Are You A Person: A Comparative Study of Posthuman Personhood in "Artificially Manufactured Persons" in 21st-Century Science Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53469/jsshl.2025.08(02).02Keywords:
Posthumanism, Personhood, 21st-century science fictionAbstract
From the perspective of posthumanist discourse, this paper delves into the possibility of "artificially manufactured persons" for having personhood, as well as the emergent posthumanist paradigm of human-machine relationality as depicted in the speculative narratives of The Windup Girl, Ancillary Justice, and All Systems Red. Within the posthumanist paradigm shift, the demarcation between the human and the non-human is problematized, leading to a nuanced intermingling of these categories. The narratives in question illustrate the assertion of personhood by non-human entities, such as "artificially manufactured persons," which is met with anthropocentric resistance, precipitating acrimonious discord. This study will scrutinize the criteria for ascribing personhood to artificial persons. Furthermore, it will investigate the root causes and potential strategies for mitigating human-machine complexities, with the aim of elucidating innovative pathways toward the establishment of an autopoietic posthuman society.)
References
Bacigalupi, P. (2009). The windup girl. Night Shade.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity.
Braidotti, R. (2018). A theoretical framework for the posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36 (6), 31–61.
Chen, S. (2023). Postmodernist fiction. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. Oxford University Press.
Gane, N. (2006). Posthuman. Theory, Culture & Society, 23 (2–3), 1–17.
Gittinger, J. L. (2019). Personhood in science fiction: Religious and philosophical considerations. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hassan, I. (1977). Prometheus as performer: Toward a posthumanist culture? The Georgia Review, 31 (4), 830–850.
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Kapica, S. S. (2014). "I don't feel like a copy": Posthuman legal personhood and Caprica. Griffith Law Review, 23 (4), 612–633.
Leckie, A. (2013). Ancillary justice. Orbit.
Rivkin, J., & Ryan, M. (Eds.). (2017). Literary theory: An anthology. John Wiley & Sons.
Silva, D. F. (2017). From human to person: Detaching personhood from human nature. In V. A. J. Kurki & T. Pietrzykowski (Eds.), Legal personhood: Animals, artificial intelligence and the unborn (pp. 113–125). Springer.
Taylor, C. (1985). The concept of a person. In Philosophical papers (pp. 97–114). Cambridge University Press.
Warren, M. A. (1996). On the moral and legal status of abortion. In T. A. Mappes & D. DeGrazia (Eds.), Biomedical ethics (pp. 434–440). McGraw-Hill.
Wells, M. (2017). All systems red. Tor.
Wennemann, D. J. (2013). Posthuman personhood. University Press of America.
Winner, L. (2005). Resistance is futile: The posthuman condition and its advocates. In H. W. Baillie & T. K. Casey (Eds.), Is human nature obsolete? Genetics, bioengineering, and the future of the human condition (p. 399). MIT Press.
Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.