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Underground > Comic Books >

Transhumanism in NXM?

23:49 / 18.03.02

Recently, I encountered the futurist thought of Christopher Dewdney (see his book LAST FLESH from harpercollins) and noticed similiarities between it and the U-Men from the New X-Men.

So I was wondering if anyone knew whether Grant was channeling Dewdney or if the U-Men were transhuman.

>>Here, readers will find transhuman avatars where they might not expect them: in walkman CD players, voting polls, role-playing games, and more. But, not unexpectedly, Dewdney always returns to the notion that the pathway to the posthuman era will be through a migration from the corporeal self into a digital substrate.<<
from a review of Last Flesh

A

02:24 / 19.03.02

I kind of saw them as being a cross between the "Transients" from Transmetropolitan, and the "Zero Tactility" types from, again, Transmetropolitan.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

22:18 / 19.03.02

Both of those things you mention are transhumanist ideas. Ellis is a major fan of the Transhumanist movement and ideals.

However, the question is this: If the U-Men represent modern Transhumanist (Transgenderist?) movements, then why the negitive portrayal? The U-Men were in fact, fuckers.

Transhumanists: Fuckers or Menace?

And... how closely related would you say the Transhumanist and Transgendered movements are?

23:59 / 19.03.02

Um, why would you say they were related at all? Apart from the prefix. In which case we might also wonder about the relation between the transgendered and the Transformers, or transhumanists, translators, transients and transitive verbs.

02:55 / 20.03.02

And Midas form Marvel Boy was a transhumanist and a complete fucker. I think Morrison is all about breeding! If you weren't born special you're fucked! That's why he writes Emma Frost so well. They're both genetic snobs.

[ 20-03-2002: Message edited by: impulsivelad ]

05:43 / 20.03.02

Absolutely not - I think that Grant is interested in that sensation of feeling special, different, weird, freakish. He's making that sensation cool again. And we all go through a time when we feel it.

And with regards to transhumanism, I think Grant's too clever to allow simple In the Book / Real life analogues to always be clumsily drawn. There's no Legacy Virus here!

23:21 / 20.03.02

First, I'm happy that some other people picked up on this theme in the NXM, as well as Transmet.

Second, I don't think Grant necessarily has a bias against Transhuman ideologies. He's just recognizing that any ideology can be absorbed and warped by consumer-fixated individuals. Look at Cassandra Nova - she's a mutant and a total evil person - the other side of the coin.

Third, while Transhuman and Transgender both involve body modification, I think Transhumanism implies technological modification - CD players, artificial hips, glasses even, while transgender is biological modification. I hope I got that right.

The Natural Way

06:47 / 21.03.02

I think Grant is actively *for* the transhuman stuff, really. S'what the X Men's about, innit?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

08:24 / 21.03.02

Well, no. The X-Men are *posthuman* rather than transhuman - they are not blurring the boudaries of what it is to be human, but rather establishing a "clean break". Homo Sapiens Superior has always been described as a separate species (or possibly a separate genus), and the idea that human DNA is shutting itself down makes "mutants" metahuman in a fairly precise sense.

dlotemp - I think it's a bit more complex than that. Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto posits that the technological modification of humans is intertwined with renegotiations of concepts of gender - that the ideas of male and female are connected to the semiologies of flesh. Or to put it another way, if a man transplants his consciousness into a toaster without questioning the applicability of the concept of your masculinity, he's pretty fucking stupid.

Probably misparaphrasing Donna H. really badly there, but you see the point. It's something that pissed me off about the foglet thing in Transmetropolitan - you have your entire body replaced by intelligetn nanomachines and what is the first thing you do in the Ellis worldview? You show that you can still have sex, and that that sex is still heterosexual sex. The mechanisms are different, the semiotics unchanged. Twart.

Matthew Fluxington

10:40 / 21.03.02

To answer the guy's question about why the U-Men were villains can is pretty simple: Grant wasn't saying anything good or bad about their philosophy, just their methods...

[ 21-03-2002: Message edited by: Flux = No Rock n' Roll Fun ]

09:43 / 22.03.02

To The Haus Who Shot Liberty Valance -

Thanks for paraphrasing the Cyborg manifesto. I've gleaned glimmers of it here and there, but never was able to get a handle on it. I assumed it was more than "Steve Austin," but anticipated it being much richer. Obviously, it is. I appreciate everyone pointing me in good directions. I admittedly don't know much about this stuff - mysterium transhuman - and hoped the strange people at Barbelith could help me.

Ride on Lee Marvin. Ride on.

09:49 / 22.03.02

It's online here:
http://www.rochester.edu/College/FS/Publications/HarawayCyborg.html

Interesting stuff.