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30 | 2021
Corps, techniques, technologies / Varia

Bodies, techniques, technologies / Varia
Image issue de la création Communion (Le partage des peaux II) (1995-2000)
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Credits: Photographie : Maryse Poulin
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The body and technology lie at the core of the definition of human beings, who are homo faber rather than homo sapiens. The appearance of humans coincides with the invention of the tool, ie of technique. However, the question of the uses of technical knowledge reveals a number of risks inherent in technical development which, when combined with a will to power, may lead to domination and enslavement. Thus technique would not only be essential to humans, it could also bring about their destruction. In our technologically savvy times where the limits of the human are being pushed back — whether in the field of bioethics, robotics or artificial intelligence — the hybridisation of humans and machines seems to threaten the existence of human beings themselves. This is the question addressed by this special issue of Sillages Critiques, which probes into the imaginary surrounding the relation between humans and technique through five diachronic works taken from the worlds of literature, cinema and performance. These articles show that the human body is a nexus of knowledge and technical power. From the scientific hybris which renders possible the creation of a new monstrous creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the fantasy of the replacement of the human body by artificial intelligence in Spike Jonze’s film Her, this special issue retraces the historical fascination which human beings have felt for the consequences of technical progress onto their own definition and survival.

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