Studies in Transhumanism: Genetics, Robotics, Information Technology, Nanosciences, and the Human Future(s) (FMS 494/ENG 598)	2006 Fall
Arizona State University	Arizona	Film & Media Studies, Engineering
This course performs a rigorous critique of the human/transhuman, exploring both in terms of their profound historical, scientific, economic, political and ideological implications. The course has two focal points: one, predominantly historical, anthropological and philosophical in nature; the second, a cultural studies focus on the ideological parameters of contemporary transhuman bioinformatic sciences. First off, the course will assess Enlightenment notions of the human exploring the scientific and technological discourse of homo sapien before then moving toward the more contemporary notion of the transhuman and its ideological import for near and not so near future global culture. We will explore several questions: what ideological forces underlie the socio-scientific production of the “human” in the eighteenth century (what was gained by this new representation of man) what philosophical, scientific and cultural itineraries has this human construct taken since its Enlightenment birth (Darwin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, The Frankfort School, existentialism, Freud, Derrida, Watson and Crick, Sturtevant and Venter come to mind), what does a deconstruction of the "trans" in transhuman reveal, and what would a semiotics of the presumed "natural evolution" (implicit in grammatical positionings of the human/transhuman construct) yield. In esssence what is the grammar of this complex ideology? Once we have preformed an autopsy on the historical anatomy of the "human," we will then explore how various representations of the transhuman have evolved. The point of all of this to construct an archeology of both the human and the transhuman so that we can then submerge that archeology within the dominant ambitions of postmodern science and technology, particularly in the area of genetic research, robotic engineering, computer, information and digital technology and the nanosciences. By the end of the course we will be able to read this NY Times blurb - In the next fifty years, life spans will extend well beyond a century. Our senses and cognition will be enhanced. We will have greater control over our emotions and memory. Our bodies and brains will be surrounded by and merged with computer power. The limits of the human body will be transcended as technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering converge and accelerate. With them, we will redesign ourselves and our children into varieties of posthumanity - and identify its ideological proteins (if you will). Perhaps the prime biopolitical question for the course asks whether human technology has always been a transhumanizing force, and, if so, from where does that production arise, what are its long term effects and are there any limits to human bioprogress?
Course Syllabus Website
Offered as part of a MAJOR in Science, Technology, and Societal Outcomes
Program: CNS-ASU Program

Course Instructor(s):