In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche, that most prescient and pre-eminent thinker of the transhuman, identifies “debt,” particularly in the form of personal obligations, as a quintessentially human quality, and one that has long been the source of many of the species's more destructive tendencies and stood in the way of human “self-overcoming.” Insofar as this book takes a number of its most important cues from Nietzsche's thought, this may put me in an awkward position—because I owe a number of debts to a wide variety of individuals who both inspired and supported its writing. However, given that one of this book's central arguments is for the potential of productively redirecting many of the negative qualities associated with “human nature,” perhaps we can just consider this acknowledgments section an example of that strategy.
The research for this book began as a dissertation project in the English Department of the Pennsylvania State University, and I owe perhaps my largest debt to my dissertation director and mentor, Richard Doyle (“To Doc, with Love”), and the other members of my committee: Stephen H. Browne, Cheryl Glenn, Jeffrey T. Nealon, and Jack Selzer. An even more long-standing debt is owed to Joseph O. Dewey, teacher and friend for almost two decades and counting. I am similarly grateful to my friend and frequent collaborator Antonio Ceraso; this book would have been far poorer without the insight and advice he has provided over the years.
This book also owes much to the immense support I have received from Wayne State University and its Department of English. Ellen Barton, Gwen Gorzelsky, and Richard Marback have been remarkable friends and mentors over the past several years, as have been the extraordinary group of scholars and teachers that make up Wayne State's English Department as a whole. The writing of this book has also benefited from a significant amount of institutional support from Wayne State, including a semester sabbatical, a summer research grant, and financial support of archival research. Much of the work between these pages also found its first form as talks delivered as part of the Wayne State Humanities Center's colloquium series, overseen by the always remarkable Walter Edwards.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to a large number of other individuals who offered suggestions, advice, or a kind word during the completion of this project: Robert Aguirre, Dana Anderson, David Blakesley, James J. Brown, William Covino, Rosa Eberly, Jamie Ebersole, Jessica Enoch, Theresa J. Enos, Alexander R. Galloway, Richard Grusin, Kathryn Hume, Jay Jordan, Kim Lacey, Carolyn R. Miller, Jodie Nicotra, JeffRice, Jenny Rice, Scott C. Richmond, Mike Ristich, Brian Rotman, Stephen Schneider, Sanford Schwartz, Michael Scrivener, Stuart Selber, Steven Shaviro, Paul Dustin Stegner, Allan Stoekl, Barrett Watten, Scott Wible, Elizabeth S. Wilson, Lynn Worsham, Anne Frances Wysocki, and James T. Zebroski.
I was also very lucky to have Elizabeth Levine and Emily Ross (Routledge) as my editors on this project, who expertly guided this manuscript from submission to publication. On the production side, I am also thankful to Anke Reisenkamp and the Van Gogh Museum, and Hannah Rhadigan and the Artists Rights Society, for help clearing permissions for visual material. An earlier form of Chapter 3 of this text, “Rhetoric in the Age of Intelligent Machines,” was published in 2006 by Rhetoric Review under the title “Rhetoric, Cybernetics, and the Work of the Body in Burke's Body of Work”; I am grateful to the editors of Rhetoric Review for permission to republish that material.
Last, but certainly not least, I owe very much to my parents, Albert and Sharon Pruchnic, and my sister, Jennifer Pruchnic, for being my first and most important teachers in what it means to be human.