『제로 K』: 경계에 선 포스트휴먼

Abstract

Don DeLillo explores the meaning of life and death through the subject matter ‘cryonics’ in Zero K. The novel concerns a billionaire financier, Ross Lockhart, who is affected by the terminal illness of his wife Artis to seek immortality for both of them through cryopreservation. ‘Convergence’ is the secret facility where the failing bodies are cryogenically frozen and stored until a time when they can be resurrected through yet unknown technology. Cryonics is considered part of the transhumanist movement, which counts ‘human enhancement’ as its prime objective. Thus transhumanism inherits anthropocentrism and humanism which produce human/animal and human/nonhuman hierarchies. The main keys to access transhumanists’ goal are identified in science and technology. According to Melinda Cooper, the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. Regarding the intertwined relationship of transhumanism, biotechnology and neoliberalism, this study considers ‘Convergence’ in Zero K the intersection of those forces and analyzes it as a privileged space for those who exercise the powers. Also this paper takes ‘Convergence’ to be the “transitional” space as Artis puts it and examines it in terms of ‘liminal space’ which Victor Turner defines as “ambiguous, neither here nor there, betwixt and between all fixed points of classification.” The liminality of ‘Convergence’ accords with posthumanist notions of liminality both blurring the strict dualisms and boundaries of humanism.