1. Excerpt of an Honours Research Essay
Sasha Welsh
Student Number: 3062672
ENG701
Theories of Writing
Research Essay
Posthumanism in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus
and James Cameron’s Avatar
Supervisor: Dr Alannah Birch

2. Posthumanism is the historical moment that marks the end of the opposition between Humanism
anti-humanism and traces a different discursive framework …. The posthumanist perspective rests
on the assumption of the historical decline of Humanism but goes further in exploring alternatives,
without sinking into the rhetoric of the crisis of Man.
(Braidotti 37)
The posthuman in a literal sense of the word seems to spell the death of man and woman. The post
signalling what comes after the human, a future perhaps, where the very existence of the human as
the distinct autonomous and dominant species on our planet is challenged. In contemporary film the
visions of an apocalyptic future for the human race are numerous1
and it seems that the term
posthuman could `easily signify life on earth after the age of man and woman. Indeed, from the
pressure we as a species place on the planet, a pressure which Rosi Braidotti describes in The
Posthuman (2013) as a “geological force capable of affecting all life on this planet” (5), it would
almost seem justifiable that mother nature would develop some strand of a virus or a severe climate
adjustment that would balance our ever increasing numbers with the earth’s available natural
resources. It is from this perspective that a particular scene from The Matrix (1999) written and
directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski seems to echo these anti-human sentiments. The scene
depicts the antagonist agent Smith (an artificial intelligence program charged with keeping order in
the matrix) who reveals his definition of the human to the captured Morpheus (a rebel leader of the
human resistance). Agent Smith’s revelation begins as follows:
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried
to classify your species. I've realized that you are not actually mammals. Every mammal on
this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment.
But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every
natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what
it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And
1
The film The Terminator (1984) directed and co-written by James Cameron, in which the very title of the film
implies the destruction of mankind and posits an artificial intelligence defence system (Skynet) that becomes self-
aware, perceives humanity as a threat to its existence and initiates a nuclear holocaust. In this depiction Skynet and its
army of machines send back a cyborg, a machine with a tough metal endoskeleton and a covering of living flesh that
gives it the appearance of being human, into the past to terminate a waitress (Sarah Connor), whose unborn son
eventually becomes the leader of the human resistance on the verge of victory against the machines. Similarly, in the
film The Matrix (1999) written and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski, artificial intelligence spawns an entire race
of machines. The human race in a war against intelligent machines scorch and burn the sky in order to block the sun’s
rays and thus the solar power the machines are using to function. The burning of the sky seems to imply another nuclear
holocaust and in this dystopian future the machines turn to harvesting humans for bioelectricity, thermal and kinetic
energy, while they keep the humans trapped in “the matrix”, a shared simulation of their world in 1999. Furthermore,
apocalyptic themes in film are not only confined to nuclear holocausts and man’s subjugation by machines, in 28 Days
Later (2002) directed by Danny Boyle, the human population is infected by a highly contagious virus “Rage”, a product
of animal testing humans are conducting on chimpanzees, which turns almost the entire population of the United
Kingdom into flesh eating maniacs with outbreaks we learn that have occurred in Paris and New York. In The Day After
Tomorrow (2004) co-written and directed by Roland Emmerich the issue of humans as a geological force affecting
climate change is thematized, as fictional “superstorms” bring in a new ice age resulting in the decimation and
evacuation of the entire human population in the northern hemisphere. It is the popularity of these films themes
evidenced in their box office success that perhaps speaks of a posthuman that signifies a future without humans or a
future in which humans are no longer the dominant species and plays on the anxiety that perhaps our days as the
dominant species are numbered.

3. we are... the cure.
(Wachowski, A and Wachowski, L 97-98)
Agent Smith’s revelation seems to touch on an underlying anxiety. An anxiety in which humans’
earthly dominance can at times be seen as an over exploitation of the natural environment, of
consuming the earth’s resources and polluting the very elements we need to survive, while our
population continues to multiply, resulting in an underlying anxiety, in that it all inevitably needs to
end, presumably with our extinction or replacement as the dominant species on the planet.
More importantly perhaps, is how this anxiety is entangled with popular conceptions of the
term posthuman and our growing technological progress. Developments in robotics, artificial
intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, information science and cognitive science have
created an environment where the possibility of creating intelligent artificial life might not be
confined to the pages of a science fiction novel for very much longer. Nick Bostrom suggests in his
article “A History of Transhumanist Thought” that “[w]ith the invention of the electronic computer,
the idea of human-like automata graduated from the kindergarten of mythology to the school of
science fiction” (7). He goes on to name authors such as Isaac Asimov, Stanislav Lem and Arthur C.
Clark as examples of authors whose work represents a closer connection to the realities of the
technological advances found in the contemporary world. Bostrom argues that “human-like
automata” will make the leap from “the school of science fiction” and into the contemporary world
of “technological prediction” (7). Furthermore, he states that “the fact that we have not reached
human-level artificial intelligence does not mean we never will, and a number of people … have put
forward reasons for thinking that this could happen within the first half of this century” (7).
Bostrom lists Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, and himself as examples of people
who believe this to be true. Indeed, in 1958 Stanislaw Ulam commented on “the ever accelerating
progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of
approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we
know them, could not continue” (as cited by Bostrom 7). Similarly, in 1965 Gordon E. Moore
noticed that the number of transistors on a computer chip “exhibited exponential growth” which led
to the formulation of “Moore’s Law”, which basically states that “computing power doubles every
18 months to two years” (Bostrom 7). Moreover, in a similar vein and more recently Raymond
Kurzweil has “documented similar exponential growth rates in a number of other technologies”
including the “world economy, which … has doubled every 15 years in modern times” (7). This
rapid technological growth has led to ideas of a “Technological Singularity” where “the creation of
self-improving artificial intelligence will result in radical changes within a very short time span”, or
as discussed in Vernor Vinge’s paper, where “within thirty years we will have the technological
means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended” (Bostrom 7-

4. 8). In this respect rapid technological growth or exponential growth as some have theorised has
perhaps created an anxiety where the possibility of creating intelligent artificial life, and thus the
displacement of the human as the dominant species on the planet, could be perceived to be around
the corner. Indeed Katherine Hayles, in her book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in
Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999), suggests when refering to the term posthuman that:
Some researchers (notably Hans Moravec but also my UCLA colleague Michael Dyer and
many others) believe that this is true not only in a general intellectual sense that displaces
one definition of "human" with another but also in a more disturbingly literal sense that
envisions humans displaced as the dominant form of life on the planet by intelligent
machines. Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a
species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while longer by
becoming machines themselves. In either case, Moravec and like-minded thinkers believe,
the age of the human is drawing to a close.
(Hayles 283)
Here it seems that developments in artificial intelligence have created an uncertainty with regard to
the future of the human species as the dominant power, and it is perhaps this anxiety which is
encapsulated in apocalyptic visions of contemporary film. This anxiety is further heightened by the
“techno-scientific structure of the globalized contemporary economy” (Braidotti 59) which has
diminished the distance between science fiction imaginings and a possible future reality.
Similarly, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818) provides the
quintessential myth for societal anxiety in relation to scientific discovery. Indeed as Maurice Hindle
has noted in his Introduction to the Penguin Classics revised edition (2003) of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, that “[a]s a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that can be cast into a society by a
presuming experimental science, Frankenstein is without equal” (Hindle xi). He cites Brian Eslea’s
book Fathering the Unthinkable which argues that the ambitious Victor Frankenstein’s desire to
“penetrate the secrets of nature” (Shelley 42) is “Mary Shelley’s indictment of masculine ambition”
which is an “exposure of the compulsive character of masculine science” (Hindle xlvi), on which
Hindle considers a warning “that we ignore today at our peril” (xlvii). For, as Hindle suggests:
The ‘incestuous’ violation of life on this planet has reached epidemic proportions, and
much of the blame for this state of affairs must surely be laid at the feet of those who find
an endless thrill of excitement in scientifically ‘penetrating’ the ‘secrets of nature’, taking
little or no responsible account of the damaging implications ‘theory’ might have for
‘practice’. Too often it seems that the lure of power, profit and a so-called ‘security’ of
nations obscures any elements of ‘real disinterestedness, toleration and a clear
understanding’ that may have been present at the beginning of a theoretical scientist’s
practical researches. A nuclear-weapons-infested globe poised to destroy itself does all too
easily seem like a threatening fulfilment of Mary Shelley’s prophetic ‘Frankenstein Idea’
(Hindle xlvii)
Furthermore, Jon Turney has argued in Frankenstein’s Footsteps (1998) that Mary Shelley’s novel
Frankenstein has had such a penetrating influence on society and in particular, from his perspective,
the field of biology. For though he admits that “Frankenstein has long been a versatile frame for

5. interpreting our relationship with technology” (2) he nevertheless believes that Frankenstein is the
“governing myth of modern biology” (3). It is the narrative of this myth that has managed to insert
itself and reproduce itself in the very structures of contemporary society that under the “generic
‘mad science’ script” (201) or the public’s use of popular cultural metaphors linked to common
themes associated with Victor Frankenstein such as tampering with nature, to form negative
opinions in the “debate about science and technology, about what research is desirable or
permissible” (201). This association, Turney argues, has had a negative effect on the development
of genetics but due to the deeply interwoven nature of the narrative the reference to Frankenstein is
an inescapable feature of public discourse on science. He suggests that because of this feature the
debate seems to be polarised to simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers on what genetics should or should not
be allowed to research and instead believes complex answers are needed in order for the field to
advance.
It is from this position that Andy Miah argues that the complexities of “posthumanism offers
such a discourse” (7). For as Hayles suggests, “[a]lthough some current versions of the posthuman
point toward the antihuman and the apocalyptic, we can craft others that will be conducive to the
long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we
share the planet and ourselves” (291). Indeed, Hayles believes that the antihuman and the
apocalyptic versions “do not exhaust the meanings of the posthuman” (283). In this respect Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein and in particular the monster as a figure of the posthuman can be seen to
demonstrate these complexities inherent in the discourse of posthumanism. For far too often as
Hindle suggests “the Creature’s narrative, so vital to the moral underpinning of the whole work, has
been ignored in so many of the theatrical and filmic re-workings of the story … the moral-political
argument of Mary’s story has often simply been left out, unwanted by an audience which prefers the
more frightening (and ‘simpler’) grunts of a threatening monster” (Hindle xxxiii). Indeed, although
the posthuman is intertwined with scientific and technological progress this does not necessarily
spell a posthumanist future where humans are superseded by cyborgs, aliens, artificial intelligence
or some genetically engineered species. Instead,
contemporary visions of posthumanism are informed by conversations on cyborgs or
automata, which have often involved a reflective stance on humanity’s distinct and special
place in the world. In this fashion a crucial premise of posthumanism is its critical stance
towards the prominence afforded to humanity in the natural order. In this sense, the ‘post’
of posthumanism need not imply the absence of humanity or moving beyond it in some
biological or evolutionary manner. Rather, the starting point should be an attempt to
understand what has been omitted from an anthropocentric worldview, which includes
coming to terms with how the Enlightenment centring of humanity has been revealed as
inadequate.
(Miah 2)
In this respect, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein encodes a script in the sense that Turney suggests the

6. neuroscientist Frank Schank coined the term script. That is to say that:
scripts of various kinds, from behavioural to emotional, are crucial to the operation of
memory, and help us to navigate through a wide range of possible social and cultural
encounters. Once a script has been laid down, a single cue can evoke an entire story, as an
interpretive frame or context for what is being discussed. In this sense, the Frankenstein
script has become one of the most important in our culture’s discussion of science and
technology. To activate it, all you need is the word: Frankenstein.
(Turney 6)
In addition, the ‘script’ produced by the story also “expresses many of the deepest fears and desires
about modernity, especially about violation of the body” (Turney 8). The narrative of the Creature
in the Frankenstein text can perhaps also be seen as the beginning of the “conversation” on the
posthuman, non-human, cyborg, automata, alien or Other in which “contemporary visions of
posthumanism” are informed, not the narrative “ignored in so many of the theatrical and filmic re-
workings of the story”, but the narrative found in the “seven central chapters” of the novel and
“given over to the plight of Frankenstein’s Creature”, where he “tells the story of his outcast
existence to his Creator” (Hindle xxxiii). Indeed the outcast or the marginalized seems to be the
central concern of cultural theorists on posthumanism. Miah suggests that “cultural theorists are
concerned about narratives of Otherness and their capacity to be politically divisive. From this view,
the appeal of the posthuman is in the destabilising of humanist values – such as the aspiration of
perfectibility or the value of controlling nature” (Miah 20). Furthermore, the marginalized or the
Other is extended to include all other life forms. For “posthumanism is consistent with perspectives
in animal ethics that seek to diminish the meaning and value of claims that species boundaries
should have any bearing on our moral commitment to other life forms” (Miah 2). In this respect
Frankenstein, through giving voice to the Other but also through the creation of the Other as part
“biological and part mechanical (through its reanimation)” (Miah 12), not only follows the
Romantic Movement’s quest for political freedom by giving voice to the ordinary, the outcast and
the marginalised, but extends this concern to include other creatures or animals as well. In a similar
way that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) can be seen as a cautionary tale, and through its
warning man is taught to respect his fellow creatures. The novel and in particular the Creature
seems to demonstrate many of the concerns or complexities of posthumanism; however as Miah
suggests “we are still becoming posthuman, in the sense that these disconnected perspectives have
yet to be written into its historical development, where, for instance, posthumanism is understood as
a critique of humanism” (Miah 20). It is in this developing sense of the term posthumanism that
Frankenstein can perhaps be seen as the beginning of the “conversation” on the posthuman and can
be compared to a more contemporary narrative in which posthumanist views are perhaps more
evident. In this respect, I have chosen James Cameron’s film Avatar (2009) that not only mirrors
these concerns but perhaps plays with and develops these concerns to produce a sympathetic

7. depiction of the posthuman that challenges the idea of the ‘monstrous’ creation, thus decentring the
human and giving value to other species.
Mary Shelley’s representation of the Creature in Frankenstein is more complex than the
simple binary of man and monster. Furthermore, through its very creation it posits the idea of a
posthuman. However, Frankenstein is not the first myth in which the creation of man figures or
where a being in the likeness of man is created. One need only look at the anthropomorphic figure
of the Golem in Jewish folklore to see that myths of creating beings that resemble man are not
original or have their beginning with Frankenstein. However, the Frankenstein myth is different to
earlier myths in the respect that unlike earlier myths, as Jon Turney suggests, “Victor does not
invoke the aid of the Deity, or any other supernatural agency. He achieves his goal by dint of his
own (scientific) efforts” (14). Indeed the Creature is different from other myths through its
connection to man’s scientific potential. Furthermore, Mary Shelley’s representation of it as a
thinking, feeling, rational being in the central chapters of the novel presents the creation of an Other
that seems human as well and thus complicates the idea of the monster as the antithesis of man, in
the same way that posthumanism complicates the idea of a distinction between man and animal or
man and machine.
This complex representation of the Creature is particularly evident in the central chapters of
the novel, where Victor Frankenstein encounters his creation on the Mer de Glace and then listens to
its story. In the third chapter of the second volume of the novel, the Creature begins its narrative. Its
tale begins with what it defines as the “original era of my being”, which it also states that it
remembered with “considerable difficulty” (Shelley 105). However, what makes the opening of this
narrative interesting and perhaps relevant to the development of posthumanism is the way the
Creature comes to a state of “knowing personhood” (Hindle xxxiv), or consciousness, a sense of
self and sensation brought about by the world or the environment that encompasses it. Hindle notes
that in the year Mary Shelley was busy writing her novel she also spent a substantial portion of her
time reading John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), “[f]rom November
1816 to January 1817” (Hindle xxxiv). Indeed, Hindle suggests that Mary Shelley absorbed
“Locke’s tabula rasa theory of knowledge (epistemology) and applied it to the way the Creature
attained to a ‘knowing’ personhood” (xxxiv). More important to the development of the posthuman
is how John Locke’s theory of knowledge contained in his work An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding relates, perhaps as a variation of our understanding of the human mind and body,
and through Mary Shelley’s depiction of the non-human as well, and as such can perhaps be seen as
the beginning of the “conversations on cyborgs or automata, which have often involved a reflective
stance on humanity’s distinct and special place in the world” (Miah 2). For Locke’s essay concerns
“Human” understanding and Mary Shelley, by conflating it with the non-human begins to propose

8. the conception of the posthuman. It follows that Locke’s epistemology seems to be the foundation
of Mary Shelley’s depiction of the Creature’s “original era of being” (Shelley 105), but in using
Locke’s theory as a conceptual framework for the depiction of the Creature, Shelley and thus the
Creature can be said to represent a variation of a larger debate centring on Descartes’s mind/body
dualism. This debate is perhaps at the centre of the imagining of the cyborg and as such the
conceptual framework for Donna Haraway, in which “[c]yborg imagery can suggest a way out of
the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves” (Haraway
39). This debate, evident in the “sensationalist” (Hindle xxxiv) depiction of the Creature, is
continued in Hayles’s formulation of “how information lost its body, how the cyborg was created as
a cultural icon and technological artifact, and how humans became posthumans” (Hayles 24). In
many ways this early critical work by Haraway and Hayles begins to situate the discourse on
posthumanism, a discourse whose foundational conception can perhaps be seen at the “heart” of
Mary Shelley’s text, and perhaps even as a catalyst for the formulation of posthumanist thought
through the novel’s depiction of the very same themes as well as its relation to scientific and
technological progress.
Furthermore, in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the planetary moon Pandora and its natural
inhabitants seem to represent the fulfilment of Rosi Braidotti’s process of becoming posthuman that
she suggests in her book The Posthuman (2013). She classifies this becoming under three branches
namely, “becoming-animal, becoming-earth and becoming-machine” (66). Furthermore, she also
defines this becoming as the “post-anthropocentric turn” (43). However, although Pandora and its
natural inhabitants may be said to represent the fulfilment of her conceptualization of “becoming-
animal” and “becoming-earth” (66); it is Jake Sully and his avatar whose representations portray the
post-anthropocentric turn with all its complexities and paradoxes. For, Braidotti defines our age as
the “anthropocene”, a “bio-genetic age” which is “the historical moment when the Human has
become a geological force capable of affecting all life on this planet” (5). In this situated context the
post-anthropocentric turn is not without its own difficulties or paradoxes.
More important perhaps, is the complexity of Jake Sully’s representation and his character’s
ability to demonstrate a theoretical approach which may be considered to be representative of the
aims of posthumanism. A theoretical approach that Cary Wolfe defines as posthuman in his book
What is Posthumanism? (2010). It seems that what may be at play in the film is the idea that the
body “is now seen as a kind of virtuality” (Wolfe xxiii). This idea finds a home in a theory that
Niklas Luhmann defines as the “reconstruction of deconstruction” (Wolfe 8), a combination of
Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and Niklas Luhmann’s second order systems theory. Wolfe
suggests that
Derrida and Luhmann emerge as exemplary posthumanist theorists … because both refuse

9. to locate meaning in the realm of either the human or, for that matter, the biological.
Moreover, both insist on the disarticulation of what Luhmann calls psychic systems and
social systems, consciousness and communication, in ways famously insisted on in
Derrida’s early critique of the self-presence of speech and autoaffection of the voice. For
both, the form of meaning is the true substrate of the coevolution of psychic systems and
social systems, and this means that the human is, at its core and in its very constitution,
radically ahuman and constitutively prosthetic.
(Wolfe xxvi)
Here, when Wolfe suggests that they “both insist on the disarticulation of what Luhmann calls
psychic systems and social systems, consciousness and communication, in ways famously insisted
on in Derrida’s early critique of the self-presence of speech and autoaffection of the voice” (xxvi).
He is referring to Derrida’s critique of the self-presence of speech and auto-affection of the voice,
which deconstructs the stability of Western philosophy stemming from ancient Greek philosophy
and Aristotle, where speech is privileged over writing. Stemming from the ancient Greeks, Western
philosophy sees speech as evidence of the self-presence of the individual, as the act of speech
provides evidence of one’s existence. Furthermore, the auto-affection of the voice is premised on
the idea that by hearing one’s voice the individual affects himself and he usually takes this as a sign
of consciousness. Thus the sound of your voice affects the self (auto) and because it seems that the
thought and voice occur at the same time one is inclined to conflate the voice with consciousness.
However, Derrida uses a variety of methods to disarticulate this premise, the simplest one being that
of time in relation to the experience of auto-affection. The experience of auto-affection can be
considered to be an event and all events occur in time. If one is truly hearing what one is thinking
there should be no difference between the thought and hearing the thought occurring in the sound of
your voice, there should be a singularity of thought and voice. However, just based on the
conception of time alone, Derrida is able to deconstruct the stability or solidity of this belief. For if,
hypothetically speaking, one did hear exactly what one was thinking it would have to happen in the
present in order to be an event, and an event necessarily implies a spontaneous and irreplaceable
experience, in that it is not repeated. However, the present also consists of your memory of the
recent present and because it is a memory it is a repetition of what happened to you in the recent
present. Furthermore, one anticipates the future based on the memory of the recent present. In this
way memory and anticipation consist of repeatability and as such the ‘now’ of the present is no
different from the ‘now’ of the memory of the recent present, or the ‘now’ anticipated in the future
and therefore no different from every other now you have experienced. However, the present
experience is at the same time an event and an event is not repeatable but irreplaceable and
spontaneous. Furthermore, because this occurs at the same time as the repeatable ‘now’ without
difference there is no experience that is separate from either the event or repeatability. It follows
that because the present always folds the memory of the recent past back into itself in order to

10. anticipate the future or perceive it, there is a “difference” in the centre of it (Derrida, Voice and
Phenomenon 56), a gap that occurs, a minute time away, where one differentiates into the speaker
and into the hearer. As, in the positing of an “I” in any self-reference implies a difference from the
self as other than the person who is speaking as an irreducible “hetero-affection” as opposed to an
autonomous auto-affection (Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I am 95). For example as “I (that is,
Sasha Welsh) tried to show earlier (at another time) in this essay and in another essay (and as such
elsewhere) the importance of difference in Derrida’s work”. This example implies that the “I” is an
“other” self that must be welcomed back into itself (The Animal that Therefore I am 95).
Accordingly, there is always some difference in time between thinking and speaking (between
thinking the difference between which “I” you are referring to) and thus one cannot truly say that
even though, hypothetically, one hears exactly what one thinks, and that even though this may seem
to occur at the same time, because the minute difference in time away (differentiating between the
one speaking and the one hearing), speech and hearing are always slightly different and not the pure
or autonomous ‘you’ that auto-affection implies. In order to prove, without a doubt, that there is a
singularity of thought and speech which would thus leave no room for doubt that the voice is proof
of consciousness, one needs to equate the thought with the word being heard at exactly the same
time, and precisely the same word and by the same particular self ‘you’ refer to. In this way Wolfe
suggests that Derrida and Luhmann both disarticulate the connection between communication (in
which speech or voice would be one form) and the psychic system (in which consciousness or mind
would be another form). By demonstrating the difference between these systems they thus
disarticulate the solidity of the foundational connection of these systems that Western philosophy
assumes.
However, Luhmann also theorises that although there is a “difference between consciousness
and communication, psychic systems and social systems … may nevertheless be coupled
structurally through media such as language” (Wolfe xxiii). Furthermore, Luhmann describes the
problem created “by modernity as a form of ‘functional differentiation’” as the “formal dynamics of
meanings that arise from the unavoidably paradoxical self-reference of any observation” (xx). In
other words if one is observing an experiment under certain conditions, the observation of those
conditions depend on the observer’s construction of reality. It follows that modern theories require
that one include an element of self-observation as part of the experiment, a form of self-reference.
This means that observation necessarily generates complexity from simplicity. Furthermore,
complexity can never be reduced to an underlying simplicity as simplicity just like “complexity is a
construct of observation that could always be other than it is” (Rasch as cited by Wolfe 303). This is
known as “contingency” or the “ability to alter perspectives”, as contingency “acts as a reservoir of
complexity in all simplicity” (303). It is this generation of complexity associated with modernity

11. that is known as “functional differentiation” (Wolfe xx). Furthermore, it is due to this reasoning that
Wolfe suggests that “functional differentiation itself determines the posthumanist form of meaning,
reason, and communication by untethering it from the moorings in the individual, subjectivity, and
consciousness. Meaning now becomes a specifically modern form of self-referential recursivity that
is used by both psychic systems (consciousness) and social systems (communication) to handle
overwhelming environmental complexity” (xx). It follows that when Wolfe says that the “form of
meaning, reason and communication” is determined by “functional differentiation itself”, he implies
that there is always difference or the possibility of difference in meaning, reason or communication
in order to function in the complexity of modernity. In this respect if meaning is referred to as “a
specifically modern form of self-referential recursivity” (xx) it means that it functions on the same
principle of differentiation. As we have already seen above, the conception of the self is not an
autonomous entity but contains the possibility of difference. For example the statement that “I am
thinking about myself” could very well apply or be used as a mode of thinking about someone else
for although I might say I am thinking about myself I could at the same time be thinking about
someone else. In this light the term “self-referential recursivity” defines a process based on the
repeated reference to self with difference or the possibility of difference. The self could always be
other than it is and as such the repeated self-reference generates complexity, in that it is the same
but different, and through repetition the possibility of difference increases. So, not tied to the
individual, subjectivity or consciousness “functional differentiation” becomes the very “form” of
meaning, the “specifically modern form of self-referential recursivity” (Wolfe xx). In light of this
situated theoretical approach Jake Sully’s complex representation seems to demonstrate the
complexities of a posthuman approach that the Creature in Frankenstein only begins to approach or
question, but it is nevertheless the beginning of a conversation on posthumanism that I will go into
more detail further on.
Neil Badmington in his article “Theorizing Posthumanism” borrows from Derrida when
conceptualizing a theory of posthumanism. It is perhaps here that we see a connection to a
theoretical approach to posthumanism that can perhaps be applied to the Creature. He suggests that
a theory of posthumanism can only develop by working through humanism. Badmington cites
Derrida as a reference to the impossibility of separating posthumanism from humanism “because all
thought always takes place within a certain tradition, thought itself is bound to bear some trace of
that tradition” (Badmington 13). He suggests that a theoretical approach to posthumanism occurs
within the constructs of humanism as a “working- through” (22) of humanism. Here a “working-
through” of humanism does not imply the repetition of humanism but that it “must be worked
through, patiently rewritten” (21). Badmington argues, while referring to Derrida’s deconstruction
that if “posthumanism repeats humanism, it does so in a certain way” (15). It seems that what

12. Badmington is implying is a theory that situates itself within humanism, a theory that patiently
works through it and through this process it is “rewritten” (21). The Creature seems to resemble this
conceptualization. It fits the very conception of René Descartes’s thinking essence. During its stay
with the cottagers it seems primarily concerned with the development of the mind to the extent that
it refers to its own physiognomy as monstrous, hideous or grotesque and therefore seems to
privilege the mind over the body. It is here perhaps that the Creature demonstrates Derrida’s
suggestion that it is possible to “lodge oneself within traditional conceptuality in order to destroy it”
(as cited by Badmington 15). The Creature fits into the definition of the human defined by
Descartes and as such “lodges” itself within the “traditional conceptuality” (15) of humanism.
However, it is spurned by society and becomes antihuman and is therefore a threat to man who is
the focus of humanism. More important perhaps, is how the definition or categorization of the
Creature destroys the conception of the human from within as being both human and non-human it
defies the conception of the human as special by blurring the boundaries of human and non-human,
by repeating the human in a certain way. More importantly, it works through humanism by
attempting to be human; and then after it is spurned it changes and rewrites this conception by
trying to become a species of its own, by convincing Victor to create a wife just like him2
.
Furthermore, the theoretical approaches of Derrida and Luhmann which “insist on the
disarticulation of … psychic systems and social systems, consciousness and communication”
(Wolfe xxvi), result in the fact that “meaning, reason and communication” are untethered from their
“moorings in the individual, subjectivity, and consciousness” (xx), as we have seen above. In
addition, it has also allowed a new conception of the body where the body “is now seen as a kind of
virtuality” (Wolfe xxiii). Indeed this all seems to foreshadow a language where subjectivity and
feeling are lost and where an impersonal machine like language takes its place. However, as Wolfe
argues “‘virtual’ does not mean not ‘real’” (xxiv), instead he believes that it is “precisely for that
reason, all the more real” (xxiii). In defence of the argument he references the work of Chiliean
biologist and philosopher Humberto Maturana and Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist
Francisco Varela, who developed the term autopoiesis which refers to a system capable of
maintaining and reproducing itself (xxv). In reference to their work Wolfe argues that if “the
contention that, neurophysiologically, different autopoietic life-forms “bring forth a world” in what
Maturana and Varela call their “embodied enaction – and if, in so doing, the environment is thus
different, indeed sometimes radically different, for different life-forms – then the environment, and
with it ‘the body,’ becomes unavoidably a virtual, multidimensional space” (xxiii). What Wolfe is
2
I have used the word “him” here and during the course of the essay the personal pronouns of reference to the Creature
may oscillate between the human and the non-human; or between one which has more emotional attachment and one
that tries to classify it as an object of human creation. The indeterminacy of the Creature is another question in itself
with even Victor switching between miserable monster, hideous wretch, devil and odious companion. Furthermore, as I
do not have the opportunity to delve into this question here and as such am undecided myself, I ask for your indulgence.

13. suggesting is that any environment, and here he means the “environment of the system, not nature
or any other given anteriority” (xxiv), is filled with “noise, multiplicity, complexity, and the
heterogeneity of the environment”. Furthermore, in order for autopoietic systems to continue their
existence they reduce this overpowering complexity in terms of “the selectivity of a self-referential
selectivity or code” (xxiv). This necessarily implies that the “world is an ongoing, differentiated
construction and creation of a shared environment, sometimes converging in a consensual domain,
sometimes not, by autopoietic entities that have their own temporalities, chronicities, perceptual
modalities, and so on – in short, their own forms of embodiment” (xxiv). In other words different
“autopoietic entities” (xxiv) or different species for example have different nervous systems,
different neural networks and perhaps different senses too. They therefore bring forth different
worlds. Furthermore, because these different systems “bring forth a world” through their “embodied
enaction” (xxiii), and by enaction Wolfe means their interaction with the environment and their way
of organizing knowledge of this interaction, the world is necessarily multidimensional. Moreover, if
this embodied enaction means that your environment is different or changed through a new way of
seeing or understanding it and that this differs for different autopoietic entities, “the environment,
and with it the body, becomes unavoidably a virtual, multidimensional space” (xxiii). However, by
reducing the environment it would seem that the virtual would be less complex and as such less
real. Here, Luhmann proposes the principle “openness from closure”, in that in order to exist and
reproduce autopoietic systems need to close the system, thus becoming more stable by creating
boundaries and integrity. However, because the environment is more complex than the system the
system is placed under a pressure generated by its inferiority. This increased “internal
differentiation” (112) causes the system to repeat the environment/system distinction internally (a
self-referential selection) thus building up its own complexity. Furthermore, with every closure the
system is structurally coupled to the environment. In other words closure creates points of contact
with the environment by constituting elements more able to be determined by the system. More
points of contact or more closures results in the buildup of internal complexity, which “increases the
complexity of the environment possible for any system”(xxiv) and thus the environment becomes
different to what it was before making it and the “body” virtual. Furthermore, this increased
connection means that there is a greater “sensitivity to, and dependence on the environment” (xxiv).
For Luhmann a system is not just a body it can be a social system such as communication or a
psychic system such as consciousness, a biological system or even the legal system. The interaction
of these different systems mean that even while they are reducing the complexity of their own
environments for themselves they are increasing the complexity in the environment of other
systems in what Wolfe suggests is “the nearly paradigmatic situation associated with
‘postmodernity’: hypercomplexity” (112). The equality of this theoretical approach, in that it can be

14. applied to any system (animal, plant or social system), is perhaps why Wolfe refers to it as
posthuman. Furthermore, all that is required is a distinction between ‘system’ and ‘environment’
how this is articulated depends on the “form” of the discipline that encompasses it. Closure
according to Luhmann is a form of broadening possible environmental contacts. In this Luhmann
differs from Derrida, as for Derrida there is no closure only difference and undecidability. Self-
reference, for Derrida, needs to be of itself only and not affected by the observations of other
systems or the conditions of reality, such as the ‘present’ seen above; it needs to be independent of
these to be truly self-referent and not contain the possibility of difference. Thus taking reality as a
given there can be no true self-reference and therefore no true closure. For Luhmann on the other
hand the difference comes to be reflected in “the problem of complexity” (28) that the environment
is more complex than the system and that other systems reducing their environment increases the
complexity in ours means that our environment is always differing and different from that of
before. Furthermore, because of this complexity we process more closures and make more contact
points with our environment thus reconstructing the difference (and making the environment more
real than it was) and hence his definition “the reconstruction of deconstruction” (8). This is what
Luhmann defines as second order systems theory and what makes it truly posthuman is that it could
apply to the Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or to avatar Jake Sully in James Cameron’s
Avatar. The difference in form or medium between written language and film language does not
detract from the theory’s ability to make its theoretical approach available to both3
.
In light of the critical theories stated above. I will argue that the Creature’s narrative is perhaps the
beginning of the conversation on posthumanism not only as a representation of the Other through a
sympathetic imagination. But, more importantly, through what the imagination of this fictional
being does to formulate a new way of thinking in relation to the theoretical approaches around it.
The Creature’s narrative begins after Victor Frankenstein encounters it on the summit of
Montanvert. He is persuaded to follow it over the icy mountainous landscape to a hut where it
begins its narrative:
It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being: all the
events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations
seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long
time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses.
(Shelley 105)
It seems, here, at the beginning of the creature’s narrative, that it speaks in the language of Locke as
it describes its state of consciousness. It lists four bodily sensations, namely that it “saw, felt, heard
and smelt” for its state of confusion and the fact that these events were “indistinct” (105) at the
time. Indeed, it seems that it was these “multiplicity of sensations” that “seized” it and occurred “at
3
In Wolfe’s book What is Posthumanism? He uses this theoretical approach to analyse the visual arts, literature and
film.

15. the same time” that accounts for its state of being. Here the creature’s use of the word “seized”
(105) invokes the sense that it was “forcibly” and “suddenly” (Reader’s Digest Illustrated Oxford
Dictionary 749) affected by these sensations, thus emphasising the power of their hold over his
consciousness. However, it could simultaneously imply its ability to “comprehend quickly or
clearly” (Reader’s Digest Illustrated Oxford Dictionary 749) and it is perhaps here through this
definition that we begin to see the connection of these sensations to its mind. For the creature lists
four bodily sensations sight, touch, sound and smell, apart from taste, all the human sense organs in
sequence thus emphasising their significance to his state of being. More important is the fact that
they are given in the form of verbs where it states that it “saw, felt, heard and smelt” (105).
According to Graham Lock these verbs or processes are at the heart of “experiential meaning”
which “has to do with the ways language represents our experience (actual and vicarious) of the
world as well as the inner world of our thoughts and feelings” (9). In this respect these processes are
at the heart of the creatures experience and they represent his choice of language to describe this
experience. More specific to our case is that these processes are defined by Halliday as “mental
processes” in that they “encompass senses of feelings, thinking and perceiving” (106-111). It seems
that the creature’s selection of verbs describes an experience totally engrossed in the mental
processing of the world, an experience it gains through its body’s sensory organs. They provide
mental information in which it can make sense of the world around it and the fact that they seize it
all “at the same time” necessarily results in the difficulty it has processing this information and
hence its confusion and the indistinctness of the world. It is only once it has “learned to distinguish
between the operations of [its] various senses” (105), and here again the word “learned” highlights a
mental process, that the creature begins to comprehend. Indeed, a closer look at the passage reveals
that the extract is almost exclusively littered with verbs depicting mental processes. The creature
states that “I remembered”, “I learned” and even the verb “seized” (105), as I have mentioned above
can be seen from the perspective of comprehending something quickly or clearly, are all related to
mental processes. From this extract it would seem that the creature’s very existence is based on the
mental. However, it is the significance and importance of the four bodily sensations listed one after
the other that defines this language as Locke’s and thus though mental in nature, this mental state is
caused by our experience of the external objects of the world that we take in through our senses.
Thus through our bodies the mental interior of the mind is connected to the external world of our
experience.
In this respect, Locke’s epistemology is different to that of René Descartes. For Locke the
question is, where have all the “materials for reason and knowledge” (Locke 122) come from? His
answer is from “EXPERIENCE” and he suggests “that all our knowledge is founded; and from that
it ultimately derives itself” (122). For Locke goes on to state that “man being conscious to himself

16. that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are
there” (121), that is the ideas founded by the objects of the material world. In other words what he
is suggesting is that “ideas” (121) are the materials of reason and knowledge as well as the object of
thinking. Furthermore, as he emphatically stated earlier, it is through experience that we come by
these ideas. It is this experience of “external material things” (124) or in a more specific sense
“from bodies affecting our senses”, by what he defines as “external objects” that “conveys into the
mind what produces there those perceptions” (123). Here he states that “[t]his great source of most
of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding,
I call SENSATION” (123). In this sense it seems that the creature’s narrative mirrors Locke’s
philosophy. The significance of the “strange multiplicity of sensations” (Shelley 105) in catalysing
the barrage of mental processing is reflected in Locke’s belief that “most of the ideas we have” are
“wholly” dependent on “our senses” (Locke 123), and indeed in one way or the other there seems to
be a trace in all ideas that they are developed from the senses, according to Locke’s epistemology.
Furthermore, there seems to be a more explicit connection to his theory later in the creature’s
narrative. For on the following page the creature describes its changed circumstances in the forest as
“[m]y sensations had by this time become distinct, and my mind received every day additional
ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light and to perceive objects in their right forms” (Shelley
106). Here the language connects directly to Locke’s philosophy. As a result of the distinctness of
its sensations its “mind received every day additional ideas” (emphasis added 106).The creature
specifically portrays Locke’s development of knowledge, using his terminology to demonstrate how
ideas are received in the mind by external objects. More important perhaps, is that it defines how
this happens through the faculty of perception that humans possess, as it begins to “perceive objects
in their right forms” (emphasis added 106). It is evident that the creature’s description of events in
the forest and through its very use of language that its development mirrors Locke’s philosophy.
Furthermore, it seems that at this stage in Locke’s theory of knowledge it seems to focus on
the materiality of objects and bodies. Indeed it seems to privilege the human body through the
operation of its senses in acquiring ideas. For as Catherine Hobbs suggests when referring to
Locke’s essay, that “this foundation in sensation seems to privilege the body” and that “[t]he body
and its passions loom threateningly and centrally yet are left behind. It might be protested that
Locke’s dependence upon pleasure and pain for the mainsprings of human action reveals an
inevitable reliance upon the body” (155). From this perspective although Locke goes on to leave the
body behind he still seems to acknowledge the importance of the physical and the body in the
development of ideas in the mind, for as Hobbs suggests a “primary move from body to intellect is
represented by his familiar two-step path to knowledge” (154). It is here and in this sense that

17. Locke differs from Descartes. For although Locke believes we can come by knowledge through our
experience of external objects that affect our senses, Descartes states
that there are two ways of arriving at knowledge of things – through experience and
through deduction … while our experiences of things are often deceptive, the deduction or
pure inference of one thing from another can never be performed wrongly by an intellect
which is in the least degree rational
(Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind 12)
For Descartes the question is how we come by certain knowledge and this rules out our
“experiences of things” as they are “often deceptive” (emphasis added 12). He goes on later in the
passage to propose “let us now review all the actions of the intellect by means of which we are able
to arrive at a knowledge of things with no fear of being mistaken. We recognize only two: intuition
and deduction” (14). Furthermore, when defining “intuition” Descartes states that he does not mean
“the fluctuating testimony of the senses or the deceptive judgement of the imagination as it botches
things together” (14). Instead, he believes that it is “the indubitable conception of a clear and
attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason” (14). Here, we see that Descartes
does not give any weight to the “fluctuating testimony of the senses” (14), but favours the internal
mental processes of intuition and deduction as the only certain way knowledge can be acquired. In
this way Locke differs from Descartes by giving value to the experience of the material world and
the body.
However, as Hobbs goes on later to say “Locke nonetheless restricts understanding to the
mind to eliminate the body’s hegemony. Since all we can ever know are ideas, knowledge itself for
Locke consists in the ‘perception of the connexion of and agreement, or disagreement and
repugnancy of any of our ideas’” (155). If knowledge only consists in our perception of the
relationship between ideas then although we acquire ideas from objects we can never know them as
all we know are our perception of the relationships between ideas, we can never know the true
essence of objects. In this way the mind is privileged as the site where knowledge takes place
however the form of knowledge is based on perception and relations between ideas. Furthermore, if
we cannot know the true essence of objects that means that the ideas our senses give us may be
wrong.
The Creature in the wood moves from acquiring ideas through physical bodily sensations to
acquiring ideas through reflection, Locke’s second step of his path to knowledge. Here is a situation
that captures Locke’s conception of the stimuli of pain or pleasure that accompanies all our ideas
and prompts us to act in response to our perceptual experiences. The Creature on encountering a fire
“left by some wandering beggars” is so overcome by the warmth it experiences that it thrusts its
hand into the hot embers only to withdraw it again “with a cry of pain” (Shelley 107). It is this
feeling of pain that prompts it but also the pleasure of the warmth that it wishes to regain that causes

18. it to state “I reflected on this” (107), and then through reflection it formulates a solution. For it is in
the act of reflection, as it pertains to Locke, that one thinks on the ideas already in the mind thus
combining and abstracting these to form new ones, internally. In this respect the Creature just like
Locke moves from seeming to privilege the body to the mind. However, although Locke sees the
mind and body as distinct, made from different substances (an immaterial thinking substance and an
extended material solid substance), he nevertheless thinks they are related, and in his conception of
the ‘self’ both his mind and body form part of it.
It is perhaps in this way that Frankenstein begins to converse with the posthuman by
beginning to connect the Creature’s intellect to its embodied senses and so begins to suggest the
idea of an alternative mode of thought to that of Descartes’s, which began to dominate humanism.
More importantly, Locke’s epistemology introduces the idea of materiality as a theoretical
approach, through material external objects from which ideas are formed and through the
materiality of the body and its senses. Indeed the French philosopher La Mettrie who extended
Locke’s propositions of materiality in his work L’Homme Machine (1748) and suggests, as cited by
De Saussure, that:
To be a machine, to feel, to think, to be able to distinguish good and evil, as well as the
eyes can different colours, in a word, to be born with an understanding and moral sense,
yet at the same time, to be but an animal, or machine, in all this there is no more absurdity
than in asserting that there is a Monkey, or Parrot, both which are capable of giving and
receiving pleasure …. So far then am I from thinking that thought is inconsistent with
organized matter, that I look upon it to be a property as much belonging thereto, as
electricity, inpenetrability, extension, etc.
(La Mettrie as cited by De Saussure 436)
It seems that here is a conception of thought that could be posthuman as it gives machine and
animal the same capabilities as humans without anthropomorphising them, as La Mettrie suggests
“to be but animal, or machine” (436). In this way the human is not special and a level of equality
not distinctness is created. Furthermore, through their shared materiality, a materiality that does not
presume “that thought is inconsistent with organized matter” (436) the qualities of the human that
have been used to justify their special place in the world are extended to animal and machine. La
Mettrie intensifies what Locke has introduced and it seems rather prophetic how similar La
Mettrie’s conception of matter is to contemporary theorists such as, Felix Guattari and Rosi
Braidotti’s conception of matter. La Mettrie conflates “thought” with “organized matter” (436) and
seems to mirror Rosi Braidotti and Felix Guattari’s definition that “[l]iving matter … is intelligent
and self-organizing” (Braidotti 60). In many ways La Mettrie seems to be ahead of his time,
conceptualizing a definition of matter similar to what Braidotti will use as a basis for her “becoming
posthuman” (35).

19. However, in Cartesian dualism the mind and body are seen as distinct and made from different
substances, and he privileges the mind to the extent that in his Discourse on the Method his very
existence is only dependent upon the mind. Descartes states that
From this I knew I was a substance whose essence or nature is simply to think, and which
does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist. Accordingly
this ‘I’ – that is, the soul by which I am what I am – is entirely distinct from the body, and
indeed is easier to know than the body, and would not fail to be whatever it is, even if the
body did not exist.
(Descartes 127)
It is evident that for Descartes mind is all that matters. It is this “I”, this thinking essence distinct
from the body, that he uses to separate man from the inhuman and to assert his anthropocentrism.
For as Neil Badmington suggests when referring to Descartes’s Discourse on the Method, “[t]he
human, in short, is absolutely distinct from the inhuman over which it towers in a position of natural
supremacy. I think, therefore I cannot possibly be an automaton” (18). Indeed, as Badmington
suggests, not only is the machine seen as separate but “because the fact that neither the animal nor
the machine could ever exercise rational thought means that there would be no essential difference.
Both figures are, in Descartes’s eyes, ultimately inhuman” (17). In this respect, according to
Descartes definition of the human as a thinking essence or his observation that “I am thinking,
therefore I exist” (127), the Creature, perhaps, can be seen as a human as it fits this definition. In the
passage where he takes up residence secretly with the cottagers and reads a volume of Plutarch’s
Lives, Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther and Milton’s Paradise Lost he demonstrates another stage of
development. These books produce in him a pendulum of emotions which he describes as “an
infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk
me into the lowest dejection” (Shelley130). The depths and heights of his feelings swinging from
“ecstasy” to the “lowest dejection” (130) represent the degree of power these ideas have. In Locke’s
“linguistic theory … words are signs for ideas” (Hobbs 154) and as discussed earlier ideas are
always accompanied by the stimuli of pain or pleasure. The troughs and peaks of his feelings come
from the ideas he acquired from these particular books, and as they represent polar opposites on the
scale of happiness and depression they indeed seem to be profound. From these books he learns
various ideas about the world outside, a world he has very little experience of. From the Sorrows of
Werther he seems to learn about the ordinary and simple domestic life “with lofty sentiments and
feelings” and “had for their object something out of self” (Shelly 131) which he could relate to his
experience among the cottagers. It is perhaps, here that we see the ambiguity contained in the
Creature. It seems to suggest that these “lofty sentiments and feelings” had for their “object” (and
from this I assume idea or concept), “something” out of its “self” (131). Furthermore, in the
following lines it states that this “something out of self, accorded well … with the wants which
were forever alive in my own bosom” (131). The creature seems to imply that it is capable of

20. deeper feelings, perhaps even love, especially in connection to the phrase “alive in my own bosom”,
and the deep seated emotional connotations to the word “bosom” (131). Then again the word
“something” adds an elusive quality to this feeling as if it may be what it is feeling or it may not.
The vagueness hides the fact of whether it has knowledge of love or whether it feels but cannot
define it. In the end it does not tell us and yet it seems to imply this. Moreover, it mixes the
expression of these feelings with its experiences of the cottagers, leaving one to wonder whether
these feelings are in relation to them, or a deeper want that excludes them. However, he notes,
that I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike those beings concerning
whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathised with and partly
understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to
none. “The path of my departure was free,” and there was none to lament my annihilation.
My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? Whence
did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was
unable to solve them.
(Shelley 131)
Here while reading the Sorrows of Werther the Creature “applied much personally to [its] own
feelings and condition” (131). It wept for the hero and found some similarities between it and the
characters, it found itself “at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read,
and to whose conversation I was a listener” (131). This causes the Creature to begin asking some
existential questions at the end of the extract, namely, “[w]ho was I? Whence did I come? What was
my destination?” (131). The Creature’s questions are similar to the questions that Descartes asked
until he finally came upon the understanding that because he was thinking about it he existed.
Similarly in the creature’s formulation of these questions especially in relation to it finding itself
“strangely unlike” (131) other beings would necessarily imply that it was thinking too. However,
the Creature’s questions stem from its physical difference from being so “strangely unlike” (131)
everyone. The conceptual shift of moving beyond the body seems to be on the same trajectory as
Descartes except that it never makes the shift, rather these questions are focused on its
physiognomy as suggested by the statement and question, “[m]y person was hideous and my stature
gigantic. What did this mean?” (131). Indeed, although these questions seem to validate the
Creature as a thinking being, it is an embodied thinking, a thinking based on its physical difference
of what this physicality means, of trying to figure out what it is. In this way its thinking is different
to Descartes who states that “I could pretend that I had no body” (Descartes 127), something the
creature is unable to do. His thinking seems to be coupled to the materiality of his body and its
physical difference. However, it is still rational thinking, it has been given these ideas from the
material world, from its body as object, but it is thinking along the lines of Locke’s epistemology
and as such is different to Descartes’s thinking.

21. In Descartes conception of the self or what makes the human he states that “I knew I was a
substance whose whole essence or nature is simply to think” (127). The fact that animals or
machines are not capable of reason is what makes them inhuman according to his critique. Thus,
according to his logic the Creature who demonstrates that he is capable of reason should be human.
However, the creature finds itself “strangely unlike” other beings and as it remarks earlier “I was
not even of the same nature as man” (Shelley 123). It is perhaps in this respect that the human
becomes posthuman in the fashion that Neil Badmington suggests by the “working-through of
humanist discourse” (22). For according to Descartes’s own argument he will be unable to make the
distinction between the human and the non-human. In this case the humanism “bears within itself
the necessity4
of its own critique” (Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play 230). The non-human who is
original, “related to none” (Shelley 131) and “saw and heard none like [it]”, repeats humanist
criteria but with the difference5
of not being of the “same nature as man” (123).
4
Here Derrida suggests that whenever something (in this case the idea of the Creature) can no longer be conceived in
the boundary of the opposition of the human/non-human, self/other, nature/culture or natural/technical that “[i]t is
something which escapes these concepts and certainly precedes them – probably as the condition of their possibility”
(230). Yet he states that the “whole of philosophical conceptualization systematically relating itself to the nature/culture
opposition is designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the very thing that makes this conceptualization
possible, the origin” (230) of the thing. In order for concepts to be true to the language of its terms it necessarily has to
critique itself as through self-criticism one begins to understand the true distinction between these opposite terms and
can thus formulate a new conception or theoretical approach by “working-through” (Badmington 22) the issues
inherent in the theory and changing the terminology or the conception. In this way the language bears within itself the
necessity of its own critique in order for the signifier, the word or term, to be true to the signified, the concept.
5
In this respect the Creature by the very definition Descartes uses to define the difference could be human and yet it
still sees only its difference and its lack of origin. Therefore as Derrida suggests it “passes beyond man and humanism”,
“is no longer turned toward the origin” and “affirms freeplay” (240). It follows then that accordingly it is “the face of
the as yet unnameable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in the offing,
only under the species of the non-species, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of the monstrosity” (Derrida
241).

22. Works Cited
Badmington, Neil. “Theorizing Posthumanism.” Cultural Critique, 53 (2003): 10-27.
Booker, M. Keith, and Anne-Marie Thomas. The Science Fiction Handbook. Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009.
Bostrom, Nick. "A History of Transhumanist Thought." Journal of Evolution and
Technology, 14 .1 (2005): 1-25.
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.
Cameron, James. AVATAR. Twentieth Century Fox Film Script. 2007. Web. 8 July 2014
(date of access).< http://ecrannoir.fr/docs/JamesCameronAVATAR.pdf>.
Cameron, James. “The /Filmcast Interview: James Cameron, Director of Avatar.” Interview
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