Perceiving the Human through the Nonhuman: Posthumanism in Issac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man

Abstract:

Since the late twentieth century, stories of humanoid robots have undermined a clear-cut boundary between humans and nonhumans. Traditionally, the mainstream opinion has been dominated by human-centered discourse, in which robots are invariably nonhumans that are characterized by inferiority, servitude, and lack. This mindset to subordinate robots as servants is outdated, evidenced by Issac Asimov’s novella The Bicentennial Man. In this story, the robot protagonist Andrew is in many aspects similar to humans, and he even commits to becoming a human at the cost of many benefits he enjoys in the form of an immortal machine. Ultimately, what Andrew’s story teaches is not so much related to the changing status of robots as a re-examination of the authentic qualities of humanity. By using the critical lens of posthumanism, this essay focuses on this end and then uses it to consider the expanding world of Artificial Intelligence.