The monstrous-feminine, the colonial body, and Dr. Moreau: transhumanism, racial capitalism, and the speculative fiction of motherless birth

Abstract

Through a reading of H.G. Wells’ nineteenth-century dystopian novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau, I draw on the concept of the monstrous feminine in an attempt to rethink transhumanism in the Anthropocene and subsequently contribute to the theorization of ‘gestational geographies’. More precisely, I find in Wells’ speculative fiction an opportunity to think through the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality as mediated in broader reproductive politics. To that end, my objectives are two-fold. First, I interrogate the (re)productive labors of Moreau, that is, the physical work performed by the vivisectionist and the intent of his experimentations. In so doing I underscore the political economy of Moreau’s activities and emphasize the imbrication of racial capitalism, colonialism, and slavery. Next, I recast the subject-position of Moreau. Here, I argue that Moreau embodies a perverse form of the monstrous feminine as he attempts to replace the maternal with the machine, a masculinist appropriation of the vicissitudes of reproduction for the purpose of rational biological production. By way of conclusions, I argue that Moreau, similar to contemporary transhumanists, sought to perfect upon evolution and to eliminate the indeterminacy and unpredictability of sexual reproduction and, to that end, Moreau personifies the desire of a masculinist science centered on the sphere of production to coopt women’s productive capabilities.