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Geoff Klock

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Article

Abstract

[Editors' Introduction]

Continuing his work in How to Read Superhero Comics and Why Geoff Klock, in “X-Men, Emerson, Gnosticism,” argues that two writers of the superhero comic book the X-Men suggest a whole new definition of the Post-Human, an alternative to what Hayles, Haraway, and Moravec have to offer. He begins by connecting a moment in Mark Millar’s Ultimate X-Men with a passage in Ralph Waldo Emerson: an ancient heretical second-century sect of Christianity called Gnosticism is the common factor. Klock argues that Millar’s X-Men incorporates Gnosticism’s radical notion of subjectivity into its Post-Human narrative, but not without cost: Millar’s depiction of team leader Professor X shows the ways in which Post-Humanism, particularly in the realm of ethics, easily veers into the inhuman. This pessimistic Post-Humanism, which is held out above every alternative, is reflected in the serial nature of the superhero comic book series itself, in which decades pass without the book’s heroes being able to significantly effect their world for the better. In the paper’s conclusion, Klock examines Grant Morrison’s New X-Men story "Assault on Weapon Plus" as a Gnostic Post-Human allegory that suggests that our inevitable evolution into the Post-Human will yield something darker than, say, a cyber-utopia or a collective robot heaven.

Comments

This article was originally formatted as a web page with background color matching background color of the title image. It included thumbnail images with links to larger images. The larger images have been incorporated into this revised version. See http://reconstruction.digitalodu.com/Issues/043/Klock/Klock.html

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