Claude Cahun and The Androgyne

Transhumanism may not yet be a household term, but it's only a matter of time before the youth culture have at the label and somehow elevate the term to cool status. Already, we learn that the PostHuman moniker has been replaced with the cooler sounding "Human+"

Having said that, the only plus in the Human+ so far seems to be an expensive personal mapping of one's genome. Aside from that, the future of the PostHuman is still at the discretion of Mother Nature and her million+ year addiction to gambling.

But if it is philosophy that we're after than Transhumans have been here for quite awhile. It can be argued that the Androgyne are our first Transhumans, as they have philosophically and culturally abandoned the all too human restrictions of gender. While a Transgender merely switches sex, an Androgyne finds a sliver of grey area to exist in, being neither male nor female. To be sexless is to remove one's self from any preconceived and misconceived illusions imposed on either gender.

Under such definitions, the Human+ movement will do well to redirect their attention away from Ray Kurzweil and zero in on French photographer, writer and activist Claude Cahun. If our male gender bias in the arts and sciences make such detours difficult, not to worry; with Claude it’s tough to know the difference. Which was kind of her point. By the way, Claude Cahun was not her real name. This was a pseudonym picked for its gender ambiguity. Daniel Douglas was another pseudonym she adopted for her early writing. Her birth name was Lucy Schwob. Far ahead of her time, as all true futurists are, Cahun challenged gender roles by virtually not having one. With her head shaven, and clothing that could swing in either direction, Cahun blurred the lines between what people knew her to be (female) and what they perceived her to be (male). Such ambiguity is still the best example of the transcendental human yet; especially since Cahun’s ambiguous gender works best on a psychological level. After all, the human psyche is arguably the defining quality of us humans.
		Cahun not only found for herself a genderless voice, but also put with it a sexually ambivalent visage. During the 1920s she created a large body of photos with her pseudonymous partner Marcel Moore (alias for Suzanne Malherbe). Having flirted with the surrealists, fired at political issues and frequented hospital lectures, Cahun and More’s work was inherently nomadic as they seemed to have sought out and eventually rejected any long term destination for their radical ambiguity. Even the amateur nature of Claude Cahun’s photography can be seen as her ambivalence of the “professional artist”.
Consequently, she transcended not just gender roles, but also the contrived role of the artist. While some of her self-portraits adopt a surrealist approach through montage, her other androgynous self-portraits act as instruments for scientific scrutiny. A 1920 self portrait of Cahun in profile has a straight forward approach, placing Cahun against a dark background that brings the contours of her shaven head and curvish nose into sharp relief. As we might investigate our imperfections in a mirror, this photograph seems to be an artifact of self interrogation. It is also an invitation for others to see beyond male and female, and find the person who is without pre-determinants.
	The pseudonyms turned out to be useful camouflage during the 1940s when the Nazi’s came to occupy the Channel Islands, where Cahun and More chose to live. Being neither male nor female, or perhaps both, they became anti-facist propagandists that the Nazi’s struggled to identify and find. Many of their leaflets spoke directly to German soldiers, challenging their obeisance and encouraging them to defy the prison of conformity. Both knew that the masquerade could only last so long, and on July 25, 1944 they were arrested in their homes. A surviving text from Cahun suggests that their discovery by the Nazi’s came as no surprise: “I had been expecting (this event) almost daily for the past three years. So I just said, ‘Good evening’, and waited for them to state their business.” Their business was to arrest the women, following which they were sentenced to six years in prison as well as a death sentence. Irreverently, one of the women asked which of the two sentences was to be served first. This indifference to their sentence was due to both women having already planned suicide in the event of their capture. “In the event of arrest, suicide.” Cahun wrote. “a mortal dose of barbiturates." However, the suicide attempts failed, and the death sentences were appealed resulting in harsh Nazi treatment during their time of
imprisonment. In May of 1945 the Islands were liberated from Gernan rule. Cahun and Moore returned to their home where the bulk of their work had been destroyed. Cahun died on December 8th, 1954. Moore endured without her partner for another 18 years, but eventually ended her own life in 1972. Force-fitting historic figures into future ideas is a temptation that should be avoided, and it’s impossible to know how Claude would have responded to the label of “Transhuman”. But through her works and words we have some idea on how she felt about personal identity. Identity is nothing if not central to the future of Transhumanism. Should the day of the PostHuman visit us, and questions about the absence of gender be asked, we can refer to the life of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. They might advise that the transcendental future find comfort in the existential ambiguity found between the hard lines of male and female.