Advancing the Human Self. Ewa Nowak
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is not only his facade and exterior layer, but also it is the embodiment of his essence; he is his body. That attachment is absolute. However, the radical post humanistic view questions its strength in the name of the decentralisation of the anthropocentric and ego-centered identity. The infinite bond exists not because of the evolution which shaped human identity as a species but also as an individual. Evolution – as proved by Hans Jonas121 – created a generic identity. Meanwhile, Friedrich Dürrenmatt believed that we, people, inherited “a prelogical and premoral brain”122 from nonhuman ←44 | 45→creatures. Gregor Samsa clashes with this primal brain, mind, and identity trapped in the body of an insect, which has robbed him of all traces of human mentality. It is a drastically self-alienating experience, not a return to the dark, unconscious sources of the conscious. The reshaping of a human brain and mind into an animal one is impossible, even if humanity inherited the archaic core of the mind from its evolutionary ancestors. Dürrenmatt’s stance gives us something to contemplate:
I am convinced that the brain has not changed much (das Gehirn gleichgeblieben ist). (…) However, suddenly it has become our enemy. It has played the human off against himself, pushing him towards a biological crisis (eine biologische Krise). I think that humankind is biologically endangered (die Menschheit als biologisch in Gefahr). I am not sure what it will lead to (…), now that we know that the human brain is greater than the human himself (der Mensch hält eigentlich sein eigenes Gehirn nicht aus).123
In his novel, The Heart of the Dog (1925), Mikhail Bulgakov addresses a reverse narrative towards a fictional experiment with xenotransplantation, aiming to let a dog develop unexpected, post-animal functionalities, although the original aim of that experiment was completely different:
23 December. At 8.30 in the evening a pioneering operation performed (…) the first of its kind in Europe: under chloroform Sharik’s scrotum was removed and replaced by human testes with seminal vesicles and vasa, taken from a man aged 28 (…) the hypophysis was removed after trepanation of the top of the skull and replaced by the human equivalent from the same man (…). The aim of the operation: (…) to explore the acceptability of hypophysis transplant and its potential for the rejuvenation of the human organism,
that is, to improve the New Soviet Man, e.g., to create new traits, including ideologies and propaganda slogans inherited as an evolutionary-progressive improvement.
Behind the satiric convention, the dog’s inside perspective combined with clinical observation is provided as the main narrative view. As a result, Bulgakov developed an anti-utopia about turning animals into highly developed psychic individuals (or enhancing any organism and subject in that way).124
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The consequences of creating a post-animal dog were “incalculable.” Instant advances in the acquisition of language were observed:
He can say a great many words: ‘Cabby’; ‘There’s no seats’; ‘Evening paper’ (…) There is something almost phonographic about it; as though the creature had heard swearwords somewhere earlier on and had automatically, subconsciously recorded them in his mind and was now belching them up in wads. (…) It is as though, having been deep frozen in his consciousness, they are now thawing out and emerging. Once out, the new word remains in use.125
Bulgakov’s novel may be a timeless warning about enhancement and eugenics applied to both humans and animals in order to grant them a privileged status. The writer used to work as a military physician and changed his profession after the Soviet Union forced medical professionals to conduct eugenic experiments.
3.4.2 T. R. Brown’s The Face in the Mirror
T. R. Brown’s book, The Face in the Mirror. A Transhuman Identity Crisis (2012), is admittedly not a literary artwork, but a postmodern exemplification of radical posthumanist S-F. Brown’s thought experiment about the self-identity crisis of the main character, Todd Herschel. He deals with multiple transformations. After he lost his body (his ‘entire body was amputated’) as a result of a nearly fatal car accident, his brain was removed from his corpse and implanted into a new, “neohuman” body, with no more than forty percent of human DNA. In this new embodiment, everything was new: it showed not only human, but also animal properties; it was not masculine, but feminine. Additionally, his brain’s replica had been reproduced in the software.
Todd Herschel wakes up from narcosis, completely oblivious. This moment of awaking shows analogies with Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Todd discovers his new situation step by step, the first time by looking at himself in a mirror:
A felis female was standing less than two feet in front of me, green cat slit eyes, mottled black and grey fur and a face that had thin almost human lips, flat cat nose and high forehead, topped by a pair of pointed ears behind which her head was bandaged. (…) As I saw my own hand rise in front of me mirroring the stranger, I realized it was my own reflection in the mirror (…) What happened to me? I asked.126
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Despite the low probability of the entire case developed by T.R. Brown in reality, for many experiences described by Todd, analogies with reports delivered by transplant patients and patients with amputees can easily be found. In particular, patients with face allografts must learn to recognize their new physiognomy, drastically changed after facial surgery, and to become familiar with it. A self-reidentification process may take a long period of time.127 Undergoing face transplantation provides them with a human face that not always resembles their original one. They have, though, received a human face. This was not Todd’s experience. After a long period his acceptance of his new embodiment did not extend to his semi-feline, semi-human face.128 Although
I no longer saw a monster in the mirror, I didn’t see me either. I didn’t even see the new me. I saw a stranger, and she gave me the willies. Even though, intellectually, I knew it was me behind those eyes (…) When I looked at the other features of my new face, it’s hard to describe what I felt. Fear was part of it, anger, alienation. I have heard of a rare condition where people can’t recognize their own reflections. It was line and unlike that. I saw a stranger, but (…) I knew I was looking out through those inhuman eyes.129
Todd’s existence as “the old human self”130 hidden in a feline camouflage was mostly dedicated to dealing with what and who he was now, and to learning to accept the truth about himself. Becoming a transsexual131 allowed him to undergo spectacular intimate and social experiences, including pregnancy and performing a bisexual, polyamorous marriage. Unlike in Gregor Samsa’s case, the initial crisis of Todd’s whole embodied self-identity was followed by a gradual recovery, development, and growth. His second identity will show mixed, “hybrid” and “post-personal” (as the posthumanists put it) properties and capacities. His cognitive and linguistic capacities seem to remain intact, regardless of his new embodiment (which apparently belongs to delusions of posthumanism).
The development of Todd’s afterlife identity was increasingly controlled by his physiology and other functionalities of his new, half ‘feline’ embodiment, and which was medically supported. Their influence prevailed over his original brain, except its originally human cognitive functioning. This development