Plastic People

I have never read H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, unfortunately, but I have seen the Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer film version, perhaps more unfortunately. Equally present in both is Dr. Moreau's use of pain as a means of controlling the nature of his creatures. He is essentially separating his human/animal hybrids from their animalistic nature through pain. As Ollivier Dyens explains in his article “The Rise of Cultural Bodies,” “for Moreau, pain is the vector that allows reshaping, … making [the body] suffer to such a point that any organic, biological, or physiological aspect related to that pain has to be cast aside.” Dr. Moreau is transforming his animal/humans into what Dyens calls “plastic bodies.”

A plastic body, according to Dyens, is essentially any being that has been separated from its natural or biological existence, that is, it did not come from nor does it depend upon or exist within its natural biological world. An example of this is a clone. Though it is comprised of the same biological material as that from which it was copied, it does not share any of the original's biological integrity. It is what Dyens describes as an “embodied idea that creates itself from the realm of concepts and culture, … a living form without biological integrity, unstable and reproducible.” This is very similar to those creature of Dr. Moreau who are engineered rather than born and are reproducible through the same pain conditioning that the other animal/humans have endured. These creatures, however, are not yet entirely plastic as they are still connected to their biological existence, they still wear their shock collars because they still have animalistic urges.

To be entirely plastic is to be fully separated from all aspects of the biological world from which you have originated. Clones are inherently plastic as their beginning is also their metamorphosis, that is, their biological origins are cast off in their being engineered rather than conceived. Most other plastic beings must go through this metamorphosis in order to become plastic, they must shed all connection to their natural existence which includes their biology but also the culture, psychology, and all other forms of existence. This is where the plastic body becomes something to be feared, its shedding of all ties to normal existence.

If Dr. Moreau's beasts became fully plastic, as he is trying to make them, then they will no longer have a connection to that which he uses to control them, pain. Pain is a part of their metamorphosis, it is a tool used in their creation, therefore they must shed this aspect of their being, the feeling of pain, in order to become plastic. If these creatures no longer feel pain, then Moreau can no longer control them, which means unpredictability and danger.

Likewise, if people become plastic, as some would argue they are, then they would no longer play by the same rules as the rest of humanity. These plastic people would not be subject to social norms, nor would they feel guilt, remorse, apathy, love or hate for that matter. Their metamorphosis would not render them to be unrecognizable as humans, nor would it make them easily identifiable as others, potentially dangerous others, it would be invisible. Their entire natural existence would be replaced by something else entirely; supposedly one constituted by technology, at least this is a fear in our technological age. We as humans are replacing ourselves with technologically dependent versions of ourselves. We no longer need to consume real food, chemically engineered alternatives will do; we do not need to reproduce, we can just clone ourselves if need be; we no longer seek out human interactions, we have instead social worlds full of avatars.

I would say that we are not at this point yet, at least not the vast majority of us, but this is not an entirely unforeseeable future.