Resumen de The Grievability of the Non-Human:: Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me
With the rising interest in artificial intelligence, and possibly alongside the new-materialist turn, the question of grievability may have come to haunt new shores. In his novel Machines Like Me (2019), Ian McEwan taps the possibilities of slipstream to imagine what happens when a very evolved robot or “artificial human,” Adam, comes to live with a young couple and becomes entangled in the economic, legal and affective aspects of their lives. Even if the novel allows for a return to previously explored ground (the fascination for science, the two cultures debate, among others), it raises the issue of the status of lives of all types, their dignity and grievability. Adam, as new homo sacer, cannot be expected to be mourned after his execution. Yet, the novel gainsays this assumption, reinstating grief and value beyond their denial. The novel’s central paradox allows the reader to intuit that superhuman strength is the condition for precariousness, and that absence of value is a way towards and condition for grievability. Its ultimate paradox lies in its use of slipstream, a genre that complicates time, provides an original presentation of the presence of the past and triggers a reflection on the grievability of the future.
