과학에 대한 D.H. 로렌스의 태도와 포스트휴먼 사상

Abstract

This article is intended to examine the aspects and characteristics of the posthuman thought in D. H. Lawrence’s scientific attitude in his novels and essays. For Lawrence, human-being is not different from animal, plant, heavenly star, sun, and other inorganic material things. This thought is based on scientific materialism, which is simply materialistic, but spiritually materialistic. And a part of human body is an independent ‘thinking matter’ with its own life; for example, our hand is an organ like our brain. In D. H. Lawrence’s novels, an animal is identical with a human being which has dynamic, vibrating spiritual element and energy as the original fundamental universal matter. This thought of spiritual, pantheistic materialism of D. H. Lawrence was once dominant in his young days, and partly come from his reading of ‘new science’ like Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel, Spinoza, Bergson, and other scientists and philosophers. D. H. Lawrence’s posthuman thought like this goes beyond the traditional humanism which is humanity-centered. So his thought is open to the posthumanism and the vision of new human-being in postmodern 21st century. D. H. Lawrence’s view on machine has double attitude, so ambiguous and ambivalent. Of course, he shows a hateful sentiment towards a lifeless, cold, automatic machine and mechanism. For him, however, mankind’s organs and body as a whole operate, and the operation works materially, physical- physiologically, with its own principles. His vision on human body is identical with Deleuze and Guattari’s assumption of “a desiring machine” and human body without organs, as a rhizome. Lawrence’s characters and things described in his novels could be anything or any kind in accordance with Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming” principle. For example, a human being could be such animals as serpent, fox, horse, and heavenly forms like sun, moon, and stars. Furthermore such kinds of animal or heavenly things could be gods or powerful superbeings beyond human limitation. This thought can be called anthropomorphism. This vision of human being is posthumanism as an anti-humanism. In this way Lawrence can be connected with posthumanism. The above-mentioned posthuman thought as anti-humanism in D. H. Lawrence’s works leads to his theory of character creation based on physical-physiology of allotropy. Descriptive words and metaphoric expressions of characters in his novel The Rainbow, according to Lawrence’s answer in a letter to Edward Garnett, are directed to elemental physical state of allotropies which he tries to trace and his search for a human being as real, true being. This search for humanity is beyond traditional humanism.