비판적 포스트휴머니즘으로 살만 루시디 읽기:『악마의 시』에 나타난 휴먼/포스트휴먼

Human/Posthuman in Salman Rushdie‘s The Satanic Verses with a Approach of Critical Posthumanism

It has become a more and more complicated and challenging task to define the concept of “human” since different philosophical theories have been adding new meanings to or altering the existing concept of the word. The boundaries between human and non/inhuman beings are being continuously blurred and repositioned due to the rapid development of science and technology. As a consequence of these changes a more specific or proper definition of the concept "human" has become necessary. This paper addresses the question of how one of Rushdie's novels, released in the 20th century but not regarded as a Science Fiction, sees a human after Michel Foucault asserted “the death of man” and how the antihuman aspects and the contemporary social discourses in the novel can be regarded as already being involved with an idea beyond humanism. In The Satanic Verses , Salman Rushdie questioned the fundamental ways of looking at human beings, which eventually revealed an antihuman perspective that encompasses forcefully homogenized subjects, socially discriminated and oppressed minorities, and so on. This paper analyzes two main characters' metamorphosis into an angel and a demon respectively, from the perspective of embodiment and reflexivity which Katherine Hayles regards as a critical process of cybernetics development. This reading will help to see The Satanic Verses through a posthuman angle, from which point we'll be better positioned to suggest a path to investigate the concept of human represented in the non SF novels.