Seventeenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In popular culture posthuman paradigms are present in two different ways. They are to be used in studying it and, in 21st century pop culture, they also happen to be represented inside it. Posthuman paradigms do not only stand in controversy to traditional humanistic paradigms. The plurality of posthuman insights makes them stand in controversy with each other. This happens with the most basic notions, such as those of agency, subjectivity or personhood, which are differently defined by such researchers are B. Latour or E.M. Schlesser. Things get even further complicated when paradigms are embodied in narratives: a paradigm embodied, a paradigm promoted by the narrative and a paradigm used to study can differ considerably. That is a situation in famous Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Here vampire is the thing with agency, which would agree with Latourian conception. However vampire is showed as abomination, abnormality: and this would be in accordance with Schlosser’s conception of agents as subjects only. It is same with apparently so different new narratives, such as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. There, vampires need to be subjectified and even humanised to appear as positive heroes. It seems that not only posthuman paradigms are useful to analyse popular culture, but also popular culture can give insight into posthuman theories. While examining vampire narrative we can notice that some of posthuman paradigms (like Schlosser’s one) are in fact quite in line with humanistic modern tradition: they are based on exclusion of some actors from the domain of agency/subjectivity.