Critical Posthuman Cyber-immortality in Francesca Talenti’s Robo-Drama, The Immortal (2014)

Humans’ long pre-occupation with immortality has been the driving force behind magic, adopting healthy lifestyles and non-aging treatments. Techno-optimists claim that technology has paved the way for Man to achieve cyber-immortality by outsourcing Human thinking to Digital platforms and replacing the perishable body with prosthesis giving the individual’s conception a chance to survive through a technologically inventive Posthuman form. Humanists have defended human Centricity and Exceptionalism claiming that Posthumanists’ dream of a techno-utopian fusion comes with serious religious and ontological issues. However, Critical Posthumanists believe that the current human nature is improvable and the fusion is inevitable. The imagined future is an age in which Humans will fearlessly choose an immortal form of a non-biological entity that allows their cyber-immortality. The aim of this paper is applying Critical Posthumanism to American Playwright Francesca Telenti’s The Immortal (The Uncanny Valley) (2014); with the aim of proving that the once farfetched dream of infinite existence may become feasible through Humans’ deliberate choice of cyber-immortality. The adopted theory is distinguished by its total rejection of human supremacy theories and its critique of Man being the universal standard of other entities and thus questions his dread of losing autonomy. Critical Posthumanism applied to The Immortal suggests that Man is not necessarily superior to his creation. The tackled play manifests the possibility of a machine surpassing a human without necessarily being his enemy. It is considered one of very few plays around the globe that incorporate the use of a RoboThespian as a major actor.