Humanism, Becoming and the Demiurge in The Adventures of Pinocchio

The Humanism

The common thread of Pinocchio’s story (Collodi 1892) is his desire to become a human being. Unlike some creators who approached the adventures of Pinocchio in the context of posthumanism to reflect the anxieties and hopes in the technological progress of humanity, Georgia Panteli refers to transhumanism, (Panteli 2016) which, quoting Nick Bostrom, „embraces technological progress while strongly defending human rights and individual choice.” (Bostrom 2005)

Panteli sees Pinocchio’s heroic journey as an example of the search for humanity, a monomyth — a concept developed by Joseph Campbell (Campbell and Robinson 2005) influenced by C. G. Jung’s psychoanalytic theory, „a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation — initiation — return”. (Campbell 2008)

The Land of Boobies is the one that gives us the device that will allow us to look directly at our own beliefs in humanity. The mandate of the heterotopic device is to provide this glass or mirror that allows us to see what is often hidden from our eyes by our inability to recognize the obvious.

The Becoming

Pinocchio is aware of his incompleteness: he seeks during the story to become „a real boy.”

The Adventures of Pinocchio allow for multiple semantic interpretations. Thus, given the amorphous ontological origin of Pinocchio in relation to human beings, its „meaning” can be determined by placing in front of human beings a mirror of their own anthropomorphic and geocentric limitations. At the same time, the Land of Boobies is an excellent example of how heterotopic spaces can exist in children’s literature. The book explores how the experiences gained in heterotopic space give the individual the ability to change the panoramic view, and how these experiences can ultimately show us how we can recover or restore our existence as individual subjects. Through the experiences of the characters, we can see the creation of this space from an external point of view.

Human consciousness can refer to things that we do not perceive directly. Imagined or conceived objects can be distanced from the immediately perceived reality. The concepts refer to a reality that exists elsewhere and whose existence I do not doubt, although I have never experienced it; to a non-existent world created by a poietic imagination, a world of children, whose fictional characters and events we can follow as we read the book as if they were real; or, finally, to a fantastic reality. In all these cases, the object of consciousness is a conceptualized, imaginary reality, which is represented or expressed by the Talking-cricket.

The puppet’s desire to become human is one of the different literary manifestations of the animated / inanimate archetype, being loaded with different connotations and substrates of meaning. An archetypal story due to all its mythical, fairytale and religious references, through the puppet’s desire to become human, which triggers the final metamorphosis. Desire is the driving force that transforms inanimate matter into a living being.

The animated / inanimate archetype allows for more interpretations in the case of Pinocchio. Thus, the puppet can be a metaphor for man and the way he feels his destiny is controlled by a superior force. (Johnson 2008, 91) Pinocchio is also the newly formed state of Italy, which can only be developed through work ethic and education. (Asor Rosa 2002, 922–27) At the same time, Pinocchio’s transformation may signify his class rise. Panteli concludes that Pinocchio’s desire to become is not only ontological, but also socio-political. Becoming involves an “ontological quest of the individual towards changing themself, whether this reflects a desire or aspiration … or it functions in contrast with being.” (Panteli 2016)

The Demiurge

Pinocchio is a „child” without a mother, created by his father to fill his loneliness. „Pinocchio also foreshadows the possible modern parenting after the death of one of the two parents. In the context of adoption, medically assisted procreation, homo-parenting, cloning, Pinocchio is also the unlikely child born of an impossible mourning, that of Gepetto who mourns his wife who died prematurely without giving her a child. The sad and lonely old man carves the child that he and his wife never had, just like today’s man who becomes a father after the death of his girlfriend due to his preserved eggs.” (Roland 2011) Caroline Anthérieu-Yagbasan considers him thus, the archetype of the dream child, brought to life by its creator: (Anthérieu-Yagbasan 2016)

”Every child is thus first of all a parental fiction, a view of the mind, which takes flesh and which, as the object of his parents’ desire, shaped, caught in the net of their narcissistic and transgenerational history, confronts its environment and becomes a subject.” (Soussan 2009)

Thus, Anthérieu-Yagbasan highlights the current problem of the relationship between man and his creation, out of control. In cognitive science, computational theory holds that the human brain can only be compared to a computer, as opposed to reductionism which postulates the identity of the mind and the brain. Reproducing a human brain does not solve the problem of consciousness. For the construction of a super-ego, of a moral conscience, Sigmund Freud considers that it is necessary to internalize the cultural rules, taught mainly by parents applying their guidance and influence. (Schacter, Gilbert, and Wegner 2011) For Freud, „the installation of the super-ego can be described as a successful example of identification with the parental agent”:

„Thus, a child’s super-ego is actually built not on the model of his parents, but of his parents’ super-ego; the content that fills it is the same and becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all time-resistant value judgments that have spread in this way from generation to generation.” (Freud 2013, 105–6)

The archetype of animating an inanimate entity is not just the primary desire to eradicate death by creating life, the desire to be a puppet, to make God. It involves a deeper idea of understanding the human body and its mechanisms. (Panteli 2016)

CUNOAȘTEREA ȘTIINȚIFICĂ, Volumul 2, Numărul 3, Septembrie 2023, pp. 154–158
ISSN 2821–8086, ISSN — L 2821–8086 , DOI: 10.58679/CS44127
URL: https://www.cunoasterea.ro/humanism-becoming-and-the-demiurge-in-the-adventures-of-pinocchio/