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10 Behind the Erin curtain In his 1959 science fiction novel Ossian’s Ride Fred Hoyle imagined a near-future Ireland that has perplexed the outside world.1 The year is 1970. How could, a young scientist is asked by the British secret service, such an apparently backward country suddenly manifest bewilderingly advanced technology? The answer seems to lie beyond a mysterious cordon that extends from Tarbert on the Shannon Estuary via Kanturk and Macroom to the south Kerry coast. Every nation on earth was directing 95 per cent of its undercover activity to Ireland
emphasised how the modification would alter their identity, turning them into the cyborgs such as those portrayed in literature and film, for example ‘Robocop’, and androids portrayed in science-fiction films such as ‘Terminator’. The ambiguity of embodiment emerges in various ways and degrees of subjectivity alteration when exploring preferences for different technological and organic materials to be embodied. In sum, I shall argue that although individuals are embodied, they are also embedded, in various social contexts that construct meanings associated with what is
consequences for the individual they are implanted within. I turn now to begin a discussion of these points with a brief outline of the modern history of the cyborg and how he (and I mean ‘he’) started as a hypothetical future space-man, eventually transforming into a science-fiction nightmare, to then be adopted as a feminist liberation concept from dualistic binary categorisation challenges (Haraway, 1991 ). In doing so, I introduce features of implantable technologies that might lead them to be considered smart and/or cybernetic, arguing that the latter eclipses all the
influential, trans theory has to be put into relation with anti-communism. 2 To do so, I analyze a science fiction Cold War film, It Came from Outer Space , and a recent independent production, Tangerine , to reveal the possibilities of connecting trans politics and histories of labor resistance. In my analysis, I seek to uncover potential historical and contextual junctures that
virtue of their being biologically human, a point that is also implied in Locke’s definition. One need only be a ‘thinking intelligent Being’ no matter how that is instantiated. Harris also approves of the flexibility of Locke’s account. Since Locke’s criteria are species non-specific they are compatible with the possibility of non-human persons. To go along with a popular science-fiction fantasy, the as-yet-to-be proven existence of extra-terrestrials may prove to be both alien creatures and alien persons. Closer to home, Locke’s criteria entertain the possibility of
of Kasparov’s residence during his match were modern-day castles. The neo-Gothic haunted house, in the form of a spaceship, a skyscraper, or a modern medical hospital, a place with antiseptic illumination, drenched in light, sponsored and branded, clothed in modern materials, clean surfaces, connected electronically and with expensive security and surveillance technology, is where the living and the dead come together; where supernatural meets with science fiction. Both spaces were nominally safe spaces, yet Kasparov was quickly unsettled by the atmosphere of the
look at the chess-player. In addition, several aspects of the aforementioned chronology are challenged, extended, ignored, or discarded as a consequence of this book’s focus on the player, not the game. The scope of this book, in geographic terms, is predominantly the English-speaking West from the medieval to the modern period, with more emphasis on the second half of this period. With this in mind, relevant source material, predominantly English-language, is varied and wideranging, including newspapers, films, cartoons, detective and science fiction, comic
vision of Ireland 45 much of its political influence. By the time of Independence the Catholic Church was on the cusp of a level of influence that could only be imagined as science fiction elsewhere in much of the English-speaking world. But the Church was unwilling to depend on miracles for its future survival. In 1870 Pope Piux IX invented the doctrine of papal infallibility as a bulwark against modernism. Intellectually, the Church drew on Thomism – Aristotelian natural law philosophy as Christianised by Thomas Aquinas – for its rebuttals of liberalism and
the cusp of a level of influence that could only be imagined as science fiction elsewhere in much of the English-speaking world. But the Church was unwilling to depend on miracles for its future survival. In 1870 Pope Pius IX invented the doctrine of papal infallibility as a bulwark against modernism. Intellectually, the Church drew on Thomism – Aristotelian natural law philosophy as Christianised by Thomas Aquinas – for its rebuttals of liberalism and socialism. The turn of the century witnessed the rise to dominance of neo-Thomist orthodoxy in seminaries and the
which has found itself perched on the asphalt edge has had different reasons for doing so than the previous one. It can sometimes be a moment of cultural inspiration – a book or a blog – but usually the reasons are linked to a wider context. I did have some small brushes with hitchhiking-related culture in those years, in the form of Douglas Adams's surreal science fiction comedy The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and later Roger Waters's odd record/poem The pros and cons of hitchhiking , but neither of these are usually on hitchers’ lists of motivational texts