In all my articles, I have argued for the possibility that critical encounters between human and non-human, often fuelled by the threat of extinction or assimilation, serve as a means of (re)addressing ontological relationality. I have suggested that the increase in the number of stories about passing as human in contemporary science fiction demonstrates a shift from imaginaries of polarisation to imaginaries of exchange and interaction. As situated imaginaries, the trope of passing as human resonates with political scientists Mojtaba Mahdavi and W. Andy Knight’s (2011) call for readdressing difference, not as a marker of separation, but as plurality and collectivity. In their critical engagement with the impact of the social movements in the Middle East and Africa in the early 2010s, they criticise the assumption that notions of freedom
and democracy are static ideals. They are particularly sceptical of what they consider to be the dominant analysis, influenced by thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama ([1992] 2006) and Samuel Huntington (1996) that positions difference from Western ideals as threatening to peace and democracy. Instead, they argue for a rejection of Universalist (Western, white) paradigms in order to properly benefit from the changes in postcolonial political landscapes. In the same vein, Mouffe suggests a radical reconceptualisation of the very notions of universality and individuality in a post-political era. This, she argues,
implies seeing citizenship not as legal status but as a form of identification, a type of political identity: something to be constructed, not empirically given. (1993: 65–66)
As this thesis illustrates, stories of passing as human in science fiction are indicative of these developments in contemporary (post)political landscapes.
However, the surge in popular culture featuring dystopian, apocalyptic narratives has been criticised by Braidotti as a “narrow and negative social imaginary” (2013: 64) because it represents a kind of anthropocentric panic that reinforces the hegemony of the universalised human. Although Braidotti argues convincingly against this panic, and in favour of a posthuman reworking of conventional categories of humanity, hegemony and legitimacy, I question her rather unproductive rejection of popular culture as a site/sight of the very potential for conceptual creativity that she herself advocates. This rejection references the general posthuman critique of discursive modes of analysis (Alaimo and Hekman 2008; Barad 2007; Hekman 2010). In this thesis, I suggest that these stories are more fruitfully addressed as situated imaginaries which demand that we pay attention not only to our own vulnerability, but also to that of non-human actors such as the weather, viruses and technology. Reconceptualised as an undecideable, the boundaries between humans and non-humans are negotiated and challenged in a
manner that is not necessarily immediately recognisable, but which holds the potential to open up our ethical and political imagination.
In Haraway’s effort to reconfigure knowledge not as objective, disembodied truth-claims, but as locatable practices and processes of understanding, she declared it “time to switch metaphors” (1988: 580). A similar appeal can now be detected in Braidotti’s call for conceptual creativity. However, this call seems to be stuck in the posthuman critique of the linguistic turn, sidestepping the notion of metaphor altogether. Meanwhile, in a very interesting discussion about metaphor, Jackie Stacey (1997) questions a dismissal of metaphorical thinking and naming in relation to material, bodily and, specifically, medical conditions. Rather than relying on an understanding of metaphor in the Aristotelian sense, as a mere linguistic substitute for naming something differently, Stacey elaborates on the potential of metaphor as knowledge production. Quoting Ricoeur, she argues that metaphors are not merely about discourse and signs, but also about the conceptualisation of categories and ontologies:
[metaphor is] the rhetorical process by which discourse unleashes the power that certain fictions have to redescribe reality […] From this conjuncture of fiction and redescription I conclude that the ‘place’ of metaphor, its most intimate and ultimate abode, is neither the name, nor the sentence, nor even discourse, but the copula of the verb to be. (Ricoeur, quoted in Stacey 1997: 50)
Ricoueur’s understanding of metaphor is also reiterated in Roberts’ (2006) account of the premise of science fiction as a point of difference, for example through the novum and processes of unfamiliarisation. For Roberts, the notion of metaphor is central to a discussion about the science fiction genre as an instrument of estrangement24.
24 For a complete discussion about the significance of metaphor in science fiction, see Roberts (2006: 134-148)
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Following on from this, I suggest a reconceptualization of the very notion of metaphor; not as semantic substitutions that describe the world, but as metamorphs: material, changeable and undecideable figures to think with. The term metamorph is derived from the noun metamorphosis, meaning transformation, (re)shaping or change. As a descriptive term, metamorph refers to amphibians or insects that change their appearance, like larvae that become butterflies, and to science fictional narratives of shape-changers or highly adaptive creatures. Interestingly, in terms of passing as human in science fiction, there are examples of metamorphs that pass by way of biological “mimicry cells” (Silverberg 1980: 189), and cyborgs using technology to transform their appearance (Fringe 2008–2013). The metamorph represents change and unstable categorisations. At the same time, the metamorphic change does not necessarily undo that which was there in the first place, but rather displaces or discontinues it in a manner that can create awareness about the processes, the traffic so to speak, rather than the categorisations themselves. Here, the metamorph allows for a double vision of the notion of change, one that is both embodied and discursive, both transformation and reconceptualisation. In this respect, the metamorph is easily situated in both imaginaries and realities, and serves as a productive figuration of the unstable assemblages that make up identities and ontologies. In addition to seeing them as a central point of departure for posthuman scholars, Foucault also embraces instabilities and discontinuities as a genealogical mode of analysis. He argues that:
the critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are, is at one and the same the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. (1984: 50)
Here, Foucault underlines the significance of ontological (in)stability, as well as the notion of undecideability, as necessary modi operandi for a critical and reflexive production of knowledge. The stories of passing as human reflected in this thesis suggest a metamorphic attitude towards ontology and identity, not as fixed categories, but as performatively unstable enactments. In turn, these enactments confront ideological imaginaries and qualitative classification concerning authenticity, legitimacy and normalcy. Foucault also encourages a kind of conceptual creativity in terms of exploring the potential of ‘going beyond’ what is already established. My take on this point about going beyond is twofold: using science fiction as an analytical angle, and attempting to analyse passing as human as particular posthuman worldings generated by this metamorphic mode. This double vision is the subject of the following, and final, section.