Exploring Post-humanity In Westworld

With the rapid development of the fourth technological revolution in 1950 s and 1960 s,the world human beings live in today is characterized by the accelerate evolution of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.Accordingly,great attention has drawn to their survival and ethical concerns of nonhumans especially cyborg(posthuman),which has aroused heated discussion and consideration on such issues as the boundary between humans and machines and reconsideration of the superior position of human in the world.It is Westworld(2016),an eye-popping American science fiction TV Series that affords a brandnew perspective of posthumanism for humans to explore post-humanity in it.The study of Westworld(2016)in the posthuman viewpoint is of great significance to the construction of a free,equal and harmonious post-human world.This thesis intends to make a progressive analysis on the TV Series and interpret it from the following three aspects: body and spiritual crises,and the rejection against human’s unitary subjectivity.The study explains the blurred and broken boundary between humans and machines with the help of advanced technology,which leads to little substantial differentiation between human and machine,deconstructing of human’s subjectivity in the world.Besides,this paper will focus on human’s spiritual crisis in the actual world which is reflected on the objectified and dehumanized biotic men in the fictional,technologically advanced Wild-West-themed park.The body and spiritual crises result in a bloody revolution against human beings themselves launched by those machineswith self-consciousness.Based on the above analysis,the thesis proves that apart from arousing the audiences’ reflection upon ethical issues and the alienated society brought about by the modern advanced technology,the director also hints at the reasonable and scientific re-examination of man-machine relationship and the construction of the non-unitary subjects in the world and the equal coexistence between humans and nonhumans in the context of posthumanism.From the approach of critical posthumanism,the study of Westworld(2016)is divided into five chapters.Firstly,a brief introduction of Westworld(2016)and its relevant literature review are presented in Chapter One which also includes the elaboration of posthumanism and its main concepts related to this thesis,research significance and questions.Chapter Two probes into the blurred and broken body boundary between humans and machines and suggests the elimination of human’s superior position in the world and of absolute opposition between human and machine.Chapter Tree points out human’s spiritual crisis leads to the objectification and dehumanization upon the machines,which are attributed to the hierarchic ordering of different life forms and their spiritual emptiness resulted from the abuse of technology and the alienated world lacking in humanistic care.Chapter Four is the analysis of the merited consequence of human’s overemphasized subjectivity and machines’ searching of selfconsciousness which have become the trigger for the afterward bloody revolution against humans’ oppression.Chapter Five comes to the conclusion that the above discussions about Westworld(2016)serve to the only one end of life,which is to realize that all life forms of life are interconnected,and that life forms evolve in cooperation against hierarchization and maintain a harmonious coexistence with nonhuman beings.