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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
“More Human Than Human”: Lacan’S Mirror Stage Theory And Posthumanism In Philip K. Dick’S Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Richelle V. Finn
“More Human Than Human”: Lacan’S Mirror Stage Theory And Posthumanism In Philip K. Dick’S Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Richelle V. Finn
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
In my thesis, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is examined using French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. In the novel, humans have built androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans except that they lack a sense of empathy, or so the humans believe. The Voigt-Kampff Machine is a polygraph-like device used to determine if a subject shows signs of empathy in order to confirm if one is an android or a human. Yet, should empathy be the defining quality of determining humanity?
In his article "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the …