On the natural and the artificial in Pinocchio’s (mis)education

Recent developments in generative artificial intelligence brought a renewed interest in representations of humans, especially puppets, in literature and in popular culture. In this article, following Giorgio Agamben’s paradoxical claim that the human can truly appear in what is not human–in a puppet, I examine the famousmarionette-turned-boy–Pinocchio. Curious about his wish to become a ‘real boy’ and about his educational path toward this goal, I read the story as an expression of complex social anxieties and hopes concerning naturalness and artificiality. Examining Pinocchio’s adventures from three critical perspectives: (1) Marx’ concept of commodity fetishism, (2) Hannah Arendt’s concepts of work and artificiality, and (3) the post-humanist critique of human superiority, I discuss education’s role in confronting the artificial/natural tension or in failing to do so. Applying Agamben’s innovative and unstructured reading of Pinocchio as a guiding anarchic thread throughout the above three readings, I argue that both Pinocchio’s desire to become ‘real’ and the socializing education he is subjected to express a wish to eliminate his unique inbetweeness in favor of a stable and restricted identity. I further suggest that an education capable of acknowledging students’ possible inhuman traits, has an emancipating potential.