“You Aren’t You, Are You?”: Transhumanism, the Person, and the Resurrection in Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back”

“You Aren’t You, Are You?” Transhumanism, the Person, and the Resurrection in Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back” Paul Treschow (bio) Introduction Stretching back to ancient myths like the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, the lover’s desire for a resurrected beloved has long been a theme explored in art and literature. Hans Urs von Balthasar suggests an intriguing relationship between this longing and the Christian vision of resurrection: “Eros contains a promise . . . which is always pointing beyond the sentiment that sighs ‘Abide a while, thou art so beautiful!’ and which, therefore, if it is not transposed onto the Christian level, must condemn itself to eternal melancholy and self-consumption. This total structure of beauty can be redeemed only if the risen Lover is met at the other side of death.”1 Balthasar’s comments establish eros almost as a barometer of resurrection, finding fulfillment when “transposed” or “redeemed” by Christ’s Resurrection (“the risen Lover”) but disappointment everywhere else. One modern variation on this theme comes from an episode of the series Black Mirror entitled “Be Right Back.”2 The episode tells the story of Martha3 (Hayley Atwell), whose deceased lover Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) is “resurrected” through a service that creates a version of him based on his digital footprint. Thus, the mode of resurrection End Page 49 that “Be Right Back” reflects is of a transhumanist variety,4 not too far removed from current speculation about “digital resurrection.”5 In keeping with Black Mirror’s usual assessment of transhumanism,6 the episode is hardly optimistic about the outcome of such a resurrection; Martha’s desire for a resurrected Ash could well be said to end in Balthasar’s “eternal melancholy and self-consumption.” In this article, I will consider the failed resurrection of the beloved in “Be Right Back” in conversation with Christian doctrine surrounding Christ’s resurrection. I will ultimately contend that the resurrected Ash is insufficient for Martha because he is not a “person,” intending with that term to evoke the Catholic personalist movement,7 particularly as outlined by Jacques Maritain.8 I will begin with an outline of Maritain’s personalism and then discuss the Enlightenment conception of the self that Charles Taylor has called “the ‘punctual’ self ”9 and its relation to transhumanism. These competing accounts of personhood will frame a discussion of “Be Right Back,” in which I will contend that the resurrected Ash is a hyperpunctual self and that his lack of personality makes true loving exchange between him and Martha impossible. Finally, I will draw on Augustine’s teaching on the Resurrection and the New Testament resurrection accounts themselves to consider how Christ’s Resurrection affirms the centrality of persons and love, fulfilling the desire for a resurrection of the beloved’s person that is implicit in the critiques of a nonpersonalist resurrection in “Be Right Back.” I. Jacques Maritain’s Personalism: Depth and Wholeness According to David Schindler, Jr., the term personalism describes a number of twentieth-century movements with a shared emphasis on personhood as “a special kind of being” and “the ultimate value or reality to which all things are relative.”10 Schindler maintains that these movements were motivated by concerns about the dehumanizing effects of “the mechanistic tendencies of modern science.”11 He also notes that many Catholic personalist thinkers emphasize the End Page 50 significance of personhood in trinitarian and Christological theology;12 Balthasar maintains that “the term person . . . receives its special dignity in history when it is illuminated by the unique theological meaning.”13 Thus questions about our relationship to technology and the divine are at the heart of personalism. Maritain gives an account of personalism that is heavily influenced by Thomist philosophy.14 He follows other personalist thinkers15 in intimately associating the concept of person with love, suggesting that “the most apposite approach to the philosophical discovery of personality is the study of the relation between personality and love.”16 In his following attempt to delineate personality through a phenomenological description of love, Maritain emphasizes two key aspects of the person: depth and wholeness. His description of the person’s depth is worth quoting at some length: Love is not...