Frankenstein’s Legacy across Science, War, and Posthuman Identity

This paper analyses the transformation of the Frankenstein myth from Shelley’s creation into a war-time world in Baghdad, and further shaped by the rise of advanced technology of artificial intelligence. We explore reimaginings of the story which depict novel anxieties
about how bodies are engendered. The original work began as a warning about the dangers of scientific creation, whereas here we discuss it as an embodiment of political violence and collective trauma, and in another rendering of this classic creation, brought to the steps of the twenty-first century in a world of AI where the instability of the human form is investigated. We draw on the concept of
transcorporeality as proposed by Stacy Alaimo. The paper examines how bodies cannot be isolated from the forces that create or shape them. They absorb and retain history, conflict, and technological effects. The paper aims to show how the “monster” becomes a space where science, war, and new technologies converge, and thus problematises the idea of the autonomy of the body and immutable identity.
Finally, the study seeks to expose the way this myth adapts to various cultural moments as it moves from Shelley’s nineteen-century galvanic laboratory to battlefields and then laboratories of artificial intelligence. What the paper argues is that Frankenstein is not merely a story that is retold in hundreds of novels, stories and film adaptations, but a continuing interaction between corporeality, technology, and the historical context which essentially keeps alive our critical inquiries into the ethics of creation and responsibility.