Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In Troilus and Cressida hybrid/bastard metaphor is employed to efface species boundaries and social values. This study examines the extent to which Troilus’s sleeve–originally symbolizing a detachable arm of his own entity as a love token, and yet representing transhumanist aspiration–helps constitute himself as a cyborg. Shakespeare dramatizes cyborg as an apocalyptic kind of transformation–machine-like warrior–in Coriolanus, and yet earlier had explored the theme in Troilus and Cressida with reference to infectious disease. He puts forward the view that there are dangers concerning becoming transhuman. Shakespeare shows what kinds of reactions against transhuman ideas, or anxiety about this transformation, come from society and the body. The transhuman characters are defined only by the feature of bastardy and their relevance to the sexual disease. In this present study, I argue that such transhuman aspiration is not realized in a way to gain immortality or to remove his/her vulnerabilities, but to fulfill the protagonist’s sexual desire - so it only results in bastardy. Shakespeare’s dramatization of transhuman aspiration helps us to understand our current conceptualization of transhuman, posthuman, and cyborg.