Creaturely Right in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Abstract

This essay raises the question of creaturely right and its cosmopolitan possibilities in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by arguing that the novel’s awareness toward the creaturely condition of earthly life allows us to imagine universal hospitality in the most radical sense. Exploring how the novel identifies the creature as the bearer of life and the creator as the sovereign, this essay’s reading opens another way to discuss the question of power and life beyond Foucauldian and Agambenian perspectives on biopolitics. Noting that the Judeo-Christian strain of imagining life given to creatures by the sovereign creator of life has been strangely neglected in current biopolitical discourse, the purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that the notion of creaturely life still persists in Western epistemology at the center of Enlightenment’s secularizing efforts. More importantly, the question of creaturely life and the creator’s sovereign power complicates modern biopolitics, opening another way to locate the epistemological grounds for violence toward life. This essay’s exploration of the creature’s right of life in Frankenstein will hopefully contribute to expanding our dialogue on power and life.