Earlier this year, the economist Robin Hanson shared an article on cloning in science fiction, and drew attention to this phrase from the original article:
The unfortunate fate of so many sci-fi clones is slavery. Mass cloning is rarely undertaken for positive reasons… countless clones in vats for whatever dull repetitive task needs doing. Clones often serve as stand-ins for real-world social underclasses
The author asks the question: what happens to human life when it becomes technologically reproducible? Put this way, the question applies equally to clones as to (humanoid) robots.
Although clones in science fiction are intelligent beings, identical to the human model, they are considered as ‘lesser’ versions for they are manufactured artificially, rather than being born. To speak like Walter Benjamin, they lack the aura that emanates from authentic human life. The de-auratization of technological reproduced life, suggests the author, renders the clone as less than ‘real’ human beings, and this predestines them to occupying the position of slaves. The author cites real-world applications of cloning in organ replacement surgeries, as further evidence of clone’s existence as a slave for the human.
“The central theme of the problem of cloning,” writes the author, “is identity.” I read this as echoing Benjamin’s problematization of the aura and authenticity of the ‘original’ in the face of technologically-enabled mass reproduction. ‘Identity’ questions in the context of the clone complicates the relationship of authentic original vs reproduced clone. The author finds that the clone as slave, is one resolution to this complication.
One of the key sci-fi examples for the author of the article is Jango Fett from the Star Wars franchise. Jango is a bounty hunter, who serves as the prototype for an army of clones. The genetic constitution of the clones is altered so that they grow into adulthood faster, and that they are more compliant and obedient. Originally commissioned by the galactic empire (the bad guys), the clone army eventually ends up fighting alongside the Jedi (the good guys). The empire, bereft of their clone army, turns instead to their robot ‘droid’ army which they send out as cannon fodder in various battles. [Note here, the structural equivalence between clones on the one hand, and robots on the other]. The clones fighting with the Jedi however, evolve different personalities of their own, showing that identity is not inherited in toto, but rather, is an irreducible historical process.
[I note here, the contrast between the clone as a slave-double, with another double from medieval political theology – the double bodies of the King. I may return to this difference, between the clone/double in the medieval context of kingship and modern notion of slavery, in a later post].
What I find most curious in the story of Star Wars’ clones, is that the original model for the clones – Jango Fett, requests one unaltered clone version for himself. Jango raises this clone, Boba, as his own son! In my eyes, this represents an alternative destiny for the clone – kin, rather than slave. Even as mass-reproducibility threatens to destroy the meaningfulness of existence into the bland uniformity of mere copies, meaning is found once again, insofar as the clone returns to the social fold as kin.
No longer separated by the distinction between ‘original’ and ‘copy’, Jango and the clone Boba live as father and son.
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