Technicity and the Utopian Limits of the Body

In this chapter, Anna Caterina Dalmasso proposes an analysis on the way this television series sheds light on the fact that human beings and technology are intrinsically entangled and mutually constituted. As pointed out by the author, technicity shall be thought of not as something that is merely added onto the natural core of embodied life, but as the very structure of the relationship between human beings and the environment. Thus, through “The Entire History of You,” “Striking Vipers,” and “San Junipero” this chapter analyzes the way digital prostheses contribute to informing and reconfiguring our bodily and embodied engagement with the world. The essay also suggests an inquiry into the experience of inhabiting an avatar as acting like a prosthetic virtual body and analyzes the fantasies of disembodiment raised by the prospects of singularity and consciousness uploading as questioned by “San Junipero,” in particular.