Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture

237 Pages·2019·3.015 MB·English

by  Melvin G. Hill

Black Bodies and
Transhuman Realities

Black Bodies and
Transhuman Realities
Scientifically Modifying
the Black Body in Posthuman
Literature and Culture
Edited by Melvin G. Hill
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
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Copyright © 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Octavia E. Butler’s KINDRED: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy and John
Jennings. KINDRED Copyright © The Estate of Octavia E. Butler. Adaptation copyright
© 2017 Damian Duffy and John Jennings. Based on the novel KINDRED by Octavia
E. Butler © 1979. Used by permission of Abrams Comic Arts, an imprint of Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN 978-1-4985-8380-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4985-8381-7 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities 1
Melvin G. Hill
1 “European Mind . . . Engrafted upon the African Constitution”:
Robert Southey’s Theory of Miscegenation in the
Tranhumanist Context 21
Md. Monirul Islam
2 The Mystery of the Invisible Drop: Pauline Hopkins’s
Transhumanist Challenge to Race Science 39
Sarah L. Berry
3 Arthurian Legend, Algorithmic Code, and Racialized
Technology: Technocultural Allusions in Ishmael Reed’s
Flight to Canada 57
Myungsung Kim
4 Transmedial Posthumanisms: Unmaking the Black Body in
Octavia Butler’s Kindred and its Graphic Novel Adaptation 71
Nicholas E. Miller
5 “A Dangerous Idea”: Human Enhancement, Transhuman
Desirability, Binary Identity Negotiation, and “Mistranthropy”
in George S. Schuyler’s Black No More 101
Melvin G. Hill
6 Transhumanism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye 119
Rae’Mia Escott
v
vi Contents
7 Glossolalia: Lucille Clifton’s Creative Technologies
of Becoming 133
Bettina Judd
8 Soul in the Shell: Steven Barnes’s Aubry Knight Trilogy,
Black Cyborgs, and Cyberpunk Investigations of
Technological Black Bodies 151
Alexander Dumas J. Brickler IV
9 Revising the White Cyborg: The Interstitial Heroism of
Del Spooner in I, Robot and Charles Gunn in Angel 177
Christian Jimenez
10 On the (Un)Becoming of Cindi Mayweather: The
Transhumanist Gynoid Performativity of Janelle Monáe 193
Kwasu D. Tembo
Index 209
About the Editor 223
About the Contributors 225
Acknowledgments
This book developed out of a personal interest that lead to research on trans-
humanism and posthumanism which, in most conversations, did not provide
a landscape for blackness and black bodies within the discussion. I hope to
establish voice that illuminates the unseen and unimagined presence and im-
pact of black bodies within this philosophical discourse.
I want to thank Dr. Ron Strickland who continues to offer his support and
intellectual generosity which has advanced my thinking since graduate school
at Illinois State University. Over the years, he has been a source of intellec-
tual aspiration, and I am deeply appreciative of his friendship. I am especially
grateful for several of my colleagues at the University of Tennessee, Martin
who have shown genuine interests in this project and the Department of Eng-
lish and Modern Foreign Languages for providing me a space for intellectual
growth. Additionally, I want to thank The Faculty Research and Development
Committee for awarding me the Hal and Alma Reagan Faculty Leave which
provided the needed time away from the classroom to complete this project.
I am fortunate to have Jessica Thwaite at Lexington Books for providing
exceptional editorial support. Her endless patience and invaluable sugges-
tions are no small measure, and I am grateful for all her hard work in making
this project a reality. Equally, I want to thank Lindsey Falk for believing in
the project from the beginning.
I am fortunate to have family that provided their unwavering encourage-
ment and unlimited support. My sons and daughter: Brandon, Brittney, and
Chris for their intense conversation, infectious humor, and joyous relation-
ship. Thank you to my wife, Darlene, who has enriched and challenged my
thinking. She has not only provided advice, encouragement, and support but
enables me to face the heaviness that weighs on my shoulders as a husband,
vii
viii Acknowledgments
father, and an African-American scholar. I am eternally grateful for your
presence, patience, and unconditional love.
I thank God, my Creator, for His love, presence, and blessings in my life.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Marvin and Erma, who in their ab-
sence, continue to sustain my spirit.
Introduction
Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities
Melvin G. Hill
Black bodies have been victims of a disturbing history in the name of medi-
cal research and scientific discovery. This historical narrative includes the
cultural memory of clinical experimentations and anatomic dissections of
slaves in America, the grossly immoral Tuskegee syphilis experiment and
others like it, the case of Henrietta Lacks, and numerous other unknown
medical and scientific episodes involving Black bodies. Black subjects have
been inhumanly displayed as dark origami figures for large and small pub-
lic entertainment including circuses, exhibitions, fairs, museums, and zoos.
Consequently, these notorious experiments with Black bodies have been
imagined onto the pages of novels and short stories, most notably, Edward B.
Foote’s Science in Story: Sammy Tubbs, the Boy Doctor, and “Sponsie,” the
Troublesome Monkey (1874). However, posthumanism, as a philosophical
and cultural movement, has slightly shifted how the Black body is included
within the grand narrative of humanity while offering a new historical path.
Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black
Body in Posthuman Literature and Culture is chiefly rooted in classical and
seminal works that offer new understandings of how the Black body tran-
scends itself through science and technology. The works examined in Black
Bodies and Transhuman Realities: Scientifically Modifying the Black Body
in Posthuman Literature and Culture provide an opportunity to consider the
subtle nexus between the Black body and transhumanism that engenders ur-
gent existential questions.
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