Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Studien zur Deutschen Sprache und Literatur, sa.44, ss.23-39, 2020 (ESCI, Scopus, TRDizin)
Machines, robots and androids in the cultural production of the West are not often the products of high technology, which is directly associated with the posthumanist discourse. It is possible to encounter such examples throughout the cultural history of the West. The golem of the Jewish mythology, mechanical dolls shaped by the effect of Enlightenment materialism, or automatons such as the Turk, chess player, are examples that prioritize today's discourse of posthumanism. The common feature of these examples is that they act from the image of the human and emulate it. Nevertheless, they lack the most basic attribute that Enlightenment thought has bestowed on human being: Subject status and the desire, power or will to be the hero of their own history are unfamiliar with the figures mentioned above. However, it is the literature of Romanticism, not Enlightenment, that is primarily responsible for popularizing the posthumanist discourse of 18th century thought. This study will track the posthumanist responses of Romantic literature to the mechanical thinking of the Enlightenment. The figures in E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales, such as the animated doll-woman in his The Sandman (1816), which is also known by Freud's reading of the "uncanny", or in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) are evaluated in this context, and they all emphasize the artificial human motif of Romanticism. Automatons, golems, homunculi, androids always move on the same axis and share their creator's fate, even if they are sometimes out of control. Artificial bodies are located on the dark side of the existence, as they are doomed to remain as the other of the human being.