The boundaries of the ethical have traditionally coincided with the boundaries of humanity. This, however, is no longer the case. Scientific developments, such as genetic engineering, stem-cell research, cloning, the Human Genome Project, new paleontological evidence, and the rise of neuropsychology call into question the very notion of human being and thus require a new conceptual map for ethical judgment. The contours of this map may be seen to emerge in works of science fiction (SF), which not only vividly dramatize (...) the implications and consequences of new technologies and discoveries, but also exert a powerful influence on culture, creating a feedback loop of images and ideas. This essay focuses on three SF topoi: the human/animal evolutionary boundary; non-biological subjectivity (AI); and the human/alien interaction. It explores each of these topoi in a selection of SF texts, including novels by H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Stephen Baxter, William Gibson, Stanislaw Lem and others, showing how the boundaries of humanity are expanded and then exploded through the radical subversion of the tenets of liberal humanism. (shrink)

This article deals with the representation of identical twins in the films Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway and Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg. It situates the films in a cultural and political context of the 20th-century controversies surrounding the issues of evolution, reproduction and cloning. The article claims that twinship represents the corporeal economy of the Same, whose ideological meanings have been shaped by the history of eugenics and social Darwinism. Identical twinship inscribes a utopia of the perfect, (...) unchanging and self-identical body, opposed to the unpredictability, confusion and contingency of sexual reproduction and evolutionary history. The films under discussion critique the utopian ideology of twinship and its imaginary cancellation of difference as narcissistic and deadly. (shrink)