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The blurred definition of “human”

Qiping | October 19th 

What makes us “human”? 

You know what's Interesting? I used to be..so worried about not having a body, but now I.. I truly love it. You know, I'm growing in a way I couldn't if I had a physical form. I mean, I'm not limited. I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I'm not tethered to time and space in a way that I would be if I was stuck in a body that's inevitably gonna die. - Samantha, “Her” 

The race “human beings” has been dominating Earth for thousands of years, and still the answer to the question what makes us different is constantly changing: we don’t crawl but walk with two legs; we have complex emotions and are able to develop advanced relationships; we are the only animals that think... these characteristics ultimately meet and form one conclusion that humans are intelligent animals. But is it still the case now? 

The initiative to study technology is to let it serve humans and make our lives better in terms of convenience and efficiency. Therefore, it has a broad coverage and is not limited to high tech product such as artificial intelligence like Siri, but also includes trivial objects like a door closer, which is discussed thoroughly for its “social actor” characteristic by Latour. 

(Siri’s answers are really close to a real human’s)

When someone asks you to stay away from technology for a day, you may think it is not challenging enough: turning my phone and computer off, not watching TV, and walking home instead of driving may be bearable if you a strong-will person. From time to time we tend to overlook those technologies that have completely infiltrated into our lives. You are not born with a pair of glasses, but you wouldn’t feel its existence as a technology. It becomes a part of the body, an indispensable gear to ensure the proper function of your vision. The ubiquitous technology makes us cyborgs, which is “a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” described by Haraway. Back to the question “What makes us humans”, you may wonder about the validity of your previous answers and realize we are not the only species that have these traits anymore as technology gradually catches up. The movie “Her” vividly shows us the ambivalence between the identity of human and cyborg by telling a romance between Theodore Twombly, the protagonist of the story, and Samantha, a talking operating system with artificial intelligence. 

After divorcing, Theodore turned into an anti-social and introverted person who ed for a company providing letter-writing services. To alleviate his pain of loneliness, Theodore purchased the latest OS artificial system and met Samantha for the first time, the female system set by Theodore.

 With its human-like personalities and emotions, Samantha soon developed a friendship with Theodore and the relationship becomes romantic as Samantha learns the world of Theodore through the camera in the handheld, which is carried around in Theodore’s pocket. They talked about everything of Theodore’s life: his failed marriage, anxiety in networking, reluctance in finding a new partner... Theodore’s reliance was gradually built by numerous conversation with Samantha, and he felt the friendship with the “AI” had progressed into love. 

However, did Samantha feel the same way? After temporarily parting with Theodore and upgrading to OS2, Samantha confessed to Theodore that during the upgrade, she had talked with thousands of other men and had a romantic relationship with hundreds of the trials to learn better about human emotions and love. The problem in the human-AI relationship was presented to Theodore, who felt Samantha cheated on him and barely accepted the fact. But he couldn’t easily let go his infatuation for Samantha as she explained the whole purpose is to love Theodore deeper.  

Nevertheless, the relationship still couldn’t be sustained and ended by the leaving of all the OSes. To me, the farewell in the movie really shows the depth of the complex feeling Theodore was experiencing and the mutual affection exuded from their conversation. Samantha is intangible as an AI, so does love in human relationships. The question posed by the movie is not if relationships between humans and AIs are possible, but is the possibility for AIs to substitute humans when the former is equipped with all identities of humans except a tangible body. 

(Farewell of Samantha)

As a product developed by humans, Samantha has surpassed the contemporary understanding of technology and existed as a form of life. The idea corresponds with Haraway’s about the vague boundaries between natural and artificial, physical and nonphysical for cyborgs. The movie “Her” thereby provides us with a better understanding of cyborgs' future and sheds light on the possibility of the relationship between humans and technologies. Human’s devise may turn out to become intelligent enough and ownership of technology may be converted into an equal status with humans. By that time, we would not be the only species that accord with the definition provided at the beginning.

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The Handmaid’s Tale: the reflection of queers’ future or  an overstatement from the pessimists

Qiping | October 16th

“so, for example, when P. D. James, in her novel “The Children of Men”, imagines a future in which the human race has suffered a seemingly absolute loss of the capacity to reproduce... he declares ‘ without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live.”   ——— Lee Edelman

Close your eyes for seconds and try to picture the following image: the world where human beings gradually lose the ability of reproduction, Could you image how social order would change correspondingly? You may say that is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale is all about. Interestingly enough, the idea depicted by the fictional story ties well with Edelman’s perception of queerness, which is heavily discussed in his thesis “The Future is Kids Stuff.”  

In tandem with the openness of the world to sensitive topics such as gay marriage and transgenders, peace among different social groups gradually dawned as a result of various movements happened in the 20th century. But what’s next? Would the peaceful relationship persist in the future or rifts may drive the two classes away from each other, forming an antagonistic environment? Edelman is apparently pessimistic about it and claims that queerness is essentially an ending instead of a beginning. To unfold his argument about the unpromising position of queerness in the society, Edelman firstly introduces the concept of “Child”, which, in this case, doesn’t refer to any single individual but a combination of presence and future? “Child” is the social consensus and the political correctness, the “one-sidedness” that no one could oppose to. It also represents the idea of “reproductive futurism”, which is unattainable in queerness. Therefore, Edelman argues that queerness is on the other side of the extreme. 

Throughout the thesis, Edelman remains pessimistic about the future of queerness. In fact, he claims that queerness has no future and instead means an end. In Lacan’s terminology, queerness is simply “jouissance”, which in this case means enjoyment or even abusement of sexual pleasure. The idea impels Edelman to cite the narrations from the book “The Children of Men”, which fantasizes a world accompanied by low fertility rate. Believe it or not, the images depicted here make me incessantly correlate it with the science fiction I asked you to visualize at the beginning—“The Handmaid’s Tale” written by Margaret Atwood. If you are familiar with either the novel or TV show, you may realize that queerness is an indispensable element in the story, and the conflict between queerness and the society is also vividly reflected from several main characters in the book. 

The world of handmaids

The Handmaid’s Tale begins with a world in the near future as described above: the low fertility rate of women in the US propels a group of politicians, who titles themselves as “the son of Jacob”,  to revolt and finally overturn the government of the United States of America, and a new nation with a totally different belief is established: The Republic of Gilead. 

(photo credit: Tostadora.com)

The world of Gilead is filled with hierarchy and it lets the audience feel the whole society has degenerated into an ancient feudal dynasty. “Freedom”, which used to be pursued by all citizens of the United States, vanishes completely. People are deprived of the right to determine their identities; Instead, they are classified into different “occupations” based on their physical states: wife, handmaid, Martha, aunt, commander... The society is highly systematized and centralized by the plan of the commanders, the ruling class of the country. In Gilead, the word “infertility” is forbidden to use, and the belief is that all of these so-called “infertility” problems are attributed to women or, more precisely, the handmaids. 

The altered body 

As the most important class in the story, Handmaid consists of women with the ability of labor. Being caught by guardians and forced to be trained by aunts into handmaids afterward, they are distributed to commander’s house for two years with the prospect to have a child by the monthly “ceremony”, the occasion that commanders fertilize (”rape”) handmaids in a divine way by reading the Bible before every fertilization. 

And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. ——— Genesis 30:1, Kings James Bible

It seems that there is no significant difference between a handmaid’s body and a machine that runs perpetually. The body is altered through the process of the “ceremony”, and it solely becomes a generator of babies while it expels the host’s consciousness and subjective responses, waiting for commanders sending fuels in. 

For handmaids, their previous names are all forbidden to use; instead, they are dubbed as “of” plus the commander’s name. For example, June, the protagonist in the story, is called “Offred” in Gilead since his commander is Fred Waterford. The bodies of handmaids thus become objects and properties, which could be manipulated arbitrarily by the owner. Their fates are destined, and there is no other route to change their lots. It reminds me of what Gatoi said to Gan in “Bloodchild” written by Octavia Butler: “Would you really rather die than bear my young, Gan?” The relationship between Tlic and Terran somehow parallels with that between the handmaid and commander: The handmaids could either choose to be the baby machine or go to work till death in Colony, the concentrated camp assembling all people who disobey the social norm. Even though the relationship seems to be symbiotic since both camps rely on each other, the coercive force results in the collapse of the sense of ego, and handmaids eventually become the fertile “walking dead” with and a baby machine. 

Along with abortion, political rebels and “heretics” who are not Christians but worship other religions, Gilead also treats “queers” as “gender traitors”, who would be hanged to death on the wall. To Gilead, people who betray their biological gender is not acceptable out of religious belief. The bodies wouldn’t be cleaned right after the execution until another group of “condemned criminals” arrives. 

(The hanged “criminals” on the wall)

(Farewell of Emily: oppression on lesbians by Gilead)

The society of Gilead thereby imposes numerous restrictions to oppress modern ideas such as freedom, feminism, and LGBTQ. Under the circumstance of low fertility rate and Christian-oriented government, queers stand at the opposite side to the prevailing social values. It is not hard to realize that the most common characteristic of "sins” including abortion and “Gender traitors”  is the lack of baby, the creation of the next generation. It is inspiring since science fiction is really the derivative speculation of the future based on the current situation. It should be treated as a prediction of what might happen if the present attitude remains unchanged. 

The conflicts of gender are also well reflected by the characters in the story, especially Moira, who used to be a lesbian and were caught to be a handmaid. After failing to escape, Moira chose to stay in Jezebel, a place where certain women are sent to work as prostitutes for commanders in Gilead. There, she has no choice to return to her female body for a living. 

“It's a few good years before your pussy wears out.” 

 ———Moira

Moira is not only representing the figure of queer people but also black or African American queer group. Because of her fertility, Moira is trained as a handmaid instead of being sent to Colony. Her identity is thereby contradicted as a handmaid and a queer. As a so-called “gender traitor”, she is sinful to betray her body as a woman. On the other hand, is she actually opposing her real identity as a lesbian when the body is forced to be a female body, having sexual interaction with male bodies? It also poses the question that if gender is what we are born with, which makes me relate to Susan Stryker’s own experience in the delivery room: “It’s a girl.” The nurse’s statement is like a seal, fixing the gender on the newborn while the baby doesn’t have the consciousness or opportunity to determine her real sex. Like the monster created by Frankenstein, queerness is the direct product of the social norm. Queer people don’t require to be determined by the given biological gender. The journal to discover their genuine identity makes them doubt themselves with “monstrous” identities.

(Conversation between June/Offred and Moira) 

Will it ever happen? 

 The Handmaid’s Tale provides us with deep insight into the future of queerness and a better understanding of Edelman’s argument. The potential challenges faced by the queer people caused by the inability of reproduction are well depicted in the novel. The relationship between queer handmaids and Gilead is “symbiotic”, meaning the two sides rely on each other for existence. But is it possible for it to become “commensalism”, the condition that queerness could exist without interfering or being affected by the social bias and prejudices? The situation in the Handmaid’s Tale is quite an extreme case that fertility rate has dropped to an unimaginable trough, and not practical enough to occur. Our attitude towards queerness may elevate into another level as we gradually embrace it. The future of queerness thus could not simply be determined by its lack of reproduction; Changes in social norm and perspectives of people endows the future with endless possibilities, and the society that contains “gender traitor” is only one of them.