Whether it's the Alexa home virtual assistant, the graphic interface on a computer game, the partially automated (not to mention the self-driving) vehicle, the robotic arm in an assembly line, or the bot assistant on an online store, we have built a world of animated things. What does it mean to be human in a world of animated things? Art, religion, and philosophy have been exploring the interface between human life and animated things for thousands of years. Can we use artistic explorations to better understand human life in a world of technologically animated things?

In this course we will examine some aspects of this exploration, focusing on puppetry as a strategy and a solution to the problems of personhood. Puppets have always served as animated things that probe the limits of the human. And as soon as we talk about limits of the human, we are talking about how we imagine dehumanized bodies. 'The human' has held onto its particular status in the modern era, associated with privileges and rights. But as we are increasingly aware, the limits and mode of existence of this self-described human also defined those deemed 'not fully human,' including women, slaves, and animals. Mimetic traditions across human histories and geographies have in various ways posed questions about the limits of the human. Enquiries across philosophy, theology, anthropology, and aesthetics have raised challenges through which to confront assumptions about the limits of the human; and puppetry arts have been integral both to reinforcing and to challenging the assumptions about relations of power, and conceptions of thought and agency. The questions raised are integrally about labour (and who does it); and in such terms the robot — a kind of contemporary stand-in for the puppet — has increasingly been integral to such debates.

This is an experimental course that brings graduate students at the University of Toronto into dialogue with their peers at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. It is taught by colleagues at the two universities who share an interest in practical and theoretical problems associated with puppetry and the limits of the human. Our aim is to establish a dialogue to investigate a single practical and theoretical problem from the point of view of students and researchers living and working in two very different societies.