The Grievability of the Non-Human:
Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me
Résumé
Grievability and its sibling, precariousness, have been theorised in relation to groups entangled in historical, military or socio-economic difficulties, or else submerged, excluded populations whose fragility is revealed in times of crisis. It seems that with the rising interest in artificial intelligence, and possibly alongside the new-materialist turn, the question of grievability may have come to haunt new shores. In his novel Machines like Me (2019), Ian McEwan taps the possibilities of slipstream to imagine what happens when a very evolved robot or “artificial human,” Adam, comes to live with a young couple and becomes entangled in the economic, legal and affective aspects of their lives. Even if the novel allows for a return to previously explored ground (the fascination for science, the two cultures debate, among others), it forcibly raises the issue of the status of lives of all types, their dignity and grievability. Adam, as new homo sacer, cannot be expected to be mourned after his execution. Yet, the novel gainsays this assumption and reinstates grief and value despite and beyond their denial. The novel’s central paradox allows the reader to intuit that superhuman strength is the condition for precariousness, and that absence of value is a way towards, and possibly a condition for grievability. Its ultimate paradox may lie in its use of slipstream, a genre that complicates time, provides an original presentation of the presence of the past, and thereby triggers a reflection on the grievability of the future.