The Posthuman Prospect In Westworld

Westworld is a science-fiction television series that reflects the living situation of posthuman beings in future society.The series is named after the theme park Westworld where androids offer the main service to visitors.The reason why Westworld is chosen as the research object in this thesis is that the series covers a wide range of posthuman issues,including cyborg technology,the combination of the organic and mechanical,the biotechnology for prosthesis,and the information technology for breaking through the limitations of physical matter.Westworld,this typical sci-fi series text provides a comprehensive and novel posthuman prospect for posthuman study.Taking the posthuman theory as the main pillar,this study explores the literary classic proposition and cultural emerging phenomenon reflected in the text,and forms a new perspective of the post-human prospect.This thesis is divided into four chapters,each chapter discourses upon a major issue of the posthuman perspective.The first chapter takes mechanical reproduction artwork theory and simulacra theory as the theoretical starting point.The theme park West World can be regarded as a developed huge system of simulacrum,consisting of androids,the simulation of human beings.According to the theory,the chapter makes an understanding of androids’ evolutionary trajectory from the copy to the simulation of human beings,then a conclusion is presented: although the androids have become the extension of human beings and react with human though the technological essential attribute,the androids still fail to copy the whole humanities.The second chapter mainly deals with the literary and art practices in the posthuman perspective.West world park operates well with multiple story lines.As a non-traditional narrative text experiment,the story lines reveal a foresight for the future prospect of literary and artistic practice.The third chapter focuses on the“zones of indistinction”in posthuman era.In the series,the situation is mainly manifested in the destruction of various traditional counterpoints,such as the real and the virtual,the main and the other,and the space and time,etc.Through the analysis of the series,this thesis regard the increase of“zones of indistinction”as the characteristic of posthuman prospect.The fourth chapter traces the continuity of the two cultures from the intertextuality relation of traditional humanism literature texts and science-fiction texts,the influence of literary tradition and the stable structure of feelings to answer the classic question of posthuman study.The purposes of this thesis is to make the continuity become a great opportunity in the post-human transition period,which will make it possible to reach the fusions of posthuman horizons and the establishment of a community of shared future for posthuman.This posthuman study is oriented by several core problems,such as androids,art practices,and the blurring of traditional dualism boundary.It aims at reflecting the technical reality and posthuman existence states.As for the aspects that the technical fact has not reached yet,this thesis can also provide a feasible posthuman study framework to deal with more complicated posthuman discourses and practices in the future.