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The tech bro imagination
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LMB/030, Law and Sociology Building, Campus East, University of York (Map)
Event details
Transhumanism is an emerging subject of interest within the social sciences and Dr Emily Hoyle's research is a contribution to this field of study situated at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies, Gender Studies and Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology.
Dr Hoyle uniquely conceptualises transhumanism as imaginaries that are brought into being and materialised by discourses, practices, bodies and technologies. Transhumanist imaginaries are collective imaginings of a future that will have the technoscientific capabilities for humans to live longer through the ‘enhancement’ or total transcendence of their fleshy body. The increasing relevancy of how transhumanism comes to matter in today’s world is best exemplified the closeness between the President of the United States Donald Trump and the billionaire patriarchs of Silicon Valley who are investing in making transhumanist imaginaries real.
In this paper Dr Hoyle will articulate how the gender panic from the right should not be understood as phenomenally distinct from transhumanist imaginaries but rather a symptom of how transhumanist imaginings are taking up space in the cultural imagination. She will argue the erosion of trans and reproductive rights in the West requires a response that is also attentive to transhumanist imaginings of the technoscientific future. To do this she will show how anti-abortionist ideas of “foetal personhood” (Sofia, 1984) and the increasing hostility towards trans people operates within the logic of pronatalism and extraplanetary escape that emerge from transhumanist imaginaries. She will argue the re-production of patriarchal power is the effect of the immanent processes of “gender-in-the-making” fundamental to bringing transhumanist imaginaries into being (Haraway, 1997). For as this paper will show, transhumanism is not a fantasy of a genderless or post-gender future as white cis abled-bodied masculinities are being re-produced and re-imagined in the production of transhumanism. Thus, she will emphasise the powerful implications of transhumanist imaginaries to re-produce and strengthen patriarchal power requires an urgent and critical feminist response.
Photo by Serhii Tyaglovsky on Unsplash
About the speaker
Dr Emily Hoyle
Dr Emily Hoyle is a feminist Science and Technology Studies researcher and writer with a PhD in Gender and Women’s Studies from Lancaster University. Her research interests include longevity, human-machine relations, artificial intelligence and transhumanist imaginaries.
Check out more of her work at:
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