Westworld and Humans: The Sentimental Disposition of Popular Posthumanism

Abstract

Popular trans- and posthuman TV fictions such as Westworld (2016-22) or Humans (2015-18) are replete with sentimental tropes and scripts–those inherited from an 18th-century sentimental tradition and the affective-political ones that allow the sentimental to continue to operate today, as a communicative code in an arena of ‘public feelings’. Here, it is activated in times of crisis and to hedge in experiences of radical contingency. Uncanny encounters with posthuman forms arguably constitute such moments of crisis. But how can the sentimental do its cultural work if these encounters threaten to decentre its humanist foundations? In Westworld and Humans, sentimental scripts are partially revised, develop ambivalent, multi-coded forms and are employed self-reflexively, both in the shows’ diegesis and in the way they address their audience: In ‘quality TV’ drama, fictions of the posthuman seem to engender a ‘meta-sentimentality’ – which in turn may allow for a critical mode of inquiry.