포스트휴먼 신체의 인간의 조건: 무어 래퍼티의 『식스웨이크』

Human Conditions in Posthuman Bodies: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

This study aims to demonstrate how the survival conditions depicted in posthuman scenarios of Six Wakes continue to align with traditional human conditions, and to critically examine—through the lens of critical posthumanism—the limitations and ethical ramifications of attributing value to life based solely on anthropocentric frameworks. Through the narrative structure of a locked-room murder mystery involving six cloned humans and an artificial intelligence, Lafferty engages with a broad spectrum of ethical concerns surrounding human cloning, encompassing legal, religious, medical, technological, and capitalist perspectives. This paper organizes these thematic concerns into two principal domains: the disjunction between body and consciousness, and the ‘state of exception’ as conceptualized by Giorgio Agamben. Finally, Donna Haraway’s theoretical framework is employed to explore potential resolutions to the ethical and ontological challenges inherent in the posthuman condition. The separation of consciousness and body attributes personhood to consciousness while imbuing the body with animality. As bodies are symbolic of nonhumanity, laws prohibit mourning them, thereby stripping individual clones of their right to life. This situation illustrates the imposition of human standards upon the posthuman condition. Moreover, treating consciousness as the defining criterion of human conditions, while disregarding the body, creates an opportunity for wealthy capitalists to exploit life. If humans and clones were categorized in a way that fosters kinship, the potential for discord could be significantly reduced.