ABSTRACT

There are two key traits found in Plato’s scant descriptions of Socrates’ daimonion: it is a figure of negation, telling Socrates what not to do but not providing any positive content or prophecy regarding what to do; and it is never seen, just appearing as a voice. These two traits lead to a daimonion which is a questioner of received wisdom rather than a prescriptive guide of moral conduct. It is this version of the daimonion, rather than the later figure of a demon burdened with additions of prophecy, direct action and haunting, which has found new life in contemporary demonic figurations. However, this guiding voice no longer mediates between the realms of humankind and the gods as it did for Socrates. Instead the daimonion has been repurposed as a mediating figure between humankind and nature. Science fiction film is taken to be a location for the development of this new figuration in which a more responsible attitude toward nature is imagined as a more demonic one. The essay begins with a discussion of the role of the daimonion for Socrates. It then extends this discussion with readings of two films: Silent Running (1972) and Interstellar (2014). Each film foregrounds and extends a different demonic trait: Silent Running focuses on the way that the demon encourages an overlap between the two terms it mediates, while Interstellar shows the political potential of the demon. What both films have in common is that they feature characters who use their demonic traits to mediate between other characters and nature. In other words, one reason that the daimonion is a positive figure of ecology is that it is because of the daimonion that humans can start seeing nature.