Paris always awakens surprises and inspirations, even if not everyone knows how to read them, as evidenced by its imposing 19th‑century buildings with slate roofs that are one of its hallmarks. I recently wandered down a narrow street that has stood for more than a century and bears the name of the writer and satirical journalist Edmond About (1828‑1885), who triumphed, above all, in the Paris of Napoleon III. He became a member of the French Academy, but he would have fallen completely into oblivion if not for the fact that one of his novels has entered the repertoire of French science fiction.
I read that novel, The Man with the Broken Ear (1862), which could be regarded as a precursor of contemporary transhumanism. Let us not expect the usual tale in which a monstrous being escapes its creator’s control. Rather, it closely resonates with the current discourse that human biological limits can be surpassed, a discourse that blends scientific ambition with commercial aims. It is true that the novel has a melodramatic, serialized structure in which surprises abound and an inevitable love triangle—a product of its era. Nevertheless, it raises a series of questions that supporters of cryonics or body‑augmented artificial intelligence seldom consider. In fact, none of them would dwell on hypotheses about what is meant by human nature. The human being is reduced to a set of circuits and chips manipulable in a laboratory. In the face of the unbridled optimism of those messages, Edmond About lets irony speak and reminds us that the body is far more than something that can be replaced technically.
“Transhumanism is a response that seeks to compensate for the loss of faith in progress across generations throughout the twentieth century”
Knowing this novel helps us remember that every person is a child of their time, though there are apologists who openly proclaim that technological advances will adapt the human mind to external circumstances. Because the mindset of the technolibertarians reduces the human being to a “programmable” machine in which, paradoxically, freedom is diminished. One could say that transhumanism is a response that seeks to compensate for the loss of faith in progress across generations throughout the twentieth century.
Edmond About presents us with the extraordinary case of Colonel Pierre Victor Fougas, a Napoleonic‑era officer, a twenty‑four‑year‑old who in 1813 was frozen on a frosty night in a Prussian prison only hours before his execution. A physician, Professor Meiser, reaches the conclusion that Fougas has not died, but has become “desiccated”. He takes the body to his laboratory and keeps it there for years with the aim of reviving him. He dies before achieving this, but, as a form of compensation, he designates Fougas as his principal heir. Finally, in 1859, a young French engineer named Léon Renault discovers the mummified body and transports it to France with the intention that it be brought to life for good. With the help of a physician, Doctor Martout, Fougas “awakens” on August 17 of that year, although Renault unintentionally causes a small lesion to the lobe of his ear.
Forty‑six years have passed and chronology would place him at seventy, yet his external appearance is that of a twenty‑four‑year‑old. However, it will be necessary to brief the colonel on the history of France—from the fall of Napoleon I to the Second Empire of Napoleon III, passing through the Restoration, the Orleanist monarchy, and the Second Republic. Nevertheless, Fougas does not understand how Great Britain has become an ally and why the French have not occupied Vienna after defeating the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino in 1859.
The fame of Fougas, spread by the press and by the townsfolk, reaches Paris, and the colonel believes he is still living in the heroic days of the First Empire. His extravagant attire is a testament to this, giving rise to the occasional public uproar. In this sense, the “revived” Fougas resembles Don Quixote in his medieval armor and is an unending anachronism. He later believes the time has come to be readmitted to his old regiment with the rank of brigadier general, a rank he would deserve for his conduct in the 1813 campaign and for his seniority. He even secures an audience with Napoleon III, from which he leaves filled with enthusiasm. But, little by little, disappointments arrive, for Paris’s urban appearance has changed and almost all the people he knew are dead. The heroic times have, in truth, given way to bourgeois times, and the colonel becomes the object of all sorts of mockery, which mainly consists of going along with him as if he were Don Quixote.
“The technolibertarians who aim to build a more competitive and powerful man claim that the human being lives in a hostile environment and must defend itself”
Fougas tries to forget his sorrow and travels to Germany to claim his inheritance from the Meiser family, though he does not receive a warm reception, as everyone hides behind bureaucratic red tape to stall him. Although he obtains compensation from the Berlin government for his prolonged captivity, he immediately returns to France to seek the long‑desired recognition as a brigadier general. He does not succeed because the law does not allow granting that rank to a seventy‑year‑old officer who has surpassed the age of entering the reserve. One month after his “resurrection,” Colonel Fougas is found dead in his bed.
There will be those who argue that all this is an exaggeration and that laws and technical advances will arise to prevent the fate of Colonel Fougas. Yet none of that could have prevented the loneliness, uprooting, and sense of failure that the “resurrected” man experiences in the novel. Nevertheless, these reflections do not affect the mood of the new Gnostics who believe they have freed the spirit from matter. The technolibertarians who seek to build a more competitive and powerful man insist that the human being lives in a hostile environment and must defend itself. In practice, this leads to the emergence of a kind of overprotected cyborg, but at the same time one that is immature and insecure because it has turned its back on considering man as a social being and only understands society as an aggregate of individuals. The difference between that cyborg and Fougas is that people will not laugh at him or look at him with pity. They will simply fear him, and of course the capacity to inspire fear will not be within reach of all fortunes.
