Reading the Superhuman

Abstract

The following chapters comprise the final section of this book and present original findings from interviews conducted with readers. Having contextualised the historical development of the posthuman body, it is now possible to consider what sense readers make of these narratives and how they might shape their understanding of human enhancement. The importance of such a project lies in explicating the various models of posthumanity available and known to the public. Interviewing comic book readers in this way provided the opportunity to test and counter the literature presented in previous chapters, which focused on questions of bodily representation in superhero comics. Some of the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of these varied approaches have already been discussed, but it is worth reiterating that even the best of these works rarely turned to actual readers when formulating their conclusions. Maigret puts it best: the shortcoming of such studies is not that they are able to identify the existence of stereotypes, nor their analyses of the ideological consequences of such stereotypes; it is their method. As Maigret says, “it is the object itself that the keys for understanding by readers have been located, while its reception and all the factors contributing to the production of the content have been overlooked”.1