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A review by variouslilies
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
3.0
After much polite side-stepping despite comically running into this book in several other works I read in this past year, I finally sat down and finished it. It's a relatively short novel and by no means a literary masterpiece; It's not difficult to get through in one or two sittings. I'm not sure if being aware of the context and implications that Fisher, Deleuze-Guattari, Latour and many more offer for this book is a good thing before going into it, but there was nothing I could do about that.
Erewhon is, as anyone would tell you, a satirical novel about Victorian society. It's the story of an unsuspecting narrator passing through the fictional realm of Erewhon, a dystopian land with various strange societal mores. In the most interesting chapters of the book (Book of the Machines) we learn that the people in Erewhon have voluntarily destroyed all advanced machines and have kept none but the simplest tools. According to the inhabitants of Erewhon, a cataclysmic process of Darwinian evolution might allow a simple timepiece to give birth to monsters that would rule over humans. The most compelling part of the book is Butler's view on the relationship between humans and machines and the ability of machines to propagate themselves. In short, the fact that human beings are involved in the reproduction of machines does not mean that they lack a reproductive system: on the contrary, human beings are essentially a part of the machinic reproductive system.
This, as it turns out, is heavily laden with philosophical implications. Through this compelling concept and the interesting arguments Butler puts forth, this book serves as a work of theory-fiction that has inspired cybernetic philosophy and challenged vitalism. Of course the story is much more imbued with caution and warning, directly inspired by the Gothic social atmosphere surrounding Darwinism, and it is devoid of any kind of cyberpunk jouissance that can be found in later philosophical works that it inspired; But the blueprint of some tenets of the subsequent cybernetic philosophy can be found within the text and it serves as a good introduction to them.
Erewhon is, as anyone would tell you, a satirical novel about Victorian society. It's the story of an unsuspecting narrator passing through the fictional realm of Erewhon, a dystopian land with various strange societal mores. In the most interesting chapters of the book (Book of the Machines) we learn that the people in Erewhon have voluntarily destroyed all advanced machines and have kept none but the simplest tools. According to the inhabitants of Erewhon, a cataclysmic process of Darwinian evolution might allow a simple timepiece to give birth to monsters that would rule over humans. The most compelling part of the book is Butler's view on the relationship between humans and machines and the ability of machines to propagate themselves. In short, the fact that human beings are involved in the reproduction of machines does not mean that they lack a reproductive system: on the contrary, human beings are essentially a part of the machinic reproductive system.
Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we may say that it is a reproductive system. What is a reproductive system, if it not be a system for reproduction? And how few of the machines are there which have not been produced systematically by other machines? But it is man that makes them do so. Yes; but is it not insects that make many of the plants reproductive, and would not whole families of plants not die out if their fertilization was not effected by a class of agents utterly foreign to themselves? Does any one say that the red clover has no reproductive system because the humble bee (and the humble bee only) must aid and abet it before it can reproduce? No one. The humble bee is a part of the reproductive system of the clover. Each one of ourselves has sprung from minute animalcules whose identity was entirely distinct from our own, and which acted after their kind with no thought or heed of what we might think about it. These little creatures are part of our own reproductive system; then why not we part of that of the machines?
This, as it turns out, is heavily laden with philosophical implications. Through this compelling concept and the interesting arguments Butler puts forth, this book serves as a work of theory-fiction that has inspired cybernetic philosophy and challenged vitalism. Of course the story is much more imbued with caution and warning, directly inspired by the Gothic social atmosphere surrounding Darwinism, and it is devoid of any kind of cyberpunk jouissance that can be found in later philosophical works that it inspired; But the blueprint of some tenets of the subsequent cybernetic philosophy can be found within the text and it serves as a good introduction to them.