(Un)Certain Future of Empathy in Posthumanism, Cyberculture and Science Fiction

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2015. This volume investigates the future of empathy as contemplated by posthumanism, cyberculture and science fiction. As humanity increasingly networks and communicates online, the reconfiguration of human communities through the removal and immediacy of the body challenges traditional notions of humanity and human capacity for empathy. The impact of cyberculture and posthumanism on humanity and its capacity for empathy is here assessed through research in literature, films, neuroscience, anthropology and philosophy. This volume addresses the centrality of the body to human interactions and assesses how intrinsic it is to the defining of the human. The exploration of posthuman narratives which display futuristic bodily modifications also engages with the anxieties and hopes for the future of human empathy. Research in dystopian narratives shows that these anxieties are also expressed without the tropes of bodily modifications and that ideological distancing creates the conditions necessary for a lack of empathy towards otherness.