Document Type
Article
Abstract
[Editors' Introduction]
In "Dead Astronauts, Cyborgs, and the Cape Canaveral Fiction of J.G. Ballard: A Posthuman Analysis," Melanie Rosen Brown explores the ways in which the so-called "Cape Canaveral" short stories of J.G. Ballard anthologized in the collection Memories of the Space Age exemplify the promises of posthumanity as articulated by posthuman theorists such as Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles. Although Ballard's fiction is viewed by many as a needlessly pessimistic and derogatory portrayal of NASA's space program, viewed through a posthuman lens, Ballard's fiction instead reveals him to be optimistic about the future of space exploration -- cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless. Ballard's fiction portrays a culture clearly not ready to do away with the human in favor of some new mechanized being; however, in Ballard's worlds, the human is no longer enough either. Only through the merging of technology and humanity -- a hybrid of posthuman and human -- does the world continue to spin for either Ballard's posthuman astronauts or his Earth-bound humans who are capable of escaping the planet only through fugues of space and time.
Repository Citation
Brown, Melanie R.. "Dead Astronauts, Cyborgs, and the Cape Canaveral Fiction of J. G. Ballard: A Posthuman Analysis." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 4, no. 3, 2004, pp. 1–13. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss3/7
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons