| Summary: | 碩士 === 佛光大學 === 外國語文學系 === 103 === In The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, we can see the Representatives transform from automatons to conscious beings and to becoming being. They are becoming-other after realizing that they are not the center of the world but atomic structures and dances, linking with all the other elements. The dramatic catastrophe and death push them into doubts and give them an opportunity to think and to reevaluate their relationship with Canopus and their identities.
In Chapter One, we see how the collapse of the wall destroys their trust in Canopus and how the antelope's corpse and the microscope shaken their firm belief in the existence and structure of external things. The world is no longer what they believe they see but transforms in a fantastic way under the microscope. Descartes' concept of hte doubting subject, the thinking things, does help us perceive how the Representatives transform from automatons to conscious beings. With the faculty of reason, they can gauge things and thus be able to cast doubt on things. However, ironically, the conscious being saves them but simultaneously destroys them. Why so? It is because the conscious being measures everything according to their faculty of reason. They are thus the center of the world. This way of mapping the world in accordance with one's consciousness is dangerous in that it will fall into the trap of anthropocentrism.
Chapter Three focuses on the evolution of the Representatives via a process of becoming-other. It entails how the Representatives expand limited beings conditioned by anthropocentrism to evolving beings. Under the process of self-dissolving and self-destructing, the subjectivity of the Representatives disappear. After the subjectivity of the Representatives disappear, they dissolve into atoms, molecules and particles which stay fluid and are linked with other living beings.
With this in mind, the Representatives transform from automatons to conscious beings to a collective beings, "we." The journey from "I" to "we" is significant in that it shows the interconnectedness among the Representatives, the represented, Johor, the snow, the mountain and the other beings in The Making.
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