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Humanity in a Posthuman World: M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts

Kimberly Hurd Hale, Erin A. Dolgoy

Utopian Studies, Volume 29, Number 3, 2018, pp. 343-361 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

For additional information about this article

[ Access provided at 28 Jun 2021 04:07 GMT from University at Buffalo Libraries ]

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/713607

Utopian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2018 Copyright © 2018. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

abstract M. R. Carey’s unique novel The Girl with All the Gifts examines the intersection of human nature, natural rights, and the political future of transhumanism. Carey’s novel is rare in the canon of dystopian literature, in that it portrays humanity’s immi- nent extinction not as the result of human action—or inaction; there is no external, extraterrestrial force dismantling the world as we know it, nor has human technology escaped its masters’ control. In the context of the novel, the extinction of humanity is not necessarily a negative outcome. The creatures initially presented as zombies are revealed to be humanity’s successors: creatures with human intelligence that lack many human frailties. Carey’s novel posits that human things—literature, philoso- phy, reason, poetry—may transcend humanity itself. Through the lens of Carey’s novel, we examine the political and philosophical implications of a humanity ulti- mately bounded by the vicissitudes of nature.

keywords: political theory, transhumanism, natural rights, human nature, politics, literature, film

Humanity in a Posthuman World: M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts

Kimberly Hurd Hale and Erin A. Dolgoy

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In his novel The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey presents human beings under vexation. The novel begins in medias res, twenty years after a fungal outbreak, as Homo sapiens are on the brink of evolutionary extinction. Evolu- tion, initiated by the spread of a fungus that first controls and then destroys its human hosts, has necessitated that human beings either adapt, thereby revealing humanity’s true potential, or die.1 Adaptation is impossible for Homo sapiens; the human body in its current form cannot coexist with the fungus. In order to preserve humanity, humanoid creatures must become a new spe- cies of posthumans. The novel explores the responses both of the surviving humans, as they face their deaths and the inevitable end of humanity, and of the posthumans, as they rise to prominence.

The narrative follows Melanie, the titular “girl” with all the “gifts,” as she slowly discovers her own nature, that of a human-fungus hybrid born to an infected mother and educated in the liberal arts. Through Melanie’s eyes, the reader learns about humanity’s impending demise and the struggle of a few select humans to survive the apocalyptic fungal infection. At the end of the novel, Melanie is forced to decide whether to work to preserve human- ity in its old form or to become the founder of a new, posthuman society. In The Girl with All the Gifts, Carey depicts humans as an endangered species and invites his readers to consider those aspects of humanity that are essential to humanness and thus worth saving.

The postapocalyptic human extinction trope is not an especially novel premise. Literature, film, theory, and popular commentary abound with examples of the impending end of Homo sapiens—and therefore of human- ity.2 Carey’s novel, however, includes three rare features.3 First, the imminent extinction of humans is not the result of human action or inaction, nor is there a mysterious, external, alien force dismantling the world; rather, this extinction is Darwinian—nature evolves, niches shrink, and predators ascend. Second, the extinction of humanity is not a negative development, and there is no clear sadness associated with its demise. Third, Carey’s account of the posthuman future provides a challenge to dominant transhumanist narratives about the nature of human evolution and the place of Homo sapiens in the human-guided evolutionary process.

The Girl with All the Gifts is neither strictly dystopian nor utopian. Although political society has collapsed and the world has become chaotic, lawless, and dangerous, these are not the novel’s primary concerns. Neither the decline in political order nor the change in human biology featured in the

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novel eliminates fear, suffering, disease, pain, or death. We understand the novel as an isotopia (a maybe place). Carey depicts a possible future that chal- lenges regnant views of humanness and humanity.

In this article, we consider the transhumanist movement in the context of political theory. We examine questions raised by the possibility of posthu- mans and self-guided evolution, including the status of posthumans’ natural and civil rights and their capacity for moral agency, a prerequisite of justice. Our analysis focuses on Melanie’s decision to hasten the extinction of Homo sapiens, in order to found a peaceful world for herself and other posthumans. We question whether her decision, in the context of her role as political founder, can be viewed as just or simply as necessary.

The Next Phase of Human Evolution

The destruction of all human beings in The Girl with All the Gifts is the result of a fungal mutation.4 An actual genus of fungus, Ophiocordyceps, prominent “on the forest floor in humid environments such as the South American rain- forest,” is adapted to “hot-wir[e] the [nervous system of] ant[s]” (53). Once the fungus “jump[s] the species barrier,” becoming Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, it is able to infect humans (54), using “asexual budding in the favourable environ- ment of blood or saliva” (175). While the human characters speculate about the catalyst to this mutation, since the cause is ultimately incidental to the outcome, there is nothing specific that human beings could have done differ- ently in order to avoid destruction.

In the post-Cordyceps environment there are three distinct types of humanoid creatures who compete for control and survival: Homo sapiens, who are struggling to survive the infection while maintaining their human- ity; infected, zombielike, human hosts known as the “hungries,” who eat people; and the mysterious hybrid children, like Melanie and her classmates. There are two groups of Homo sapiens in the novel: those who gather at the military base and the “junkers,” who roam the countryside in search of pro- visions and are focused solely on survival. The junkers are concerned with mere life as opposed to the good life: “They don’t build, or preserve. They just stay alive”  (216). The junkers have reverted to a brutal, nomadic, tribal existence. In contrast to the junkers, the humans who live on the military base where Melanie and the other hybrid children are confined and studied

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hope to develop a cure or vaccine for the fungus in order to preserve some version of the good life. On the military base, Sergeant Ed Parks is charged with the security of the Homo sapiens; Dr. Caroline Caldwell is a scientist responsible for finding a cure, experimenting on the hybrid bodies; and Miss Helen Justineau studies the minds and personalities of the hybrid children by educating them in the liberal arts.

The humans on the base regard the fungal infection as a disease that can be treated. Caldwell’s methods include the vivisection of intelligent, sensitive, self-aware children in order to secure the survival of Homo sapiens. Caldwell is convinced that the children are vital to her development of a cure or vac- cine for Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. She is a dedicated, single-minded scientist, concerned with the end but not the means. Her mission is to understand the disease, study the infected, create a vaccine or cure, and save Homo sapiens: Melanie and her classmates are specimens to be studied.

While the hungries and the hybrid children are infected by the Cordyceps fungus, they have distinct cognitive and emotional capabilities. Caldwell, in the hours before her death, discovers the distinction between Melanie and an ordinary hungry: Melanie is a second-generation hungry infected in utero and born with a symbiotic fungus embedded in her body. The hybrid children, like Melanie, are not infected and altered by a parasite; they develop with the parasite. After infection, the fungus compels its host to procreate and, in order to preserve the hybrid fetus, must keep its host alive through the gestation period. The hybrid children are truly a species distinct from both their human and their fungal ancestors. They are no longer Homo sapiens, nor are they completely cognitively regressed, as are the hungries. Melanie and the other hybrid children represent something evolutionarily new: the end of human beings as they have thus far been understood and a beginning of something humanlike but adapted to the fungus-saturated environment.

The personhood of the hybrid children is debated among the humans on Caldwell’s team. Caldwell maintains that Homo sapiens is the only truly sentient species on earth; she has no qualms vivisecting the children without anesthesia, likening their suffering to that of a lab rat. Justineau and Parks have more nuanced viewpoints. Both agree with Parks’s statement, “Not everyone who looks human is human,” although they differ on what that means (14). Justineau believes that the children are sufficiently human to war- rant dignity and kindness; she fantasizes about saving the children but recog- nizes that “you can’t save people from the world. There’s nowhere else to take

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them” (51). Parks, on the other hand, views the children with deep suspicion, verging on hatred. He chastises Justineau for gestures of kindness and for her physical comforting of Melanie, noting that they must treat the chil- dren as inhuman, despite the instinct to protect a small humanoid creature. Parks understands humanity as dependent on DNA and physiology. Justineau believes that humanity is more than mere biology.

When feral hybrid children arrive at the base, they are unable to speak or to control their impulses. Biologically, the hungries and hybrid children in Carey’s novel are in many ways superior to, or at least more streamlined than, uninfected humans. The hungries are programmed to reproduce. While they will devour human flesh, it is not necessary for their survival. Any sort of pro- tein is sufficient nutrition for an infected human body. Melanie and the other children are fed a bowl of grubs once a week; as one of the doctors explains, “Their bodies are spectacularly efficient at metabolizing proteins.  .  .  . The grubs give them everything they need” (9). The instinct to attack and con- sume human beings results from the fungus’s desire to infect a new host; much like the ants that are compelled to climb to the highest accessible point in order to spread the fungal spores, the hungries are compelled to infect human hosts and, potentially, destroy competing humanoid creatures. In order to protect themselves from the hybrid children and the hungries, the humans must “mas[k] the smell of their endocrine sweat” so that they are not eaten (110). The junkers have developed a similar approach using tar and Kevlar. Once their biological impulses are (at least temporarily) under con- trol, the hybrid children are able to learn from their human teachers. The chil- dren quickly learn language, math, literature, and ancient mythology. They also form emotional relationships with one another and with their teachers. Caldwell’s understanding of the children is thus incomplete. The children are not strictly human, yet they retain the intellectual and emotional capacities associated with human beings. If they are not Homo sapiens, what are they? The novel traces this mystery, chronicling the permeable line between “per- son” and “monster.”

On the day that Caldwell intends to vivisect Melanie, the base is overrun by “a whole herd of hungries, a friggen tidal wave of hungries,” driven by a resourceful group of junkers (103). Justineau, Parks, and Caldwell escape, with Melanie’s help. Melanie’s love for Justineau helps her overcome her nature. Once outside the base, Melanie not only begins to learn about herself and what she truly is but also becomes a protector of her human captors.

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Melanie repeatedly risks her life to save Justineau, attacking junkers who threaten Justineau’s life and serving as a scout after she, Justineau, Parks, and Caldwell escape the junker raid on the base.

Once they reach the city, the group makes a shocking discovery. Melanie, while scouting for supplies, comes across a group of children who are not hungries but are also clearly not human. They look and smell like Melanie but behave as feral creatures. Though the children plainly have emotional bonds with each other, playing and working together to capture food, they primarily communicate through grunts and hand gestures. They are capable of reason but have not been educated. Armed with this new knowledge, Melanie finally discovers the truth about her hybrid nature.

Melanie thus conceives a plan both distressing in its brutality and familiar in its utilitarian calculation. Through her lessons at the base, Melanie knows enough about human society to recognize that a better world is possible. She has all the intellectual gifts of Justineau’s education and all the physical gifts of the fungus’s evolution. Melanie determines that the only way to begin building a new world is to eradicate the remaining vestiges of Homo sapiens by releasing all the now-matured fungus spores, infecting all the remaining humans at once; with no more human pheromones causing the hungries to feed and transmit the fungus to new hosts, the hungries will focus on pro- creation and more second-generation posthumans will be born before the hungries also die out. Melanie wishes for a peaceful, orderly society; after all, she was happy in her school at the military base. In order to create the possibility of such a society, however, Melanie will have to teach the feral hybrid children to appreciate the liberal arts education she received from her human captors. Melanie understands that she cannot educate the hybrid chil- dren alone; thus, she protects Justineau from infection and charges her with educating the children of the new world. As with all change, “it will be scary. But so amazing!” (3).

Transcending the Human: Transhumanism and Natural Rights

Most posthumanist accounts of biotechnology and evolution suggest that human beings, as we understand ourselves today, will somehow survive any change to our environment and any technological development. They also tend to frame humanity’s evolution as somehow dependent on or catalyzed

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by technology, such as artificial intelligence or genetic engineering. Carey’s account is different and decidedly Darwinian. He envisions the violent and painful end to Homo sapiens at the hand of a superior version of ourselves.

By necessity, all natural beings evolve to better suit their conditions. With regard to human beings, these changes are both natural (as with the evolu- tionary acquirement of reasoning ability) and unnatural (as with the use of medical technologies to overcome diseases or disabilities). Human beings are both part of nature and apart from nature.5 Reason helps us better under- stand our environment and ourselves. Science and technology—the system- atic application of our reason—enable us to understand and manipulate both human and nonhuman nature. Transhumanists go further, advocating the use of reason, science, and technology to pursue the next evolutionary form of mankind. They do not view human interference as a threat to the natural order; transhumanists, rather, argue that it is entirely natural that we would use every tool at our disposal to progress to the next stage of being.

Many scholars both opposed to and supportive of transhumanism have attempted to explain its appeal. Eric Cohen contends that the lure of bio- technology is a promise of freedom from the frailty and vulnerability of the body.6 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner argues that the biotechnological evolution of man is analogous to the evolutionary gap created by education.7 Education increases a human being’s value to society; education also improves our abil- ity to survive and thrive in society. This gap becomes evolutionary because successful individuals (measured by whichever metric one’s society uses to evaluate success) are more likely to pass on their genes.8 Mark Walker takes Sorgner’s argument further, positing that we may have a moral duty to genet- ically enhance virtue in the population.9 His Genetic Virtue Program seeks to perpetuate virtue by selecting embryos with desirable “virtue” genes. In Walker’s view, nurture can be assisted by nature, rather than nurture seeking to overcome nature.10 Melanie’s existence challenges this genetic argument. Melanie is both genetically superior to Homo sapiens and educated. She is not, however, human.

The relationship between nature and nurture is essential to Fred Baumann’s treatment of transhumanism. He argues that transhumanism simply “continues the Baconian project of control over nature for human betterment.”11 Transhumanism differs from humanism, however, in its effort to change humanity to better fit the world, rather than changing the world to better suit humanity. Baumann questions the wisdom of treating human

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beings as “material for transformation.”12 In The Girl with All the Gifts, the world has changed, and Homo sapiens are unable to adapt to the new conditions.

Patrick Deneen, in a similar argument to that posited by Baumann, explains the central tenet of the transhumanist view that human beings are raw material to be manipulated into a variety of forms.13 Deneen traces this view to the fundamental distinction between ancient and modern philosophy. The ancients believed that man was not entirely a natural being but, rather, a mixture of nature and the divine. Modern thinkers, on the other hand, argue that human beings can be entirely understood with the same methods used to understand nature.14 Consequently, once understood, human beings, like nature, can be manipulated. Deneen attributes this turn to the birth of liber- alism in the political sphere. Liberalism is the desire to liberate human beings from previous modes of politics.15 For transhumanists, this desire for free- dom from constraint inevitably extends to a desire for freedom from the con- straints of illness, aging, and even death. It is not clear whether Carey believes that the hybrid children are a threat to liberalism or a further liberation of humanoid creatures from our limited bodies and a hostile natural world.

Melanie’s Moral Character

When the novel begins, we understand that Melanie is different, but we do not know why. Ten-year-old Melanie dreams of becoming a princess, rescued from the military base on which she lives. Her world is small: “the cell, the corridor, the classroom, and the shower room” (2). When she is not in her cell, Melanie is strapped—by her wrists, ankles, and neck—into a wheeled chair that is used to transport her from cell to classroom, where she receives an extensive liberal arts education. Melanie is remarkable for several reasons. Like the other captive children, she is in a symbiotic relationship with the fungus. Unlike the other children in her class, she has genius-level intelligence and is introspective, perceptive, capable of understanding detailed scientific data, and predisposed to contemplate the nature of herself and the world around her. Melanie is an ideal leader for the hybrid children.

The first words of the novel, “Her name is Melanie” (1), establish Melanie’s identity. She understands that her name “means ‘the black girl,’ from an ancient Greek word,” μελαινα (melaina), meaning “black, dark.” Yet, Carey explains, “she thinks maybe it is not such a good name for her,” since

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“her skin is actually very fair” (1). The act of being named establishes identity. It informs who we become, how we understand ourselves, and how others interact with us. There is, however, no substantive or sentimental reason that Melanie is named Melanie. Justineau simply selects the next name from the list of names given to the children. While her human captors may as well identify Melanie by a number, her name means something to her.

Caldwell recognizes that Melanie’s humanoid characteristics, such as the capacity for speech and learning, make her sympathetic; yet Caldwell never regards Melanie and the other hybrids as human. She believes that the survival of Homo sapiens demands that she prioritize human beings over other intel- ligent life-forms. Transhumanists refer to this type of perspective as “human racism” and argue that it is only supported by arbitrary reasons.16 Caldwell and Parks maintain that biology is the defining characteristic of the children: “Dr. Caldwell takes the view that the moment of death is the moment when the pathogen crosses the blood-brain barrier. What’s left, though its heart may beat (some ten or twelve times per minute), and though it speaks and can even be christened with a boy’s name or a girl’s name, is not the host. It’s the parasite” (38). Although Justineau and eventually Parks are unable to deny that a creature such as Melanie is worthy of human dignity, Caldwell never compromises her scientific position. Melanie and the other hybrid children are not human and are therefore not deserving of being treated as one would treat a human.

As Melanie becomes increasingly aware of her own nature as a “hungry,” she muses about people’s (in)ability to overcome their own natures. During an incident in which Parks attempts to prove to Justineau that the children are not, and should not be treated as, human children, he wipes from his arms the astringent chemicals that block human pheromones. Melanie, despite being at the back of the room, smells something that she has never smelled before, and she feels instinct and urgency. She understands that her appetites over- ride her reason: “Her body was trying to take over her mind” (15). Melanie determines that her reaction is caused by her desire to attack human beings, an action she would never consciously undertake: “It’s still scary—a rebellion of her body against her mind, as though she’s Pandora wanting to open the box and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s been told not to, she’s just been built so she has to, and she can’t make herself stop” (83). The question of whether or not she is able to assert her mind’s authority over her body’s instincts in the service of virtue or justice is central to Melanie’s personhood.

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Both Plato, in the Republic, and Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, argue that the desire for bodily pleasure, including food, drink, and sex, is natural; the pursuit of bodily pleasure, however, is animalistic, insufficient for develop- ing reason and virtue.17 As rational creatures, human beings are tasked with overcoming our animal desires in order to pursue the higher things in life, such as politics, art, and philosophy. We do not succumb to the urges to rape, pillage, and gorge ourselves, because we understand that in doing so, we lose something much more important than the pleasure derived from fulfilling our desires: our humanity.

As the novel progresses, Melanie slowly begins to assert control over her world and herself. She consciously undertakes a program of self-mastery. Since the human scent inspires her to act contrary to her will, she endeavors to overcome her instincts. She starts acclimating to Justineau’s scent, in order to protect Justineau from her violent desires. She exposes herself to human pheromones and overcomes her instinct to consume. Melanie is philosophic in her desire to master her nature. She describes the moment when she is taken from her cell and brought to Caldwell’s laboratory for vivisection as liberation from “Plato’s cave” (90). Although she undoubtedly does not fully grasp the nuances of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, she is seeing her world clearly for the first time. She recognizes the truth of her captivity. Melanie is not destined to escape or to marry a prince; instead, she is intended to die at the hands of the vestiges of humanity. Her near death reveals her own vulner- ability and her separation from Homo sapiens.

Melanie is a product of both natural evolution and a liberal arts edu- cation, which makes her distinct from the feral hybrid children. Her educa- tion allows her a glimpse into a traditional human life that might have been hers had the Cordyceps not mutated, her mother not been infected, and she not evolved beyond humanity. Melanie’s liberal arts education enables her to imagine a life, a genealogy, and a history other than her own. She knows that she could have grown up in a human family. Melanie also understands that had the Cordyceps not mutated, her mother not been infected, and she not evolved beyond humanity, she would be neither as unique nor as excellent as she is. The vexations with which she lives, surviving against all odds, rallying other hybrid children, and, ultimately, releasing the spores that bring about the end of humanity and the rise of hybrid society, are only possible because she is infected.

Melanie must make a choice: she must decide whether or not to com- plete the extinction of all Homo sapiens. Although Melanie understands the

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ramifications of her choice, Carey encourages his readers to consider the mer- its of Melanie’s decision: Is Homo sapiens worth preserving, or is humanity’s value merely in the artifacts of human culture? If Melanie and the posthuman children continue to learn and build in the areas of art, literature, science, phi- losophy, and politics, has anything irreplaceable truly been irrevocably lost?

Transhumanism, Justice, and Choice

In order to establish whether or not Melanie’s decision to activate the fungal spores, thereby ensuring the extinction of all Homo sapiens, is just, we must first establish whether or not Melanie is capable of justice. As Aristotle notes, justice is only possible between multiple people, each of whom is capable of choice.18 A single person is neither just nor unjust; justice is found in the balancing of interests or the restoration of equality between political actors.19 In order to make a choice just, a person must be capable of understanding right and wrong, legal and illegal, helpful and harmful. Justice is the pro- cess of ensuring that harms are corrected and, in modern political thought, that rights are equally respected. Melanie is a singular creature; while other hybrid children have received a liberal arts education, Melanie is clearly intel- lectually and emotionally superior. Further, we do not know whether any of the human-educated hybrid children survived the raid on the base. Melanie seems to have no true peers. Her justness can only be considered as it relates to inferior creatures, namely, human beings and feral hybrids. However, human beings and feral hybrids are capable of reason and are thus ultimately capable of justice and injustice. Complex emotions such as empathy and love are commonly cited as signifiers of personhood.20 If Melanie is to be deemed a person, she must be capable of empathy and love. Melanie loves Justineau. She believes that there is no one “better or kinder or lovelier than Miss Justin- eau anywhere in the world” (15). She worries for Justineau’s safety; in fact, her concern for her teacher’s safety motivates Melanie to overcome her own hungry nature. She is content, even happy, to wander through a dystopian wasteland because “now . . . every day will be a Miss Justineau day” (137). She believes that Justineau is the one person in the world exempt from the Pandora-like impulse to “do wrong and stupid things” (245).21 Although she does not recognize Justineau’s complex reaction to her—as both monster and child—Melanie does not want to be a monster; she loves Justineau and wants to be worthy of life and love in return.

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Melanie is afraid of dying, yet “the fear makes no difference” (134). Her primary concern is protecting those she loves, including Justineau, and rebuilding a semblance of society with her fellow hybrid children. Melanie is capable of fear, anger, and self-defense, as well as love, kindness, forgive- ness, and self-reflection. Emulating the actions of Justineau, at the end of the novel Melanie forms a class for the feral posthuman children, complete with a liberal arts curriculum. It is Parks who unexpectedly explains Melanie’s com- plicated nature: “As far as the kid is concerned, the world never ended. They taught her all these old, old things, filled her head with all this unserviceable shit, and they thought it didn’t matter because she was never going to leave her cell except to be dismantled and smeared on microscope slides” (336). The liberal arts education that Melanie receives on the base is anachronistic. The hybrid children are expected to die, either on Caldwell’s table or when a vaccine is developed. These hybrids are educated to live in a world that no longer exists and a world that they are never meant to inhabit. While Melanie has an education, she has no experience of life in a civilized political society, exercising justice, or practicing civic virtue—and, in fact, has no equals with whom she can gain that experience until the other hybrid children have been successfully educated. The human beings whom she knows are unable to sur- vive in the new world and cannot be expected to willingly cede the planet to Melanie’s new order.

Melanie clearly understands the ramifications of her choice. She has overheard Caldwell “estimate that what’s left of Humanity 1.0 will close up shop within a month of one of these [fungal spore] pods opening” (289).22 When Melanie opens the pods and spreads the spores, Homo sapiens will be eradicated. A transhumanist may well argue that Melanie’s choice is just, in addition to being necessary from a utilitarian point of view, as human society is untenable in the world of the Cordyceps fungus. The remaining humans will slowly die horrible deaths, if left to their own devices, and will likely hunt down and kill the feral hybrid children, effectively ending all rational life on earth. Once infected, the human hosts become hungries, inferior to both humans and posthumans. Only in the second generation can the fungus and the human live in harmony. Melanie is thus faced with a choice: commit genocide against the species that educated her or allow all rational life to die off slowly and completely.23

Melanie is intent on preserving the lessons of her human ancestors; ancient knowledge will find a place in her new world. When asked by Parks

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why she chose to destroy humanity, Melanie explains: “Because of the children. The children like her—the second generation. There’s no cure for the hungry plague, but in the end the plague becomes its own cure. It’s ter- ribly, terribly sad for the people who get it first, but their children will be okay and they’ll be the ones who live and grow up and have children of their own and make a new world” (399). This renewed civilization is only possible in a time of peace. Melanie does not believe that Homo sapiens are peaceful beings, and most human beings are unwilling to accept the second-generation hybrid children as political equals. Although it is not clear that all the hybrid chil- dren will be capable of controlling themselves and their instinctual desire for human flesh, Melanie justifies her decision: “This way is better. Everybody turns into a hungry all at once, and that means they’ll all die, which is really sad. But then the children will grow up, and they won’t be the old kind of peo- ple but they won’t be hungries either. They’ll be different. Like me, and the rest of the kids in the class. They’ll be the next people. The ones who make everything okay again” (399). Melanie’s faith in education is astounding. She believes that her love for Justineau will keep Justineau safe. She also believes that education will provide the other children with the skills and motivation to build a more just society than the society that made their creation possible.

Justineau is thus charged with educating the first generation of via- ble posthumans. The price she pays for Melanie’s “love without hesitation or limit” is a life spent confined to the laboratory, where she is protected from the new, poisonous environment, only free outside of the laboratory in her biohazard suit accompanied by a guard of hybrid children (402). In Justineau’s view, her sentence—to be the last remaining Homo sapiens in the post- Cordyceps world, tasked with educating the hybrid children—is justice, retribution for her previous transgressions and for her complicity in the cap- tivity and torture of hungries and hybrid children while part of Caldwell’s team. Justineau is overwhelmed with “the rightness of it” (402). She educates these hybrid children as she would educate young Homo sapiens. She begins with the alphabet, drawing the letter A on the side of the mobile laboratory that will be her hermetically sealed home: “Greek myths and quadratic equa- tions will come later” (403).

Melanie’s decision raises the old question: Is justice related to moral deci- sion making or simply an expression of power? Transhumanists and their opponents have no consensus regarding this question but agree that it will be a central concern of the looming conflict between humans and posthumans.

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For example, Ingmar Persson argues that it does not matter, morally speaking, whether enhanced people are human or not.24 M. J. McNamee and S. D. Edwards are also concerned with whether or not humans and posthu- mans would have a common basis for universal rights.25 If not, it is logical to assume that posthumans would have the practical advantage from which to advance their position in society. Persson further argues, from a utilitarian perspective, that harming inferior unenhanced human beings is morally per- missible.26 James Hughes disagrees, explaining that empathy, self-awareness, and understanding of consequences are all required for moral reasoning and furthermore that citizenship rights are reserved to moral beings.27 Hopefully, empathy precludes deliberately harming beings whose only fault is evolu- tional lag. After all, the humans in Carey’s story do not recognize that the hybrid children have rights, and their reaction to these children is part of the catalyst for Melanie’s destruction of Homo sapiens.

Charles Rubin is pessimistic about transhumanists’ ability to acknowl- edge that morally flawed, unenhanced human beings will initially be respon- sible for developing and using bioenhancement technologies. He argues that the siren song of progress, allowing humanity to fulfill its “ultimate destiny” of overcoming itself, blinds transhumanists to the moral bankruptcy of their vision.28 Cohen posits that human life is meant to be metaphysically unsatisfying, which is why we cannot resist the urge to keep pursuing a bet- ter future.29 Given that we will, as a species, pursue genetic enhancement, what can be done to ensure that justice and morality survive in more than a utilitarian calculation? Will Jefferson and colleagues suggest that bioenhance- ments, in combination with a renewed, vigorous program of civic education, will produce better citizens.30 Rita Risser, as does Hughes, argues that the transhumanists’ belief that self-determination is the essential quality of per- sonhood and the bio-conservatives’ belief that the human form has special significance are incorrect.31 Instead, she recommends bio-liberalism, which seeks neither to prevent nor to pursue transhumanism. Bio-liberals maintain a classically liberal faith in individuals’ ability to understand their own well- being, while focusing on each technology from a relational standpoint; for example, enhancements must contribute to the well-being of society rather than merely satisfy curiosity.32

Baumann argues that discussions about liberty with regard to personal enhancement are futile. As with all other major technological changes,

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the decision to adopt will be made either collectively or from the top.33 Rubin  agrees, positing that the Singularity, in whatever form it takes, is essentially unknowable given our current experiences.34 Hughes somewhat concurs but argues that we can already see evidence that bioenhancement will be accepted widely by society, citing (1) medical technologies such as pacemakers and (2) hormone and sexual reassignment surgeries as evidence that the use of technology to improve the lives of individuals will outweigh vague concerns about the implications of transhumanism.35

Rubin offers a less comprehensive, but perhaps more effective, means of mitigating the dangers of bioenhancement: “Cultural and moral relativ- ism, historicism, postmodernism, dogmatic materialism, and fashionable nihilism all create obstacles to taking the question of the human good seri- ously in our time.”36 He recommends turning inward, to the mundane joys and pains of human life, rather than looking toward the posthuman. Rubin’s approach does not preclude the eventual extinction of Homo sapiens. Instead, it demands a serious accounting of what we, as human beings, value enough to preserve in the posthuman future.

Melanie’s decision to kill off Homo sapiens is, on its surface, unjust, since murder of rational creatures is never just. Although they are not her perfect equals, the humans in the story are undoubtedly capable of entering into a political relationship with Melanie. The uninfected human beings are moral actors capable of reason, empathy, love, and suffering. Despite the cruelty of certain individuals, such as the junkers and Caldwell, the entirety of human- ity does not deserve the fate Melanie bestows upon them, regardless of its inevitability.

Melanie, however, is behaving as a founder, not as a citizen. She acts not from a concern for justice but from necessity. She cannot have justice between herself and the uninfected humans. These uninfected humans refuse to rec- ognize the natural rights of Melanie and other hybrid children. They will not accept a world where Homo sapiens is not the only species to possess person- hood. It is also unlikely that all the hybrid children will be capable of sup- pressing their instinctual desire to consume Homo sapiens. Melanie’s love for Justineau, in combination with her liberal education, has made her aware of the immorality of eating human beings; her fellow hybrids will not possess such motivators for some time, if ever. This education has also led Melanie to recognize her own mortality and understand her own enhanced ability to

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reason, motivating her to rebuild society and preserve human culture. In the context of the old society designed by human beings, Melanie’s first act as a leader, the genocide of Homo sapiens, is unjust. However, Melanie has, for all intents and purposes, left behind that old society by the time she decides to release the fungal spores. She is acting as a founder, outside political society and thus outside justice. Her act unjustly kills the old society, but it creates the conditions for a new justice to emerge.

In accordance with the law of unforeseen consequences, the extinction of Homo sapiens in the novel is ultimately brought about by the humans’ experi- mental attempts to eradicate the infected hosts. Melanie’s education prepares her to understand both her own nature and the science of the Cordyceps’s adaptation. She accepts what she must do in order to ensure her own survival and the survival of the hybrid children like her. Melanie knows that if she allows the spores to mature naturally, she may miss her opportunity to found a new city of hybrid children with herself at its head. She believes that if she does not release the spores, she will either live alone forever or die at the hands of creatures less suited to the environment. Melanie chooses her most hopeful option: Homo sapiens will cease to exist, but some human things, such as language, myth, art, and love, will be preserved in the new society. Without sentient, rational creatures to appreciate the excellences of human culture, the culture would die completely. Melanie indeed destroys Homo sapiens, but she maintains their legacy. Melanie, according to Carey’s account, represents the best aspects of humanity; she is intelligent, resourceful, compassionate, and loyal. She is willing to make tough decisions to ensure the long-term survival of her species and the protection of those aspects of human culture that she regards as essential.

Transhumanist accounts of the future depend on the continuation of the essence of Homo sapiens. The dominant transhumanist argument suggests that, regardless of the nature of the enhancement, we will remain biologi- cally human, only better. The Girl with All the Gifts challenges this optimistic narrative. A biologically superior humanoid may not actually be an enhanced Homo sapiens; it may be something evolutionarily different. As Melanie explains, she will enter the new world “like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out” (242).

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Conclusion: The Inevitability of Evolution

Evolution is driven by favorable mutations; it is nature at its most reckless, as organisms risk death for the possibility of supremacy. Human-led innovations are similar to evolutionary changes; great leaps in science and technology require bold and daring scientists.37 Changes of great magnitude, whether evolutionary or technological, unsettle what is established. This view of tech- nology as an agent of disruption is at odds with technology’s stated purpose: to bring human mastery and control over nature. As technological creatures, human beings seek to bring order and regularity to every part of nature. We use technology to avoid having to evolve. For example, nearsightedness will not gradually be eradicated from the human population, as are unfavorable characteristics in other species, because we can make glasses and perform LASIK eye surgery to allow nearsighted individuals to perfect their vision and to survive long enough to procreate. Yet, as Carey’s novel asserts, evolution may not be so easily thwarted.

In The Girl with All the Gifts, the replacement of Homo sapiens with the posthuman hybrids is accomplished in spite of the remaining humans’ deter- mination to use their technological prowess to stop the evolution. While the majority of human beings would likely welcome evolution that we control, such as the elimination of genetic diseases through genetic engineering, as a species we have become extremely resistant to the idea that we should con- tinue to take part in natural evolution. In the context of The Girl with All the Gifts, this leads to an active human resistance against transhumanism; as individuals, we are unwilling to forgo our current physical form, even if doing so prevents our species from evolving into something stronger. This is a consideration unique to human beings, as nonrational animals do not have to contemplate the idea that their deaths may be good for their spe- cies. M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts helps us explore our resistance to natural human evolution. It presents a challenge to transhumanist accounts of the future of Homo sapiens. Melanie’s dilemma and the responses of Parks, Justineau, and Caldwell provide a framework in which to consider the essence that makes human beings human and the nature of humanity’s true gifts.

kimberly hurd hale is an assistant professor of politics at Coastal Carolina University. She is the author of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis in the Foundation of

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Modern Political Thought (Lexington Books, 2013) and The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film (Lexington Books, 2016).

erin a. dolgoy is an assistant professor of political science at Rhodes College.

Notes

1. As Peter Pesic explains, it is only in conditions of torment that organisms either die or adapt, revealing their true potential. If there is no incentive to change, organisms remain as they are. Peter Pesic, “Francis Bacon, Violence, and the Motion of Liberty: The Aristotelian Background,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75, no. 1 (2014): 69–90, at 86–87.

2. For discussions of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering toward a posthuman future, see Kimberly Hurd Hale, The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2016); Charles Rubin, Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress (New York: Encounter Books, 2014); and James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

3. For other examples of works of science fiction that focus on the “Darwinian” nature of human evolution and are ambivalent about human extinction, see Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (New York: First Anchor, 2004); Clifford D. Simak, City (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 1952); Phillip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Del Rey Books, 1968); and Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (New York: Bantam Dell, 1950).

4. M. R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts (London: Orbit Books, 2014), 54; hereafter cited parenthetically in the text by page number.

5. Patrick Deneen, “The Science of Politics and the Conquest of Nature,” New Atlantis 32 (Summer 2011): 90–102, at 90.

6. Eric Cohen, In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology (New York: Encounter Books, 2008), 4–5.

7. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Beyond Humanism: Reflections on Trans- and Posthumanism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 21, no. 2 (October 2010): 1–19, at 2.

8. This argument is belied by the decreasing birth rates recorded among the educated classes of developed nations.

9. Mark Walker, “Enhancing Genetic Virtue: A Project for Twenty-First Century Humanity?” Politics and the Life Sciences 28, no. 2 (September 2009): 27–47, at 28.

10. Ibid., 29. 11. Fred Baumann, “Humanism and Transhumanism,” New Atlantis 28 (Fall 2010):

68–84, at 70. 12. Ibid. 13. Deneen, “Science of Politics and the Conquest of Nature,” 90. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 94.

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16. Animal rights activists also use the term human racism to indicate an unjust denial of rights to intelligent animals, such as great apes.

17. Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), Book IV; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus, 2002), Books III–IV.

18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V. 19. James Madison also endorses this view of justice in Federalist 51. 20. Hale, Politics of Perfection, 1. 21. Justineau, of course, does possess this “inescapable flaw.” Her caress of Melanie’s

head, breaking all protocols for interaction between teachers and students, has far- reaching consequences, including an increased hostility between Melanie and Parks and a heightened distrust between Justineau and Caldwell.

22. Melanie examines Caldwell’s notes before killing her; everything that Caldwell included in her notes, Melanie now knows.

23. There is much more to explore in Melanie’s role as the founder of a new political order, which cannot be discussed here due to space constraints. This discussion will be resumed in Erin A. Dolgoy and Kimberly Hurd Hale, “Founding a Posthuman Political Order in M. R. Carey’s Girl with All the Gifts,” in Science Fiction and Political Philosophy, eds. Steven Michels and Timothy McCranor (Lanham: Lexington Books: forthcoming).

24. Ingmar Persson, “Could It Be Permissible to Prevent the Existence of Morally Enhanced People?” Journal of Medical Ethics 38, no. 11 (November 2012): 692–93, at 692.

25. M. J. McNamee and S. D. Edwards, “Medical Technology and Slippery Slopes,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 9 (September 2006): 513–18, at 514. 26. Persson, “Could It Be Permissible to Prevent the Existence of Morally Enhanced

People?” 693. 27. Hughes, Citizen Cyborg, 222, 254. 28. Rubin, Eclipse of Man, 153, 160. 29. Cohen, In the Shadow of Progress, 25. 30. Will Jefferson, Thomas Douglas, Guy Kahane, and Julian Savulescue,

“Enhancement and Civic Virtue,” Social Theory and Practice 40, no. 3 ( July 2014): 504–9. Jefferson et al.’s claims are predicated on the argument that smarter citizens will be better citizens. While this is nominally true, in that people with higher education levels tend to be more politically active and have higher levels of political knowledge, this conclusion confuses correlation with causation.

31. Rita Risser, “A Tory and a Liberal Spar on the Ethics of a Posthuman Future,” Public Affairs Quarterly 25, no. 1 ( January 2011): 53–62, at 53.

32. Ibid., 60; see also Rubin, Eclipse of Man, 179. 33. Baumann, “Humanism and Transhumanism,” 71. 34. Rubin, Eclipse of Man, 140. 35. Hughes, Citizen Cyborg, 207; see also Rubin, Eclipse of Man, 142. Rubin compares our

acceptance of biotechnology to a frog that does not perceive that the water around it is getting hotter, until it boils to death.

36. Rubin, Eclipse of Man, 165. 37. Pesic, “Francis Bacon, Violence, and the Motion of Liberty,” 86–87.