Making Us New

Abstract

This study makes the case not only that modernist writers were influenced by eugenic and early transhumanist thinking, but that Anglo-American modernist culture was saturated with ideas and shaped by debates about making humans new. It explores cultural expressions of, and interventions into, eugenic and transhumanist thought by excavating and analyzing four key sets of debates between and among eugenicists and transhumanists: (1) those surrounding the body: what sorts of bodies, and especially what sorts of sensory organs, should improved people have? (2) those surrounding reproduction: how might we produce new human beings using reproduction? (3) those surrounding racial difference: in what ways will race be transformed for future people? and (4) those surrounding animality: how might animality be either left behind by or useful for these improved people? While distinguishing the two modes of human improvement and their ethical and political implications, the study maintains a view of both eugenics and transhumanism as simultaneously utopian and oppressive—oppressive not only because of their real-world applications but also because of their false assumptions about human worth. The analysis foregrounds the fundamental aims of eugenic and transhumanist thought—to shape and control human evolutionary futures—understanding eugenics and transhumanism as part of the larger modernist quest to make it new.