler-Forest

pp. 66-76

in: Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, Curtis D. Carbonell (eds), The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

We live in an age of cyborgs. The streets, trains, cars around us are populated by strange creatures whose intense engagement with technology is both reassuringly familiar and vaguely alarming: familiar, because most of us have come to feel like cyborgs ourselves, having come to rely on mobile technology for nearly every aspect of our lives, spending most if not all our waking hours "plugged in" to an infinite network; and alarming, because this reliance brings with it not only new kinds of connections, but also what seems like a new experience of time, space and alienation. But in many ways, our reliance on wireless data transfer, smartphones, tablets and other consumer gadgets are only the tip of the iceberg, as developments in medicine, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), prosthetics, and quantum mechanics continuously destabilize our traditional anthropocentric worldview informed by liberal humanist values.