WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Prosthetic Immortalities

Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life

Adam R Rosenthal David Wills

$270

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English
University of Minnesota Press
02 January 2025
Series: Posthumanities
Examining the links between today's ideas of radical life extension and age-old notions of immortality.

From Plato's notion of generation to Derrida's concept of survival to such modern phenomena as anti-aging treatments, cryogenics, cloning, and whole-brain uploads, Adam Rosenthal's Prosthetic Immortalities shows how the dream of indefinite life has always been a technological one: a matter of prosthesis. He argues that every biological instance of perpetual life, from one-celled organisms to rejuvenating jellyfish to Henrietta Lacks's 'immortal' cancer cells, always results in the transformation of the original being. There can, therefore, be no certainty of immortality. Yet, because finite mortal life is already marked by difference, division, and change, as Rosenthal concludes: 'the problem of immortality will not cease to haunt us'.

Prosthetic Immortalities examines the persistence of humans' aspirations of deathlessness, showing that the link between immortalisation and prostheticisation is not unique to a single period but is, rather, a ubiquitous element of the discourse of immortality, encompassing both modern technoscientific efforts and religious discourses of an afterlife. Rosenthal asks to what extent the emergence of a virtual, posited, immortal presence follows from the tenets of empirical science

and not simply from the discourse of biology but also, and more radically still, from biological organisation itself.

Rosenthal ultimately argues that the discovery of biological immortals

lifeforms that naturally have indefinitely long lifespans, such as cancer cells and bacteria

present novel conceptual difficulties for traditional philosophical approaches to mortality and selfhood, asking whether it is life itself that first births immortalising prostheses.
By:  
Foreword by:  
Imprint:   University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 140mm,  Spine: 254mm
Weight:   539g
ISBN:   9781517916572
ISBN 10:   1517916577
Series:   Posthumanities
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Adam R. Rosenthal is associate professor of global languages and cultures at Texas A&M University. He is author of Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida. David Wills is professor of French studies at Brown University and author of Prosthesis, also published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Reviews for Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life

"""Rigorous, compelling, and beautifully written, Prosthetic Immortalities is at the vanguard of the new wave in Derrida studies. Problematizing and deconstructing transhumanist technologies, Adam R. Rosenthal offers to readers both clarity and new understanding as he lucidly and insightfully illuminates Derrida's notions of 'lifedeath' and survival in the contexts of biology, technology, and ontology."" --Nicole Anderson, founding editor, Derrida Today Journal"


See Also