Fragmented Minds: SOMA and the Reconstruction of Identity

Author(s)

Karolina Sawa, University of Łódź, Poland
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0564-7147

Journal: Polish Journal of English Studies

Issue: 11.2 (2025)

Date: 15/12/2025

Page: 54

Quote As: Sawa, Karolina. Fragmented Minds: SOMA and the Reconstruction of Identity, Polish Journal of English Studies 11.2 (2025): 54-70

DOI: doi.org/10.64867/pjes.25435981.25.112.2365

Abstract

Contemporary technological developments challenge established notions of human identity (Sorgner 2022), such as gender, race, or personality (Drew 2023), creating new possibilities for understanding, beyond biological and social categories, what it means to be human (Braidotti 2013; Wilde 2024). This article examines how the video game SOMA (2015) serves as a critical examination of posthuman subjectivity in a transhuman setting. By analyzing the game’s narrative structure and interactive mechanics, this article explores the tensions between the silicon-based transhumanist visions of enhancement (Sorgner 2021) and the posthumanist critiques of autonomous selfhood (Haraway 2016; Wilde 2024). The analysis focuses on the game’s exploration of mind uploading scenarios in which human consciousness becomes detached from its original biological substrate and then reimplanted in more-than-human bodies. SOMA’s narrative reveals the fundamental contradictions in the mind uploading technology through its portrayal of digital entities trapped between human memories and mechanical realities. These entities inhabit robotic forms while retaining a complete belief in their human identity, creating a disturbing gap between the subjective experience and the objective existence. Through this exploration, SOMA questions whether, and at what cost, human identity can survive radical technological transformation as mind uploading.

The paper argues that, although SOMA does not introduce a new conceptual model of mind-uploading, its interactive format creates unique opportunities for exploring posthumanist concepts of distributed subjectivity. Players experience identity not as a stable property of one’s individual consciousness but as an emergent effect of the ongoing interactions between human and machine. The study concludes that SOMA offers a compelling counter-narrative to techno-optimistic visions of human enhancement, revealing the irreducible complexity of embodied existence and the ethical implications of consciousness transfer technologies.

Keywords: posthumanism; identity; SOMA; consciousness; reconstruction of identity

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Received: 2025-09-29; reviewed 2025-10-21; accepted 2025-11-13