Technological appendages and organic prostheses : robo-human appropriation and cyborgian becoming in Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse

Abstract

Daniel H. Wilson’s 2011 novel Robopocalypse revolves around the trope of the robot uprising and depicts a world in which human beings must fight growing armies of ever-evolving machines in order to survive. The human-robot battles described in this text engage with traditional definitions of technology as a prosthetic tool or supplement of the human and present the possibility of overturning the hierarchical relationship between man and machine. This article outlines how through the use of the motifs of prosthesis and the appendage, Wilson’s text explores such traditional interpretations of technics and offers a different understanding of man’s relationship with technology based on the notions of originary technicity or a cyborgian becoming that is inherent to the human.