Being human, fully from Axel Kahn - Stock Edition, March 2016
Dewi and Eka are identical twins born in the southern province of Kalimantan, Borneo. The first one is saved from a terrible fire in which everyone thinks Eka perished. In fact, the latter has been recovered by a female orangutan who will raise her. Dewi will be one of the most brilliant women of her generation, and will receive the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Eka, as for her, although she was taken in by a human society at the age of ten, will remain a wild child suffering from severe mental retardation.
She will die miserably. Both sisters have the same genes. How was Dewi able to develop the tools for brilliant, fully human development, what were the stages and conditions? Why couldn't all this happen in Eka?
Axel Kahn uses fiction to introduce the theme he develops through an essay, seeking to enrich, touch after touch, the observation of his twin heroines whose image and example runs through the work. He reminds us of the role of the otherness of the one and the other, like two incandescent logs that set each other on fire, and enjoins us : "Let's dare to want, then maybe we can. »
Dewi and Eka are true twins, they share one hundred percent of their genes and are, in this way, both individuals of a single clone. This means that the biological determinants of genetic origin of the two sisters are similar, that they possess the same potentialities in the first place. The properties of their neurons, their ability to form the complex synaptic networks that are the cellular support of cognitive abilities are similar... So what exactly do we need to be fully human?
Axel Kahn is the author of some twenty books, several of which have been best-sellers, including Et l'homme dans tout ça ? (NiL, 2000), Raisonnable et humain (NiL, 2004), L'Homme, ce roseau pensant (NiL, 2007) and Pensées en chemin. Ma France, des Ardennes au Pays Basque (Stock, NiL, 2014).
