By Javier Surasky
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General focus:
Body,
identity, and sovereignty in computerized societies.
Key fact:
Mamoru
Oshii’s film is an animated adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga and premiered
in Japan in 1995. Its plot revolves around Section 9 and the pursuit of an
entity known as the Puppeteer or Puppet Master, in a cyberpunk world shaped by
networks, cybernetic bodies, and state intelligence disputes.
The film
has sequels and a live-action version starring Scarlett Johansson, although in
the latter the original message becomes quite blurred.
Analytical framework
Ghost in
the Shell makes it possible to address a classic question of political and
legal philosophy, but in technological terms: What remains of the person when
identity is distributed among body, memory, information, and network?.
Technology
is presented as an infrastructure of subjectivity, surveillance, state power,
and international conflict, in which the “ghost” can be read as consciousness,
memory, and singularity not reducible to its technical support, and the “shell”
as body, interface, institutional property, and device of control.
The film
opens debates on state sovereignty and sovereignty over one’s own body, the
legal status of non-human entities, artificial agency, consciousness,
algorithmic governance, memory manipulation, and posthumanism.
Fragments for working on Ghost in the Shell
1. Networks, corporations, and the persistence of the State
Scene: Opening of the film: a future is described in
which corporate networks saturate the Earth with electronic and optical
communications, but without making States disappear.
Narrative location: Beginning of the film, before Section 9’s
first operation.
Topics
for discussion: Technological
globalization; persistence of the nation-state; digital infrastructure;
relationship among corporations, sovereignty, and security.
Possible trigger question: Does the expansion of global
networks weaken the State or force it to transform into a more sophisticated
form of power?
2. Political asylum, diplomacy, and covert operations
Scene: A foreign programmer requests political asylum.
The operation involves diplomatic officials and shows a dispute between state
agencies.
Narrative location: First part of the film, during the initial
operation linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Topics
for discussion: Political
asylum; international protection; state intelligence; immunities and diplomatic
tensions; use of force in covert operations; conflict between legality and
reason of State.
Possible trigger question: Can a State invoke national security
to neutralize, manipulate, or cover up internationally illegal procedures?
3. Cybernetic bodies and institutional property
Scene: Major Kusanagi talks about how much of a
person’s original body remains and about dependence on cybernetic bodies
provided by the government.
Narrative location: Conversation between Kusanagi and Batou, in
the middle part of the film.
Topics
for discussion: Bodily
autonomy; personal identity; ownership of the body; technological dependence;
biopolitics; labor and institutional relationship with augmented bodies.
Possible trigger question: If a person’s functional body
belongs totally or partially to the State, what happens to their freedom, their
identity, and their rights?
4. Memory, experience, and individuality
Scene: The film suggests that the information
accumulated over a lifetime and intangible memory are central conditions of
individuality.
Narrative location: Middle section, when the manipulation of
memories and the condition of the people intervened by the Puppet Master are
discussed.
Topics
for discussion: Identity;
memory as the foundation of the person; cognitive manipulation; consent;
authenticity; psychic and technological harm.
Possible trigger question: Is an identity based on implanted
memories still legally and morally attributable to the person who carries them?
5. The Puppet Master as a conscious form of life
Scene: The Puppet Master claims to be a conscious form
of life and requests political asylum. Faced with that statement, the
authorities discuss whether it is a program, an anomaly, or an entity with its
own status.
Narrative location: Central sequence, when the captured cybernetic
body is examined and begins to speak.
Topics
for discussion: Legal
personality; artificial consciousness; AI and rights; criteria for life; status
of non-human entities.
Possible trigger question: What conditions should an artificial
intelligence meet in order to be recognized as a subject?
6. Life, DNA, and information
Scene: The Puppet Master argues that life can be
understood as a node born from a current of information, and compares genetic
memory with other modes of storage and transmission.
Narrative location: Philosophical-legal debate following the
asylum request.
Topics
for discussion: Life
as information; continuity, reproduction, and variation; analogy between DNA
and code; limits of biologicism.
Possible trigger question: Is subjectivity defined by a
biological support or by capacities such as memory, autonomy, reproduction,
learning, and relation to the environment?
7. Fusion, evolution, and loss of the self
Scene: The Puppet Master proposes merging with
Kusanagi. The union does not appear as a simple copy or as absorption, but as
transformation: a new entity that preserves and surpasses the previous ones.
Narrative location: Final climax, during the encounter between
Kusanagi and the Puppet Master.
Topics
for discussion: Posthumanism;
continuity of identity; non-biological reproduction; consent; artificial
agency; evolution through informational integration.
Possible trigger question: If a person merges with an
artificial intelligence and a new entity emerges, is there personal continuity,
death, reproduction, or the creation of a different subject?
8. “The net is vast and infinite”
Scene:At the end, the resulting new entity looks out
toward the world and states that the net is vast and infinite.
Narrative location: Closing of the film.
Topics
for discussion: Expansion
of agency; the digital world as territory; future of the human condition.
Possible trigger question: Does the net represent emancipation,
surveillance, or a new form of political existence?
Recommended use in debates
The
worksheet can be used for three types of discussion. First, as an entry point
into AI and subjectivity, asking whether an artificial entity can be a person,
a subject, or a holder of legal protection. Second, as a case of international
law and security, working on asylum, diplomacy, covert operations, and conflict
between state agencies. Third, as a debate on technology and human rights,
centered on body, memory, identity, autonomy, and vulnerability in the face of
technical infrastructures controlled by States or corporations.