(De)/(Post)human(ization) in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”

Abstract

[Abstract] The purpose of this BA thesis is to examine the stratified notion of humanity, as well as its antithesis and eventual transgression, as depicted in Harlan Ellison’s science-fiction short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967). The analysis delves into the essential constituents of human nature, in resistance against a dystopic sphere. Thereafter, this end-of degree dissertation counterpoises humanity with its immediate collapse, engendered by a calculated apparatus of cataclysmic torment, thus architecting a distillation of anthropic experience. Lastly, the analysis focuses on the posthuman dismantling of archetypical, universalistic hierarchies characteristic of human practice as portrayed in the text. Hence, this analysis contrives to determine whether its conclusion designs humanity as victor, or if it has otherwise been transformed beyond repair—regardless of its attempts of resistance—into an entity that transcends traditional definitions of the human continuum. The contentions here introduced are rooted on a close-reading analysis of the short story, while also taking into consideration its place within its specific authorial and literary context, pertaining to the emergence of New-Wave Science Fiction and Ellison’s role in such a transition. Furthermore, this end-of-degree thesis dissects—and expounds upon— a referential body concerning previous research on Ellison’s work, predominantly regarding his purposeful embedment of religious innuendoes, coupled with his omniscient rendition of the master-computer. Additionally, academic reinterpretations of the story’s latent psychological narrative, along with the resulting identitarian conundrums, are also considered. This undergraduate thesis implements conceptuality surmised under the poststructuralist frame—chiefly pertaining to Foucauldian philosophy—, alongside postmodernist thought and its position on decentralized hybrid identities. In direct correlation, this thesis delves into posthumanist aversion towards anthropocentric belief, resulting in humankind’s idiosyncratic reformulation, coupled with the emergence of transhuman singularity and existential protraction through technology. Additionally, the analysis incorporates minor adjuvant nuances of revised psychoanalysis and philosophical treatises that support the forthcoming discourse. This analysis of Harlan Ellison’s text yields a series of conclusions regarding its projection of the downfall of humanity and the surviving remnants of human qualities. While the denouement of the conflict between technological dictatorship and human uprising is ambiguous in its portrayal, it is the ferociousness of humanity’s unyielding willpower that cathartically puts an end to its own suffering. In so doing, and through its symbiotic convergence with machinery, humanity is impelled into an alternate—even superior—state of interrelationship with itself and its surrounding circumstances. Such findings engender several implications regarding the analysis of the text. Ellison’s short story may not be conceived as a misanthropic and technophobic narrative, but as a vanguard for human protagonism embedded within mechanized environs. As such, the text is transformed into a hyper-narrative encompassing humanity’s role in its own transition into an epistemic beyond that may be further explored through continuous revisions of the narrative’s undertones.