Sam Deese Explores Biology and Technology in Recent Publications
College of General Studies Senior Lecturer Sam Deese has published a book chapter in Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens (MacMillan Reference USA, 2018), and has had an article published in Aldous Huxley Annual.
The textbook Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens provides an introduction to a vast array of scholarly perspectives on emergent technologies and biotechnologies used to modify or augment the capabilities of human beings. In his book chapter, “Between Progress and Armageddon:The Stakes of Our Time,” Deese considers the gospel of human progress, the dystopian narratives that emerged in the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century impulse to imagine a “posthuman” world through transformations such as artificial intelligence or machine-brain interfaces.
He writes, “When the tragic view of history dominates our visions for the future of human societies, it is natural for human beings to seek some source of escape. In medieval times the soul’s ascent to paradise offered such a vision. In the twenty-first century, the transformation of one’s brain and body into a technological artifact offers a secular and ostensibly more plausible vision of escape from the sorrows and pitfalls of the human condition.”
In his article in Aldous Huxley Annual, “The Post-Huxleyan Feminism of Elizabeth Mann” Borgese, Deese looks at the feminist work of Borgese, a famed writer and founder of the International Oceans Institute, in her 1963 book Ascent of Woman, a largely-forgotten work that Deese calls a “mid-century jambalaya of cultural history, science journalism, and science fiction.” Deese looks at how Borgese engages with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, evolutionary biology, and biotechnology.