PO Box 440140 Aurora CO 80014-0140
Title: Mad Scientist, Impossible Human: An Essay in Generative Anthropology
Author: Andrew Bartlett
The Davies Group, Publishers
348 pp.
soft cover
USD 32.00
ISBN 978-1934542354
Pub date: September 6, 2014
The myth of the modern scientist playing God-the-creator asks how does the human come into being? Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, H. G.
Wells’ Dr. Moreau, the engineers in Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and the genetic engineer Tyrell in Blade Runner all aim to re-make
the origin of the human, as if human reality could be invented and discovered by science alone. But when the human becomes nothing but an
object of science, the object is no longer human – for humans act as sacred, aesthetic, and erotic objects to and for each other. Frankenstein
and his heirs incarnate not technology in the service of human exchange, but scientism in denial of the uniqueness of the human. His victims are “impossible” because he
makes them serve his historical purposes; it is impossible for them to enter history as our equals. This ambitious analysis restores the power of the Frankenstein myth,
showing us anew how it can shock us with the horrors of scientism. Whatever else humans are, they cannot be made from matter alone, built in factories, or reduced to
DNA. Humans make one another human by exchanging signs of resentment and love, signs that transcend physical reality.
Contents
One
The Frankenstein Myth, Scientism, and Generative Anthropology
Four Stories, One Formula
Defending the Mad Scientist Plays God Formula
Resisting Victimary Attitudes
More Criteria for Counting as a Story that Builds Up the Frankenstein Myth
Scientism as the Reduction of Anthropology to Biology
Studying to Say Almost Nothing of the Origin of Language
On That Which Necessarily Must Have Happened Accidentally
The Exchange of Abortive Gestures of Appropriation
Experience of the Object-as-Sacred: Revelation without Cognition
Experience of the Object-as-Esthetic: Imaginary Possession, Recognized Inviolability (To and Fro)
Experience of the Object-as-Economic: Sacrificial Consumption, Economic Value
The Object-as-Cosmological: From Good (Minimal) Science to Scientism
Exchangeability and Desacralization
Tortured Matter, Multiple Errors
Two
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818): Experiment and Irreversibility
Two Ways of Approaching the Book and Its Author
Victor’s Early Career: Discovery and Experiment
Irreversible Experiment and the Event-structure of Scientific Revelation
On the Expulsion of the Monster
The Mock-Creation Scene of Failed Integration
The Vain Scientist as Pseudo-Savior
A Concluding Retrospective
Three
Allegories of Playing God in The Island of Dr. Moreau
H. G. Wells and Biological Thinking
Moreau Playing the God of Punctualist Creation Theology
Moreau Playing the Gradualist “God” of Liberal Theology
Moreau as One Who Believes in Scientific Species-making (The Atheist Plays God)
The Island of Mr. Prendick
On the Mercy-Killing of the Leopard Man
Hypnotism and the Unnatural Language of the Beast People
Prendick’s Farewell
Four
Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): Mechanical Not Erotic
R.U.R. as Rebellious Heir to Frankenstein and Moreau
To Believe in an Economy of Mechanical Value
Android Automata and the Comedy of Baffled Activism
Altered Androids and Mechanical Resentment Mobilized
Committee Robots and Primary Humanoids
Capek’s Originary Script and the Popularity of Robots
Five
Blade Runner: Minimizing the Difference of the Impossible Human
Blade Runner as Postmodern Frankenstein: Contesting the Nondifference Thesis
Corporate Science and Postmodern Paranoia: Tyrell as Scapegoat
Falling in Love with the Impossible Human
Victimary Thinking and the Human/Replicant Boundary
On the Vanity of Eldon Tyrell
Batty’s Enigmatic Gesture of Rescue
On the Dying Lines of Roy Batty
Six
Afterword: Sharing the Human Scene
Inequality and Mad Science: Imagining a Mind-materializer
Sharing Our Origin inLanguage
Notes
Works Cited
Index
The Author
Andrew Bartlett lives in Vancouver, Canada. A full-time regular member of the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia, he
teaches courses in academic writing and literary analysis. From 2009 to 2014, he was president of the Generative Anthropology Society and Conference.