Worlds Falling Apart: Human and Nonhuman in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods
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Annalisa Volpone is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Perugia. Her study research includes modernism (she has published on James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and on the (post) modernism of Vladimir Nabokov), romantic poetry (she has published on Blake, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge and Shelley) and the interconnections between literature and science. She co-directs the CEMS (Centre for European Modernism Studies).
Abstract
This essay discusses Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) in light of human and nonhuman relationships. The author presents us with quite a paradoxical situation, whereby what is human seems to be less human than what is said to be nonhuman. The ontological instability produced by such a peculiar paradigm generates interesting consequences in terms of fundamental rights, especially when applied to hybrid forms of life such as those represented by “Robo sapiens.” Hence, Winterson’s novel invites a reconfiguration of the notion of rights and “legal personhood” in the context of AI systems. Robots demand that their “humanity” is acknowledged and, as a consequence to that, they also demand that they are granted rights. One could notice that Robot’s existential condition is very similar to that of slaves, precisely like slaves they are submitted to servitude, forced or bonded labour. And yet the fact that they are not “fully human”, only very similar or close to them, puts robots in a juridical position that might be compared to that of animals and the way they are presented in animal law studies.
About the author
Annalisa Volpone is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Perugia. Her study research includes modernism (she has published on James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and on the (post) modernism of Vladimir Nabokov), romantic poetry (she has published on Blake, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge and Shelley) and the interconnections between literature and science. She co-directs the CEMS (Centre for European Modernism Studies).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Have We Ever Been/Will We Still Be Human? Law and Literature Faced with the Shifting Boundaries of Humanity and Technology
- Sustainable Posthumanism. Ethical Nudging and Normative Robomorphing
- Minding the Shift: Some Thoughts on the Human and the Not Too Human Mind
- The Legal, the Digital, and the Global Production of Space
- Somatic Jurisprudence: Re-Drawing the Boundaries of the Human Body
- Of Sexbots, Cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence: Articulations of the Posthuman Subject in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story
- Worlds Falling Apart: Human and Nonhuman in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods
- On the Marionette Theater by Heinrich von Kleist. In Other Words: The Impossibility of Man’s Salvation through Technology
- Is Bureaucracy the Answer of the Law to Digital Technologies?
- Research
- New Materialisms in Law. A Plea for a Contemporary Ontology of Intellectual Property Law
- “Farewell My Sweet Virginia” – “Die, Die Lavinia”: Defiled Roman Maidens in Webster and Heywood’s Appius and Virginia and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
- Book Reviews
- Chiara Battisti, Sidia Fiorato, Matteo Nicolini, and Thomas Perrin: Islands in Geography, Law, and Literature: A Cross-Disciplinary Journey
- Daniela Carpi: Law and Culture in the Age of Technology
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Have We Ever Been/Will We Still Be Human? Law and Literature Faced with the Shifting Boundaries of Humanity and Technology
- Sustainable Posthumanism. Ethical Nudging and Normative Robomorphing
- Minding the Shift: Some Thoughts on the Human and the Not Too Human Mind
- The Legal, the Digital, and the Global Production of Space
- Somatic Jurisprudence: Re-Drawing the Boundaries of the Human Body
- Of Sexbots, Cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence: Articulations of the Posthuman Subject in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story
- Worlds Falling Apart: Human and Nonhuman in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods
- On the Marionette Theater by Heinrich von Kleist. In Other Words: The Impossibility of Man’s Salvation through Technology
- Is Bureaucracy the Answer of the Law to Digital Technologies?
- Research
- New Materialisms in Law. A Plea for a Contemporary Ontology of Intellectual Property Law
- “Farewell My Sweet Virginia” – “Die, Die Lavinia”: Defiled Roman Maidens in Webster and Heywood’s Appius and Virginia and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
- Book Reviews
- Chiara Battisti, Sidia Fiorato, Matteo Nicolini, and Thomas Perrin: Islands in Geography, Law, and Literature: A Cross-Disciplinary Journey
- Daniela Carpi: Law and Culture in the Age of Technology
