Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Star Wars

For generations, Darth Vader has been one of the most iconic villains in popular culture. From his first menacing appearance in Star Wars – A New Hope, until today Darth Vader has fascinated the global audience. He is not only an iconic movie character, but also a cyborg: A sentient being combining both technology and organic matter. Through this, Darth Vader embodies ideas and tropes of both transhumanism as well as posthumanism. However, he is not the only character in the Star Wars narrative that invokes such ideas. A variety of cyborgs, intelligent robots, or droids, and clones populate the Star Wars universe, and all of them blur the line between technology and humans, or rather intelligent, organic lifeforms. This book is the first to explore these ideas and characters in the Star Wars franchise in depth, providing the reader with a critical posthumanist reading of one of the most influential science fiction narratives our time has to offer.