Posthumanism: Narcissism, Schizophrenia or the Twilight Zone

In Professor Asma's article, A Portrait of the Artist as a Work in Progress, he gives us an introduction to Posthumanism by naming a few of the fields practices, such as cloning, genetic engineering and neuropharmacology. He quotes the professor of cybernetics at England's University of Reading, Kevin Warwick, who said, "I was born human. But this was an accident of fate--condition merely of time and place (Asma, 2001), "phrased by another as, "a dimension not only of sight and sound but of the mind," which of course we all recognize as Rod Serling's introduction to the Twilight Zone. Asma infers, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to the posthumanistic dream of cyborg Utopia when he links our current "wet sacks" of bodies with contemporary artists who are exercising their humanistic right to deconstruct, reconstruct, manipulate and exhibit their own "wet sacks."

Both Orlan, with her surgeries that suggest she is "taking off a mask," and Stelarc, who sculpts internally and performs remote muscle-stimulation, are executors of genetic art, which involves DNA, either directly or indirectly. There is also transgenic art that involves genetic engineering. Whether an artist works with DNA or engineers genes, it is logical that Prof. Asma would be reminded of Freud's idea that: "technology is our way of becoming prosthetic gods (Asma, 2001)." John McDermott, professor emeritus in labor studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, has referred to technology instead as "the opiate of the intellectuals (Hook, 2003)."