Superhumans, Mutants and Monsters

Superhumans, Mutants and Monsters: Gene Doping, Bioethics and the Posthuman Game
University of Toronto, Canada, March 24, 2005.

I just got back from UoT, where i gave a presentation by this title. I wanted to talk a bit about how posthumanism is evolving as a body of literature and how it relates to competing ideas on transhumanism and cyborgology.

It always suprises me (pleasantly) at how different people approach this subject. The cover of GMA has written the content for many of my talks on this subject. This week conversations got into the subject of 'feline' modifications and the possible colonial interpretations of enhancement. For example, could we think about the discourse of posthumanism as similar to how people of certain races might have been characterised as savage or Other? Alternatively, does the morphed human with cheetah tell us anything about the gendered nature of enhancement? What kind of animal would we like to look more like and what does thi reveal about our values and assumptions about beauty?

Interesting lines i think. If you want to take a look at the presentation, click here

(sorry if you read this on Bioethics and Sport, but sometimes there is valuable overlap!)