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From Dr. Moreau's Beast People to David Cronenberg's Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem's robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler's human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, Posthuman Metamorphosis examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs.New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman.Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox.Posthuman Metamorphosis draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.

Some researchers have long been interested in reconstructing natural insects into steerable robots or vehicles. However, until recently, these so-called cyborg insects, biobots, or living machines existed only in science fiction. Owing to recent advances in nano/micro manufacturing, data processing, and anatomical and physiological biology, we can now stimulate living insects to induce user-desired motor actions and behaviors. To improve the practicality and applicability of airborne cyborg insects, a reliable and controllable flight initiation protocol is required. This study demonstrates an electrical stimulation protocol that initiates flight in a beetle (Mecynorrhina torquata, Coleoptera). A reliable stimulation protocol was determined by analyzing a pair of dorsal longitudinal muscles (DLMs), flight muscles that oscillate the wings. DLM stimulation has achieved with a high success rate (> 90%), rapid response time (< 1.0 s), and small variation (< 0.33 s; indicating little habituation). Notably, the stimulation of DLMs caused no crucial damage to the free flight ability. In contrast, stimulation of optic lobes, which was earlier demonstrated as a successful flight initiation protocol, destabilized the beetle in flight. Thus, DLM stimulation is a promising secure protocol for inducing flight in cyborg insects or biobots.

Anxieties about embodiment and posthumanism have always found an outlet in the science fiction of the day. In Bodies of Tomorrow , Sherryl Vint argues for a new model of an ethical and embodied posthuman subject through close readings of the works of Gwyneth Jones, Octavia Butler, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and other science fiction authors. Vint’s discussion is firmly contextualized by discussions of contemporary technoscience, specifically genetics and information technology, and the implications of this technology for the way we consider human subjectivity. Engaging with theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Anne Balsamo, N. Katherine Hayles, and Douglas Kellner, Bodies of Tomorrow argues for the importance of challenging visions of humanity in the future that overlook our responsibility as embodied beings connected to a material world. If we are to understand the post-human subject, then we must acknowledge our embodied connection to the world around us and the value of our multiple subjective responses to it. Vint’s study thus encourages a move from the common liberal humanist approach to posthuman theory toward what she calls ‘embodied posthumanism.’ This timely work of science fiction criticism will prove fascinating to cultural theorists, philosophers, and literary scholars alike, as well as anyone concerned with the ethics of posthumanism.

As digital practice in archaeology becomes pervasive and increasingly invisible, I argue that there is a deep creative potential in practising a cyborg archaeology. A cyborg archaeology draws from feminist posthumanism to transgress bounded constructions of past people as well as our current selves. By using embodied technologies to disturb archaeological interpretations, we can push the use of digital media in archaeology beyond traditional, skeuomorphic reproductions of previous methods to highlight ruptures in thought and practice. I develop this argument through investigating the avatars, machines, and monsters in current digital archaeological research. These concepts are productively liminal: avatars, machines, and monsters blur boundaries between humans and non-humans, the past and the present, and suggest productive approaches to future research. Avec la généralisation des pratiques numériques en archéologie, qui deviennent cependant de plus en plus imperceptibles, l'auteur soutient qu'il existe un vaste potentiel de créativité dans la pratique de l'archéologie cybernétique. Cette discipline s'inspire du posthumanisme féministe pour briser les limitations de nos préconceptions sur les gens du passé mais aussi sur nous-mêmes. L'emploi de technologies incorporées et de médias numériques en archéologie nous permet de dépasser les limites des reconstitutions traditionnelles et skeuomorphiques produites par des méthodes plus anciennes, de bouleverser nos interprétations et de mettre l'accent sur certains points de rupture dans la pensée et en pratique. L'auteur traite ce sujet à travers l'examen d'avatars, de machines et de monstres tels qu'on les représente de nos jours en archéologie numérique. Ces concepts, liminaires mais productifs car les avatars, les montres et les machines brouillent les frontières entre ce qui est humain et non-humain et entre le passé et le présent, nous permettent d'entrevoir des approches fructueuses en recherche. Translation by Madeleine Hummler Als sich die Digitalisierung in der archäologischen Praxis durchsetzt und zunehmend unsichtbar wird, wird hier der Standpunkt vertreten, dass die Ausübung der Cyborg-Archäologie potenziell sehr kreativ sein könnte. Die Cyborg-Archäologie ist vom feministischen Posthumanismus beeinflusst und bietet die Möglichkeit, unsere beschränkten Vorstellungen der Menschen in der Vergangenheit aber auch von uns selbst zu überwinden. Mithilfe der verkörperten Technologien und Digitalmedien in der Archäologie können wir die Grenzen der traditionellen, skeuomorphischen Rekonstruktionen der älteren Methoden überschreiten, archäologische Deutungen stören und gewisse intellektuelle und praktische Bruchstellen aufzeigen. Dies wird hier anhand von Untersuchungen von Avataren, Maschinen und Monstern in der gegenwärtigen digital-archäologischen Forschung herausgearbeitet. Solche liminale aber produktive Auffassungen, weil die Avatare, Maschinen und Monster die Grenzen zwischen dem Menschlichen und Nicht-Menschlichen und zwischen der Gegenwart und der Vergangenheit verwischen, stellen vielversprechende Ansätze für weitere Forschungen dar. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

Caroline Alphin presents an original exploration of biopolitics by examining it through the lens of cyberpunk science fiction. Comprised of five chapters, Neoliberalism and Cyberpunk Science Fiction is guided by four central themes: biopolitics, intensification, resilience, and accelerationism. The first chapters examine the political possibilities of cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction and introduce one kind of neoliberal subject, the self-monitoring cyborg. These are individuals who join fitness/health tracking devices and applications to their body to “self-cultivate.” Here, Alphin presents concrete examples of how fitness trackers are a strategy of neoliberal governmentality under the guise of self-cultivation. Moving away from Foucault’s biopolitics to themes of intensity and resilience, Alphin draws largely from William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, along with the film Blade Runner to problematize notions of neoliberal resilience. Alphin returns to biopolitics, intensity, and resilience, connecting these themes to accelerationism as she engages with biohacker discourses. Here she argues that a biohacker is, in part, an intensification of the self-monitoring cyborg and accelerationism is in the end another form of resilience. Neoliberalism and Cyberpunk Science Fiction is an invaluable resource for those interested in security studies, political sociology, biopolitics, critical IR theory, political theory, cultural studies, and literary theory.

This article will critically appraise the extent to which new developments in the fields of reproductive technology are shown to impact female bodily autonomy and reproductive choice in Eva Hoffman’s novel The Secret. The Secret pushes its readers towards the more pressing and urgent questions arising from ongoing developments within the field of NRT and human cloning in a neoliberal climate. The novel cautions that, ultimately, the individual right to reproductive choice is never completely free; an awareness of external influences and a consideration of possible repercussions is integral to responsible decision-making in the context of NRT and cloning. However, the novel moves towards a possible reconceptualization of NRTs as part of the evolutionary progress of humankind. In returning to the body and biopolitical figurations, this article sees the novel’s protagonist, Iris, and her emergent cyborg identity as a manifestation of Haraway’s monstrous cyborg replete with possibility.

This article analyses the novel Generation 14 by Priya Sarukkai Chabria from a convergent perspective of Dalit Studies (which encapsulates Dalit literature and Dalit feminism) and science fiction. I suggest that Indian science fiction that discusses caste with reference to the emerging technoscientific culture can be termed Dalit-futurism. I define this concept by drawing on the tradition of Dalit literature and science fiction and suggest that the Dalit-futurist texts seek to mutate caste to foreground its arbitrary structure. This paper uses the vocabulary of science-fiction criticism to analyze the mutation of caste in the fictional world and draws parallels with our social reality. It suggests that the social divisions in the fictional world echo the Brahmanical patriarchy of the Indian subcontinent. I theorize that the convergence of Dalit-futurism with feminist theory results in a new and transformative feminist configuration termed 'Dalit-futurist feminism'. I explicate Dalit-futurist feminism through the cyborg figure, which I suggest shares overlapping themes and concerns with the Dalit feminist standpoint theory, conceptualized by Sharmila Rege and Cyborg feminism conceptualized by Donna Haraway. I suggest that the main protagonists, Aa-Aa and Clone 14/54/G, embody the intersectional, revisionist, and inclusive feminism advocated by Rege and Haraway, arguing for an affiliation-based politics that rejects women's unity based on essentialized identities like sex, class, race, and caste and uncover the constructive nature of social processes that maintain and reproduce hierarchies, inequalities, and oppression.

This essay examines the emotions of diverse artificial intelligences envisioned by an incongruous feminist science fiction author, Sheri S. Tepper. The focus of the comparison will be on a complex cyborg, the Questioner in Six Moon Dance and the relevant sentient creatures in Sideshow so as to contrast the representation of emotions felt/expressed by constructs, and try to establish the connection with the author’s world view.

Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind's capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind's conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision.