Document Type
Article
Abstract
[Editors' Introduction]
In this paper, Miranda Campbell discusses Richard Powers' novel Galatea 2.2 and argues that this work is situated at the intersection of the posthumanist and humanist discourses. Campbell examines Powers' approach to the mind-body problem, his interrogation of the limits and limitations of posthumanism, and its dissolution of the importance of the body, difference, and agency. In the posthuman setting of the Center for Advanced Science of this novel, scientists integrate the mind into the body through its designation as a mechanically functioning brain. At the Center, the binary of human and machine begins to erode with the creation a self-conscious computer. Following in the path of N. Katherine Hayles, Powers resists the collapse of difference between human and machine, and retains the importance of embodied experience for both subjectivity and for political action. Campbell asserts that Powers' novel foregrounds the ways in which the mind-body problem persists in our dualistic culture in spite of posthumanist attempts to collapse the distinction between these two entities.
Recommended Citation
Campbell, Miranda "Probing the Posthuman: Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 and the Mind-Body Problem." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol. 4, no. 3, 2004, pp. 1–17.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss3/8
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