New human responsibilities : framing the ethics and personhood of artificial life in contemporary fiction

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the representations of the responsibility of a creator, or lack thereof, in contemporary depictions within literary fiction of tropes of creation and recreation involving bio/technology, artificial life and intelligence. In doing so, this dissertation also draws attention to various ethical implications and issues surrounding personhood, as they emerge from narratives that depict the evolution of the human toward diverse posthuman states, and the ramifications conveyed through such modifications. By drawing from canonical texts in which tropes of creation and re-creation figures prominently, namely Ovid's Metamorphoses, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the (re)creator's evasion of responsibility can then be observed in contemporary portrayals of this motif. The novels chosen for close analysis are Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 (1995), Ian McEwan's Machines like Me (2019), and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and the Sun (2021). Each novel presents a unique set of circumstances narrating the importance of ethics, personhood, and (re)creator responsibility in the relationship between humanity and artificial (re)creations. This dissertation concludes on the analysis of the depiction of a relationship between a (re)creator and their (re)creation in James Smythe's I Still Dream (2018), and draws on arguments advanced by posthumanist scholars, such as N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Briadotti, Elaine L. Graham and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, on the ethical considerations surrounding the personhood and development of artificial intelligence and bio/technology, and on humanity’s role as responsible (re)creators.