Interrogating personhood : law and science fiction

• Main Author: Travis, Mitchell
• Published: Keele University 2013
• Subjects: 346.0134
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.602983

This thesis brings together for the first time the legal humanities and feminist legal theory in an interrogation of legal personhood. Originality can be found in the consideration of the relationship between law and science fiction. This thesis considers the question of what makes a legal person. Proponents of feminism have highlighted that legal personhood is predicated upon the bodies of healthy white heterosexual males. As a consequence embodiment becomes central to understanding whom or what can become legal persons. In this thesis Ngaire Naffine's (1997, 2003, 2009, 2011) understanding of the embodied legal person is used as a starting point and applied to a number of different contemporary and potential entities including human-level artificial intelligence, admixed embryos and elective amputees. Adopting a law and culture approach three different science fiction films are used to anchor this work. 77w Matrix trilogy (1999, 2003a, 2003b) is used to highlight the relationship between embodiment and legal personhood. Bladerunner (1982) is used to exemplify the relationship between legal personhood and the conflated concepts of rationality and masculinity. District 9 (2009) and elective amputees are used to demonstrate the relationship between the body, rationality and legal personhood. Science fiction is presented as prophetic and allegorical; forewarning of the possibilities associated with potential entities but also serving as a reminder of the injustices of contemporary and historical times. These themes are drawn together through the proposition of a new approach to legal personhood; an approach based on multiple modes of embodied experience, diversity and heterogeneity.