Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology and the Ethics of Personhood by Christina Bieber Lake (review)

In Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology and the Ethics of Personhood, Christina Bieber Lake probes into the meaning of humanity imperiled by technoscience which in pursuit of an at-any-price transcendence of limitations sweeps aside ethics from inquiry. Likewise, deploring the exclusion of “the ancient question of the good life” from the academy, the author advocates the return of narrative to ethical questions and the active involvement of Humanities in bioethics (xv). To fill an existing gap in literary study that focuses only on interpretation, Bieber Lake’s study revalues the work of Flannery O’Connor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Saunders, James Tiptree, Jr., Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Walker Percy, Raymond Carver and Marilynne Robinson in light of large ethical questions.

Though there is no unanimity about the term posthuman, the reader has to wait until page thirteen to find an explicit definition of the word given by N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book How We Became Posthuman, presents the concept as a new category resulting from the osmosis of the American self with the biotechnological revolution. In the same way, the author cogently elaborates on this concept, contrasting it with the related term of transhumanism only in her last chapter. However, except for this frustrating delay concerning fundamental terminology, the study is highly readable and accessible to the general reader, although it draws widely on philosophy and theology. Bieber Lake does not hide her affinities with Christian theology in particular; her long introduction ends with a revisiting of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Yet what underpins this study is not only Bieber Lake’s faith in Christian love but also in narrative and in the capacity of literature to maintain a humane humanity in a dehumanizing posthuman world. Indeed, in her conclusion, the author defines fiction as “the art of love for persons” and opts for her literary prophets, the nine writers she analyses, rather than Ray Kurzweil who exemplifies the transhuman mind (189).

Indeed, Bieber Lake adopts Walter Brueggemann’s notion of “prophetic imagination” to distinguish the writers she chose, who, through their capacity for truth-telling and foretelling, and their ability to criticize and energize, manage to “oppose the dominant consciousness of an advanced technological society” offering an alternative (12). Bieber Lake’s key operating concept is personhood, which involves commitment instead of individualism, and that involves freedom. Through her readings the author fleshes out a position termed “personalism,” “the belief that ethics must start with the basic assumption that human beings are, simply by virtue of being born, persons within the human community and thus our neighbors,” which is quite eloquent of the book’s Christian leanings affirming telos over techne and progress over process (9).

Tightly structured the study offers close readings of novels and short stories that illuminate hitherto ignored dynamics of these narratives. Bieber Lake demonstrates their potential to challenge the dominant culture of consumerism, scientific positivism, and the bioenhancement technologies. A rich bibliography ranging from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Ray Kurzweil accompanies the book.