revision

The futuristic world of “He, She, and It” provides insight into the sort of world we

may someday be heading into. Piercy allows the reader to experience the life and mind of

‘Yod’, a sort of futuristic cyborg created by the minds of a brilliant physicist with the

help of a creative programmer. Yod is not born of flesh and blood, he was created and

designed for a specific task, but as the book progresses we see Yod become socialized

and find out he learns and experiences feelings just as a person does. The townspeople of

Tikva then must vote on whether Yod should be considered as a person and citizen of

their town. I will discuss in this paper why I believe that Yod, although not fully human,

should be considered as a person. I will cite evidence on his human-like experience from

the novel He, She, and It. I will further support this claim with Andy Clark’s view on

bodily and mental presence in humans, which I will use to represent Yod’s experience as

a cyborg and as a person.

Yod is described as a sort of superhuman; he is inhumanly strong, possesses

knowledge far above the capacity of a human, and has the ability to go without sleep and

with little food. However, Yod has many human-like qualities: he is able to read other’s

emotions and derive meaning from them, he has needs for human connection and

companionship, and he can learn from all situations he encounters. As Shira begins to

teach him human interaction we see more of these qualities come to life. Throughout the

novel, we see Yod grow, learn, mature and form human relationships. Based on his

experience, he seems ever more like a person as the novel goes on. Yod is undoubtedly a

conscious being. Although he was not born the way human beings are born, this does not

make him any less of a person, for he possesses all of the capabilities of a person.

In Andy Clark’s writing on cyborgs, he talks about the two criteria for “selfhood”,

which is, bodily presence and mental presence. From Andy’s Clark’s perspective, Yod

projects both bodily presence and mental presence, and it is clear from the novel that Yod

is fully self aware. The fact that Yod is able to have this self awareness and is able to

form goals and relationships shows that he has the equivalent to human consciousness.

As Yod says in the climax of the book, he is ‘conscious weapon’ able to think critically,

consider ethics, and have desires. This proves beyond a doubt that Yod has this person-

like selfhood as Andy Clark describes.

If I were a citizen of Tikva, I would vote to allow Yod to be considered a citizen

of the town, and to be a free person. Although in “He, She, and It” the discussion on Yod

isn’t ever quite resolved, it is seen as a very controversial topic. While the presence of a

cyborg such as Yod is something I cannot experience firsthand and must leave up to my

imagination, the way in which Marge Piercy depicts Yod as well as Joseph the Golem, is

so very conscious, it is hard to deny that they are living, thinking, people, the same as you

and I.