Introduction: Living in Technical Legality

This chapter introduces the book. It introduces the key concepts of the Frankenstein myth, law as technology and the role of science fiction as the site for the collective dream of technological culture and society in the West. This chapter also locates the book to come in the emergent field of law and humanities and the existing literature that examines law and legality of science fiction. It also introduces the concepts of the monster and the trickster.

Mad Max and Mapping the Monsters in the Networks

This chapter examines living in technical legality from the location of the legal scholar. Technical legality means that thinking about law and especially law and technology, has to escape the circularity of the Frankenstein myth, through coming to know the complex networks of technical legality. In this chapter George Miller’s classic Australian post-apocalyptic film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior provides a map of the functions of a very familiar manifestation of technological humanity, the human-automobile in Australian law, politics and culture. What is shown through this cartography is a way of thinking law and technology that goes beyond the closed metaphysics of the Frankenstein myth. In mapping complexity, complicity, collusions and surprises within the networks of the present, the law scholar-nodes functions as a privileged location whereby the technical legality can be self-reflective; where the effects and affects of the continually changing world are seen. Further, in generating knowledge about the networks of the present, law-scholar-nodes can empower others, other embodied nodes in the networks, the monsters that have come to inherit the Earth, to live well in technical legality.

From Law and Technology to Law as Technology

This chapter argues that law can be seen as technological when, ironically, law is called to respond to technological change. Through a focus on the legal responses to cloning, it is shown that the called-for laws were responding to visions of cloning futures directly sourced from science fiction. Having located these legal acts within science fiction, the essential elements of this future-oriented process – monstrous technology, vulnerable humanity and saving law – can be seen. This will be identified as the ‘Frankenstein myth.’ What is revealed is that science fiction holds the technical and legal together at the level of substantive dreaming and also at the level of basic commitments. The irony intrudes at this point. This saving law that can determine the future has a particular character. It is a species of pure power, manufactured through procedure in the present to determine the future. It appears to have the same characteristics that have been ascribed to technology. With this the categories established by the Frankenstein myth of ‘technology’, ‘humanity’ and ‘law’ seem to be imploded. What is glimpsed is the singularity of technical legality.

The two faces of a myth: the Frankenstein myth and its mythological heritage

<em>Frankenstein</em>, escrito por Mary Shelley, remete à figura mitológica de Prometeu desde o subtítulo do romance. Frankenstein é um Prometeu moderno, ajustado aos padrões românticos da época em que foi escrito. Assim como Prometeu, Frankenstein também é o criador de um novo ser, porém sua criatura se torna um monstro incontrolável, o que evidencia a falibilidade humana. Prometeu não é o único mito usado por Mary Shelley para compor sua obra; ela também alude à história cristã da criação e queda dos homens através do épico <em>Paraíso Perdido</em> de John Milton. Frankenstein e sua criatura podem ser comparados a várias personagens de <em>Paraíso Perdido</em> em diferentes partes do romance. Apesar das alusões a <em>Paraíso Perdido</em> e a Prometeu, <em>Frankenstein</em> não é uma mera repetição destes mitos, a história de um cientista que cria um monstro se tornou um mito romântico que ainda permanece vivo no imaginário das pessoas.