ABSTRACT
The android and the cyborg make us reconsider our idea of matter, as a conscious rethinking of what entails becoming a human being. Transhumanism becomes understood as what transcends humanity and configures the concept of the posthuman: non-human others and the more-than-human world acquire a relevant role to remind us of the problematic issue of the parallel extinction of resources and species on Earth. Questions of sexuality and reproduction as shown already in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? represent one of the concerns of contemporary ecofeminists such as Val Plumwood, Vandana Shiva, or Karen Warren that find significant attention in dystopias such as the film Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera or the HBO series Westworld inspired in Michael Crichton’s screenplay of 1973. As much as maternity is linked to women and nature, the extinction of resources on Earth is inevitably connected to the inability of female reproduction in what science fiction stories have predicted will be sexual relationships in a near future. Thus, humanity as we understand it now is threatened to disappear with the belief that creation as in Frankenstein always turns against its creator, its human master. As Alaimo states in Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, “these novels, like many monster movies, seem to fan the fear of nature, evolution, reproduction, and the female body” (142).
This chapter aims at analyzing the hierarchy and classification that has been established by anthropocentrism and challenged extensively by the aforementioned ecofeminists, between humans, androids/cyborgs, non-human others, and the more-than-human world in terms of their reproductive abilities and their utilitarianism for other species. At the same time, issues such as the increasing appropriation of the human body by technology to transform it into a more effective product of consumption will be addressed in the discussion of the films.
