Can One Desire Too Much Of A Good Thing?’: Imagining Shakespearean ‘Un-Dead’ In A Transhumanist Hybrid

Abstract

Obsession over power and control has historically been detrimental to the peaceful status quo, often leading to an extreme post-humanistic utopia of immortality. This ‘Un-dead’ thirst reinstates itself in Hamlet primarily through false consciousness, biased memory, and pluralistic truth. Transhumanist questions of identity, morality, power, and new authority, recall Machiavelli in this Digital Renaissance. This paper explores the modern power dynamics of Shakespearean tragic heroes in a cyborgian utopian context. A society of hybrids garners humanoids that can replace Nietzsche’s dead God. Transhumanist interpretations can help with contemporary manifesting themes of immortality, ethical nihilism, reality manipulation, and the historical consequences thereafter - under the backdrops of stagnant power and oversaturated civilizations. An omnipresent tussle between the past and the future for preserving the present, in a way, rejuvenates the old and curtails the newness. The transhumanist space with no human folly is ironic, taking us back to Latour’s doubt about modernity.