Resisting Transhumanism in Matt Haig’s The Humans

This paper analyses Matt Haig’s The Humans (2013) as a response to transhumanism that resists transhumanist aspirations for human enhancement. Humankind has always pushed its limits both to survive and to thrive. The advent of industry, however, has accelerated the slow progress of its advancement beyond imagination to be further amplified with the advent of advanced techno-science later in the mid-twenty-first century. Armed with their new tools, and since Nietzsche, humans have aspired to become the Übermensch; and, since Julian Huxley coined the term in 1951, they have sought to become transhuman. Yet, the worth of these pursuits or the questions regarding humanity’s ultimate direction are still topics for debate, maybe more immediate than ever in our age of autonomous robots and artificial intelligence. Haig’s novel enters the conversation at this point, within the context of the 2010s, which witnessed a considerable increase and intensification in research and in both academic and popular debates about transhumanism. The overall impression that these debates leave the public with is one of unanimous endorsement by all kinds of positivist authorities, inviting people to embrace a transhuman future outright. Haig’s The Humans, however, attempts to introduce a pause to this narrative—if not a full-stop altogether. His ultimate argument is that perhaps the answer for humanity is in seeking to become not super- or trans-humans but simply to become contended humans, retaining and making one’s peace with one’s fundamental humanity.