Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

210Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsmanner of human brains. The “union” of man and machine is here accomplishedby erasing the “machine” from the man-machine hybrid. 19The question of artificiality in identity construction is a sensitive one.Nowadays, “artificial” has characteristically negative connotations; it is opposedto something genuine and natural – “artifice” is a human stratagem,deception or trickery (as an imitation of the real thing). 20 The omnipresenceof technology in the affluent West is well suited to heighten any semiconsciousanxieties one might have about one’s own status as a product as muchas a producer, as a heterogeneous collage: an object, rather than a unifiedand monologic subject. Cultural critics have recently renewed their interestin the manner in which industrialisation and development of the modern society“liberated” people into the freedom of modern individuality only bydemanding more self-control; the new way of administering time, for example,is machine-like in its mechanical precision. Marshall Berman reminds usof the ways the Faustian tale is connected with modernity; the need to exceedall traditional boundaries is linked in Goethe’s classic version with “anew social division of labor, a new vocation, a new relationship betweenideas and practical life.” 21 Like Faust, the modern man has “two souls” livingin his breast; the unremitting drive for development springs from an innercontradiction. 22 The interpretations for this situation differ: Berman thinksthat the demonic aspects of modernity are necessary – even if the process ofmodernisation “exploits and torments us,” it also brings us energies andimagination, drives us to confront the ever-changing world and make it ourown. 23 Charles Taylor, on the other hand, claims in his Sources of the Selfthat to live without a stable moral basis (Taylor speaks about “moral ontologies”or frameworks that structure identity) is senseless life. 24 According tothis view the constant hurry and almost hysterical rush for more “efficient”modern technologies (which, in reality, have become ends in themselves)operate as an obfuscation of inner emptiness. Whatever the interpretation,machines, and in our day especially communication and information technologies,have nevertheless become emblems of this condition, and sciencefiction records both the exhilaration and anger in our relationship to them. 2519 Asimov’s views on robotics are deeply intertwined with racial (even racist) discourses;the last whisper of the dying (ex-)robot invokes the memory of the belovedowner: “Little Miss.” (Asimov 1984, 682; Asimov - Silverberg 1995, 290). Perhaps UncleTom’s Cabin transposed into the positronic brain?20 The etymology of ‘artificial’ is connected with art: it is derived from Latin artificiâlis,belonging to art (from artificium, craftsmanship). The idea of deception nowdominates over the more positive dimensions of ‘artifice’ as the ingenious use of skill.21 Berman 1982/1991, 62.22 See Faust I; Goethe 1808/1949, 67.23Berman 1982/1991, 348.24 Taylor 1989, 17-18.25 The discourse of slavery is repeatedly invoked, as people describe their relationshipto the technological modernity – in the past, as well as in the present: “Is not slavery tocapital less tolerable than slavery to human masters?” (George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!or Slaves Without Masters [1857; quoted in Selzer 1992, 47]), “I now have attained free-