“More Human Than Human”: The Posthuman in Global Science Fiction Cinema

In 2015, director Koji Fukada introduced audiences to Geminoid-F, widely referred to as the “first android actress”, in his post-apocalyptic film Sayonara. This project raised questions among critics and filmgoers about whether or not androids were capable of conveying the nuances of the human experience on screen. Could an android have chemistry with a human costar? If so, how would we define it? As a genre, science fiction often grapples with re-conceiving the human – and what it means to be human – through the depiction of posthuman bodies as androids, cyborgs, and clones. In this course, we will examine filmic representations of the posthuman in science fiction cinema, paying particular attention to the aesthetic and thematic elements of these films which reoccur and are reinterpreted across five national cinematic traditions. How is the android Maria translated in the Japanese adaptation of a German film? How are cyborgs reimagined throughout the 20^th century? We will consider these questions among others as we explore the way in which the posthuman is connected to notions of agency, sentience, (co)evolution, subjectivity, power, and gender. We will also consider the medium of film and its relationship to critical texts such as Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman.