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Session 7a: Monsters of Outer Space
Chair: Christopher Auld

Monsters, the Post-Human, and History
J. Randall Groves
Professor of Humanities, Ferris State University, United States of America

“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment.” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, First Part, 3)

The presentation of monsters in science fiction and horror as well as the contemplation of their creation in the musings of worried medical ethicists display fairly consistent visions of possible futures. These visions reveal an antipathy toward the seemingly inevitable evolution of a “posthuman” species as humans make increasing use of genetic engineering and human interfaces with mechanical objects and digital systems. To the extent that these changes become commonplace they invite a change in the form of transformation into something evolutionary. This evolutionary possibility implicates a philosophy of history that projects changes in our conception of human nature, changes that make clear that human nature is itself historical. This change in our view of human nature also affects the way we conceive of monsters.

Monster as Protagonist: The Boundaries of the Human
Susan Wolfe
The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, United States of America

In American popular culture, creatures that might otherwise be thought monstrous (vampires, werewolves, cyborgs, and extraterrestrials) are often depicted as benign, provided only that an individual creature is exactly that. Once a creature demonstrates the capacity to transcend its genetic or computer programming, demonstrates, in short, its position as a subject, it is rendered sympathetically.
This can be seen in the Star Trek films and series, in which the Borg, who assimilate other species, draining them of their uniqueness while acquiring their knowledge and skills, are depicted as evil. In one episode, however, a Borg who acquires the use of the pronoun “I” and the name “Hugh,” by virtue of misunderstanding the second-person pronoun, evolves a personality, and is thus spared destruction at the hands of the Star Trek crew. Likewise, the cyborg in the film Bicentennial Man, who has through some fluke acquired affections and desires, is gradually granted status as a human being, because he functions as an individual.
In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and its spin-off series, Angel, those vampires who manifest desires beyond that of the next bloody meal—those who fall in love, those who protect some humans, those who are given “souls” by means of supernatural intervention, also escape classification as monsters, despite their occasional lapses into monstrous behavior (e.g., the slaughtering of innocents they feed upon). Indeed, such vampires become heroes who save mankind in both series.
In The Transformation of Myths through Time, Joseph Campbell has argued that individual heroes dominates the myths of Western culture because Western culture so prizes individuality. Many recent versions of “monsters” in popular culture suggest that we are capable—indeed, eager—to read monsters as virtually human, or almost provided they demonstrate individuality.

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