The Titanic and Transhumanism : The Enfolding of Myth

Ever since the sinking of the Titanic on 14 April 1912, the disaster of the luxury liner has animated the popular imagination. Countless articles, books and documentaries have reconstructed the chain of events that led to the accident. More recently, scholars have examined the meaning of the wreck in the popular imagination. For example, Richard Howells has examined the way that such disastrous events are enfolded into and made sensible in terms of existing myth.(1) Howells sees myths as texts within which ìthe actual and the imaginaryî are enfolded in a potent blending of ìfactî and ìfictionî in ways that make otherwise unintelligible, arbitrary, and senseless events meaningful. According to this understanding, myths locate confusing events within existing cultural frameworks. Howells shows how the Titanic became, post hoc, an ìunsinkable ship,î as well as an emblem of the myth of technological hubris. As such, the Titanic not only became comprehensible in terms of existing myth bu...