Human-Posthuman Conflict In Pandorum: A Posthuman Gothic Study

Abstract

When the very identity of the human being is questioned and debated in the twenty-first century, the different forms of conflicts that arise from humans’ actions in day-to-day life and environment should also be viewed as posthuman level conflicts. As technologies develop, computers and artificial intelligence progress, the world is in a transition towards a posthuman era where human beings are not the only intellectual, social, communicable, and rational beings. This posthuman era consists of other forms of posthuman beings who decenter Protogoras’s idea of man as the measure of all things and occupy an even more superior position in the world. These posthumans can be divided into three categories: Evolutionary Posthuman, Transhumanist Posthuman, and Post-human. The encounters and conflicts between these posthumans and humans lead to an existential, survival crisis for humans. Pandorum is a science fiction movie that deals with space travel, hypersleep, evolution, advance science, and posthuman creatures. It also opens up the imaginable possibilities of humans building an interstellar ark carrying multitudes of people to colonize Tanis, an earth-like planet. The researchers point out the human-posthuman conflict between the human passengers of the interstellar ark, the Elysium with the gothic posthuman creatures or monsters in the spacecraft in this paper. The researchers also try to analyze the possibility of gothic posthuman beings or creatures and how the encounters between humans and these gothic posthuman creatures have become a danger to the survival and existence of humans in Pandorum movie through a posthuman gothic study.