Transhuman Perfection: The Eradication of Disability by Transhuman Technologies
This paper is to examine the transhuman technologies that seek to eradicate disability - primarily prostheses and implants. While most would agree that disability denies individuals the same quality of life as those deemed "abled," this eradication ultimately relies upon secular humanist notions of the perfect human. Transhuman technologies hold obvious implications for the human body, however they also hold implications for what it means to be an acceptable body; ultimately these technologies aim to create the perfect human by eradicating the disabled Other. This paper uses these notions to question concepts of "heirarchies of life," at which disabled individuals are most commonly moved towards the bottom, or at the very least considered nonhuman. This paper consults contemporary transhumanist scholars such as Nick Bostrom and Simon Young to examine the ideologies transhumanism operates within and the technologies used to meet these requirements, and seeks to provide alternative theory to the eradication of disability, which states that these individuals may not have the same mode of existence, but that their mode/s are just as valid as those lived by "abled" individuals. This paper also examines the technology of Braille, which I will posit exists as a transhuman technology - however, this technology does not seek to eradicate disability, but work with the disability to acknowledge this mode of existence as valid. David-Jack Fletcher PhD Candidate, Faculty of Arts ...From:David-Jack FletcherViews:2 0ratingsTime:19:19More inEducation
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