ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter begins with an anecdote about the philosopher René Descartes. It defines the book’s keywords (motherless creation, artificial life, fictions of artificial life, transhumanism, and the birthing body) and outlines its scope, theoretical background, chapters, and methodology. Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, golems, automata, androids, and steam men typify what is now called artificial life (ALife), beings made autonomously through manufactured means. In American, British, French, and German literature before 1890, male protagonists fashion these motherless creations ex-utero without any life-giving contribution from women. Adaptations of the story of Pygmalion and his statue and works by Goethe, Hoffmann, Shelley, Arnim, Villiers, Melville, and Ellis share aspects of transhumanist visions of humans’ potential to become superior and immortal through technology. Feminist responses to transhumanism emphasize the need to clarify the ways in which reproductive technologies shape personhood. Including American literature in this ambitious study allows the book to account for the motherless creation’s connection to slavery. The introduction explains the book’s emphasis on anthropomorphic characters and exclusion of figures with human mothers. It concludes by outlining the book’s distinctive place among other scholarship about missing mothers or artificial life.
