Of Masters, Men, Machines and (M)others: Revisiting the Virgin and the Dynamo in a Post/Trans-Human Context

• Authors: Sorina Chiper
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Education of Henry Adams owes its cultural cachet, in part, to Adams’ elaboration of a dichotomy that has pitted religion against science and technology. Though Western ideologies of modernity have viewed religion in rather negative terms, the current revival of religiosity in the postist context (post-modern, post-communist, post-colonial, post-human) invites a reconsideration of the role of religious belief, practice and objects/symbols in the current society. This article discusses Henry Adams’s dichotomy of the Virgin and the Dynamo, and recontextualizes it from a post-human perspective. It argues that the return of religiosity or spirituality, in its multiple forms, is an ethical stance that signals a cultural need for the feminine values of care, solidarity, affection and affiliation.

Keywords

EN

Henry Adams; Virgin; Dynamo; cultural object; trans/post-humanism

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human and Social Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 78-100

Dates

published

2015-06-01

online

2015-07-16

Contributors

author

Sorina Chiper

• Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/hssr-2015-0016