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By Root 407 0

the other hand, the massive rise of enframing and standing reserve is hardly being directed by Yoda and Mace Windu, or even through the Light Side of the Force. Rather the Dark Side has stealthily gained control of the process of enframing without the Jedi knowing it. As Count Dooku confidently informs Obi-Wan, “The Dark Side of the Force has clouded their [the Jedis’] vision, my friend.” The void of darkness is slowly but surely spreading, and extinguishing the Jedis’ power to use the Force. And this applies equally to young Anakin Skywalker, the soon-to-be Darth Vader. With not a little concern about Anakin’s fear of losing his mother, Yoda warns, “Clouded this boy’s future is.” In Heidegger’s terms, this clouding of the Force by the Dark Side is precisely the covering up of being by enframing. Heidegger says, “[Being] can be covered up to such a degree that it is forgotten and the question about it and its meaning altogether omitted.”84 In Anakin’s case, at the very height of his own enframing, this clouding will indeed become “forgetting,” as Luke rightly points out.

The Enframing of Anakin Skywalker

Anakin and his mother Shmi are slaves, both owned by Watto, a Toydarian junk dealer. And Anakin knows it’s wrong. Even as a little boy, he’s well aware that Watto subordinates his personhood—evident in his first meeting with Padmé. “You’re a slave?” she asks him. “I’m a person, and my name is Anakin!” he responds. As a slave, Anakin works on all manner of machines and is actually quite gifted in his work. He even brags to Qui-Gon that he can help fix their ship’s hyperdrive, and also takes considerable pride in showing Padmé his newest creation, a protocol droid for his mother—C-3PO. But despite all his talents, Anakin’s powers have already been wrongly honed in the service of control. He lives in a world of high-tech tools and so many enframed things which themselves require tools. Indeed, at a very basic level, Anakin himself is Watto’s own living tool, which is precisely how Aristotle defines a “slave” in the Politics.85

These distortions of slavery and the immersion in technology are the initial steps of a descent that will later spiral downward and out of control with the death of Anakin’s mother at the hands of the vulgar and nomadic Sand People. Infuriated at his powerlessness to keep Shmi alive, as her poor tortured body goes limp in his arms, Anakin, aflame with rage, proceeds to slaughter the entire community of Sand People (including the women and children). Trying to console him, Padmé clumsily explains that Shmi’s death was not his fault: “You’re not all-powerful.” But furious, Anakin insists, “Well I should be. Someday I will be. I will be the most powerful Jedi ever.” At this point, Anakin’s early technological skills and interests become obsessions for control and manipulation. Perhaps once he wanted to free the slaves (as he told Qui-Gon he had dreamed) and be the “shepherd of being”—as Heidegger means “shepherd” in the sense not only of “caring for,” but also “setting free.” But now he is on the path to becoming the “lord of beings” in the form of Lord Vader.

His rage has permanently unbalanced him, and this is nowhere more evident than in his futile charging attack on Count Dooku against Obi-Wan’s desperate warning. Ultimately, Yoda rescues Anakin and Obi-Wan from the powerful Sith Lord, but Anakin has lost his arm to Dooku’s lightsaber. Severed from his natural ready-to-hand relation, his natural being-in-the-world is now robotically mediated through an artificial hand attached to a cyborg arm. As a result of his thoughtless fury, Anakin has now shifted from the ready-to-hand (a natural hand-link to the Force and humanity) to the present-at-hand (the artificial hand-link to the Dark Side).

And this is only the beginning. His next step toward becoming fully enframed is brought about by Obi-Wan himself, Anakin’s teacher. Following a violent battle of lightsabers between the two, Anakin is left severely maimed and his biological body is no longer capable of sustaining itself on its own. After