Book
Motherless Creations: Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890
(2022)
Abstract
This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called artificial life, living systems made through manufactured means. Fantasies about creating life ex-utero were built upon misconceptions about how life began, sustaining pseudoscientific beliefs about the birthing body. Physicians, inventors, and authors of literature imagined generating life without women to control the process of reproduction and generate perfect progeny. Thus, some speculative fiction before 1890 belongs to the literary genealogy of transhumanism, the belief that technology will someday transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. Female motherless creations tend to operate as sexual companions. Male ones often emerge as subaltern figures analogous to enslaved beings, illustrating that reproductive rights inform readers’ sense of who counts as human in fictions of artificial life.
Keywords
- Alchemy,
- alchemical American literature Android / androids Anti-Semitism Artificial life Automaton / automata / automatons Birth,
- birthing,
- birthing body,
- birthing machine,
- birthing machines Breeding British literature Comparative literature Creator,
- creators,
- creation Cyborg Eugenics,
- eugenic,
- proto-eugenic Fathers,
- paternity,
- patrilineal Faust Fiction Forceps Frankenstein French literature German literature Golem / golems gynecological,
- gynecologist Homunculus,
- homunculi Imagination Incest Intersectional,
- intersectionality Medical literature,
- medical-advice literature Midwifery,
- midwives,
- man-midwives,
- obstetricians,
- obstetrics,
- gynecology,
- Maternal imagination or maternal impressions Mothers,
- maternity,
- patrilineal Narrative,
- narratological Passing Physician,
- physicians Pygmalion Race,
- ethnicity,
- racial Singularity Slavery Steam man,
- steam men Technology Transhuman / transhumanist / transhumanism White supremacy Womb
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring May 31, 2022
Publisher
Routledge
ISBN
9781032231679
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003276104
Publisher Statement
"This fascinating exploration of the quest for mechanical life in the Western imagination is beautifully written, thought provoking, and riveting. By situating these fantasies of "motherless creations" within a cultural context of medicalized misogyny and slavery, Nielsen presents a deeply rich, timely study relevant for understanding today's transhumanist debates."-Joanna Ebenstein, Founder of Morbid Anatomy
Citation Information
Wendy Nielsen. Motherless Creations: Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890. New York(2022) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/wendy-nielsen/18/