Are We Already Posthuman? A Study of Lucy Prebble's The Sugar Syndrome

Since we are living in the age of modern technology in its various shapes, one feels it is important to discuss what is posthuman meant by being a posthuman. This study is going to apply some of the features on Lucy Prebble's The Sugar Syndrome (2003) to investigate the belief that we, as humans, are already posthuman now and we do not need to wait for the future to be posthuman. This study attempts to apply posthuman concepts to the selected play, drawing on the work of Cary Wolfe, Ihab Hassan, Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Hans Moravec, and Thomas Carlson. The paper is going to identify the archetypal figure of digital culture – the posthuman subject – within a dramatic form. The recent study tends to explore the effect of the digital technology in the humanist paradigm as well as the dichotomy in the self that occurs as a result of the integration with intelligent machines.
        The Sugar Syndrome is a posthuman play due to the characters' relationship with the internet. In fact, about half of the nine scenes in the first act of the play are online, whether partly or completely, shifting between the virtual and material world through the internet. The characters, in this play, are multidimensional as what they appear to be is different from their inner self, which their interaction with technology helps to disclose. The model of identity represented in The Sugar Syndrome, reveals the characters to be subjugated to factors that are heterogeneous and collective rather than singular and self-conscious, which are integrated with the intelligent machines. The main characters can be viewed as posthuman subjects as they represent a cyborgic unity between the digital code and unwanted desires of the flesh. In this sense, this play tends to assert the idea that we, as humans, are posthuman through our consolidation with the technology, machines, and the accelerating digital world, and we do not want to wait for the future to be nominated as posthumans.