Frankenstein, Blade Runner and Matrix: A Cyborg Analysis in British and American Science Fiction

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Cyborg, a portmanteau of cybernetic organism, is a term used to designate a creature which is a mixture of organic and electromechanical devices. It is one of the most amazing and intense expressions emerging in the post-modern era. It is not a definitive figure, since it is the result of a hybridization process which has affected our culture since the late modern age. Applying technology and merging human and machine, organic and synthetic, flash and metal, the abilities of human organisms have been enhanced. In the last decades, the process of artificialization of human body has recorded such a fast acceleration, that we are currently expecting to go through an abrupt transition. Someone even claimed an imminent passage towards post-human scenarios. This paper aims at pinning down some milestones in British and American Science Fiction production. Exploring the Golem, the Homunculus, passing through Frankenstein, Neuromancer, Blade Runner and Matrix, it will be shown how the proliferation of hybrids and tribal cultural concepts are evidence of the revival of ancient eras, reinterpreted in a post modern perspective.

Stream: Media, Film Studies, Theatre, Communication

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Antonella Elia is an expert in media education and currently a Ph. D. student in English for Special Purposes at the University of Naples Federico II. She has been a lecturer in ‘Humanities and Computing’ at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ since 2002, and has published a number of papers which connect languages, humanities, and computing. Elia is the author of Inchiostro Digitale: tecnologie e scienze umane - scrivere, comunicare, insegnare con i nuovi media (2004), (Digital Ink: new technology and humanities: writing, communicating and teaching through the new media) and Uomini di latta e sogni di metallo: cyborgs & cyberspaces nel mondo digitale anglofono (2006) (Tin men and metal dreams: cyborgs and cyberspaces in the digital English world.