Creature : Faust e la scienza da Moreau a von Sasser

My work attempts to reframe some of the major themes related to Darwinian science, grounding the critical approach in Foucault’s notion of docile body and Beer’s interpretation of the evolutionary theory. The analysis concerns two nov- els – The Island of Dr Moreau (H.G. Wells, 1896) and The Butt (Will Self, 2008) – that, though far apart in time, show several contiguities. For one thing, they develop around a protagonist that closely replicates, with minor differences, the same model of scientist. Secondly, the two stories also imply an obsessive, morbid and often cruel relationship between a scientist and his creatures. In both cases, in fact, the plot describes the process through which a man of science actually subjugates weak creatures that he deems as inferior and therefore deserving guid- ance. These creatures seem to acquire a double status: they are the victims of the scientist’s hybris, but also the results of some extreme experiments. This being so, they ideally combine, in their own body, the tension towards an orderly articula- tion of the scientific creation and the anarchic freedom of nature. It is my position that these critical issues can effectively be seen at work comparing Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and Self’s The Butt, focusing on the figure of the scientist as a shared paradigm, borrowing much from Goethe’s Faust but also from its revision in Valéry’s Mon Faust.