On Sight, Technology, and Science Fiction: Transhumanist Visions in Contemporary Canadian Dystopia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/452f.2022.27.12Keywords:
transhumanism, dystopian fiction, Canadian literature, vision, sight, human enhancementAbstract
This article examines a number of practices of observation as represented in contemporary Canadian dystopias in light of technological developments as seen by transhumanist thought. It argues that the transhumanist scopic practices that underlie their science-fictional imaginaries are in fact dystopian, and, as such, it takes examples from dystopian literature to illustrate how the nature of sight and seeing in the techno- and image-mediated context presents dangerous pitfalls for subject formation, identity politics, and agency. The article distinguishes between “vision” as a body of ideas and “sight” as the actual ways of seeing that may be reciprocal and create bonds of affectivity or, in the case of the transhumanist predicament, be instead founded on watching as the one-sided commodifying alternative.
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