Transhumanism and Utopia in Kenneth Folingsby’s Meda: A Tale of the Future

Marta Komsta

doi:10.18290/rh.2018.66.11s-4

Marta Komsta Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh.2018.66.11s-4

Keywords: transhumanism; utopia; brain; disembodiment

Abstract

The paper examines the evolutionary aspect of morality in Kenneth Folingsby’s Meda: A Tale of the Future, a nineteenth-century utopia, in the context of the transhumanist tenets of progress and enhancement sensu Nick Bostrom, Max More, and others. A literary descendant of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race, the key evolutionary utopia of the late Victorian period, Folingsby’s narrative depicts progressive disembodiment of the futuristic eutopia as a result of the unprecedented development of the human brain. Echoing Bulwer-Lytton’s satirical stance on the implications of the evolutionary process, Meda attempts, thus, to delineate the guided evolution of the utopian community in terms of the correlation between moral progress and intellectual enhancement.

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