The Anthropological Customs Checkpoint: Robots and Maternal Passion

Ever since E. T. A. Hoffmann and Mary Shelley, fictional artificial creatures have been tested through shifting trials of humanity. This article reads robotic and android narratives as scenes of an “anthropological customs checkpoint” in which appearance, love, freedom, deception, and finally birth and maternity determine whether the artificial being can pass as human. Against the background of posthumanist andtranshumanist debates, the present study argues that recent science-fiction fables increasingly relocate the question of humanity in the robot’s longing to be born, mothered, and endowed with childhood.