Posthuman Visions in Postwar U.S. and Japanese Speculative Fiction: Re(con)figuring Western (post)humanism

This dissertation explores the "posthuman visions" in U.S. and Japanese science fiction/speculative fiction (SF) produced after World War II. By "posthuman visions," I refer to a writer's imaginative capability to create a series of ideas and imageries of the new figures that appear in SF, many of which are radically different from the modern, Western conception of "human." In many cases, these posthumans are hybrid characters, results of intercorporeal fusions, augmentations, exchanges, and hybridizations between man and machine, man and aliens, man and animals, etc. My research primarily analyzes the literary and cinematic works of SF writers and creators such as William Gibson, Octavia E. Butler, Numa Shozo, and Oshii Mamoru. I argue that their posthuman visions articulate the emerging subjectivity in the postwar technocultural context in which new sciences and technologies such as cybernetics, informatics, bio(techno)logy, nanotechnology, and global information networks have become both extensive and dominant social and cultural forces. Simultaneously, they critically question and refigure the normative model of "human" by engaging the issues of otherness in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality (or nationalism).