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Empathy In A Posthuman World Analysis

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ABSTRACT: Discussed from a posthumanistic perspective this paper argues for the existence and acceptance of empathy in a posthuman world. The discussion revolves around Olamina who possesses the hyper empathy syndrome to bring all humans together in a dystopian world. This paper also examines how empathy is rooted in vulnerability of different life forms. All human beings are interconnected and there is a kinship between all. Nayar’s posthumanism and Judith Butler’s idea about precarious life are used to support the existence and acceptance of empathy. Butler offers different hyper empathy characters to establish a posthuman world. Olamina believes in the concept that God is change and she creates a community named Acorn that welcomes everyone …show more content…

Haraway in her “Cyborg Manifesto” uses the word cyborg to designate a hybrid of living organisms and machine. In this way she puts conventionally opposed things together by ascribing connection and link between all living organisms and between living and nonliving things. In parable series Olamina’s concept of Earthseed and Acorn are based on kinship and connectedness between human beings. Contemporary science fiction is crowded with cyborgs. Characters are portrayed as combination of human and animal or human and machine. The origin of cyborg is multiple. Cyborg stands for anything that demands kinship and rejects boundaries. Haraway recommends kinship among individuals that holds no boundaries on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientations. Becoming posthuman doesn’t mean to evolve into a completely new species but to become hybrid, which is more powerful than the existing one. Haraway considers humans as hybrid, always dependent and coevolved with nature and machines. Butler’s concept of Earthseed is not based on human individuality but on merging many to become one and always in a process of becoming. Human life is always changing, changing with other life forms. Butler in her works suggests different modes of kinship with human and nonhuman ‘Other’. P.k Nayar says, “By demonstrating the end of the sovereign human subject, critical humanism prepares the ground for the new form of the human, the posthuman.”

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