Monsters of Modernity

This analysis aims to examine the intrusive potential of the mechanical and technological force of the ‘posthuman’ as a physical and existential threat on the borders of the self, leading to ‘two-way hybridizations’ that make it impossible to discern between the human and posthuman. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me (2019) contextualize this threat, portraying monstrous Gothic representations of the cyborg. These monsters operate as a physical and technological force which seek to corrupt and destroy the once considered private realm of human experience. By harnessing elements of the Victorian and Neo-liberal Gothic which have historically enforced the notion of the human body as material, such as: the anatomy act of 1832, galvanism, screen-based trading, and phone hacking, the monsters attempt to diminish a sense of the human as a body with interiority, and instead, view them as just another border to breach and invade.