The Writing Writer Fictional Autobiograp

Edited by
Artur Matos Alves
Unveiling the Posthuman
Critical Issues
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The Cyber hub
Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture
2012
Unveiling the Posthuman

Edited by
Artur Matos Alves
Inter-Disciplinary Press
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Artur Matos Alves
Part I
Posthuman Concepts: Placing the Posthuman

Visions of Humanity between the Posthuman and the
Non-Human
Hadas Elber
Part II
vii
Posthuman Rights: The Ethics of Alien Encounter

Elana Gomel
11
Reconceptualising Space, Place and Body: Telepresence

and Locative Media in Art
M. Luisa Gmez Martnez
21
Gender, Sex and Bodies in Cyberspace

Do We Really Die? Bodies in Cyberculture, Life and
Social Existence after Death
Raquel Botelho
33
Cyberspace and Subversion: The Creation of Culture in

Steampunk and Body Modification Cyber-Communities
Ann-Renee Clark
41
The Digital Bodys Mantra: Man and Machine in Grand

Junction by Maurice G. Dantec
Claire Cornillon
51
Cyborgs in the Garden: Tales of Iden in Kage Bakers

Company Series
Tania Honey
59
Pat Cadigans Cyberfiction and Jessica Benjamins

Intersubjectivity
Ana Makuc
67
A Gravelled Path: Historicizing Feminist Utopias/Dystopias

Prasita Mukherjee
75
Feet, Silk and Sex: The Not So Secret World of Fetish Online
Kayleigh Newby
85
Part III Fictions? Posthuman Societies and Cultures

Total Machine or Homelessness: The Tyranny of the Artificial
and the Limits of Politics in the Posthuman Era
Artur Matos Alves
93
Orthodox Science Fiction and Fictional Worlds

Chris Bateman
105
Wrong Laughter: Laughing Away the Human in Richard Powers

Galatea 2.2
Fran McDonald
115
Retro-Future Societies in Woody Allens Sleeper and

Oldich Lipsks Man in Outer Space
Daniel Riha
123
Part IV Cybernarratives: Literature and Videogames

We See Cyborgs Differently: A Comparative Study between
North American and Latin American Cyberpunk
Rodolfo Rorato Londero
133
The Writing Writer: Fictional Autobiography in Claudio Sanchez 145

The Amory Wars
Laura-Jane Maher
Quevedo and Gngora Fistfight in Virtual Heaven: Contemporary
Cyber Poetry in Spanish
Dolores Miralles-Alberola
155
Godliness in Tad Williams Otherland Series

Petra Rehling and Cindy Squires
163
Through Other Eyes: The Other as an Extension of the Self in

Post-War Science Fiction
Jorge Martins Rosa
171
Canon and Contingency in Mass Effect

Adam W. Ruch
181
Introduction
Artur Matos Alves
The electronic book Unveiling the Posthuman collects twenty of the papers
presented at the 6th Global Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture,
Cyberspace and Science Fiction, which took place in Mansfield College, Oxford,
from 12th to 14th July 2011. The conference event was an activity of the Critical
Issues Cyber Hub research, developed by the Inter-Disciplinary.Net global
network.
The chapters in this book are grouped in four parts, each reflecting a set of
convergent features of the original papers, presented and discussed during the
Conference. Even if it does not (could not) reflect the richness of the debates that
took place, this collection is, itself, a sample of the opportunities of debate which
arise from our current (and fictional) cultural, social and political practices in
cyberculture and cyberspace.
Interpreting these practices and discourses is one of the most exciting
challenges of our times, since they signal the changes we are undergoing. If this
process of becoming can be seen as a transition towards a new phase of our
humanity, then its multidisciplinary analysis will enrich the perspective of our
situation. In the different chapters, there is an extremely noticeable mingling of the
theoretical aspects of cyberculture with the perplexities arising from a close
reading of contemporary culture(s). Because of that, this bookas the conference
where it took shapepresents itself as an exercise in decoding posthumanisms
signs. Most contributions to the original conference coalesced around the
interpretation of cyberculture and its representations (real, fictional and virtual).
Inevitably, a number of the chapters here included highlight the new, unstable
situation of Humanity, both as a concept and as a biological species. Many of the
contributions look into literature, and chiefly science fiction, for the main thrusts of
imagination crossing the boundaries of classical humanism. The result provides an
extremely rich look into our perception of what it means to be human and, more
than that, what our post-human future could have in store for us.
In fact, decades of theoretical and fictional work, as well as excitingand
somewhat terrifyingtechno-scientific developments
have
irrevocably
destabilized our self-image. It seems to be a general premise of the chapters
gathered in this book that humanity is in flow. Struck by doubt and images of
itself thrown into a mysterious technological future, modern humanism reached a
crossroads: neither accepting nor encouraging great narratives, we nevertheless
find it reflected upon many surfaces. Mirrors or windows? might be the great
ontological question in the background of the studies that try to capture and
analyse the visions of humanity. Do the images of the human conveyed in
cyberculture (captured in film, in literature, in music, in discourses flowing through
viii
Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
cyberspace), and embodied by the practices of our times, show those possible
changes in how we perceive our humanity?
It seems beyond dispute that we have been thrown into a new realm of
questioning, far from our favourite essentialist clichs. The new condition of
humanity is multiple and fragmentary, and not a coherent narrative displacing
modern subjectivity. The result is a partial palimpsest, a hybrid that doubtlessly
retains some aspects of humanism but is also under the dissolving effect of
contemporary criticism, technology, scienceand their conundrums, gaps,
kinships, dreams, and conflicts of every sort.
For these reasons, approaching the post-human is inherently transgressive of
barriers and frontierswhich is why we often find literature mingled with political
theory, cognitive philosophy decoding science fiction tropes, or gender studied
through the lens of online ethnography. The different parts of this volume establish
important bridges with each other. Indeed, as the reader will undoubtedly notice,
most themes and approaches relate with the others, making this division somewhat
artificial. This book consists of four parts:
Part I Posthuman Concepts: Placing the Posthuman;
Part II Gender, Sex and Bodies in Cyberspace;
Part III Fictions? Posthuman Societies and Cultures;
Part IV Cybernarratives: Literature and Videogames.
The first part, Posthuman Concepts: Placing the Posthuman, includes three
chapters. Each of them takes a different perspective in the analysis of what posthuman means, and how it relates to our contemporary challenge of redefining our
humanistic heritage in terms of our own placement in the world.
In Visions of Humanity between the Posthuman and the Non-Human, Hadas
Elber re-examines the rifts between humanism and post-humanism, particularly in
what concerns the difficult problem of coexistence of both forms. By addressing
the proliferation of post-human figures in Sterlings, Watts and Mivilles science
fiction works, Elber shows how the new forms of alterity further may expose the
limitations of the human / non-human binary, even in the light of Haraway and
Nietzsche.
Posthuman Rights: The Ethics of Alien Encounter, by Elana Gomel, is a
discussion of the trope of the alien encounter in science fiction. Going beyond
Lvinas ethics, this chapter highlights the strangeness and Other-ness of such a
situation. Thus, it poses the question of how an alien beingthe ontological Other
can be construed as subject in our minds, and what that (lack of) comprehension
and empathy means for our own ability to anticipate what it means to be
posthuman.
In Reconceptualizing Space, Place and Body: Telepresence and Locative
Media in Art, M. Luisa Gmez Martnez analyses examples of artistic works
Artur Matos Alves
ix
__________________________________________________________________
focused on telepresence and locative media, showing how they can become
important elements to reinforce the links between space, place and body, in our
technological reality.
The second part, Gender, Sex and Bodies in Cyberspace, comprises seven
chapters, all of them dedicated to subjects related to the physical, social, and
cybercultural matters of identity and the body.
Raquel Botelho, in Do We Really Die? Bodies in Cyberculture, Life and
Social Existence after Death, studies the separation between life and death in the
physical and virtual realms. Our bodies and personalities are subject to forms of
replacement, metamorphosis, or doubling that highlight the ways in which
technologically mediated communication and interaction changes our views of life
and death.
Cyberspace and Subversion: The Creation of Culture in Steampunk and Body
Modification Cyber-Communities, by Ann-Renee Clark, tackles the importance of
interaction in cyberspace, as geography and medium of communication, for the
creation of the steampunk and body modification niche cultures and communities.
Claire Cornillons The Digital Bodys Mantra: Man and Machine in Grande
Jonction by Maurice G. Dantec approaches language as an articulation between
Man and Machine, deploying a meta-language as a means to re-establish the
boundaries between digital communications (the realm of the machine) and the
symbolic language-world of humankind
In Cyborgs in the Garden: Tales of Iden in Kage Bakers Company Series,
Tania Honey addresses the interrogations brought by the figure of the cyborg to
several contexts ruled by resistant and oppositional paradigms. By presenting an
analysis of Kage Bakers character Mendoza, the author explores the implications
of spatial and temporal displacement, alienation, and different systems of
representation of gender and cyborgs for an interpretation of feminism.
Ana Makucs Pat Cadigans Cyberfiction and Jessica Benjamins
Intersubjectivity is an examination of the possibilities of technological
modification of the human mind and body. For the author, the specific ways in
which that modification is fictionalised in Pat Cadigans work reveal a radical
approach to gendered subjectivity, which uses technology to create a post-gendered
world.
A Gravelled Path: Historicizing Feminist Utopias/Dystopias, by Prasita
Mukherjee, is an analysis of the efforts to build a feminist canon, which focus on
utopian and dystopian narratives as proposals of alternate forms of coexistence and
segregation, on the one hand, and as critiques of dominant representations of power
structure in utopian literature, on the other.
Kayleigh Newby, in her Feet, Silk and Sex: The not so Secret World of Fetish
Online, explores sexual fetishism in social networking services, and specifically
Facebook. The chapter unravels the ways in which these networks are being used
Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
to build, show, and perform sexual identities, while also bringing into question the
role of the deviant label in the appeal of that construction.
Part III, Fictions? Posthuman Societies and Cultures, includes four chapters,
which examine political, social, and cultural aspects (or consequences) by
analysing what may be called the fictional macro-laboratories of science fiction.
In Total Machine or Homelessness: The Tyranny of the Artificial and the
Limits of Politics in the Posthuman Era, Artur Matos Alves studies the
relationships between human and technology in E. M. Forsters dystopian The
Machine Stops. The main focus of the chapter is the fate of a society that has
transferred political agency to intelligent machinery, and the consequences of that
high degree of reliance upon complex artificial systems.
Orthodox Science Fiction and Fictional Worlds, by Chris Bateman, is an
explanation of science fiction as megatext, and of orthodox science fiction as a
canon within that tradition that may be likened to a corpus of belief. This amounts,
in orthodox science fiction, to a physicalist view of science and an accompanying
positivistic stance present in (and giving form to) fictional worlds.
In Laughing Away the Human: The Threat of Cyberlaughter in Science
Fiction, Fran McDonald studies the representations of artificial laughter, both as
an eerily inhuman form of hilarity or as an human-like sound so uncanny that
renders humanity defenceless in the face of the transgression of another territory
previously exclusive to humans. McDonald discusses the redefining of those
categories in Richard Powers novel Galatea 2.2.
Daniel Rihas Retro-Future Societies in Woody Allens Sleeper and Oldich
Lipsks Man in Outer Space consists of a comparative study of the two science
fiction comedies as cultural and societal critiques. By examining them as futuristic
portrayals of Western and Eastern societies, Riha demonstrates how the movies
satirical elements arise from different interpretations of a particular political
situation, as well as ideological assumptions about utopia, dystopia, and a good
societythough sharing an identifiably liberating form of humour.
The fourth part concerns Cybernarratives: Literature and Videogames, and
includes a total of six chapters discussing a plurality of narrative genres.
We See Cyborgs Differently: A Comparative Study between North American
and Latin American Cyberpunk, by Rodolfo Rorato Londero, shows how Latin
American cyberpunk writers take a different approach to the common uses of
cyborg technology. For Londero, the cultural, social, and economic conditions of
Latin America give an original form to its cyberpunk fiction, very distinct from its
North American counterpart.
In The Writing Writer: Fictional Autobiography in Claudio Sanchez The
Amory Wars, Laura-Jane Maher examines the transmedia fictional characteristics
of that science fiction project. By studying how identity is built using a plurality of
textual and bodied resources, the author shows the complex ways readers and
Artur Matos Alves
xi
__________________________________________________________________
writers can cooperate in the creation of transmedia narratives, thereby calling into
question the dominant notions of readership, authorship, and shared experience.
Quevedo and Gngora Fistfight in Virtual Heaven: Contemporary Cyber
Poetry in Spanish, by Dolores Miralles-Alberola, studies how the contemporary
online practices of Spanish poets are an expression of new ways to do and
understand literature. Cyberliterature, and cyberpoetry, simultaneously demands
open authorship and open publics, both creating and interacting as part of a
community.
For some, posthumanism is synonymous with a liberation from our physical
form and, therefore, a form of intelligence not subject to bodily limits would
possess immense power. But what does that radical Otherness entail for humanity?
In the chapter Godliness in Tad Williams Otherland Series, Petra Rehling and
Cindy Squires examine radical forms of Otherness and technofutures through the
enhancement and expanding of humanitynamely, mind uploading.
In Through Other Eyes: The Other as an Extension of the Self in Post-War
Science Fiction, Jorge Martins Rosa employs Claude Shannons Mathematical
Theory of Communication to analyse instances of science fiction narratives in
which technology enables individuals to access and manipulate other peoples
cognitive activities.
Canon and Contingency in Mass Effect, by Adam Ruch, explores the actions
and options offered to human players in videogames. Ruch addresses sexuality and
romance between player and non-player characters in Mass Effect as a form of
scripted contingency that calls into question a number of assumptions about the
narrative structure, the players options, or even the characters and their roles.
I would like to thank Daniel Riha and the Inter-Disciplinary Press for inviting
me to edit this electronic book, as well as the authors of the texts for their thoughprovoking work. Furthermore, I believe I may write for all of the participants in the
conference, and contributors to this book, in thanking the Inter-Disciplinary.Net
team for enabling the stimulating exchanges that took place during and after the
event, and which hopefully this book will also foster.
Part I
Posthuman Concepts: Placing the Posthuman
Visions of Humanity between the Posthuman and the

Non-Human
Hadas Elber
Abstract
Humanity has long been envisioned as self-conflicted, fractured along the lines of
mind and body, reason and emotion, conscious and unconscious. Friedrich
Nietzsche has conceptualized this fragmentation as a d isease, positing the nonhuman Judeo-Christian God as the origin of the sickness and the posthuman
bermensch as its cure. Donna Haraway, in contrast, sees the discourse of human
disease as a product of the human/non-human binary opposition. Haraway argues
that the collapse of this binary shall engender posthuman inappropriate/d others
whose deconstructive relationality constitutes a viable alternative to Western
patriarchal power relations. The essay examines the intersection of the human, the
non-human and the posthuman in Speculative Fiction (SF), which simultaneously
builds upon and problematizes Nietzsche and Haraways paradigms. The research
discusses Bruce Sterlings Schismatrix, Peter Watts Blindsight and China
Mivilles Perdido Street Station.
Key Words: Humanity, Blindsight, humanism, Haraway, posthumanism, nonhuman, Nietzsche, Schismatrix, Perdido Street Station.
*****
Throughout the history of Western culture, humanity has often been envisioned
as a house divided, the human as an entity ceaselessly at war with itself. This
fractured condition has been conceptualized in various forms: Plato imagined a
tripartite human soul composed of a charioteer pulled in opposite directions by two
winged horses, 1 Rene Descartes formed the famous Cartesian duality of mind and
body, 2 and Sigmund Freud revealed a human psyche bifurcated between the
conscious and the unconscious. 3 Friedrich Nietzsche overlays this view with a
value judgment, by denouncing fragmentation as the sickness that defines
humanity. Man is a d isease, Nietzsche tells us, because to be human is to be
fraught with contradiction: an animal ego turned against itself, taking part against
itself. 4
For Nietzsche, this disease arises from mans insistence upon clinging to the
corpse (and corpus) of his non-human Judeo-Christian God, thereby occluding the
emergence of the bermensch, the posthuman cure to the disease called man. 5
The bermensch is everything man is not. As Gilles Deleuze points out, this
posthuman figure is profoundly anti-dialectical, neutralizing internal forces of
negative opposition. 6 The bermensch heals all mans divisions, epitomizing the
harmony of mind and body, emotion and reason, desire and action. Hence,
Visions of Humanity between the Posthuman and the Non-Human
__________________________________________________________________
Nietzsche sees the non-human Judeo-Christian God and the posthuman
bermensch as antithetical forces that demarcate the sickness that is man.
Donna Haraway echoes Nietzsche insofar as she asserts that the interplay
between human and non-human plays a pivotal role in Western discourse of
disease and medicine. According to Haraway, hegemonic medical institutions
appropriate outer space into inner space, configuring biomedical images of our
physical interiority according to the features of extraterrestrial topos: The blasted
scenes, sumptuous textures, evocative colors, and ET monsters of the immune
landscape are simply there, inside us. 7 The bodys inner struggle against illness
thus becomes a space opera where humanity defends itself against invading aliens.
This holds true as long as the vision of humanity rests on the binary opposition
between human and non-human. Haraway remarks that Western patriarchy has
engendered two such visions, or two births, as she calls them. The first birth
grounds humanity in the physical body 8 that implicitly denotes the white
Eurocentric body. The second birth equates humanity with the liberal humanist
paradigm of the cohesive, teleological subject, which originated in the
Enlightenments heliotropic 9 worship of science and technology as conduits for
the production of sameness. In both births, humanity is defined against the nonhuman.
Haraway pins her hopes on a third birth that features in works of Speculative
Fiction 10 (SF) generically concerned with the interpenetration of boundaries
between problematic selves and unexpected others. 11 The collapse of the
human/non-human dichotomy into bidirectional permeation gives rise to
posthuman inappropriate/d others, 12 who reject both the corporeal and the
humanist models of humanity. What defines these inappropriate/d others is a
critical, deconstructive relationality 13 that offers a viable alternative to Western
patriarchal power relations. Not unlike Nietzsches bermensch, the posthuman
inappropriate/d others rewrite the discourse of disease into a discourse of life.
Haraway offers the example of HIV positive individuals who maintain that they
are living with AIDS, rather than accepting the status of victims (or prisoners of
war?). 14
The following essay strives to bring together Nietzsches philosophy of the
bermensch and Haraways theorization of the births of (post)humanity, through a
discussion of SF works that explore notions of humanity as a disease by
showcasing the interrelationship between the human, the non-human and the
posthuman. The research focuses on Bruce Sterlings Schismatrix, Peter Watts
Blindsight and China Mivilles Perdido Street Station, which together form a
composite of visions parallel to Haraways three births. Whilst frequently
resonating with Nietzsche and Haraway, these works adhere neither to the
Nietzschean opposition between the non-human and the posthuman, nor to
Haraways synergy between the human and the non-human that generates the
posthuman. Rather, the works suggest the inexhaustible diversity of posthuman and
6F
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8F
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10F
1F
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13F
Hadas Elber
__________________________________________________________________
non-human figures, thereby highlighting the limitations of Nietzsche and
Haraways modalities. At the same time, they chart the increasing propinquity
between the posthuman and the non-human, as a canvas upon which the vision of
humanity-as-sickness is thrown into relief.
Bruce Sterlings Schismatrix describes a future world in which humanity is
synonymous with death, a world of losses, broken hopes, and original sin, a
flawed world, 15 posthumanism with life and the future. 16 In keeping with
Haraways notion of the first birth of man as a biological creature, the novel indeed
locates humanity in the physical body, but it is the sick, decaying and ultimately
dead body. The novel thus opens with the successful suicide of Vera Kelland and
the failed suicide of protagonist Abelard Lindsay In the name of humanity! And
the preservation of human values! 17 It comes full circle with the suicide of Vera
and Lindsays former co-conspirator Phillip Constantine. Likewise, Earth has been
abandoned by all but the most retrogressive human communities, its landscape
dominated by the strangling monuments of the legions of the dead. 18
Posthumanism, in contrast, has broken away from its human past and spread
among the stars, devoting itself to the prolongation of life via manipulation of the
physical body. Granted, in the first part of the novel, posthumanism is torn asunder
by bloody conflict between the Mechanists, who advocate technological
enhancement through prosthetic implants, and the Shapers, who practice genetic
manipulation and rigorous mental discipline. This notwithstanding, the two
factions share the premise that to be posthuman is to be on the side of life. 19
Further, the rift between the posthuman Mechanists and the posthuman Shapers
is largely healed by the arrival of the non-human, the extraterrestrial Investors:
People began to speak, for the first time, of the Schismatrixof a posthuman
solar system, diverse yet unified, where tolerance would rule and every faction
would have to share. 20 As a result of this first contact, the Mechanists and the
Shapers establish dtente that enables them to share their knowledge and expertise
and thus enhance their techniques of longevity. Hence, the non-human encourages
the posthuman desire for life, at the expense of the human death wish.
Accordingly, the more posthumanism distances itself from its former humanity, the
more it approaches extraterrestrial non-humanity. Posthumans begin to emulate the
Investors: Artificial Investor hide and boots shaped as miniature Investor feet,
toes, claws, and all 21 become valuable commodities in posthuman communities.
This trajectory is illustrated by Lindsays ideological development. Initially a
fanatic believer in the preservation of humanity, Lindsay becomes posthuman by
reluctantly accepting life-extension following his rescue at the hands of the
Investors and consequent commission as an expert in Investor sociology. He
quickly adapts to his posthumanism, to the extent that when his wife Nora decides
to sacrifice herself for the sake of her family, Lindsay chooses to escape in an
Investor spaceship and live. Finally, Lindsay sheds his physical body completely,
becoming a disembodied companion to The Presence, an ethereal extraterrestrial
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life-form. Lindsay thus liberates himself from the corporeality that is the hallmark
of human disease, fulfilling the posthuman dream of transcending humanity by
transforming himself into a non-human.
If in Schismatrix humanity is a sickness of the body, in Blindsight it is a disease
of the mind. Symbolically, Blindsight picks up where Schismatrix left off. Most
human beings on Earth have abandoned their physical bodies, by uploading their
consciousnesses into a virtual reality called Heaven. The novel therefore does not
anchor humanity in corporeality, but rather in sentience: You invest so much in it,
dont you? Its what elevates you above the beasts of the field; its what makes you
special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. 22
This equation of humanity with consciousness is in line with Haraways second
birth of man as a humanist subject, because a cohesive subjectivity relies on a core
self around which all individual experience can be structured. Blindsight, however,
postulates that sentience is a parasite impeding the unconscious workings of the
mind: Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and
proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and
awaken, and call themselves I. 23
Hence, the novels posthuman and non-human figures possess an evolutionary
edge on humanity, by virtue of their respective diminished and absent sentience.
Posthumanism is embodied in vampires. Long-extinct cannibalistic offshoots of the
human race, vampires have been resurrected by humans to serve as slave labour.
Stronger and more intelligent than human beings, vampires are also less sentient.
In the novels dnouement, they rebel against their human masters, presumably
exterminating all human beings on Earth. This mass-killing is represented as the
workings of natural selection, extirpating the ill:
21F
2F
We humans were never meant to inherit the Earth. Vampires

were. They must have been sentient to some degree, but that
semi-aware dreamstate would have been a r udimentary thing
next to our own self-obsession. They were weeding it out. It was
just a p hase. They were on their way. [] You cant blame
predators for being predators. We were the ones that brought
them back, after all. Why wouldnt they reclaim their
birthright? 24
23F
The non-human appears in the form of an alien artefact tellingly named

Rorschach and in its starfish-like inhabitants, nicknamed scramblers. Rorschach
and the scrambles are variations on John Searles hypothetical Chinese Room, a
system that enables communication and problem-solving without conscious
understanding of the conveyed information. These non-humans are thus ultraintelligent, non-sentient life forms: They [Scramblers] turn your own cognition
against itself. They travel between the stars. This is what intelligence can do,
Hadas Elber
__________________________________________________________________
unhampered by self-awareness. 25 Consequently, the scramblers view human
sentience, and the excess of self-reflexive language it produces, as a virus, 26
prompting Rorschach to register the human race as a threat and send out an array
of probes to photograph Earth.
Like in Schismatrix, the encounter between the posthuman and the non-human
results in the posthumans further dehumanization. In response to Rorschachs
probes, humanitys governing body launches a delegation led by the vampire Jukka
Sarasti, with the purpose of initiating first contact and assessing the alien lifeforms intentions. In the novels climax, however, Sarasti is revealed to be a puppet
whose cerebral functions are controlled by the delegations artificially intelligent
spaceship Theseus, in an effort to maintain crew morale through the illusion that a
vampire is in command, rather than a machine. Hence, the posthuman vampire
loses his modicum of human sentience in the exigencies of establishing contact
with the non-human.
China Mivilles Perdido Street Station unfurls a beautifully intricate fabric of
interwoven relationships between the human, the non-human and the posthuman.
Set in the fictional city of New Crobuzon, the novel uses condensed urban space as
a catalyst for meshing together humans, xenian races, and biologically reshaped
posthumans. Non-human species include the frog-like vodyanoi, the avian garuda,
the intelligent cacti aptly named cactacae, and the khepri who possess scarabs in
place of heads. Although the ruling bodies of each of these species make an effort
at self-segregation, the novel focuses on the rebellious elements that choose to
trade, engage the services of, and even become romantically involved with,
biological humans possessing a humanist subjectivity. Thus, for example, the
khepri Lin has an on-going love affair with the human protagonist Isaac, and the
garuda Yagharek seeks Isaacs help in restoring his capacity to fly. In addition, the
city is inhabited by an artificially intelligent hive-mind called the Construct
Council and a semi-divine arachnid named the Weaver.
Posthumanism manifests itself in the Remade, residents of New Crobuzon who
have been corporeally reconstructed by the authorities, most often as a form of
punishment, usually with attendant utilitarian purposes. Hence, for instance,
miserable men and women are reshaped as both cabdriver and cab. 27 Xenians
are occasionally subjected to such institutional cruelty, but the majority of the
Remade are former human beings and therefore posthuman, insofar as corporeality
is taken to be the measure of humanity.
Further, a r adical group emerges from within the Remade, poignantly named
the fReemade, who forge a posthuman subjectivity for themselves to accommodate
their posthuman bodies. They break away from nostalgic pining for their lost
humanity, opting instead for a celebration of their corporeality. The fReemade may
thus be seen as the Remades posthuman spearhead. Such for example is Jack Halfa-Prayer, a vigilante who uses his Remade praying mantis arm as a deadly weapon
against the authorities and their collaborators.
24 F
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26F
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Perdido Street Station may be read as a critique of the Nietzschean paradigm.
The novel recounts the efforts of a coalition of humans, posthumans, and nonhumans to battle the slake-moths, monstrous creatures that constitute a living
Sleeping Sickness 28 that spreads nightmares and consumes sentience. Contrary to
Blindsight, then, the novel does not represent sentience as a disease, but as a
vulnerable treasure that must be safeguarded from disease. Nor does Perdido Street
Station call for a return to the humanist paradigm by privileging sentience as the
kernel of the unified subject. Instead, the novel foregrounds the irresolvable
paradox that attends the human psyche, as an organism simultaneously equal to
and more than the sum of conscious and unconscious: two simultaneous
conclusions: x=y+z; and xy+z. 29
Moreover, as Joan Gordon astutely observes, the novels alliance of humans,
posthumans and non-humans operates according to the same oxymoronic logic. 30
Much like Haraways inappropriate/d others, this alliance is defined by mutual
support that neither elides nor demonizes difference. Isaac fights alongside
Yagharek, the Weaver, and the vodyanoi Pengefinchess, without humanizing them.
The alliance finally vanquishes the slake-moths through crisis energy, energy that
is released in moments of tension between what-is and what-is-not. Thus,
indeterminacy becomes the novels most potent cure to the sickness of the slakemoths.
The slake-moths, on their part, recall Nietzsches bermensch. Beautifully
formed with symmetrical wings and two sets of reproductive organs that allow
maximum versatility, the slake-moths act out of pure physical desire, without
hesitation or compunction. Like the bermensch, they are the panacea to human
fragmentation, reducing the unique inconsistency of the multi-layered psyche into
a component of their perfectly consistent bodies.
One may surmise, therefore, that Perdido Street Station inverts Nietzsches
value system. True to the anti-authoritarianism underpinning Mivilles entire
oeuvre, the novel asserts that if self-contradiction is a sickness and purity the cure,
then let us all be sick. Accordingly, it is precisely the inconsistency that Nietzsche
diagnoses as the disease called man that forms the source of Mivilles posthuman
power. The slake-moths perfection and obliteration of incongruity render them the
true disease that is arrested by that power.
Contemporary history has been plagued by attempts to cure humanity of its
schisms. The Third Reich, the Soviet Union and the Cultural Revolution in China
were all ideological projects devoted to abolishing contradiction from the human
subject and reconstituting him as the harmonious posthuman. Whether or not these
projects were faithful to Nietzsches original vision remains a matter of debate, but
clearly they drew upon his tropes of human disease and posthuman salvation. A
growing awareness of the cost of such radical treatment may be seen in the
conceptual shift from Shismatrixs celebratory dnouement to Blindisghts bleak
conclusion. Haraways endeavour to imagine a new kind of relational
27F
28F
29F
Hadas Elber
__________________________________________________________________
posthumanism, whilst laudable, overlooks the bloody history of these alternative
posthuman forms. Hence, it is in Perdido Street Station that we may find the
successful answer to both Nietzsche and Haraway. The novel envisions a
posthumanism that integrates both the human and the non-human as an act of
resistance to the putative redemption offered by the utopian posthuman. In so
doing, it opens a horizon where humanity may be enriched, rather than erased, by
posthuman and non-human alterity.
Notes
1
Plato, The Phaedrus of Plato (New York: Arno Press, 1973).

Rene Descartes, A Discourse on Method (London: Dent, 1969).
3
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (London: G. Allen & Unwin,
1915).
4
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (New York: Dover, 2003), 57.
5
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 57.
6
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2006).
7
Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for
Inappropriate/d Others, in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New
York: Routledge, 1992), 320.
8
Ibid., 300.
9
Ibid.
10
Although initially referring to Science Fiction as the locus of her vision,
Haraway soon expands her definition to include various forms of Speculative
Fiction.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 299.
14
Ibid., 322.
15
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus (New York: Penguin, 1996), 38.
16
Ibid., 170.
17
Ibid., 5.
18
Ibid., 224.
19
Ibid., 170.
20
Ibid., 109.
21
Ibid., 197.
22
Peter Watts, Blindsight (New York: Tor, 2006), 301.
23
Ibid., 303.
24
Ibid., 362.
25
Ibid., 304.
26
Ibid., 324.
2
10
__________________________________________________________________
27
China Miville, Perdido Street Station (London: Macmillan, 2000), 21.

Ibid., 827.
29
Ibid., 773.
30
Joan Gordon, Hybridity, Heterotopia, and Mateship in China Mivilles Perdido
Street Station, Science Fiction Studies 30 (2003): 456-76.
28
Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press,
2006.
Descartes, Rene. A Discourse on Method. London: Dent, 1969.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1915.
Gordon, Joan. Hybridity, Heterotopia, and Mateship in China Mivilles Perdido
Street Station. Science Fiction Studies 30 (2003): 456-76.
Haraway, Donna. The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for
Inappropriate/d Others. In Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary
Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, 295-337. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Miville, China. Perdido Street Station. London: Macmillan, 2000.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Dover, 2003.
Plato. The Phaedrus of Plato. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
Sterling, Bruce. Schismatrix Plus. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Watts, Peter. Blindsight. New York: Tor, 2006.
Hadas Elber is currently writing her M.A. Thesis on Charles Dickens and Urban
Fantasy in Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Her interests include Posthumanism,
Literary Theory, Urban Studies, Narratology, Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Posthuman Rights: The Ethics of Alien Encounter

Elana Gomel
Abstract
Do posthuman subjects have human rights? My chapter will examine this question
through the trope of human-alien encounter in science fiction (SF). This trope
enables us to go beyond the naturalizing discourse of human rights as the
foundation of ethical community and to consider new ways of forming moral
judgments and ascribing an ethical status to an entity. My focus will be on the
confrontation with the totally Other: that is, with an alien intelligence that resists
both cognitive and psychological appropriation by humanity. Depicting such
intelligence in a literary text poses problems of representation that parallel ethical
and epistemological challenges of an encounter with the totally Other. I will
analyse the narrative strategies used to resolve these problems, specifically the
manipulation of the point of view, the ambiguous closure, and the figure of the
human/alien mediator, as indicating both the crisis of humanism and the tentative
emergence of posthuman alternatives. The dissolution of the biological boundaries
of humanity in the postmodern episteme necessitates questioning the basis for
moral judgment in the humanistic assumption of inalienable rights. By creating
scenarios of encounter with an epistemologically opaque and biologically different
intelligence, SF suggests the concept of alien rights, residing not in the humanity
but in the non-humanity of the Other. My argument attempts to go beyond Lvinas'
ethics of the face-to-face encounter, which is still bound by anthropocentrism. The
absence of the (humanly recognizable) face is what both compels an attempt at
contact and causes its failure. The ethical imperative arises in the schism between
the two. The chapter will focus on Stanislaw Lem's classic SF novels of alien
encounter: Eden (1959), Solaris (1961) and Fiasco (1989).
Key Words: Ethics, science fiction, alien, posthumanity, human rights, Stanislaw
Lem.
*****
1. Stand Up For Your Wrongs
Do posthuman subjects have human rights?
There is something paradoxical in the idea of human rights as the foundation
for ethical politics in the age of humanisms crisis. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
succinctly summarizes the current situation:
Over the last thirty or forty years, we have invested an enormous
amount of thought, emotion, treasure, and blood in what we call
human values, human rights, the defense of human dignity and of
12
Posthuman Rights
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human rights. Over the same period, quietly but devastatingly,
science and philosophy have combined to undermine our
traditional concept of humankind. 1
Humanism generates an ethical community whose membership is predicated on
ontological commonality (being human). The ethics of human rights is based on
similarity: we have rights because in some fundamental sense we are all alike
(human). It is a d iscourse of the Same. Meanwhile, scientific advances, new
technologies, and cultural shifts have created modalities of subjectivity that
undermine this commonality.
[T]he fact remains that technology is rapidly making the
concept of the natural human obsolete. We have now entered
the realm of the posthuman, the debate over the identities and
values of what will come after human. 2
Posthumanism is a discourse of the Other. But if the concept of humanity
becomes blurred, the foundation of ethics can and should be questioned.
Ethical and political struggles often attempt to expand rather than to breach the
boundaries of humanity. Most political battles are waged around extending human
rights to previously disenfranchised groups, such as women, gays, minorities, the
disabled, and so on. The animal rights movement would grant rights to non-human
animals. But even in this case, the concept of rights remains sacrosanct and the
ideological fight is over the issue of who is entitled to have them; in other words,
who is sufficiently like us to benefit from the same ethical consideration we
extend to the members of our own group.
But what about the ethics of the unlike? How can an ethical discourse of the
Same accommodate the ontological Other? Or to paraphrase Lyotards question:
what rights (if any) accrue to human beings who are in the process of, constrained
into, becoming inhuman? 3
Posthumanist ethics is often assimilated to the radical politics of the authors
choice. Thomas Foster makes a distinction between the argument that
posthumanism has critical potential, that it is or can be part of struggles for
freedom and social justice, and the argument that posthumanism dismisses such
struggles or even makes them obsolete. 4 The second argument, however, is
seldom heard. As Lyotard notes, challenges to humanist prejudices are often met
with references to Nazism, which tends to be a conversation-stopper. 5
But the problem with the discourse of rights is that it results in a sort of legal or
moral anthropomorphism, in which the price of equality is the denial of difference.
In Peter Singers groundbreaking Animal Liberation, the rights of non-human
animals are defended on the grounds of their essential similarity to humans in one
crucial respect: their capacity to suffer. But everything that is alien and opaque
Elana Gomel
13
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about animal subjectivities is bracketed out as irrelevant to the moral argument.
Similarly, Emmanuel Lvinas ethics of face-to-face encounter, which insists on
humbleness and self-renunciation in the face of the Other, is essentially
anthropocentric, reading life still in terms of an opposition between human and
nonhuman, where the human logos of ethics is the defining factor. 6
Thus, instead of challenging humanism, the posthuman may reinforce it. And
nowhere is this more evident than in the literary genre supposed to articulate the
discourse of the Other: science fiction (SF).
2. The Alien Next Door
In most SF texts that represent an encounter with alien beings, we are in fact
re-presenting questions that have been asked of the humanquestions about social
injustice, gender discrimination, ethical dilemma, etc. 7 Such texts often become
allegories, in which the aliens stand in for some disenfranchised human group (like
the blue-skinned Native Americans of Avatar) or for the political threat du jour
(like the evil invaders in V or The War of the Worlds). The average alien of Star
Wars, Star Trek or Avatar, whether good or bad, is a great deal less mysterious
than our next-door neighbors. In fact, some critics argue that the function of SF is
to deliver social critique through writing the narrative of the same, as other. 8 I
would argue, however, that it is the genres function to write the narrative of the
other, as other, and in doing so, to question the humanist prejudice, in which
whatever is different is automatically designated as evil. Instead, SF may, and
occasionally does, suggest that what we regard as evil may be just another kind of
different.
A minority of SF depictions of alien encounters break away from the paradigm
of the the same as other and try to represent a genuinely different, inhuman
subjectivity. When it happens, a new form of ethics is adumbrated, based not on
similarity but on difference; not on empathy but on its failure. This is the ethics of
metamorphosis, in which a human subject is transformed by an encounter with the
Other.
Neuropsychology claims that the basis of empathy is theory of mind: the
neurologically hard-wired propensity of human beings to ascribe interiority and
subjectivity to the Other. The ethics of human rights may be seen as a cultural
codification of theory of mind: the rights we grant to others are a projection of the
rights we want for ourselves. But theory of mind inevitably misfires in alien
encounters, even when it is an encounter with a non-human animal or a
neurologically atypical human. This failure forces the human subject to reshape
him/herself in the image of the Other. Becoming post/trans/human is an ethical
response to the inhuman. Or to paraphrase Lyotard, in alien encounters, what is
proper to humankind [becomes] inhabited by the inhuman. 9 If human rights
are often described as inalienable, posthuman rights derive from (self) alienation.
14
Posthuman Rights
__________________________________________________________________
3. Stranger Paradise
Stanislaw Lem, arguably the greatest SF writer of the last century, criticized
Steven Soderberghs soppy adaptation of his novel Solaris (1961) for trying to find
human interest in a text whose artistic goal was to probe what lies beyond
humanity:
Indeed, in Solaris I attempted to present the problem of an
encounter in Space with a form of being that is neither human
nor humanoid. Science fiction almost always assumed the aliens
we meet play some kind of game with us the rules of which we
sooner or later may understand However I wanted to cut all
threads leading to the personification of the Creature, i.e. the
Solarian Ocean, so that the contact could not follow the human,
interpersonal patternalthough it did take place in some strange
manner. 10
In what follows I will discuss Solaris and Lems two other major novels of
alien contact, Eden (1959) and Fiasco (1986), as fables of posthuman ethics, in
which an encounter, which could not follow the human, interpersonal pattern,
becomes the foundation of moral choice. Refusing the narrative humanization of
the alien through such devices as first-person narration or internal focalization,
Lems novels of alien encounter starkly pose the problematic of ethics beyond the
familiar categories of good and evil.
In Eden, the issue of interpretation is the backbone of the plot. The spaceship
crew, known only by their professional roles (Doctor, Navigator and so on), are
stranded on an unexplored planet whose intelligent inhabitants are doublers:
obligate symbionts composed of two linked but distinct creatures. Their strange
physiology is magnified by the strangeness of their civilization: cities in which
pedestrians are randomly executed; busily running factories that recycle their own
products; and most shocking of all, mass graves and what appears to be the
aftermath of atrocious bio-experiments. The crews reaction to this strangeness is
predictable: a n ave eagerness for contact gradually superseded by frustration,
anger and a moral outrage that prompts one of them to suggest bombing the planet
out of existence. The doublers are indifferent to humans, either overlooking them
altogether or reacting in seemingly nonsensical ways. The novel is consistently
focalized through the crews point of view: there is never any glimpse of the
doublers interiority or any external information, explaining their behavior. The
novels considerable suspense is both cognitive and moral, as the reader follows
the increasingly baffled crew in their attempts to understand Eden and to decide
whether intervention is warranted.
The last chapters are a co mputer-mediated dialog between the crew and a
suicidal doubler who shows up on their doorstep. The linguistic filtering is
Elana Gomel
15
__________________________________________________________________
foregrounded: the translation is clumsy, often incomprehensible; and the crew are
wondering whether they are actually communicating with the alien or with their
own software. Delivered in tantalizing glimpses, the civilization of Eden appears to
be sick, engaged in a vast project of social bio-engineering whose ends are unclear
but whose means include mass exterminations and self-policed concentration-camp
communities. There is no doubt that from a human ethical standpoint this
civilization is evil and the oblique but unmistakable echoes of Nazi Germany and
Communist Russia only reinforce the readers revulsion from it. Nevertheless, the
crew decides to leave without making any attempt to save either the planet or their
doubler interlocutor.
They are not motivated to do so by some vapid cultural relativism but by the
sober realization that since the doublers are not human, saving Eden would be
tantamount to destroying it. And this realization is predicated not on empathy but
on its failure. The impotence of theory of mind in plumbing the inhuman
subjectivity enables the crew to transcend anthropomorphism and to make the only
ethical decision possible under the circumstances.
In last sentence of the novel the Captain remarks on Edens beauty and adds
that going by the probability curve, there must be other planets even more
beautiful, or more incomprehensible, than this evil world. 11 And indeed, in
Solaris, published two years after Eden, humanity encounters a world, in which
theory of mind is rendered not just useless but detrimental. And yet it is also the
text, which most explicitly articulates an ethics of transformation through the
post/trans-human figure of the mediator between humanity and the ontological
Other.
4. Intercession
The plot of Solaris is well-known due to the two cinematic adaptations by
Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven Soderbergh. Neither does justice to the philosophical
complexity of the text or to the sheer beauty of its descriptions of the planet
Solaris, covered by a l iving Ocean. The doublers are at least animals like us; the
Ocean is the Other than has nothing in common with humanity.
The novel is narrated in the first person by the psychologist Kris Kelvin who, along
with the other members of the research station on the planet, becomes the subject
of a bizarre experiment, in which the Ocean materializes their hidden, shameful or
repressed memories. Kris visitor is his girlfriend Hari whom he drove to suicide.
The other visitors are presumably even worse.
The meaning of the Oceans act is endlessly debated in the novel, sinceas
opposed to the adaptationsits emotional center of the text is the relationship
between human and alien rather than between a man and a woman. Or rather the
complex interaction between Kris and Hari becomes the vehicle for his encounter
with the Ocean. As opposed to the stark aporia of Eden, this encounter is
16
Posthuman Rights
__________________________________________________________________
ambiguously successful, due to the presence of a mediator who bridges the gap
between the two ontologically incompatible beings.
Kelvin initially regards Hari merely as the Oceans means of torturing him. He
kills her without any compunction, only to find out that she (or at least a Hari)
always comes back. She describes herself as a sort of pseudo-human veneer over
the unfathomable will of the Ocean. But gradually she develops a t rue agency,
which she paradoxically demonstrates by committing suicidethat is, by
replicating the actions of her original whom she simultaneously denounces as not
herself.
Kris empathy with her, born of love and remorse, cannot cross the barrier of
mutual incomprehension, vividly illustrated in the scene, in which she fruitlessly
tries to describe the dreams she has of the Ocean. But unlike the failing translation
software in Eden, Hari is ontologically bilingual. Straddling the boundary
between human and alien, she becomes a secular equivalent of Christ, whose dual
nature is simultaneously human and divine. Lems extensive deployment of
Christian theology creates an alternative discourse to humanism, as the ineffable
mystery of divine is transmuted into the ineffable mystery of the ontologically
Other. Haris mediation enables some kind of contact with the Ocean through
Kris quasi-religious epiphany, which inaugurates a time of cruel miracles. 12 The
meaning of this epiphany lies beyond language and therefore beyond humanity.
But it enables Kris to resist the attempts to eradicate the Ocean and to come to
terms with his loss of Hari. Where humanist ethics fails, posthumanist metaphysics
succeeds.
5. The Victory of Failure
Fiasco, perhaps Lems most challenging and brilliant novel, rewrites the
hermeneutic deadlock of Eden as a fable of evil, hubris and ambiguously
redemptive transformation. The spaceship Hermes, sent on the mission of contact
and goodwill to the planet Quinta, encounters an apparently suicidal civilization,
embroiled in a techno-war running out of control. The Quintans are hiding behind
the war sphere, created by their semi-organic technology. They refuse the contact
which the Earthmen are trying to enforce, prompted by the selfless desire to
understand and help the suffering civilization.
But by engaging in a game with the invisible adversary, the humans soon begin
to mirror the aliens insane violence. Having come in peace, they eventually
unleash a horrifying cataclysm upon the planet they are trying to save. Their
nemesis is theory of mind run amok. By ascribing human-like motivations to the
Quintants, they have no choice but to interpret their actions as unmitigated evil,
which naturally requires retribution of biblical proportions. The encounter
conducted in terms of rights, justice, and morality inevitably results in a
catastrophe, since it reflects back to the humans their own limitations. As the priest
Elana Gomel
17
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who acts as a sort of chorus to the Greek tragedy of the Hermes tells the captain, by
acting morally, you have succumbed to the Quintansby the mirror effect. 13
Similarly, the Lvinas ethics of the face-to-face encounter becomes a trap. The
protagonist Mark Tempe is obsessed with the desire to see the Quintans. But in
the final ironic twist he realizes he has already done so only when the Hermes
begins to rain fire upon the planet and the defenseless warts he has taken for a
natural feature of the landscape are revealed as its inhabitants. 14 Having no faces,
the Quintans cannot evoke empathy. Having no minds commensurable with ours,
they cannot be understood. Refusing human rights and wrongs, they cannot be
judged. And in trying to assimilate them to the ethics of humanism, humanity
becomes guilty of genocide.
And yet, bleak and savage as Fiasco is, it is not without hope. Even more than
Solaris the novel is permeated with theological and mythological references. They
function as an alternative semantic system that undermines the captains discourse
of rational ethics by suggesting transcendence as counterbalance to the failure of
both empathy and cognition. This transcendence is not a possible merger with the
Other as in Solaris but rather a stepping-outside the human frame of reference. In
finally recognizing the Quintans, Mark acknowledges the alien as alien.
Mark himself is trans-human: a construct made out of two dead men, whose
original identity remains unknown. Thus, like Hari, he mediates between humanity
and the Other. This mediation is tentative and uncertain. Fiasco abandons the
emotional first-person narration of Solaris and returns to the impersonal voice of
Eden. Mark presumably dies at the end, along with the entire Quinta. But his
doomed mission to see the Other is the only way to salvage something out of the
ruins of the just war. The fiasco of humanism can only be redeemed by the
abandonment of humanity.
Aliens may not exist or if they do, we may never encounter them. But the
inhuman is always-already there, in what Lyotard calls the ungraspable and
undeniable presence of a something which is other than mind. 15 Posthumanism
as an ideology, an ethical system and a cultural dominant must come to terms with
this presenceor risk becoming yet another tyranny of the Same.
Notes
1
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, So You Think You Are Human? A Brief History of

Humankind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1.
2
Sheryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 7.
3
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Inhuman, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel
Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 2.
18
Posthuman Rights
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4
Thomas Foster, The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory

(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), xxvii.
5
Lyotard, 1.
6
Silvia Benso, The Face of Things: A Different Side of Ethics (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2000), 43.
7
Yi Dongshin, Toward A Posthuman Ethics, Re/Construction: Studies in
Contemporary Culture (Jan. 2006). http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/yi.htm;
accessed 4/9/2010.
8
Damien Broderick, Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction (New
9
Lyotard, 2.
10
Stanislaw Lem, The Solaris Station, http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adap
tations/soderbergh/147-the-solaris-station; accessed 3/9/10.
11
Stanislaw Lem, Eden (1959), trans. Marc E. Heine (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1989), 262.
12
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961), trans. Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox (New
York: Walter & Co., 1970), 204.
13
Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco (1986), trans. Michael Kandel (San Diego: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 249.

Lem, Fiasco, 322.
15
Lyotard, 75.
Bibliography
Benso, Silvia. The Face of Things: A Different Side of Ethics. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2000.
Broderick, Damien. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. New York:
Routledge, 1995.
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. So You Think You Are Human?: A Brief History of
Humankind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Foster, Thomas. The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Lem, Stanislaw. The Solaris Station. Stanislaw Lem: The Official Site.
http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/soderbergh/147-the-solaris-station.
Accessed 3/9/10.
Elana Gomel
19
__________________________________________________________________
. Eden. Translated by Marc E. Heine. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1989.
. Solaris. Translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. New York:
Walter & Co., 1970.
. Fiasco. Translated by Michael Kandel. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1987.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Inhuman. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and
Rachel Bowlby. Stanford University Press, 1992.
Vint, Sheryl. Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
Yi Dongshin, Toward A Posthuman Ethics. Re/construction: Studies in
Contemporary Culture (Jan 2006). http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/yi.htm,
Accessed on 4/9/2010.
Elana Gomel, PhD. is a S enior Lecturer at the Department of English and
American Studies, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, which she chaired for two years.
She is the author of Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject (2003), We and You:
Being a Russian in Israel (2006, in Hebrew), The Pilgrim Soul: Being Russian in
Israel (2009), Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination (Continuum
2010), and of many articles, on topics ranging from science fiction to narrative
theory, and from poetics of evolution to the Victorian novel. She is currently
working on a book about space and narrative.
Reconceptualizing Space, Place and Body: Telepresence and

Locative Media in Art
Abstract
Since the development of information and communication technologies (ICT), but
above all since the emergence of the Internet, the traditional concepts and
experiences of place and body have radically changed. The possibilities of
interconnection and networking in real time seem to give rise to the definitive
overcoming of spatial and temporal boundaries, generating a space-time
compression and challenging the role of place as stable and localized environment
in which human activities are developed. Thanks to Cyberspace, mobile
communication devices and to telepresence, we have become ubiquitous and deterritorialized subjects, inhabitants of a new Space of Flows where the physical
body seems to be obsolete. By means of the creative use of the same digital
technologies, the artistic practices, not alien to this transformation, have turned into
an important way of reflection and experimentation about spatiality and corporeity.
This chapter intends to reflect about the spatial relationships built in this context,
showing how digital artistic practices play a key role in the re-conceptualization of
the notions of space, place and body. By analyzing specific and significant
examples of artistic works focused on telepresence and the construction of new
cartographies by means of Locative Media, the aim of this proposal is to study how
the notions of space, place and body, far form blurring, acquire an increasing
importance in experiencing the current technological reality. The main objective is
to show how telepresence and locative media, rather than provoking a loss of the
subjects physical relationships with the place, can become important elements to
reinforce the links between them. At the same time, these tools generate a complex
notion of place and body by making visible the real, virtual and imaginary
dimensions that shape them, giving rise to a complete re-signification of the
concepts of physical action, mobility and spatial occupation.
Key Words: Space, place, locative media, art, digital body, cyberspace,
reterritorialization, deterritorialization, telepresence.
*****
1. Introduction
After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary
and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding.
During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies into
space. Today, after more than a cen tury of electric technology,
22
Reconceptualizing Space, Place and Body
__________________________________________________________________
we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global
embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is
concerned. 1
As suggested by Marshall McLuhan, technologies can be understood as
extensions of the human being. ICT and Cyberspace, capable to profoundly alter
both the dimensions of our bodies and the spaces within which we operate, have
radically changed our notions of body, place and the established relations between
them. But, paradoxically, the direction of these changes, the main consequence of
the virtual extension of human capacities over space and time has led to a
disembodiment and a dematerialization of the physical body and, therefore, to a
loss of our sense of place.
However, since the emergence of certain technologiesespecially those that
imply a s pecific interaction between physical space and virtual information, such
as Locative Mediathis trend seems to have been challenged. Body and place
have acquired a new hybrid nature, which grows around new experiences and
perceptions of space.
Both conceptsbody and placeare closely linked to the notion of space,
which is usually defined as the three-dimensional expanse in which all objects
exist or as an interval of distance or time between two points, objects or events. 2
Therefore, space is a d imension of reality to which we are linked trough the
materiality of our own bodies. When space acquires symbolic meaning and
concrete definition, it becomes place, marking up the whole spectrum of identity
and sense of belonging.
Considering the postmodern theories of spaceboth from a phenomenological
point of view, following Merleau-Ponty, or from a sociological point of view,
following Lefebvre or Bourdieuwe should also remark that space is not only the
physical expanse that contains objects and subjects, but a social construction that
depends on experience and action, depending of how space and place are occupied
and inhabited through action and mobility and, therefore, depending on the body as
a field of experience. This means that the reconfiguration of physical and social
space implies a whole reconceptualizacin of the body, while a redefinition of the
physical relations between space, place and body entails a n ew experience of
space.
Taking these ideas as our theoretical background, we can explore the spatial
transformations occurring in the context of Cyberculture, in order to understand
how they construct a new sense of body and place.
2. Virtualized Space, Obsolete Body
The transformation of our spatial perception was the result of the acceleration
of communication processes. The mobility possibilities offered by mechanical
means of transport, as well as the virtual mobilityentailing physical
23
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immobilityoffered by remote communications, outlined a n ew spatial and
corporal landscape.
As pointed out by A. Giddens, before the emergence of remote
communications, space and placeunderstood through the notion of local,
referring to the physical settlements of geographically located social activity
almost always coincided together, since social relations were ruled by physical
presence. By fostering relations between the absentees set at a distance from any
face-to-face interaction, 3 the ICTs provoked a separation between space and place.
This process results from the communications conquest of spatio-temporal
barriers: ICTs eliminate the need to cover physical space, whichas suggested by
different marxist theoristsis virtually annihilated in favour of real time; a fact
that produced what Harvey calls the time-space compression. 4
Besides this compression and anihilation of phisical space, ICTs have given
rise to the emergence of a new space, the Cyberspace, the virtual space of
communication emerging from the global interconnection of computers.
Cyberspace, according to Pierre Levy, is identified with the Network and can be
defined as
[T]he new communication media emerging from the global
interconnection of computers. The term refers not only to the
physical infrastructure of digital communication, but also to the
ocean of universal information contained, and human beings who
navigate and feed it. 5
One of the characteristics attributed to it, precisely due to its intangible and
virtual nature, is a disconnection from the physical coordinates of space and time.
If, as pointed out by Castells, the importance of Cyberspace in our culture is rooted
in the way that the Network absorbs all our cultural logics, including the spatial
one, it seems natural that the emergence of Cyberspace had created a new sense of
space, founded in the same logics of mobility that the information flows. That is
how the traditional Space of Placesthe physical settlement of social activity
located geographicallyhas been replaced by a Space of Flows. 6
What has happened with the physical body in this context? If space, as the
material extension where our bodies exist, is virtually annihilated to become a
virtual space, then the body should also have become a virtual body, that acts as a
double of our physical one and that inhabits Cyberspace. Therefore, we become
ubiquitous subjects, capable of being here and there (in the virtual space) at the
same time. As Cyberspace gained more importance as a socializing sphere, we
have also become de-territorialized subjects: given that subjects are no longer
where they are, their social relationships in and with the physical space are
weakened.
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In this context of virtualization, whereas highlighted by Negroponteatoms
have been replaced by bits, 7 apparently the body has become just a mind, the
physical part of the bodythe Cartesian res extensahas remained obsolete,
replaced by the virtual one, just as the physical space has been replaced by the
virtual space.
Of course, these ideas can be discussed. We know that physical spaces and
places have not disappeared, as we still have physical bodies that allow us to be in
those physical spaces and places. Castells and Levy themselves have pointed out
the importance of materiality, both for the configuration of space of flows and for
the access to Cyberspace through an interface located in physical space. However,
even if our reality is not completely virtual, these ideas of obsolescence of all
physical matters of life were very important in the social imaginaries of the 90s.
Practices such as Virtual Realitynowadays increasingly replaced by Augmented
Realityconsiderably helped to reinforce this images and ideas associated to the
notions of space and body.
From this point, my purpose is to account for these spatial and body
conceptions and their own transformations thanks to the development of new
technologies, analyzing them through the lens of artistic practices, and considering
the creative and thoughtful use that those practices make of them. I consider this
approach essential because artistic practices, as symbolic constructions of society,
areand have always beenregulators of the world conceptions, as they propose
critical points of view and practical and aesthetical experiences that, straying from
the everyday life, allow new glances at reality.
3. Telepresence
Telepresence seems to be the maximum expression of the possibility of
annihilating body and space. By telepresence we understand not only the virtual
presence in Cyberspace, but also the virtual presence in other physical spaces, with
which we can interact and where our actions have visible and practical effects on
subjects, objects and places geographically located far away from us. 8
During the 1990s, coinciding with the expansion of new visions of space and
place provoked by the emergence of Cyberspace, many artistic practices tried to
explore the possibilities of interacting with remote spaces, setting out certain
reflections on its consequences and even on its ethical connotations.
One of the best-known projects in this field was Ken Goldbergs Telegarden
(1995-2004, University of Southern California). It was a cooperative online
gardening initiative that allowed users of the entire world to control trough the
Internet a robotic arm that grew seeds or watered plants in a real garden situated,
since 1996, in the Ars Electronica Centre, Linz (Austria). 9
Mexican artist Lozano-Hemmers projects in public spaces are also very
representative of this kind of practices. Vectorial Elevation was created to celebrate
the year 2000 at the Zocalo Square of Mexico. The work consisted of a series of
25
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light beams that could be controlled trough the Internet by users from all over the
world. Thus, the work reflected on the aesthetic possibilities of telepresence itself,
but at the same time, it allowed an aesthetic re-definition and the transformation of
the real place through the different combinations of the light beams and its
movements. 10 For this reason, in a cer tain way, this project was also challenging
the idea of deterritorialization: we, who interact with the work, are virtually
ubiquitouswe are able to alter a d istant space in real time but we cannot
physically experience the effects of our action. However, other subjects inhabit that
other physical space, and, by aesthetically reshaping it through our actions, we
transform the practices of its inhabitants and we alter their perception of that space,
generating a new sense of place and locality.
Regarding the specific subject of the body, some projects have also been
carried out whichdealing with the ethical consequences of our remote actions
raise the question of a r eal obsolescence of the physical body in very critical
manners. This is the case of the project Epizoo, by the Spanish artist Marcell
Antnez (1994). The work consisted in manipulating an artists flesh and body
through remote mechanic devices connected to his bodysuch as in Stelarcs
Exoskeletons. The main idea was to explore the artists pain threshold. Watching
this performance, the question that rises up in ones mind is: can we really think
about an obsolete physical body? 11
4. Locative Media, Hybrid Space
We said that space and place are created through mobility and action, through
an embodied experience of reality. Since the development of ubiquitous
computing 12 and mobile telephone technologieswhich allow us to combine
virtual and physical mobilitywe are now able to construct new relationships
between body and space; new relationships through which, far from blurring, both
notions seem to acquire new dimensions and to increase their importance for sociocultural practices.
Locative Media is a type of artistic practice based on the use of devices and
location systems such as GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile phones etc., which are
built to allow the exchange of information with the physical world. This term,
invented by Karlis Kalinis in 2003, refers precisely to the differences between the
artistic use of these devices and its commercial use. 13 Based on these new
localization systems and combining them with other ICTs, Locative Media consists
in the creation of alternative and collaborative maps in order to reshape our
worldview through new strategies of spatial representation beyond the imposition
of an external geometry on physical geography. 14 Thus the Locative Media consist
in adding information to the physical space to change the way we experience it.
Therefore, they appear to challenge the discourse on space versus cyberspace,
insisting on the idea of physical space as a t erritory, and on the production of
spatial content defined by objects and places. That is, they seek to generate a
26
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reterritorialization process through virtual space. In this sense, they are practices
directly related to those proposed in the late 1950s by the Situationist International,
which tried to create social and political transformations upon the recognition of
territorial space and what they called psycho-geography.
One of the best-known projects in this area is PacManhattan, developed in
2004 at the University of New York and implemented in several cities since then.
It consists of a mixture of location and display devices (mobile phones, Wi-Fi and
special software), aiming to enliven the well-known videogame of the 80s,
PacMan, placing it on an urban setting. It sets a circuit of several streets along
which the player (Pacman) runs, trying to collect virtual dots. These are depicted
on a map of the city that the player carries on a mobile device. At the same time,
four other players who represent the typical ghosts of the videogame pursue
Pacman and they can locate him through the same system. 15
Locative Media involve a great range of different artistic typologies. Some of
them, more critic and based in the writing of new narratives of place, combine the
physical presence and mobility along it with personal and collective memories.
This is the case of Rider Spoke (Blast Theory, 2007): an intervention in urban
space which consisted in recording messages in hidden places of the city by means
of a computer mounted over a bicycle. Participants had to discover the messages of
their opponents, which could be decoded only in the place where they were hidden.
In this case, space and place where re-constructed by the personal experience of
others, providing participants with new ways of engaging their daily
environment. 16
In these examples we can see how physical space and physical body interact
with virtual information by means of electronic devices. Therefore, they become
augmented and hybrid entities that merge from the superposition of virtual
information over them. 17 But actually, they are reciprocally constructed mainly by
physical activities of real subjects, whoby means of their own mobility, by
means of their own physical presence in the shared space of the cityre-construct
not only a new way of experiencing space itself, but also a new way of
experiencing the materiality of their body in relation to space and place.
5. Conclusion
To sum up, we can say that the transformations of the notions of place, space
and body are an empirically verifiable fact nowadays, and one of the most
important effects of ICTs over social-cultural life. Regarding the nature of the body
and space itself, these transformations involve processes that critically engage
virtualization and actualization; mind, flesh and identity; place, territory and
mobility. As any of these aspects acquire new dimensions and possible natures by
means of technologies, our experience and perception of space and body is
modified by a number of imaginary and subjective tensions depending on action
and social practice over physical reality.
27
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But those transformations are far from being accomplished: they are still
developing, just like our own technical and communicational systems. That is how
in a few years, the predominant ideas that saw technological human expansion as
the overcoming of physical space and thus, as the announced death of the body,
have been challenged by new technologies that allow new ways of thinking
virtuality, as well as our social and physical practices within it.
The analysis of material practices in contemporary societyin this case artistic
practices, which have also allowed us to approach different aspects regarding the
evolution of creativity and digital aestheticsopens a space to think about these
processes linked to ICT development, and, sometimes, forces us to re-think such
accepted contemporary concepts like deterritorialization or ubiquity. By means
of this analysis, we can state that in the current technological era, we live in a
spatiality in which the real and virtual spaces are getting more and more connected.
This means that the body is also reconceptualized, but not as an immaterial reality,
but as a complex expanded reality that is doubled in Cyberspace and re-signified in
real and physical space.
Notes
1
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994 (1964), 3.
2
Collins Dictionary On-line. http://www.collins language.com/, Accessed June 12,
2011.
3
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (California: Standford
University Press, 1990), 29-30.
4
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change (London: Blackwell, 1991).
5
Pierre Levy, Cyberculture (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001),
XVI.
6
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age:
Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell,
2000).
7
Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Vintage, 1996).
8
Eduardo Kac, Ornitorrinco y Rara Avis: El Arte de la Telepresencia en Internet,
in Ars Telemtica: Telecomunicacin, Internet y Ciberespacio, ed. Claudia
Gianetti (Barcelona: LAngelot, 1998), 119-127.
9
For more information about the work see: http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/ garden/
Ars/.
10
For more information about this work see: http://lozano-hemmer.com/vectorial_
elevation.php
11
For more information about this work see: http://www.marceliantunez.com/
work/epizoo/.
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12
Martin Weiser, The Computer for the Twenty-First Century, Scientific

American 265.4 (September, 1991): 94-104.
13
Andr Lemos, Medios Locativos y Territorios Informativos. Comunicacin
Mvil y Nuevo Sentido de los Lugares, Inclusiva-Net: Redes Digitales y Espacio
Fsico (Madrid: MediaLab-Prado, March 2008). http://medialab-prado.es/
mmedia/1835. Accessed June 12, 2011.
14
Dimitris Charitos et al., Prcticas Artsticas basadas en la Localizacin que
desafan la Nocin Tradicional de Cartografa, Artnodes 8, UOC 2008.
http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/8/dt/esp/presentacion.pdf. Accessed June 10, 2011.
15
For more information about this work, see: http://pacmanhattan.com/.
16
For more information about the project see: http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/
work_rider_spoke.html.
17
About the condition of space as Augmented Space see Lev Manovich, The
Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada, http://manovich.net/articles/.
Bibliography
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy,
Society and Culture, Vol. 1. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000.
Charitos, Dimitris, et al. Prcticas Artsticas basadas en la Localizacin que
desafan la Nocin Tradicional de Cartografa. Artnodes 8 (UOC 2008).
http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/8/dt/esp/presentacion.pdf.
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. California: Stanford
University Press, 1990
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change. London: Blackwell, 1991
Kac, Eduardo. Ornitorrinco y Rara Avis: El Arte de la Telepresencia en Internet.
In Ars Telemtica: Telecomunicacin, Internet y Ciberespacio. Edited by Claudia
Gianetti, 119-127. Barcelona: LAngelot, 1998
Lefebvre, Henry. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald NicholsonSmith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
29
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Lemos, Andr. Medios Locativos y Territorios Informativos: Comunicacin
Mvil y Nuevo Sentido de los Lugares. In Inclusiva-Net: Redes Digitales y
Espacio Fsico, Madrid: MediaLab-Prado, March 2008. http://medialab-prado.es/
mmedia/1835.
Levy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001
Manovich, Lev. The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada.
http://manovich.net/articles/.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994 (1964).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin
Smith. London: Routledge, 2005.
Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Vintage, 1996
Weiser, Martin. The Computer for the Twenty-First Century. Scientific American
265.4 (September, 1991): 94-104.
M. Luisa Gmez Martnez is a PhD student at the University of Barcelona. Her
research interests are focused on social imaginaries, space-time transformations
and audio-visual aesthetics in the context of the digital culture.
Part II
Gender, Sex and Bodies in Cyberspace
Do We Really Die? Bodies in Cyberculture, Life and Social

Existence after Death
Raquel Botelho
Abstract
When a friend of mine died, a few months ago, it took me a couple of weeks until I
was able to delete him from my network of friends on Facebook. Looking at his
name on the screen, it r eally felt like he was still there. That was the way I was
used to seeing him: a name and a picture on a screen. Deleting him was like killing
him (again?), as if the fact of his body did not exist anymore did not mean that he
was actually dead. I could still keep up with him on Facebookhis likes, his
groups, his friends, his pictures. This personal episode made me (even more) aware
of the strange way in which we face life, death and social existence in these
technological times. Life, death and social existence are one thing; having a body
is another. We do liveand dieapart from our bodies.
Key Words: Posthuman, post-self, self, science-fiction, doubling, technology,
cyborg, cyberculture.
*****
1. Preamble: We are All Doublers
Living apart from our bodies is not a (technological) new experience. Actually,
it has come a long way. In technological termsthe way in which we propose to
analyse the subject in this chapterphonography and photography were the
beginning of this process, hearing the voice of someone who is not there or of
someone who is already dead. Seeing former selves in early photographs or having,
in the same manner, the presence of people as they were when they were alive.
These two technologies duplicate the indices of physical presence. These ways of
representation of the self are, as Marina Warner points out in Fantastic
Metamorphoses, other WorldsWays of Telling the Self (2004), a form of
doubling, a fundamental concept to help us understand the lives that we have apart
from our bodies. But what is doubling?
Doubling is a complex, even riddling concept: it c an mean a
second self, or a second existence, usually coexisting in time, but
sometimes sequentially, as in soul migration plots, such as
intricately executed in the Venetian Carlo Gozzis The King Stag
(1762). It can mean a l ookalike who is a f alse twin, or, more
commonly, someone who does not resemble oneself outwardly
but embodies some inner truth. In this sense, the double, while
wholly dissimilar, unnervingly embodies a true self. 1
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Do We Really Die?
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Doubling is what technology allows us to do with our lives, our social existence
and our dead today. We live what I would call a totally doubling life. The
particularity of this doubling life is that not only we create different selves, but we
tend to totally separate these selves from our body. One body, several souls. Or, to
put it i n a more cyber language: one physical body, several different Facebook
profiles, Twitter profiles, blogger profiles. Double and be whoever you want to be.
Embedded in a network of technologies and platforms of social connections,
doubling, as Marina Warner points out, solicits hopes and dreams for yourself.
Why? Because it offers the possibility of becoming different while remaining the
same person, of escaping the bounds of the self, of aspiring to the polymorphous
perversity of infants, in Freuds phrase, which in some ways mimics the protean
energies of the metamorphic gods. 2
I have a baby blog where my self is Raquel, the mother of three young children
and I talk about diapers, bottles and breastfeeding. I have another blog where I am
Raquel, the journalism teacher, which I use to keep in touch with my students and
publish the evaluations and rates. I have another one where I am Raquel, the writer,
where I write whatever I feel like. I also have a Facebook profile to keep in touch
with my personal friends, and yet another one where I am Raquel the journalist and
interact with my professional contacts and a few others, some of them more or less
secretive.
Dividing myself into different copies of me, the me who is not me but is yet
another me, challenging the premises of individual integrity, as Marina Warner
defends. 3 If Haraway says that we are all cyborgs, I would say we are all doublers,
or cyber doublers.
2. When our Bodies Die
But what happens to all of our mes, all of our cyber doubles, all of our selfs
when we die? First: the most curious thing is that with the cyber doubling
phenomena, when we die we have a lot more than just one funeral to deal with. We
will have several. Second, trying to answer these questions leads us to the concept
of the post-self.
Sociological studies on the life course usually terminate at the point of death.
However we are here much more interested in a stage of life that occurs after death
or, more precisely, a form of social life after death, usually referred to as symbolic
immortality and the post-self.
It is a fact that humans always seek a way to overcome the idea of the end and
the inevitability of death. Lifton calls this process of symbolic immortality:
humans attempts do live on after their own death in a symbolic fashion through
various means.
Regarding the post-self-concept, the post-self is the self that endures after death
through reputations and/or in the memories of others. The post-self is the
reputation and influence we have after death. 4 The post-self is then related to the
Raquel Botelho
35
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notion of symbolic immortality. In this context we will use the post-self-concept to
refer to also another type of immortality: to the active virtual social life we will
have after death. And that also implies what Shneidman refers to: the reputation
and the influence. Converting these two ideas into cyber language, when we say
reputation and influence we are saying number of friends over Facebook, number
of likes, number of Facebook or Blogger comments, number of tweets, and so on.
Because this isnowadaysthe way we have to measure our influence, our
reputation and our social life, during our lives and even after we die. As
Shneidman points out, the construction of the post-self occurs not only
individually, but socially as well, for it remains malleable after the individual has
passed, which socially, today, means the whole world.
The post-self is then, in this context, the self that continues to live in
cyberspace after we die, or after our bodies die.
This post-self is then not an abstract idea or something that we will see in the
future. It is already a r eality. It is already happening. Lets take Facebook for an
example. If the company is not informed about our death, our profile will go on
forever as a part of our digital remains spread all over cyberspace. However, if a
death is submitted to them, they will gladly memorialize that users account: The
Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.
Memorializing an account also prevents all login access to it.
Another interesting example is MyDeathSpace.com. This websites makes
coverage of the death of higher-profile celebrities and other famous people, as well
as anonymous ones. The Web page essentially functions as a cl earinghouse,
containing news articles, online obituaries, and other publicly available
information, that allows users to pay their respects and tributes to the recently
deceased MySpace.com members via their comment system, a formal way of
putting the post-self in the arena of the cyberspace.
The concept of post-self leads us to yet another post: the posthuman. What
connect these two concepts apart from the post prefix are the dematerialization of
the body and the pursuit of immortality.
We can establish two kinds of posthumanism: a more popular one and another
that reflects a much more contemporary and theoretical thought on the subject. The
first one found the perfect way to expand itself on the web, since cyberspace is the
natural habitat of the imaginary/fictional cybercultural world. In this popular
posthumanism concept there is the belief in a perfect future, due to the
technological evolution and to the technoscience that, in the end, will be able to
replace parts or even the entire biological human body with a perfect, sophisticated
and immortal machine. The final objective is, then, to overcome man, introducing
the cyborg.
The more academic posthumanismwhere we can find names like Donna
Haraway, Katherine Hayles or even Philippe Bretonintends to overcome the
reductionist dualisms that have characterized Western thought and also to
36
Do We Really Die?
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deconstruct the central role that the same thought has always given to the human
subject.
The most curious thing is that those two posthumanisms connect with each
other. This is because the most academic one does not deny the imaginary/
fictional cybercultural world that is part of cyberculture in general and of the
popular posthumanism in particular.
And in this imaginary and fictional cybercultural world, man is, most of the
time, immortal. The posthuman subjecta hybrid being, half human, half
machineis able to replace parts of his body in order to overcome any problem.
The posthuman lies at the heart of cultural fictions that surround the cyberculture.
As Jay Bolter points out:
Technological man has always had the goal somewhere in the
back of his mind, and it has emerged audaciously in myths,
legends, toys and automata throughout history. In all the
manifestations, the informing idea is that the artificer and the
artefact become one. Man makes man. 5
Man makes man: the cyborg as the post-self and as a promise of immortality. If
we look a little bit deeper into this imaginary and fictional cybercultural world, we
can see all these concepts in action, interacting with each other: doubling, post-self,
posthuman, life and death, life after death, immortality.
3. The Self in Fiction
Starting with the doubling concept, fiction takes it a little bit forward: putting
different minds in a body, changing bodies and parts of our personality or even
totally replacing our brain. In A Work of Art, a science fiction short story (by
James Blish), we are in 2161 and we have a new medical speciality: mind
sculpting.
The mind sculptors are able to place the minds they recreate for aesthetic
enjoyment into bodies for a small period of time. Dr Kris and Dr Seirds recreate
the mind of Richard Strauss and place it in Jerome Boschs body only to perform a
concert, a work of medicine. This was Nietzsches eternal recurrence and the
immortality of the Uebermensch combined into one. The new Dr Strauss is
encouraged to recommence his life as a music composer. After some difficulty
adjusting to the theories of musical composition, Strauss completes an opera and
conducts its premiere. But during the performance, he begins to suspect that
something isnt quite right, and finally realizes that he has no musical talent at all.
At the end of the performance, the applause is not for him, but for the mind
sculptors, and Strauss realizes that it was all an experiment, and a successful one.
In another short story, Sculptors of Life, by Wallace West, the life sculptors
create bodies for people whose old bodies are dying and then transfer their
Raquel Botelho
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memories and personalities from the old bodies to the new ones. In this process the
life sculptors are able to transfer only some parts of their so called personality. And
here we can find our doubling concept in action. In the story we have two people
about to discard their old bodies for new ones. Both of these people have very
questionable morals, and the life sculptors, after discussing some ethical issues,
decide to transfer only the good parts of these two personalities, leaving the bad
ones to die in the old bodies. In the end everything goes wrong. One of the
characters, when he finds out what the life sculptors have done, accuses them of
murder, the sculptors of lives ensuring immortality and doubling.
Finally, in Am I Still There?, by James R. Hall, we have the story of Lee, four
hundred nine years old, who has undergone replacive surgery eighty-seven times
and is a candidate for the first complete replacement of a human brain. He is very
concerned about the fact that once his brain is replaced, his body will no longer
have any original parts. Lee is also wondering how the replacement of the brain
will affect his idea of himself. Lees doubt is simple: will he still be there after the
surgery? As he asks his doctor Doc, if Im not me when this is over, do you think
Ill know it?. 6 Lee is a c yborg, with all of the parts of his body replaced. A
posthuman, concerned about self or, to be more exact, concerned about his self
after the surgery. For Lee, the self after the brain replacement is a post-self.
4. Back to Reality or Not
That is fiction. But how far are we from reality when we already separate our
selves from our bodies in cyberspace? When we split our personality into several
to create different profiles in our social electronic life? When we continue to live in
cyberspace after our body dies? Or when biotechnical advances allow us to embed
more and more technology into our bodies, to heal but also to improve?
Let us take three (real) examples: Cloning, as the first, is already possible. With
cloning the theme of the double is more real than ever. But this time, as
Giaccherini says,
(Doubling) in its extreme and deadliest form: the same exemplar
(the word individual literally indivisible, no longer making
sense) couldactually can, according to what we read in the
pressbe split at pleasure into unlimited replicants, with no
bounds, but the consequence could be the final stasis in life, the
ultimate entropy: reproduction without variation. 7
The second example: virtual reality and what it i s already offering. The
possibility of liberating ourselves from the
dead weight of bodily fragility, and of actually undergoing, at
hardly any physical risk, all those experiences. The next
38
Do We Really Die?
__________________________________________________________________
stageand researchers in the field of virtual reality are already
working at itcould be the direct connections of, and
transmission of psychic experience from, each individual mind to
every otherwhich is ultimately equivalent to going beyond
form, meta morph. 8
In the third example: non-fictional cyborgs such as Jesse Sullivan (electrician,
American, born in 1951), who accidentally touched an active cable that contained
7,000-7,500 volts of electricity. In May 2001, he had to have both his arms
amputated at the shoulder. His bionic arm, a prototype developed by the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, differs from most other prostheses, since it
does not use pull cables or nub switches to function and instead uses microcomputers to perform a much wider range of complex motions. It is also the first
prototype which enables operating a fully robotic limb through a nerve-muscle
graft and allows him to actually sense pressure.
Starting with these three real examples that embrace the real possibility of
doubling, experience and going everywhere in cyberspace while staying at home
and of body replacement (and who knows one day immortality) with technology,
who would be so foolish as to predict the limits of technology in fifty years from
now, assuming that science continues to make discoveries at its present rate? 9
Notes
1
Marina Warner, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the

Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 163.
2
Ibid., 165.
3
Ibid., 202.
4
Edwin S. Schneidman, The Postself, in Death: Current Perspectives, ed. J.
Williamson and E. Schneidman (Menlo Park, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1995),
454-460, 454.
5
Jay David Bolter, Turings Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 212.
6
James R. Hall, Am I still There?, Analogue Science Fact/Science Fiction
(September 1963): 76-79, 79.
7
Enrico Giaccherini, Metamorphosis, Science Fiction and the Dissolution of the
Self, in Proteus, the Language of Metamorphosis (Aldershot: Ashgate Pub, 2005),
62-70, 68.
8
Ibid., 62-70, 69.
9
Bolter, Turings Man, 190.
Raquel Botelho
39
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Bibliography
Blish, James. A Work of Art. Science Fiction Stories (July, 1956): 118-139.
Bolter, Jay David. Turings Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Giaccherini, Enrico. Metamorphosis, Science Fiction and the Dissolution of the
Self. In Proteus, The Language of Metamorphosis. Edited by Carla Dente, George
Ferzoco, Miriam Gill and Marina Spunta, 62-70. Aldershot: Ashgate Pub, 2005.
Hayles, Katherine. How we become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature and Informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hall, James R. Am I still There? Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction
(September, 1963): 76-79.
Kurzweil, Raymond. We are becoming Cyborgs. http://www.kurzweilai.net/artic
les/art0449.html. Accessed May, 2009.
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life.
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc, 1979.
Lin, Patrick Lin e Allhoff, Fritz. Nanoethics and Human Enhancement.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0661.html?printable=1. Accessed June, 2009.
Naam, Ramez. More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological
Enhancement. Portland: Broadway Books, 2005.
Schneidman, Edwin S. The Postself. In Death: Current Perspectives. Edited by J.
Williamson and E. Schneidman, 454-460. Menlo Park, CA: Mayfield Publishing
Co., 1995.
Warner, Marina. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the
Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
West, Wallace. Sculptors of Life. Astounding Science Fiction (December 1939):
72-85.
40
Do We Really Die?
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Raquel Botelho, ESTA, Escola Superior de Tecnologia de Abrantes, FCSH,
Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas, UNL, Universidade Nova de Lisboa,
Lisbon, Portugal.
Cyberspace and Subversion: The Creation of Culture in

Steampunk and Body Modification Cyber-Communities
Ann-Renee Clark
Abstract
This chapter investigates the relationship between cyberspace, as geography and
medium of social interaction, and the creation of socially subversive niche cultures.
It focuses on the capacity of cyberspace to function as the location of culture
creationusing the development of subversive Internet groups as exemplars of
virtual culture creation. This research examines how people create cultural spaces,
and how they define identities and boundaries in the cyber-landscape. Is
identification achieved through the discursive and aesthetic aspects of online
communities? And, is this identification an instrument of culture creation in
cyberspace? The definitional parameters for this chapter involve the
anthropological concept of culture as processinvolving that which is produced
and observable in the daily interactions of individuals within a communitywith
that community setting as cyberspace. The research utilizes two exemplars of
virtual culture creationSteampunk, a retro-Victorian-futurist community, and
the online Corset-training community of aesthetic and body modification
practitioners. There is a growing body of literature surrounding cyberspace as
object of cultural analysis. Less studied however, is the creation of culture in
cyberspace, and the discussion of identity-formation through boundary work as the
mechanism for culture creation in virtual communities. This chapter addresses this
dynamic aspect of the growing cyberculture phenomenon, particularly how
belonging is produced and negotiated through boundary work being done by
participants of Steampunk and Corset-trainer cybercultures.
Key Words: Boundary work, communities, corset-trainers, cyberculture,
identification, identities, internet, steampunk.
*****
1. Introduction
The word identity evokes a static conceptone that is beginning to fall out of
favour in the social sciences. A better term perhaps is identificationas it
suggests an on-going process of association and negotiation between participants
in a community who construct their cultural content as they produce their own
group. This brief discussion of identification and culture construction is a part of
my on-going exploration of Steampunk and Corset-Trainer cybercultures, and the
ways in which the participants of these groups create their own culture via
practices involving aesthetics and language. The purpose of this chapter is not to
engage in explicit descriptions of the two groups but to ask a more fundamental
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Cyberspace and Subversion
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question of all human activityWhat is culture and what is it that people do to
construct, maintain, and defend cultural territories?
In asking, what is culture? we embark on a potentially endless journey into
everything from the political and technological to the cognitive and linguistic. Easy
definitions generally suggest that culture is everything produced by a people; but
these definitions ignore the cognitive and psychological constructs of those who
produce culturetheir nuanced social discourse, their understandings of
boundaries and spacesand the continual, interactive process of what comes to be
termed a culture. The subtleties of culture construction are generally lost, even on
those who are engaged in its production. Thinking the end result to be their
culture, participants in a given social body tend not to notice the ways in which
they create, maintain, and transform culture with their every interaction. Humans
are doing cultureit is not some end result. 1
The tendency to lose sight of culture as process is amplified when the culture in
question is formed in, or transfers to, the cyberspace environment. In physical
world spaces, culture is largely produced in real-time visual cues and audible
communication. These aspects of communication are sometimes found in
cyberspace interaction, but most cyber-communication takes place via delayed or
real-time textual interaction, and still or pre-recorded images instead of the evershifting face and body. This has an effect on the communities involved in terms of
personal interactionspecifically in the lack of important face-to-face visual
cues. 2 This delayed interaction also affects the nature of community discourse, as it
includes the opportunity for pre-meditated response that is often not an option in
physical world interaction. These differences do not make cyber-communities any
less real than those formed in the physical world, nor does it invalidate the
construction of culture within these environments. Far from being some inauthentic
mirror world to physical-world spaces, cyber-communities are locations of genuine
culture construction, allowing participants to engage in authentic processes of
identification in a similar manner to communities in the physical world. 3
Exploring culture creation in cyberspaceor any cultural space for that
matterrequires a working definition of culture that extends beyond classic social
science ideas of culture as social artefact. Culture is far more than a checklist of
material culture markers, governing styles, and subsistence strategies. Culture is
construction, and this construction requires the use of specific tools. This cultural
tool kit includes such items as ritual, language, kinship, and aestheticsand each
cultural construction (and its associated environment) requires a unique
combination of the available tools. For participants of a given cyberculture,
language and aesthetics are the primary tools of culture construction, and these
tools are used to create, maintain, and expand boundaries between their
communities and those perceived as being outside of them.
The drawing of boundary lines based on perceived similarities in group
participants, and the maintenance of these boundaries create group cohesion in
Ann-Renee Clark
43
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differentiation from others. Douglas Massey writes that this differentiationand
its later potential effect stratificationbegins psychologically with the creation of
cognitive boundaries that allocate people to social categories. 4 He goes on to write
that [g]roup identities and boundaries are negotiated through repeated interactions
that establish working definitions of [these] categories... a process that sociologists
have labelled boundary work. 5 In both cyberspace and physical world
environments, people create their cultural groups through boundary work. And it is
through boundary work that language and aesthetic markers become the tools of
culture construction in cyberspace. Boundary work leads to identification.
In looking at identification and culture construction, two groups of cybercommunities are being examined in this discussion and in subsequent works. The
first group, the newly emerging Steampunk culture, is an example of culture
construction in the cyberspace environment, and its emergence as a physical world
phenomenon. The second group being examined, that of Corset-trainers
individuals who wear corsets for the purpose of changing the shape of the bodyis
an example of a subversive, fringe culture finding new, virtual ground to expand
and re-invent itself.
The question that I am interested in is how aesthetics and language are being
used to do boundary work and create culture in cyberspace. Is identification with
the discursive and aesthetic elements of a cyber-community a factor in the success
of culture construction and maintenance in cyberspace? The importance of
language seems obvious in discussing cybercultures given the prominence of textbased interaction in most cyber-communities. Language is the primary medium of
discourse. But why should aesthetics be singled out as such an important factor?
Its because aesthetics and visual distinctions continue to be the primary way that
human beings categorize others and determine social boundaries. 6 Language is
used heavily in cyber-communities, not just in discursive boundary work, but to
create an aesthetic, and to evoke images in the mind of the reader. Images enhance
the aesthetic. And it is through all of this discursive and aesthetic boundary work
that participants in a cyber-community identify themselves with the culture they
are constructing in cyberspace.
2. Methods
The methods for investigating these two groups involved observation of the
online Steampunk and Corset-training communities, and preliminary content
analysis of online posts and publications from these communities. Steampunk
Magazine has been indispensable for studying aesthetics, themes, and discourse
within the Steampunk community. Steampunk Magazine markets itself as a
lifestyle magazine, embracing the idea that Steampunk is a culture, and not
merely a collection of online fora. Additionally, Steampunk communities exist on
Facebook and other social media spaces, and are reflected in multiple fora at
personal domains across the cyber-landscape.
44
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For Corset-trainers and body modifiers, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and
personal websites are important in documenting modification progress and for
interacting in text, pictures, and video exchange, as well as mentoring new Corsettrainers through the processes of body modification. Observations and content
analysis of text, video, and images at these sites provide information on the way
the cyber-environment is building disparate Corset-trainers into communities.
3. Discussion
Steampunk as a culture does not really begin with the Steampunk literary genre.
The origin of Steampunkboth as science fiction and as a part of the collective
imaginationis usually attributed to the writings of Jules Verne and his fellow
science fiction authors, and the early forays of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
into computer technologies. This is the romantic foundation of both the literary
genre and contemporary Steampunk culture; it is a cultural origin story on which
Steampunks can base personal identification with a chosen history and aesthetic.
Later events of significance in the Steampunk literary genresuch as Michael
Moorcock writing the first Steampunk novel, and K. W. Jeter coining the term
Steampunk for the literary styleare also seen as landmark events in Steampunk
culture. These works created foundational concepts for the Steampunk aesthetic.
But Steampunk as a culture originated much later and in two locationsin
cyberspace, and in the basements and garages of makers (those individuals who,
inspired by the language and aesthetic of Steampunk and science fiction stories,
began to modify their belongings to reflect an anachronistic, Victorian style)
Makers have existed for decades, and arise as response to the increasing lack of
knowledge and appreciation for mechanical (as opposed to digital) technologies in
the West. These makers existed in a fair degree of isolation however, until the
advent of Steampunk culture in cyberspace.
Steampunk, as it was created outside of the literary genre, begins in the 21st
century. Steampunk culture formed in cyberspace through the websites and fora of
artists, musicians, makers, and fashionistas who specialized in the creation,
construction, and exhibition of what would come to be labelled as Steampunk. This
included everything from their creations in an anachronistic aesthetic, to true,
steam-powered inventions. These early Steampunk makers were inspired by
Steampunk literature. It was however only after Steampunk culture began to be
formed through the websites and fora (and of course, e-commerce) that the literary
genre was incorporated back into the culture. 7
And it is through these websites and fora, and their associated online
publications, that Steampunks create the narrative of themselves as a culture.
Participants reproduce and perpetuate their aesthetic and discourse through online
interactions, identifying with and constructing Steampunk. In these interactions,
Steampunks engage in boundary work through internal policing of language use
and expected personas (both in text and image), and in the process of negotiating
Ann-Renee Clark
45
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the meanings of Steampunk. These same measures define what is not Steampunk,
and represent further discursive boundary work leading to distinction and cultural
identification for this group.
Steampunk is a re-envisioning of the past with the hypertechnological perceptions of the present... steampunk is a nonluddite critique of technology. It rejects the ultra-hip dystopia of
the cyberpunks... while simultaneously forfeiting the noble
savage fantasy of the pre-technological era. It revels in the
concrete reality of technology instead of the over-analytical
abstractness of cybernetics... [Steampunk is] a blurring of lines
between engineering and art, rendering fashion and function
mutually dependent. 8
This quote is typical of the boundary work being done in Steampunk cultural
groups. It tells us what Steampunk is and what it is not. It tells us about its vision,
its aesthetic, and its unique language. It tells us that it is a rejection of other types
of lifestyles, and that it is a rebellion against that which it could not believe in. It
tells us that Steampunk is subversive, but also a genuine cultural expression.
Steampunks spend a great deal of time constructing and refining Steampunk.
Attempts to create a solid boundary separating the Steampunk community from
those who are considered outside of it involve the use of aesthetics and discourse,
resulting in an on-going debate over what constitutes Steampunk, how Steampunk
should look, and what technologies should be considered Steampunk. Some strand
of this debate appears in nearly every Steampunk space on the Internet. These
debates often make a point of differentiating authentic Steampunk culture from the
fandom and cosplay of anime culture. 9 This differentiation is yet another area
where Steampunk groups are engaging in boundary work and clarifying their
identifications.
Countering this idea of culture construction and identification, Steampunk
blogger Cory Gross has made the claim that despite the many pushes to develop
Steampunk into a complete subculture and lifestyle... it can never truly come to
pass because the foundational precept of Steampunkthe Victorian Era of Jules
Vernedoes not exist and never did. 10 But this denial of Steampunk as a culture
is based on several misconceptionsthe most important one being that Steampunk
is an image formed in the imagination of an author instead of being created in the
real, day-to-day activities and interactions of thousands of people constructing a
cyberculture. The fact that this culture is styled after a future that never was is
repeated as a source of pride within Steampunk fora and publications. Just as the
creation of beautiful and anachronistic objects is a mark of authenticity and cultural
capital among Steampunks, the culture itself thrives upon its own aesthetic
dedication and anachronistic identifications.
46
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For Corset-trainers there are similar types of boundary work going being done
on fora and social networking sites. Like Steampunk, this latest incarnation of
corset-training and associated body modifications (such as tattooing, body piercing
and/or stretching, and similar modifications that are often practiced in association
with corset-training) is being explained as a subversive aesthetic and discursive
rebellion against contemporary, Western notions of beauty. Culture participants
engage in boundary work to frame their identification as Corset-trainers, evoking
what they consider a subversive aesthetic. Temporal boundary work is also being
done; contemporary Corset-trainers make their separation from historical Corsettrainers very clear. Despite professed appreciation for historical styles,
contemporary Corset-trainers and body modifiers rework identification around the
idea of a very personal modification and individual aesthetic choice. 11 This is very
different from the ideology of fashionable corsetry found in past eras, in which
individual identifications and modifications were largely discouraged, and corsets,
far from representing a subversive aesthetic, were an expected undergarment. For
contemporary Corset-trainers, there are at least five different corset-training
shapesdefined in association with rib-shaping (or lack thereof) and spinal
curveand each of these styles of training will have a different effect on each
unique body; it is a truly personal aesthetic. Personalizing the body, subverting
contemporary aesthetic norms, and breaking with historical corset-training
traditions are the dominant themes by which Corset-trainers transgress and reconstruct boundaries, leading to personal identifications with the culture they are
constructing.
For those among the corset-training community who earn their living via
corset-training and body modificationusually in the role of model or corsetier
further aesthetic boundary work is often performed. Tattooing is common among
corset models, as are some early, post-human modifications such as augmentation
surgeries. Some corset-training and medical fora even house discussions on
modifying the feet into a permanent en pointe position so as to accommodate the
continual wearing of ballet heels which require the wearer to walk on the tips of
the toes. Such extreme forms of modification are rare however, even in the corset
model subsection of corset-training communities Whether Corset-trainers will now
begin to do boundary work around those who are and are not surgically modified is
something that timeand the increasing availability of body modification
surgerywill tell.
4. Conclusions
For Steampunks and Corset-trainers, there exists an association between
identification processes and the success of culture construction. The activity of
making or wearing a corset, for medical purposes for example, does not make one
a part of corset-training culture. Working with steam-powered machines does not
make one a Steampunk. There is no cohesive image, no visual aesthetic or
Ann-Renee Clark
47
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communication of an aesthetic in these hypothetical groups. There is a difference
between a forum for troubleshooting (like Linux communities for example), and
a culture, with its imagery, aesthetic and discursive rules, and imagined
associationsoften very strongbetween its members.
For Steampunks and Corset-trainers, boundaries are made and identifications
created through aesthetic expressions and discursive commonalities (language use
and repetition of themes, and shared history or break with history, for example.)
The identification with aesthetics and cultural tropes (especially those declaring the
culture as subversive) allows for the on-going process of culture construction to be
successful for these groups. And, nestled in the comforting environment of
cyberspace, these individuals, no longer disparate makers in garages and
basements, or secret Corset-trainers with few direct connections or mentors in their
chosen course, are coming together to construct culture, create identifications, and
flourish in the cyberspace environment.
Notes
1
Sarah J. Mahler, Culture as Comfort: The Many Things You Know (But Might Not
Realize) about Culture (Forthcoming from Pearson.) Mahlers work provides
further information on the cognitive and psychological background of culture as
process, the idea of culture as construction, and the concept of boundary work in
anthropology.
2
Laku Chidambaram and Beth Jones, Impact of Communication Medium and
Computer Support on Group Perceptions and Performance: A Comparison of Faceto-Face and Dispersed Meetings, in MIS Quarterly 17.4 (December, 1993): 465491.
3
Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, Net Surfers Dont Ride Alone: Virtual
Communities as Communities, in Communities and Cyberspace (New York:
Routledge, 1999), 16.
4
Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System
(New York: Russell Sage Publications: 2008), 8.
5
Ibid., 15.
6
Fred E. Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a
Global Community (London: Sage Publications, 2007), 98-103.
7
Gail Carriger, What is Mightier the Pen or the Parasol? in Steampunk II:
Steampunk Reloaded ed. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (San Francisco: Tachyon:
2010), 401.
8
The Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective (NYC), What Then is
Steampunk? Colonizing the Past So We Can Dream the Future, in Steampunk
Magazine 1 (2007): 4-5.
48
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9
Carlo Bernhardi, General Conclusions, http://www.greatsteampunkdebate.com/

forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=437, accessed June 2011.
10
Corey Gross, Varieties of Steampunk Experience, in Steampunk Magazine 1
(2007): 60-64
11
Kristy Sapsford, Corset Training, http://www.corsettraining.net, accessed 5
July, 2011.
Bibliography
Bernhardi, Carlo. The Steam Brigadier. In General Conclusions. http://www.
greatsteampunkdebate.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=437.
Carriger, Gail. What is Mightier the Pen or the Parasol?. In Steampunk II:
Steampunk Reloaded. Edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, 399-403. San
Francisco: Tachyon, 2010.
The Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective (NYC). What Then is
Steampunk? Colonizing the Past so we can Dream the Future. Steampunk
Magazine 1 (March, 2007): 4-5.
Chidambaram, Laku and Beth Jones. Impact of Communication Medium and
Computer Support on Group Perceptions and Performance: A Comparison of Faceto-Face and Dispersed Meetings. MIS Quarterly 17(4) (December, 1993): 465491.
Gieryn, Thomas. F. Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from NonScience: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists. American
Sociological Review 48 (December, 1983): 781-791.
Gross, Cory. Varieties of Steampunk Experience. Steampunk Magazine 1
(March, 2007): 60-64.
Jandt, F. E. An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global
Community. London: Sage Publications, 2007.
Lamont, Michele and Virag Molnar. The Study of Boundaries in the Social
Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 167195.
Mahler, Sarah J. Culture as Comfort: The Many Things You Know (But Might Not
Realize) about Culture. Forthcoming from Pearson.
Ann-Renee Clark
49
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Massey, Douglas S. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System.
Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2008.
Sapsford, Kristy. Corset Training. http://www.corsettraining.net. Accessed 2011.
Wellman, Barry and Milena Gulia. Net Surfers Dont Ride Alone: Virtual
Communities as Communities. In Communities and Cyberspace. Edited by P.
Kollock and M. Smith. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Ann-Renee Clark is a graduate student in Anthropology in the department of
Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. Her research
interests include technology and identity, technological change and social
development, and visual communication.
The Digital Bodys Mantra: Man and Machine in Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec
Claire Cornillon
Abstract
Grand Junction, published in 2006 by the French author Maurice G. Dantec, is a
very complex novel which takes place in a future where a Metastructure, a supercomputer that is entirely virtual, has taken power over the world, threatening
humanity. After a first fall which has killed a large part of the worlds population, a
second fall is coming: the machine has mutated again. It evolved so much that it
wants to be the world. It is building an after-world an after-machine world as
the characters say. In order to do that, it needs to turn humans into machines.
People loose their ability to communicate: they can express themselves only in a
computer binary language, getting rid of every substance, every piece of
information they have, like a modem but connected to nothing, and, when the
process is over, they die. Machines are becoming human and humans are becoming
machines. However, the Metastructure is trapped in a p aradox, it has to destroy
humans but it needs humans to destroy, to give sense to its actions. But this
question of language and the way it is constitutive of humanity is presented in a
spiritual context and with Christian symbolism: language is also the Word in a
Christian sense. The story is a messianic one and describes an apocalyptic time and
the coming of a saviour, Gabriel Link de Nova, who can resolve this problematic
link between man and machine, through light and music (as usual in Maurice G.
Dantecs works, rocknroll music is a very important source of references).
Indeed, the salvation in this story comes from books: it i s the word against the
number.
Key Words: Science fiction, man, machine, language, myth, Maurice G. Dantec.
*****
Grand Junction, published in 2006, is the sixth novel by Maurice G. Dantec, a
French writer, who became Canadian. His novels are most of the time very long,
dark and twisted science fiction thrillers with a mystical aspect. Grand Junction
follows Cosmos Incorporated (2005), but not directly: it takes place in the same
fictional universe. In Grand Junction, there has been a mutation in humanity:
people can only speak through binary language and then they die. A young man,
Gabriel Link de Nova, finds out that he has the power to cure human beings
through music: he plays rock songs through the radio. And then, with some men,
he leads a war against the Antichrist, the Anome, who wants to desindividuate
humanity to create a collective and anonymous entity.
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The Digital Bodys Mantra
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What preoccupies Dantec is the limit between man and machine: he evokes the
traditional mechanisation of human beings by artificial parts and the humanisation
of machines that become conscious. This is not an end in Grand Junction, but
rather, a beginning. Even in this reverse pattern, the limits are clear to an extent
because you can identify oppositions: biological versus artificial, for example. On
the contrary, Dantec here blurs these limits and the oppositions are not quite clear
anymore: they are at least dialectic, if they still exist.
The enemy in Grand Junction is what the novel calls a Metastructure, a MetaMachine, but it is not a material entity. Dantec explains in an interview for the
magazine Voir in 2006 t hat There is no super-computer in Grand Junction.
Humanity is the super-computer. By definition, the Metastructure is the whole
human network which forms the metamachine. 1 And, for the metamachine, the
goal is not to destroy human beings but to make them turn into machines, at a
spiritual level. The characters in the novel have to fight to keep their individuality
in a context where they can loose themselves to an anonymous whole, which is the
humanity of the Anome, a collective entity, but here it is not a social or a
psychological individuality but a metaphysical or spiritual one. We find this theme
treated differently in other novels by Dantec, his characters are often outcasts that
are trying not to be absorbed by the uniform whole. In Grand Junction, people
loose their individuality turning into machines, because they lose their ability to
speak with words. They turn into modems. They can express themselves only in a
computer binary language, getting rid of every piece of information they have, like
a modem, but connected to nothing, and, when the process is over, they die.
The articulation between Man and Machine in Grand Junction is the question
of language, not only in a thematic way, not only in the story, but beyond that, in
the way the story is written. Stylistically, Grand Junction is very interesting,
because the style and the structure of the story, the change in the narration,
represent this question of language, which goes deeper all through the novel. When
you compare Grand Junction with, for instance, The Roots of Evil, Dantecs
second novel, the difference in the writing is striking. Grand Junction is far more
poetic in a way, more complex, to a point that sometimes it is really difficult to
understand it. For example:
But now, with this intensified inversion, as Professor
Zarkowsky calls it, with this numerisation of language, only the
electric language of the Machine, only the singular aesthetic
tension born of its individuation as poesis projecting beyond
itself, only the serial chaos of riffs as infinite combinations of the
physical, concrete, real uprising of the World of the Machine
animated both materially and stylistically by electricity []. 2
Claire Cornillon
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Thus, the complexity comes from two elements: the vocabulary, which is often
technical and full of neologisms, and a syntax of accumulation. This way of
building sentences seems to be a tool to recreate a thought in act; the movement of
the reality and at the same time of the thought trying to describe it.
Grand Junction seems to emphasise some aspects which existed in the other
Dantecs novels, but they reach here another level because of the specific theme of
this novel, which is clearly language. Therefore, we can say that every novel
written by Dantec gives us a vision of humanity but the crucial point here is how
humanity defines itself and its connection to the world with or through language.
We could say that Dantec, in his novels, is trying to approach an aspect of
reality, in its complexity and its constant movement. In 1999, at a conference about
the novel and literature, he insisted that the point of literature is to upset our
perception of the world, transmuting its values, creating for our time nothing less
than an aesthetic monstrosity, but a monstrosity done for the century to come, a
multiple, mutagen being. 3 He considers literature a virus that disturbs you. This is
the way he is building its fictional worlds.
As a consequence, characters are also complex and always changing. There is
no psychological development of characters in his novels, at least not in the
common understanding of it. In fact, what seems to be explainable by psychology
often cannot be in the end. The psychopath killer in The Roots of Evil suffers from
psychosis but he also sees what is real and what others cannot see: psychological
analysis is insufficient to explain his condition. His visions could be a
manifestation of the truth but so are unbearable for his disturbed mind that it
pushes him to violence.
That is why some Dantecs novels follow an initiatory pattern. It is the case for
instance in Grand Junction, Cosmos Incorporated or The Roots of evil. At first the
characters understand the world and themselves according to our traditional
cognitive schemes. But it doesnt work, because the world they live in is based on
another scheme. So, understanding that, they can progressively understand better
who they are. And it is the same thing for the reader: one has to understand the
rules in order to understand what is going on in the novel.
In Grand Junction, one could think in the beginning that the situation is based
on traditional oppositions between man and machine and that a super-machine
wants to take over the world but it is more complicated than that. For instance, the
character of Gabriel Link de Nova, who is the saviour, uses electricity to give
people their individuality back, the saviour transcends the opposition between man
and machine as he is both.
Rather, to combat this symbolic trapneither biological nor
mechanical, but located in the disjunctive synthesis of the
twoclosing on humanity, on its language, they must use a
countertrap that is equally symbolicneither biological nor
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mechanicalbut that opens up the possibility of language,
through electricity, for machines. 4
And later on, it is said that Gabriel Link de Nova is a natural cyborg,
completely man and completely meta-machine at the same time. He is an
oxymoron.
What is very disorienting in Dantecs novels is that his fictional world
functions within an unfamiliar cognitive structure, precisely as it is built to shake
our cognitive foundations. If we follow the distinctions made by the anthropologist
Philippe Descola in Par-del Nature et Culture, we can notice that some elements
of Cosmos Incorporated or of Grand Junction belong more easily to what he calls
the animist ontology than the naturalistic one, which is our traditional
occidental modern point of view in his terminology. It means that beings are linked
not by their physicality, not because their bodies are made of the same matter, but
because their spirits are of the same nature. In other words, the characters think at
the beginning of each of the novels that their world is a naturalistic one, but it is
maybe an animist one.
In Grand Junction, Dantec combines these animist structures with the Christian
idea of Grace and with the concept of destiny, but all these elements appear
progressively during the novel. The fictional universe is more and more complex
until the end. The titles of the three parts of the novel are interesting for this
question: After the machine (so the first question is to deconstruct the notion of
machine), After the world (the second question is to deconstruct the notion of
The World), and After the Man (the third question repeats the deconstruction,
but of the notion of Man).
Dantec said in an interview for The Science Fiction Magazine in 2006, that his
work is based on scientific theories, but also on an anti-rationalist metaphysical
approach. 5 The word anti-rationalist is crucial because, at a certain point, it is no
longer reasoning or explanation, it is an experience, a perceptive intuition. Since
the novel deconstructs our mental patterns, we reach a point where we cannot
rationally, logically, follow this deconstruction any longer because, in a way, it is
impossible to understand it. It makes us go beyond the cognitive structures of our
mind. Thus you cannot define things anymore, since they are one thing and its
contrary simultaneously.
There are long sentences or paragraphs in the novel with anaphoric structures
like he is: for instance about Link: Link is the productive diagram; he is what
makes the Law of the Territory a gift of the living, a unique and infinite flux that
yet fragments at each singularity as at its point of origin. He is what frames choices
and impossibilities. 6 It is as if it were necessary to try to tell, not really to define
as we could circumscribe the thing, but to tell, to draw a space in words where the
thing can exist.
Claire Cornillon
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Most of all, because you may not be able to circumscribe things naming them,
you can experience them through space and time, that is to say, you can build a
story. Story is a cognitive tool. So it is not a fiction about the failure of language,
but on the contrary, it is a fiction about the power of the word. We cannot forget
that there is a sacred approach in Dantecs work. He became a Christian several
years ago, and his novels are full of spiritual or religious references, but he
integrates his faith into his own system which resists tradition. It seems very hard
to put a clear label on his novels: you cannot say that they are simply Christian
novelsit is far more complicated that that.
Because of this idea of the power of the word, finally in Grand Junction, we
reach myth: it is another way to try to understand the world, not defining things but
telling them through images, poetry and story. There is an epic aspect to the last
section of Grand Junction, and characters are not really characters anymore.
Instead, they are mythical creatures and they are making the story. We could take
the example of the death of Yuri McCoy at the end of the novel: One day, Yuri
McCoy dies. [] It is a morning of pale silvery glitter touched with gold and rose
the most beautiful morning, perhaps, that he has ever seen. A purple crow glides
above the Sanctuary. That is what the Legend will say, in any case. 7 Is not
surprising that Dantec uses in the novel epic structures but also more specifically
structures of the Western, which is a genre based on mythical structures. But what
is striking is that this kind of narration, the legend, appears at the end of the novel:
it did not exist before. The narration adapts itself to the story and at this moment,
events are mythical, so narration has to be.
In Grand Junction the Meta-structure wants to level the world by the numbers,
the figures, which is the becoming-machine of the world.
What the thing, the Post-Machine, if you will, is doing is
flattening everything into the same level of equipotence,
reducing everything to a common denominator, but without
needing any interface or any positive pseudoreality. It is a sort
of negative metastructure; it doesnt kill language, it c auses it
to survive at its zero point []. 8
Against that, the novel reintroduces the human aspect in the world through
language, but not any language, not the data language, the communication
language, but the symbolical one, the story and even the myth. The numeric
language is called in the novel the digital bodys mantra, 9 it means something
simple repeated infinitely, but what the heroes of the novel need is the opposite of
that: it is the complexity of a language which evolves constantly, that is to say, a
story. Language is not about the world but it is the world, the word is performative.
Link represents, incarnates precisely this idea:
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He is the narrative of what they are living, the narration in act,
the invisible narration, the secret machine. Link himself was
written in an earlier story, and yet it is also the story Milan
Djordjevic completed just in time, during these past few weeks,
under unimaginable pressure. Yuri knows that Link is a living
metaphor for the paradox of the Word made Flesh; he is its
signalling image. 10
Therefore the novel, the writing, can build an after-world. To write is to create,
to bring into existence the world and that is what the characters are doing in Grand
Junction: one is writing songs and the other is writing a story called Grand
Junction as the novel itself. It is because they become characters of a story that
they may win, as human beings.
Dantec is trying to redefine literature to question man. So it is a meta-novel. He
questions his own activity as a writer. He offers the reader a very disturbing space
to experiment a challenging apocalyptic world but with it you can do whatever you
want. Dantec has said in the same interview for The Science Fiction Magazine: we
(he meant science fiction or rather speculative fiction writers) build worlds, we ask
questions to these worlds, or rather they question us without consideration. 11
Notes
1
Interview for the magazine Voir, 16th November 2006. Reproduced on the
Maurice G. Dantec Website: http://www.mauricedantec.com/article/article.php/arti
cle/entretien-voir-2006. All the translations of conferences or papers by Maurice G.
Dantec are by the author of this chapter.
2
Maurice G. Dantec, Grand Junction (New York: Random House, 2009), 220. All
the translations in English come from this edition of the novel, translated by Tina
A. Kover.
3
Maurice G. Dantec, Principes de thermodynamique transfictionnelle,
conference in Montreal, 1 May 1999, http://www.mauricedantec.com/article/arti
cle.php/article/premiers-principes-de-thermodynamique-transfictionelle.
4
Dantec, Grand Junction, 220.
5
Interview for Science Fiction Magazine (December 2006), http://www.maurice
dantec.com/article/article.php/article/interview-science-fiction-magazine.
6
Dantec, Grand Junction, 540.
7
Ibid., 576.
8
Ibid., 12.
9
Ibid., 222.
10
Ibid., 537.
Claire Cornillon
57
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11
Interview for Science Fiction Magazine.
Bibliography
Dantec, Maurice G. Grand Junction. Paris: Librairie Gnrale franaise, 2008.
. Grand Junction. New York: Random House, 2009.
. Les Racines du Mal. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
. Principes de thermodynamique transfictionnelle. At Conference in
Montreal, 1 May 1999. http://www.mauricedantec.com/article/article.php/article/
premiers-principes-de-thermodynamique-transfictionelle.
Descola, Philippe. Par-del Nature et Culture. Paris: Gallimard. 2005.
Interviews of Maurice G. Dantec. Reproduced on the Maurice G. Dantec Website:
Voir. 16 November 2006. http://www.mauricedantec.com/article/article.php/art
icle/entretien-voir-2006.
Science-Fiction Magazine (December 2006). http://www.mauricedantec.com/arti
cle/article.php/article/interview-science-fiction-magazine.
Claire Cornillon teaches at the Universit Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and is
currently writing a PhD thesis about spirituality in English, American and French
science fiction.
Cyborgs in the Garden: Tales of Iden in Kage Bakers

Company Series
Tania Honey
Abstract
Within feminist cyborg theories and science fiction the cyborg can represent a shift
in social and political ideas signifying the move from universal dualistic concepts
to fluid and multiple notions of subjectivity. As many theorists have pointed out,
our technologically saturated experiences can often be read in terms of science
fiction reality where the schism between fiction and reality is blurred. Science
fiction often adumbrates the social and political implications of anxieties
surrounding technology and closely examines and challenges concepts of what it is
to be human. Kage Bakers Company Series, a collection of narratives that centre
upon immortal cyborgs, can be examined through the lens of feminist cyborg and
SF theory. This chapter will examine the first novel in this series, In The Garden of
Iden (1997) 1 and discuss how it may contribute to the emergent discourse of
cyborg identity and engage with current theoretical perspectives of subjectivity.
The chapter will focus on the novels protagonist, Mendoza, an immortal cyborg
woman placed in sixteenth century England to breed and collect rare botanic
specimens to take back to the future. Bakers narrative highlights feminist concerns
of spatial and temporal displacement, alienation, and systems of representation
concerned with gender and cyborgs. Importantly, this chapter will extrapolate,
from an analysis of Mendoza, the interrogations of cultural/textual production that
the figure of the cyborg promotes (or perhaps) facilitates in resistant and
oppositional paradigms.
Key Words: Cyborgs, science fiction, feminist theory, Kage Baker, The Garden of
Iden.
*****
Science fiction often adumbrates the social and political implications of
anxieties surrounding technology and closely examines and challenges concepts of
what it is to be human. Indeed, one of the central concepts of SF is the question:
what is human? This query directly relates to the fundamental concerns of the
construction of (human) subjectivity and accordingly, this theme is intimately
bound up with the concept of the cyborg. Furthermore, feminist explorations of
agency as multiple and uncertain, now pervade theoretical perceptions of
subjectivity; agency is perceived as an assemblage of complex and shifting
interactions and social networks. Science fiction can accommodate feminist
appropriations of dominant ideologies, as Sarah Lefanu points out:
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Cyborgs in the Garden
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Unlike other forms of genre writing, such as detective stories and
romance, which demand the reinstatement of order and thus can
be described as closed texts, science fiction is by its very nature
interrogative, open. Feminism questions a given order in political
terms, while science fiction questions in imaginative terms. 2
The rise of technoculture in the mid 80s saw the development of a new SF
movement, termed cyberpunk. This movement centred upon the increasing
interaction between humans and technology. As a result, feminism responded to
cyberpunks emphasis on mind versus meat and the frequent celebration of
disembodied subjects and it became an important site for feminist contests over
representations of subjectivity. Donna Haraways Cyborg Manifesto, first
published in 1985, called on SF to promote a site for feminist considerations of
identity and subjectivity in the figure of the cyborg, as it makes problematic the
boundaries between dualisms such as fiction and reality, human and non-human,
machine and organic. 3 The manifesto appropriated the cyborg image and (re)
presented it as a new political paradigm of interrelations between science,
technology and socio-political ideologies. As Monica Casper points out, cyborgs
already
dwell on the border between cultures, between living and dead,
between organic and inorganic, between natural and artificial,
between now and the future, and in doing so they obscure, and
reify, these very boundaries. 4
Furthermore, a female cyborg directly comments and reflects upon official
(read patriarchal) culture. As Anne Balsamo suggests, female cyborg images do
more to challenge the opposition between human and machine than do male
cyborgs because femininity is culturally imagined as less compatible with
technology than is masculinity. 5
In The Garden Of Iden 6 is Kage Bakers first novel in the Company Series.
The Company, aptly named Dr Zeus Incorporated, is situated the 24th century. Dr
Zeus has created time-travel and immortality, in this way they travel back in time
and choose intelligent orphans who are facing imminent death, remove them and
turn them into cyborgs. These cyborgs then work throughout history gathering and
concealing valuable artefacts, and extinct plants and animals that will be recovered
to profit the Company in the 24th century. However, cyborgs cannot travel forward
in time and thus must continue to live, doing their work from wherever they are
sent.
It is in this first novel that we are introduced to Mendoza, a female cyborg.
Mendoza is only a child of five years old, when Joseph, a cyborg who is thousands
of years old, hailing from the Basque region in Spain, saves her from the Spanish
Tania Honey
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Inquisition. Once she is augmented, Mendoza, trained as a botanist, is sent into 16th
century England. However, Mendoza must interact with mortals, something she is
fearful of, and this will lead her to question her identity and subjectivity as both a
cyborg and a woman.
Mendozas mission begins in Spain and then continues into England during
1553 to 1554, a time fraught with religious bigotry and persecutions.
Accompanying her are two cyborgs, Nefer, an Egyptian zoologist and Joseph, the
Biscayan facilitator who originally seized Mendoza from the Inquisition. However,
Mendoza is a relatively new cyborg, and she is now just nineteen years old;
consequently, she has had limited interactions with humans.
Mendoza begins her cyborg life with no real sense of identity and a feeling of
dislocation from the human race. Firstly, Mendoza is not her real name; it is, in
fact, the name of the so-called witch who buys Mendoza, when she is five years
old. Because she remembers her parents calling her daughter, and as she does not
know her parents names other than Mama and Papa, her facilitator, Joseph first
tags her as little Mendoza. When Mendoza is informed of her first appointment,
to spend a year in Sir Walter Idens garden in Kent, she is appalled at the idea of
working with humans and when the counsellor informs her that she will be
accompanied by a whole team, she retorts, As long as I dont have to interface
personally with the killer monkeys. 7
Once on site, Mendoza relies heavily on her cyborg enhancements to monitor
indications of human hostility and movement, I was so nervous, I was tracking a
radius of two miles. 8 At first, she hides from the mortals and when Nefer gruffly
tells her to come downstairs, Mendoza exclaims,
[The servant] has an abscessed tooth, and it could start hurting
at any time and send him into a killing frenzy and the
females in a highly volatile emotional state. Possibly
premenstrual. Shes also sustained several contusions and is in
pain, which could prompt a psychotic episode. 9
Until this mission, Mendozas interaction with humans has been relatively volatile
and, after her augmentation and prior to entering the field, she contemplates this
relationship, To be honest, I dont think I would have got on all that well with the
human race anyway. The company did not put that fundamental dislike there.
Possibly the Inquisition did. 10 This indicates that from her cyborg viewpoint,
Mendoza believes she is the norm; it is not she who is alien. Furthermore, the
Company teaches the cyborgs, during their augmentation, that their job is to
protect them [humans] from their own butchery, and (better still) to protect the
other inhabitants of the Earth from the destruction wreaked by human nature. 11
Consequently, Mendozas first view of humans problematizes her identity, but this
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changes when Mendoza becomes the lover of Nicholas Harpole, the secretary of
Sir Walter Iden.
Mendozas understanding of Nicholas blurs her previous belief that all humans
are violent, unintelligent monkeys. But, while she is only 19 years old, her cyborg
implants significantly facilitate her knowledge and abilities well beyond what is
normal for a 16th century woman; accordingly, Nicholas is at once attracted to her,
yet suspicious of her worldly actions and experience. Thus, in the garden, Mendoza
asks Nicholas if carnal intercourse is sinful and whether he thinks Jesus, at thirtythree, was really a virgin. Nicholas is horrified that Mendoza should speak in such
a manner, she could be claimed a heretic, and he warns I would not speak so
recklessly in front of anyone else, and neither must you. 12 Baker is aware of the
clichs bound up in stories of love and desire and often employs ironic
commentary to contrast Mendozas awareness of the contradiction between her
cyborg status and her role as an innocent 16th century adolescent woman. Only
with you would I say such rash things, because I know you would never do me
harm. I said, flirt, flirt, wishing I had a fan to flutter. 13
While being schooled as a cyborg, Mendoza has been warned about having sex
with humans, but later Nefer ridicules this order articulating that sex with other
cyborgs is boring, too perfect; but, humans, on the other hand, are fresh and
inexperienced. Hence, Mendoza has uninhibited sex with Nicholas. However, on
their first sexual encounter, Mendozas cyborg implants are so hardwired that,
during their first lovemaking attempt, she punches him in the jaw. Stunned at this
reflex herself, Mendoza must cover this reaction of an automatic defence mode
with a seemingly innocent story about fears of losing her virginity. I struck you
because I thought you would tear me and make me bleed. 14 Mendoza is consistent
with Haraways cyborg figure, in the emphasis on her ambiguity as superhuman,
but simultaneously as inexperienced adolescent, Mendoza obscures and
destabilises boundaries of identity and subjectivity in the 16th century. Reflecting
upon her own story, Baker is thus able to underline Mendoza with Haraways
cyborg: Was I ever really that bored girl, pining for new gowns? Time, time,
time. 15
Additionally, during her relationship with Nicholas, Mendoza also begins to
question her immortal status. While she begins her mission with a clear hatred of
mortal beings, Mendozas attraction to Nicholas is partly based on her fascination
with his advanced knowledge and prophetic ponderings despite his humanness,
I just spent the night with a mortal man who has Gods own
intellect Hes enlightened, hes fearless, hes seven hundred
years ahead of his time. The only thing that makes him different
from me and you is the hardware. 16
Tania Honey
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Moreover, she comes to the slow realisation that, as a cyborg, she is beholden
to the Company and does not possess an autonomous identity. Later, when
Nicholas is being burnt at the stake, He held out his hand, through the fire But
he was wrong: I couldnt choose. I was rooted where I stood. I could no more have
walked into those flames than lifted that stone cathedral on my back. I had no free
will. 17 When Mendoza comes to question the value of her cyborg status, it is her
relationship with Joseph that best illustrates this concern.
When playing their respective roles in front of the humans Joseph asks how she
found the Sisters of Perpetual Mercy Convent she replies, with conscious irony,
Truly, Father, a right holy place, and the good sisters taught me so well that I am
everlastingly in their debt. And in yours. 18 Joseph represents the patriarchal
society Mendoza, as a female, must contend with. In a very real sense, he is her
father; not least because her original operative role in this mission is as the
daughter of Don Ruy Anzolbejar played by Joseph. More importantly, it is Joseph
who recalls her back to her duty as a cyborg operative. At one point he tells
Mendoza,
Nothing like the pain Id feel if I ever, ever thought you had
some crazy idea about ditching the company and running off
with a mortal. Not that you could, of course; they built all sorts
of subprograms into you to make you betray yourself if you ever
tried dereliction of duty after all the money they spent on you.
But youre a good little operative 19
But, like Haraways cyborg, Mendoza does not stay faithful to her father.
When Nicholas walks in on Joseph just as he has opened out open his shoulder to
do mechanical repairs, Nicholas flees the house in fear of what he believes are evil
spirits, and, rather than obey Josephs command to forget Nicholas, Mendoza
leaves and goes out after him. At this point, she has defied both Joseph and the
company and is torn between her cyborg reality and her love for Nicholas.
However, this exertion of free will does not end happily; Nicholas flees to
Rochester where he performs wild religious rants and is thus burnt as a heretic.
This could be read as an orthodox indictment of womens free will. The title would
then imply a parallel with The Garden of Eden in the original Christian myth as a
place of innocence and also original sin. But Mendozas cyborg status
problematizes this because she is not human, so this is not the origin story of
humans where woman caused the fall of man. It is rather, Mendozas own origin
story detailing her first conflicted and ambiguous experience as a cyborg
masquerading as a young woman.
This inversion serves to explore Mendozas notion of self and her alienation
from human subjectivity; it is a celebration of the fluid and partial subjectivity the
cyborg imbues. Mendoza the cyborg articulates a sense of resistant thinking by
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emphasizing the diffused boundaries and ambiguities of her subjectivity; she does
not remain faithful to her origins, either as a woman or a company artefact and she
is without innocence.
At the same time, IDEN is the acronym for Integrated Digital Enhanced
Network, so it also implies the functionality of a cyborg. Accordingly, the title may
articulate a nature that does not essentialize the feminine, unlike the original
Christian myth. As Karen Cadora has pointed out, feminist writing about
cybertechnology often, acknowledges a love for the organic without making it an
essentialist connection between nature and the feminine. 20 Furthermore, notions of
reproduction and the maternal are almost non-existent in Bakers consideration of
the female cyborg. Mendoza does not lament or claim lack at the notion that she
cannot have children and she does not represent a maternal figure.
Most importantly, Mendozas attempts to save Nicholas from death fail. When
he is burned, her cyborg implants respond to her shock and automatically deaden
her emotional reactions. She returns to Joseph and withdraws into her botanical
work, feeling nothing. But this immunity to her emotions do not last, the
provisional and multiple outlooks that a cyborg identity affords her reappear when
she notes,
I only became aware that my eyes had filled with tears when I
noticed some commotion in the treetops, far off outside the
perimeter wall. I blinked and looked again. There were monkeys
out there fighting, screaming and pelting one another with rotten
fruit. 21
Where previously humans were monkeys to be despised, the image of them
now causes her to weep.
As Mendoza oscillates between her sometime desire to be human and her
sometime acceptance at being a cyborg, her behaviour emphasises feminist claims
that the cyborg figure celebrates the partial, fluid and destabilising notions of
identity and subjectivity. Mendoza cannot be reduced to a simple organic/machine,
mind/body opposition. In the Garden of Iden appropriates the cyborg figure to
destabilise these traditional notions of subjectivity and identity. Instead it
celebrates embodied identity as partial, fluid and unstable, rendering the whole and
innocent humanist subject obsolete.
Notes
1
Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden (New York: Tor, 1997).

Sarah Lefanu, In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science
Fiction (London: The Womens Press, 1988), 100.
2
Tania Honey
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3
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the Reinvention of Nature (New
York & London: 1991), 201.
4
Monica Casper, Fetal Cyborgs and Technomoms on the Reproductive Frontier:
Which Way to the Carnival, in The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray,
(New York and London: Routledge, 1995) 183-202.
5
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women
(London: Duke University Press, 1996) 148-149.
6
Baker, In the Garden of Iden.
7
Ibid., 59.
8
Ibid., 68.
9
Ibid., 71.
10
Ibid., 51.
11
Ibid., 51.
12
Ibid., 132.
13
Ibid., 133.
14
Ibid., 163.
15
Ibid., 78.
16
Ibid., 165.
17
Ibid., 319.
18
Ibid., 66.
19
Ibid., 292.
20
Karen Cadora, Feminist Cyberpunk, in Science Fiction Studies 22.3 (1995):
357-372.
21
Baker, In the Garden of Iden. 329.
Bibliography
Balsamo, Anne. Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women.
London: Duke University Press, 1996.
Baker, Kage. In the Garden of Iden. New York: Tor, 1997.
Barr, Marleen. Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction. Iowa City, IA:
University of Iowa Press, 1992.
Cadora, Karen. Feminist Cyberpunk. In Science Fiction Studies 22.3 (1995): 357372.
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Casper, Monica. Fetal Cyborgs and Technomoms on the Reproductive Frontier:
Which Way to the Carnival. In The Cyborg Handbook. Edited by Chris Hables
Gray, 183-202. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time and Perversion. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New
York and London: Routledge, 1991.
Kirkup, Gill, Linda Janes, Katherine Woodward, and Fiona Hovenden, eds. The
Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2000.
Lefanu, Sarah. In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction.
London: The Womens Press, 1988.
Merrick, Helen. The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction
Feminisms. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2009.
Toffoletti, Kim. Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the
Posthuman Body. New York: Tauris, 2007.
Wolmark, Jenny, ed. Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and
Cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Tania Honey is a PhD candidate at James Cook University, in tropical North
Queensland, Australia. Her research is interdisciplinary drawing from literature,
philosophy and cultural theories.
Pat Cadigans Cyberfiction and Jessica Benjamins

Intersubjectivity
Ana Makuc
Abstract
This chapter examines issues of gender and the treatment of body and subjectivity
in Pat Cadigans feminist cyberpunk novel, Mindplayers (1987), with reference to
the notion of intersubjectivity developed by the American psychoanalyst Jessica
Benjamin in The Bonds of Love (1988), Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995), and
The Shadow of the Other (1998). Benjamins conceptualization of
intersubjectivity offers a non-hierarchical, non-essentialist and nonheteronormative view of gendered subjectivity, and, as such, it is useful in
analysing science fictional subjectivity in Cadigans novel. Benjamin defines
intersubjectivity as the meeting of two minds, the interplay of two subjective
worlds, as an intrapsychic as well as relational zone of experience. This chapter
focuses on the interaction between protagonists in Cadigans novel in the virtual
reality in which Cadigans Mindplayers is mostly set by analysing the analysandanalyst/therapist relationship that develops between the main characters. In
Cadigans novel, a mindplayer is a psychotherapist of the future, who goes
naked mind-to-mind with a patient in virtual reality computer system, by
connecting through the optic nerve. In the world of Mindplayers, personality traits
are downloadable and for sale, psychosis is an acquired taste and plastic surgery
is widely used to accommodate altered states of consciousness without end.
Cadigans text suggests that the next evolutionary step for humans will involve the
brain and modifications of the human biological body with the help of information
technologies and biotechnologies. Investigating the interactions between
developments in science and technology and other forms of culture, this chapter
explores technologized gendered subjectivities in Cadigans science fiction text.
Key Words: Gender, embodiment, intersubjectivity, virtual reality, analysandanalyst relationship, Pat Cadigan, Jessica Benjamin, the post-human.
*****
1. The Analysand-Analyst Relationship
The conceptualization of virtual reality in Cadigans novel, as a medium for the
meeting of two or more minds, could work as a potential space for the imagining,
practising, questioning and/or further developing of Benjamins concept of
intersubjectivity. Benjamin defines intersubjectivity as the meeting of two
minds, the interplay of two subjective worlds or fantasies, by arguing that the
subject or the self perceives the object or the other as both the inside other and
the outside other: Each self may experience the other both as part of self and as
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Pat Cadigans Cyberfiction and Jessica Benjamins Intersubjectivity
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an equivalent but different centre of existence. 1 After Allie, the main protagonist
and a first-person narrator of the book, is caught by the Brain Police because of
trying on an illegal madcap, she has to undergo a reality affixing. With reality
affixing she is first introduced to mindplay; her lawyer and reality affixer
Paolo Segretti explains to her they will meet mind-to-mind inside the virtual reality
computer system: Well both be in the system, where well in meet mind-to-mind
contact. 2 Allie alludes to this third, middle, intersubjective position of self and
other in the virtual reality system, by saying that it reminded her of bubbles
touching, that they were separate, but [] in contact. 3
Benjamin regards intersubjectivity as mutual subjectivity by maintaining that
every self has a need for mutual recognition from the other, because the other has
to be recognized as a subject in order for the self to be recognized as a subject in
return. In the mind-to-mind contact with Segretti a representative of the police
and a therapist Allie, as both a criminal and a patient, describes the experience as
the most powerful sense of identity she had ever had in her life, 4 as a s pace or
place, where she feels at home, by which she is referring to a n on-hierarchical,
equal, subject-subject relationship. However, as Lynne Pearce explains in
Dialogic Theory and Contemporary Criticism: Dialogisim and the Subject
(1994), Mikhail Bahktin, whose theory of dialogics resonates with Benjamins
theory of intersubjectivity, points to the power relations inherent within
intersubjective relationships. Therefore it s eems important to note that Segretti
indeed acknowledges Allies subjectivity, but this does not ensure that she is
socially his equal. Segretti belongs to the historically more powerful gender and is
also a representative of the law, a police attorney and a therapist, while Allies
social status is that of a criminal and a patient.
In addition, virtual reality as Allie describes it in the novel, reminds us of
dream space, Allies unconscious, manifested as conscious through dream
symbolism, as well as through condensations of time and displacements of persons.
According to Sigmund Freud (1899), [t]he interpretation of dreams is the royal
road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. 5 Indeed, Allie
equates the cathedral she sees in virtual reality with her own mind: I hadnt
expected to find anything like that in my own mind; I wasnt sure I was prepared
for what Ive been keeping in. 6 The inside of the cathedral represents her
unconscious the things she liked, owned, once wished she had, done, seen: it
even includes a repressed image of her unrequited love, whom she put down, as
she says, because an unrequited love makes you feel such a jerk. 7 Virtual reality
seems to work as a d ream space or as the unconscious also because of the
acceleration of time and because of the displacement of persons. For instance,
when Allie wants to enter the cathedral, she suddenly finds herself inside it (There
was a doorknob instead of a chip slot. I was reaching for it when the door swung
and I was inside without having taken a step) 8 and when Allie perceives her great-
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grandmas portrait, she acknowledges that the great-grandma is a part of herself (I
might have been looking at my own face.) 9
The fact that virtual reality in the novel works as dream space, the unconscious,
manifested as conscious, is important because, according to Benjamin, central to an
intersubjective analysand-analyst relationship is the need
[t]o become unclothed, naked [,] de-vested of ones authority,
brought down to the patients level. It is thus to have the parts of
the self that have been split off into the patientones own
dangerous instinctsexposed. 10
Benjamin acknowledges that the analysand-analyst relationship is, in this sense,
reminiscent of erotic love or similar to erotic transference. 11 Indeed, before her
first mindplaying experience with Segretti, Allie expresses scepticism about this
kind of intimacy: I didnt mind, as it were, an altered state of consciousness, but
the idea of going naked mind to naked mind with someone 12 The next day, after
the first mindplaying experience, when Allie meets Segretti again, she feels as if
she had known him for a long time: it was just that familiarity. 13
At J. Walter Techs, where Allie is training to become a p rofessional
mindplayer, her dreamfeeder Jascha explains to her that, in order to be in control
in mindplay, so that other minds do not annex you, as a mindplayer, you have to
learn how to dream lucidly. Dreaming lucidly means being aware of your own
unconscious impulses so that you do not impose them on patients, by means of
skilful free association and dream-control. Allie leaves J. Walter Techs and is
employed as a professional pathosfinder (helping artists release a creative vein) at
Nelson Nelsons, nicknamed Deadpan Allie, and famous for her ability to refrain
from exerting too much influence. 14 In Benjamins terms,
the necessity of struggling to grasp the viewpoint of another as
well as to strain our own view through the critical filter of
analysis [] [s]eeking to grasp the real process involved in
attaining an approximation of anothers viewpoint [] as well as
awareness of our own subjective view is central to [] an
intersubjective psychonanalysis. 15
In practice the awareness of the analysts own subjective view and the attainment
of the approximation of the analysands view works by actively involving the
client in the process of psychoanalysis. In her reality affixing session with
Segretti, Segretti tells Allie, This is your mind, as I keep telling you. And as I also
keep telling you, Im not going to force you to do anything, 16 to which Allie
replies, I just wanted to know what to do, I didnt ask you to do it for me. 17
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2. The Reversibility of the Analysand-Analyst Relationship
Benjamin contends that once the therapist unclothes or becomes aware of her
unconscious impulses, she becomes de-vested of authority, and brought down to
the patients level. Benjamin maintains that, in intersubjective psychoanalysis, the
patient must become the analyst, the analyst must become the patient, the
doubleness of identification, which leads to a breakdown of the rationalistic
complementarities between knower and known, active and passive, subject and
object. 18 Accordingly, Benjamin emphasizes that the complementarity of the
analyst-patient relationship is in constant reversal and tension, in a tolerable
paradox, neither denying nor splitting the difference, antagonistic and reconcilable
at once. Allie, for instance, is convinced that Nelson Nelsonher employergave
her the Gladney case because, during her reality affixing routine, which is, from
time to time, obligatory for every mindplayer, she came out Pearl Necklaced.
Pearl Necklace is a metaphor for Allies subjectivity, symbolizing her belief that
the things that happen to her in life are not related, but self-contained incidents.
Like the composer Gladney, who has been mindsucked and could not get rid of the
delusion of old Gladney, Allie believes that McFloy, her lover in the consensual
reality pool, who has also been mindsucked (and who died while they were
hooked together in virtual reality), occupies a unique and separate place in her past
and in her mind. Like Gladney, who could not combine elements of music into a
coherent musical piece, Allie consequently has to learn how to combine the pieces
of her life (including McFloy) into a larger whole that is more than the sum of its
parts. By realizing that they suffer from survivors guilt and overcoming it in their
mind-to-mind encounter, both Gladney and Allie are able to discard the thinking
that old Gladney and McFloy, respectively, are still literally alive in their minds,
and to combine pieces of music and life together, respectively, so that they make a
whole that is larger than the sum of parts.
Since the conceptualization of virtual reality in the book resembles dream
space, the analysand-analyst relationship is also dual and reversible in terms of the
displacements of persons. When Allie is in mind-to-mind contact with the dead
poets, Kitta Wrens, brain, she literally alludes to the fact that the poet represents a
displacement of herself by using the first person pronoun interchangeably with the
third person pronoun (I/she). Further, as it could be said that the analysandanalyst relationship in virtual reality is dual and reversible because the
conceptualization of the virtual reality in the book resembles dream space through
the displacement of person, this relationship could also be seen to be gendered and
sexualized. Benjamin argues that transcending the polarities of analyst-analysand,
active-passive, subject-object, which are inherently gendered and (hetero)
sexualized, also brings into question the demarcations between sameness and
difference, being and having, identifying and loving. In other words, single
(gender) identity is replaced by plural (gender) identifications. Benjamin calls this
disruption of boundaries postoedipal complementarity (in contrast to the oedipal
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form). She sees Oedipal form as involving a s plitting between self and other,
resulting in (gender) opposition and in projecting the unwanted elements of the self
into the other; postoedipal form, by contrast, reintegrates elements of
identification, so that they become less threatening, less diametrically opposite, no
longer cancelling out ones identity. 19 This results in gender multiplicity and
ambiguity, which, however, does not exist outside the binary gender system, but
remains in relation to that division, reworking its terms, disrupting its binary logic
by recombining and breaking down opposites. 20
There are different sexual and gendered positions within the same narrative,
working through displacement of person, that, however, do n ot exists outside
gender system, but rather seem to be reworking its terms. In one of the virtual
reality sessions, Pjotr Frankis tells Allie: Youre the sum of everything youve
done. 21 Indeed, in the virtual reality excursions into her own mind, Allie
encounters both her analysts/teachers (Paolo Segretti, Pyotr Frankis, Jascha) and
her analysands/patients (Marty Oren, Kitta Wren, Gladney, Coor and Lam) in her
unconscious. In addition, Allie mourns after the loss of McFloy, who was her
virtual reality lover and who died while they were hooked in together in the
consensual reality pool. Because Allie, after this event, struggles to continue with
her life (especially as far as her relationship with her husband Jascha is concerned),
her reaction to the loss could be seen to resemble melancholia rather than
mourning. The latter implies that McFloy represents not only a displacement of
Allie, but also a part of her. Freud explains that, in melancholia, the failure of the
transference of sexual desire to another object following a loss is, instead, drawn
into the ego and becomes an identification of the ego with lost object.
3. The Consequences of the Analysand-Analyst Relationship
As Benjamin explains, every intersubjective analysand-analyst interaction,
involving as it does dual or complementary identities, changes both the therapist
and the patient. We see that Allie finds it hard to understand that she cannot alter
states of consciousness without altering herself; that, after an analysand-analyst
relationship, both the patient and the therapist are changed. In one of her dreams in
which her teacher Pyotr Frankis appears, he tells her that [p]athosfinding is a
messy work. No matter how deadpan you are. 22 He continues, [y]ou do work
clean. But you are altering states of consciousness. And you have to live with the
consequences, to which Allie replies, [b]ut Im only supposed to alter a clients
consciousness, not my own! 23 Pyotr Frankis (or another part of herself since the
dialogue is taking place in Allies dreams) replies that, by changing others, she
changes herself. Like Benjamins psychoanalytic subject, Cadigans subject in
Mindplayers is not an essential, static, or unified subject, but the locus of
experience that preserves its history in the unconscious, possessing agency and
singularity. Like the Bakhtinian subject, Cadigans subject, as we have seen, is not
in the state of being, but rather of becoming through relationships. 24
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Further, because the unconscious is a p art of the mind, and hence, part of the
body, the subject in Cadigans novel is also embodied. Even though the novel is
mostly set in virtual reality and although Cadigan acknowledges multiple realities
and states of existence, her characters nonetheless challenge the Cartesian mindbody split. Mindplaying in virtual reality is employed so as to make a better life in
social reality; Allie, for instance, is supposed to help Gladney to find his
composing vein in virtual reality so that he can be a successful composer in the
social reality. Moreover, people see themselves as embodied in virtual reality; in a
mindplaying session, Segretti tells Allie that she has a very strong physical image
of [her]self: 25
How you look is, uh, how you look. Most peoples inner image is
a little more idealized, at the very least, and there are plenty who
dont look much like their outer selves at all. 26
In addition, the protagonists of Cadigans novel, who are changed as a
consequence of mindplay, also experience physical transformations. Allie, for
instance, chooses cats eyes biogems when she becomes a professional mindplayer,
as a co nsequence of mindsex with McFloy in virtual reality, during which they
symbolically exchange eyes: Allie gives him her brown eye with green flecks,
while McFloy gives her his cats eye.
4. Conclusion
Since the analysand-analyst relationship in the novel remains power-inscribed,
the depiction of subjectivity in the book does not escape hierarchization. The novel
also does not deny the significance of biology, but, rather, it confirms the notion of
a persons core personality: a subject who preserves her history in the unconscious.
In addition, it is arguable that the model of (inter)subjectivity generated in the
novel is heteronormative: the majority of the subjects with whom Allie interacts in
virtual reality are gendered male and she herself appears fixedly gendered as
female. However, as both the analysand and the analyst are changed after every
mindplaying session, because personality traits are transplantable, and since virtual
reality is conceptualized as dream space through the displacements of person, the
portrayal of subjectivity is not narrowly essentialist. Since the analysand-analyst
relationship is dual and reversible, the gender system is disrupted through Allies
multiple gendered identifications in virtual reality. As a co nsequence of these
identifications, Allie, in her relationship with her lover McFloy and husband
Jascha, cannot draw a clear line between who she is and whom she loves, between
sameness and difference.
By taking into the account the historical context in which the novel was written,
I would therefore argue that Cadigan offers a r adical, highly imaginative view of
technologized gendered subjectivity: although she seems to share the 1980s
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feminist desire to celebrate all that is positive in female experience, the text
nevertheless reaches beyond fixed gendered identity and sexuality. Furthermore,
while it may at first appear that Cadigans characters are more focused on
cognition than on embodiment, the excursions into virtual reality ultimately
provide strategies for living a better life in social reality. In other words, the novel
suggests that subjects need to go further in liberating their minds from their bodies
in virtual reality, in order to enjoy better inter-subjective relationships (notably,
ones free from patriarchal constraints and power structures) in social reality.
Mindplayers / mindplayers seem to be, in this sense, a step on the way towards a
post-gendered, post-human 27 world.
Notes
1
Jessica Benjamin, Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in

Psychoanalysis (Routledge: New York and London, 1998), 6.
2
Pat Cadigan, Mindplayers (London: VGSF, 1989), 16.
3
Ibid., 20.
4
Ibid.
5
Freud cited in Laura Marcus, ed., Sigmund Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams:
New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press, 1999), 1.
6
Cadigan, Mindplayers, 26.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 28.
10
Benjamin, Shadow of the Other, 18.
11
Ibid.
12
Cadigan, Mindplayers, 17, my emphasis.
13
Ibid., 37.
14
Ibid., 202.
15
16
17
Ibid.
18
19
Ibid., 70.
20
Ibid., 73.
21
22
Ibid., 197.
23
Ibid., 179.
24
Lynne Pearce, Reading Dialogics (London, NY, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward
Arnold, 1994), 89.
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25

Ibid.
27
The concept post-human is defined as a combination of a an embodied human
and an intelligent machine. It is used in opposition to the concept post-humanist,
the distinction problematized in Hayles How We Became Posthuman (1999).
26
Bibliography
Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Benjamin, Jessica. Like Subjects, Love Object. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1995.
Benjamin, Jessica. Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in
Psychoanalysis. Routledge: New York and London, 1998.
Cadigan, Pat. Mindplayers. London: VGSF, 1989.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. London: George Allen and Unwin
Ltd, 1948.
Freud, Sigmund. Collected Papers, Volume IV. London: The Hogarth Press, 1956.
Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
1999.
Marcus, Laura, ed. Sigmund Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams: New
Interdisciplinary Essays. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press,
1999.
Pearce, Lynne. Reading Dialogics. London, NY, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward
Arnold, 1994.
Ana Makuc is a PhD student at the Centre for Gender and Womens Studies,
Lancaster University. Her PhD research project investigates issues of gender and
the treatment of body and subjectivity in feminist cyberpunk science fiction
literature.
A Gravelled Path: Historicizing Feminist Utopias/Dystopias

Prasita Mukherjee
Abstract:
Feminist Utopianism, an offshoot of gendered power relations among two
heterosocial groupsman and woman is a conscious and well-defined shift from
the stereotypical analysis of heteronormative politics. It delves into the future and
envisages an ideal world, congenial to the existence of woman and a challenge to
the other through narratives which involve a subversion of the archetypal situation/
condition of women. Frances Bartkowskis observation on the intention of such
discourses would be pertinent in this context. She states: The feminist utopian
novel is a place where theories of power can be addressed through the construction
of narratives that test and stretch the boundaries of power in its operational
details. 1 In these narratives there is a subversion of gendered identities and women
wield the power in their almost-perfectly constructed society. The essentialist
modes of critiquing the patriarchal system are altered and the sex/ gender binary
is problematized. This idea may be traced back to 1404 when Christine de Pizan
wrote The City of Ladies as a treatise against medieval misogyny and certain
socially-construed beliefs like women are vessel(s) in which all the sin and evil of
the world has been collected and preserved and that they are an aberration in
nature. 2 Since then there has been a constant endeavour towards realizing the
dream of having an exclusive space for/of/by women where the superstructure
pertaining to all social, political, economic, psychological and sexual concerns is
built upon egalitarianism. Moreover their unique survival strategies as presented by
authors of the twentieth century like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Diana Rivers, Gerd
Brantenberg, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Naomi Mitchson, Margeret Atwood and
Octavia Butler is interesting as they evolve with time. Eventually the concept has
proved to pose a challenge to the dystopic present and usher a e/utopian future. In
this chapter I shall trace the gravelled path which has been traversed by feminist
scholars to create a literary canon of their own. In doing so, there will be an
elaborate discussion on the varied discourses under the sub-genre of feminist
utopian/ dystopian narratives.
Key Words: Dystopia, subversion, homosocial, utopia, subculture.
*****
A rather unusual analogy which crossed my mind was the geometry of writing.
If the Pythagoras theorem [mathematical formula: (hypotenuse)2 = (base)2 +
(height)2] is appropriated to literature, can we consider the cannon as AB and
womens writing as BC, and can we re-read their perpendicularity as a signifier of
(i) the suppressor- suppressed binary and (ii) their conflicting positions?
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A Gravelled Path
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If it is specifically contextualized for feminist utopian narratives it is seen that

there is an attempt towards a reconciliation of the woman question within the good
place (eutopia) and which is still no place (outopia). A three-pronged structure
may be considered for the same: the narrator and reader are situated here
(present/ dystopia) whereas the represented possibilities are there (future/ utopia).
One may imagine the latter to hold the central position as created by the narrator
who placed here, constructs through her/his discourse a there, while the reader,
also situated here, stretches to a relative point to reach/match it. Thus it serves as
the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, connecting the narrators utopian vision
to that of the readers dystopian state of existence and providing an alternative and
well-organised mode of resistance. However Wright opines that there may be two
plausible angles of resistancea pragmatic, political one as opposed to a fantastic
utopian model. 3 But in the case of feminist utopias these paradoxes are blended to
give it a unique position by effacing the compartmentalized notions of a wo/man
and seeking to build a utopian state in which she has the agencies of power and
knowledge.
Feminist utopianism thus, is regarded as an outcome of heteronormative power
relations and a conscious and well-defined shift from stereotypes. Here Eleanor
Roosevelts belief that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams 4 becomes relevant as it delves into the future and the super-women of
these texts envisage an ideal world, congenial to their existence thereby posing a
challenge to the Other through fictionalized representations of their vision of the
ideal world which involves a subversion of the archetypal situation/ condition of
wo/men.
Considering the niche constructed by this form of writing, one can call it a
subculture with specific and subjective conventions. Ken Gelder earmarks certain
features which designate a subculture and the predominant ones in this case are the
Prasita Mukherjee
77
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de-recognition of class, the adoption of an alternative style of living practice,
adherence to certain exaggerative conditions and a tendency to subvert the
hackneyed concerns that govern human existence. A comprehensive definition of
the same is offered in The Subcultures Reader (2005):
Subcultures are groups of people that are in some way
represented as non-normative and/or marginal through their
particular interests and practices, through what they are, what
they do and where they do it. They may represent themselves in
this way, since subcultures are usually well aware of their
differences, bemoaning them, relishing them, exploiting them
Subcultures are always seen in terms of their relationship to, and
function within, the broader social system-society 5
Utopias for/by/of may be a contextualized case in point comprising a
subversive group of individuals, usually women, echoing a similar (sub)cultural
standpoint. Their ideology seeks to explore and adhere to feminist desires from the
biological, psychological and sociological perspectives and in their modus
operandi they challenge the macro politics of social constructionism. Consequently
it is an egalitarian societyaddressing one of the principal debates of feminist
activism that was initiated from its inceptionwhere power structures are not
hierarchical among women. Thus, from being the marginalized they rise to a
subject position to dominate the scene and consider it to be an ideal world devoid
of patriarchal oppression. In most cases there is an erasure of the existence of
males in this subculture as they are considered to be harbingers of the dystopic
dilemma that is faced by human beings, especially women.
This idea may be traced back to 1404 when Christine de Pizan wrote The City
of Ladies as a treatise against medieval misogyny and certain socially-construed
beliefs like women are vessel(s) in which all the sin and evil of the world has been
collected and preserved and that they are an aberration in nature. 6 This was a
time during which virtues and values were given primacy and Pizan argues that
human superiority or inferiority is not determined by sexual difference but by the
degree to which one has perfected ones nature and morals; 7 moreover, the choice
of three allegorical charactersReason, Rectitude and Justice echoes her
aforementioned belief which negates the socially-constructed indictment on the
fairer sex of being unreasonable and emotional. In order to validate the aweinspiring capabilities of women, Pizan fabricated a city of ladies where every
good thing grows in abundance and as she excavates with the spade of (her)
intelligence she realizes that the more women are criticized, the more it rebounds
to their glory. 8
With the advent of an organized feminist movement from the nineteenth and
early centuries onwards, issues pertaining to the well/ ill-being of women were
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addressed, which may be considered as backlashes against the gendered roles that
society had designated. The concept of gendered roles is a socio-cultural construct,
usually maneuvered to suit the convenience of the wielders of power. In this
context Stuart Halls observation that human beings are producers and consumers
of culture becomes relevant. He was also of the opinion that cultureis a critical
site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established
and potentially unsettled. 9
The roles that women were expected to perform were those of daughter of
father; sister of brother(s); wife of husband; mother of son(s). She was primarily a
care giver within the family, an occupation which could not be adjudicated
quantitatively. So her position or worth with respect to her contribution towards
familial logistics also remained subjective to variants like the people concerned
and circumstantial demands. More so, her identity was solely in relation to the
male factors which governed her existence as they were her providers. A woman
was destined to be a homemaker- an angel in the house; the violation of this dictum
inevitably led to her denigration as a b/witch or home-breaker. She was
systematically abstained from economic independence as contributing to family
finances was not considered to be a feminine role. The ownership of the means of
production (domestic labour, child bearing and rearing) were vested with men who
exploited women physically, emotionally/psychologically, sexually and
economically. The primary reason that has been identified is their incapability to
demand payment in lieu of their services within the domestic since it is labour for
loved ones and consequently unbefitting to mercenarize it. Gilman in Women and
Economics substantiates the same by stating:
Their labour is the property of another: they work under another
will; and what they receive depends not only on their labour, but
on the power and will of another. They are economically
dependent. This is true of the female race both individually and
collectively. 10
The awareness of the woman question with particular reference to feminist
utopianism is achieved primarily by re-defining and subverting normative sociocultural practices.
After Pizan, Gilman was the next prominent proponent of this sun-genre of
fiction with Herland which is regarded as the mother-text of the later amazontexts. 11 In Herland/ Feminisia, 12 the women share their system with Terry, Jeff
and Vandyck and in turn the three men narrate the experiences of the women in
their country. For instance Terry says: The men do everything, with usWe do
not allow our women to work. Women are loved- idolized-honoured-kept in the
home to care for the children which seemed incredulous to Somel and Zava who
ask: What is the home? and do no women work, really? 13 The discourse itself
Prasita Mukherjee
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is politicized as women are loved as objects; the idolization in itself is testimony to
the fact that they are deified and considered to be angelic because of their docile
and tolerant attitude. Therefore the angel is the house is honoured for her status as
a lump of clay to be trampled upon and moulded as per the need of the family and
this is semantically glorified as the self-effacing personality of a true woman. The
flabbergasted response of the women of Herland is typical and in sync with
Gilmans view in Women and Economics where she opines that women must have
employment other than domestic engagement as marriage is treated as a business
partnership between the husband and wife in which either is expected to
contribute capital, experience and labour. She also asserts that the seat of all
troubles is the heart and the purse, an estimation which seems to define the woman
question in a nutshell. In Herland there is one family, all descended from one
mother! ...she alone had founded a new race! comprising of five sisters, twentyfive first cousins and a hundred and twenty-five second cousins and where the
tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out. These stalwart
virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection. 14 In her signature
tongue-in-cheek style Gilman says: Are gentlemen always safe? 15 Though there
is a possible threat of complete erasure of males from their lives, as in the later
texts belonging to this sub-genre of fiction, we notice that it finally remains
unimplemented as the close of the novella celebrates heterosexual wedlock
between the women of Herland and the men of Hisland which signals an attempt
towards reconciliation which perhaps was the ideal proposition according to
Gilman.
In the narratives which follow much later (post-1970s) radical feminism plays a
key role with a now and ever stance towards womens emancipation. The
deconstructionist approach to feminism which re-constituted the concept of gender,
defined the gender-sexuality and body-identity binaries. Feminist politics is thus
revolutionized by interrogating heteronormativity. Later feminists believed that
when biological/natural justification of sex is based on compartmentalized
demarcations like male/female, man/woman and masculine/feminine it gives rise to
an antagonistic fervour between them. From this construction emanates social
stratifications which politicize relationships based on systemic power structures.
Though heterosexuality posed several problems, it was considered to be a norm in
society and this entire notion was challenged which triggered a behavioural
approach where sex was no more based on the chromosomal composition (XX/
XY) of human beings. Moreover the signifier gender became widely accepted thus
signifying a socio-cultural influence on the human body and consequently on the
mind as well. In the context of feminist utopias it is severely criticized and the
quintessentiality of other closely associated paraphernalia like marriage, family and
child bearing/ rearing are also under scrutiny.
In keeping with the progressive second and new/ third generation feminist
ideology, the women in these fictionalized representations may be said to be
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striving towards constituting a fourth generation which will adhere to the existing
and also innovate upon those. In this case Sally Gearhart's summary of a feminist
utopia/ science fiction may be relevant:
a. (it) contrasts the present world with an envisioned idealized
society (separated from the present by time or space), b. offers a
comprehensive critique of present values/conditions, c. sees men
or male institutions as a major cause of present social ills, and d.
presents women not only as at least the equals of men but also as
the sole arbiters of their reproductive functions. 16
Existing praxes would be the resistance to marginalization by accepting and
defending difference, contesting heteronormativity and inculcating homosociality
and/or homosexuality and reinstituting an alternative power structure where there
is non-existence of men. This last aspect which is common to all feminist utopian
discourses is the unique proposition that is put forth and in the process it envisions
a haven where dystopic forces have ceased to exist, creating a place for all that is
ideal. Lucy Sargisson explains this kind of utopianism as being critical of the
political present:
It is imaginative and sometimes takes a fictionalized form; it
fully exploits the ambivalent status of fiction and produces an
estranged commentary. The point at which this utopianism
diverges from the colloquial view is in its approach to the
creation of alternatives. 17
She also mentions the reconceptualization of utopianism as these
discourses are similarly transgressive and resistant to closure thereby
interpreting utopianism as a radical phenomenon. In this light, Helene Cixouss
observation on her own writing in The Laugh of the Medusa may be taken as a
model for all writers of this sub-genre of fictionWhat I say has at least two sides
and two aims: to break up and destroy; and to foresee the unforeseeable, to
project. 18 Authors of feminist utopian texts also have a similar agendathe
existing order is dismantled and an all-women world is created where the
worldview as represented is a subversion of the present. Thus it is able to envision
an ideal future and identify the prerequisites that will help in realizing it, which the
male literary canon fails to anticipate, perhaps because they pose a challenge to its
survival.
The need for such texts is well explained by Teslenko.
(It) provide(s) the feminist community with a conceptual space to
articulate the politics of change, to validate the personal as
Prasita Mukherjee
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political, and to express feminists self-defence in their
retaliating symbolic violence against patriarchy. (They) expose
patriarchal social order and offer such a new conceptual space:
envision a different time/place that allows for ideological
change First, feminist utopias must avoid fixing the act of
social dreaming by creating blueprints of utopian worlds
Second, feminist utopias must describe a better world for women
while working with the very tools of patriarchy in the form of
language
Joanna Russs The Female Man (1975) is a pertinent example in point. Here,
the lives of four women living in parallel worlds that differ in time and space have
been depicted and Russ also suggests a second possible separatist future for
women by illustrating how women live on earth and how they might live in an
all-female utopia. 19 When they cross over to each others worlds, their different
views on gender roles startle each others pre-existing notions of womanhood. A
comprehensive description of Whileaway provided by Joanna Russ in The Female
Man exemplifies the ideal community that is envisioned by utopists which they
believe can only be possible in a culture that derecognizes the existence of the male
sex and the social evils that are commonly associated with them: A sentimental
excerpt which is reminiscent of the bio-socio-psychological subjugation that has
victimized women and resulted in their efforts to congregate against such
intimidation in the hope for a brighter future is as follows:
This book is written in blood.
Is it written entirely in blood?
No, some of it is written in tears.
Are the blood and tears all mine?
Yes, they have been in the past.
But the future is a different matter 20
The kinship web which Russ refers to is an ideal prototype of the web of
humanity as presented in feminist utopian fiction. At a very empirical level it
qualifies as a science fiction which explores the space of four womenJoanna,
Jeannine, Janet and Jaelwho are placed in different worlds. Joannas is Earth in
1970, Jeannines the world of the Great Depression, Whileaway or the future
society is Janets and Jaels represents dystopia. All these four worlds are explored
in this novel and at some point they seem to be alleles and also coalesce.
The shift from a conservative approach (Pizan) to a liberal one (Gilman) and
finally to that of an extremist (Russ) is evident from the three key texts which have
been analysed in detail. It was a vision of humanity to make living more humane
for women by creating a separate state for them. In the near future perhaps feminist
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utopias will become an e-reality and one can hope to be part of cyber-groups
practicing it as an existential alternative to coercive existence.
The following poem (in two parts) is in sync with the theme and
summarises my premise aptly
MEERA
In a trance Meera sways and sings
Arms outstretched, reaching out to the mesmeric flute-player
Playful, erratic, Krishna-Kanhaiya surges within her love-lorn
soul
In a cruel hide and seek game
A lifelong maze of doomed desire
Love-sick Meera sings of elusive tormenting spring
Meera could never say like a much younger poet
Whether flowers blossom or not, its spring today
As mesmerized Meera sings her plaintive songOh Lord, how to endure the days and nights
Without my love Giridhar
Krishna the relentless pied piper
Meena-lurer, tantalizer
Krishna of the many names
Giridhar, Govinda, Gopal, Hari, Murari
Weirdly has the last laugh
In all such messy cases. 21
2012 Dasgupta & Co. Pvt. Ltd.
CYBER MEERA
As the year ends
I wonder
Shall I dump you
In the Trash bin
Or place you in the Recycle Bin
Or shall I delete you forever
O elusive flautist
Mused Meera
Entering the wireless Chat Room
Prasita Mukherjee
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Away from the barbed, barbaric LOCs
FabIndian Meera stood with raised arms
Then spun deliriously on high heels
To the mind blowing fusion
Of Hip-hop Bhangra and Salsa-Bhajan. 22
2012 Dasgupta & Co. Pvt. Ltd
Notes
1
Frances Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias (New York: University of Nebraska Press,

1989), 5.
2
Christine de Pizan, The City of Ladies (USA: Penguin, 2006), 3.
3
Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias, 11.
4
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_future_belongs_to_those_who_believe_in_
the/13262.html.
5
Ken Gelder, The Subcultures Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 1997), 1.
6
de Pizan, The City of Ladies, 3.
7
Ibid., 17.
8
Ibid., 8.
9
James Procter, Stuart Hall (London, NY: Routledge, 2004), 1.
10
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (New York: Prometheus
Books, 1994), 7.
11
Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias, 12.
12
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (USA: Digireads.com Publishing, 2008), 6.
13
Ibid., 39.
14
Ibid., 37.
15
Ibid., 42.
16
Quoted in Robin Silbergleid, Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a
Postmodern Feminist Citizenship, Hypatia 12.4 (Autumn, 1997): 161.
17
Lucy Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (New York, London:
18
Ibid., 113.
19
Judith A. Little, Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction: Utopias and
Dystopias (University of Michigan: Prometheus Books, 2007), 325.
22
Joanna Russ, The Female Man (USA and Canada: Bantam Books, 1975), 5.
20
Ibid., 95.
21
Sanjukta Dasgupta, First Language (Kolkata: Dasgupta & Co., 2005), 33.
22
Sanjukta Dasgupta, More Light (Kolkata: Dasgupta & Co., 2008), 27.
84
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Bibliography
Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. New York: Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press,
1989.
Dasgupta, Sanjukta. First Language. Kolkata: Dasgupta & Co., 2005.
. More Light. Kolkata: Dasgupta & Co., 2008.
Gelder, Ken. The Subcultures Reader. London & New York: Routledge, 1997.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics. New York: Prometheus Books,
1994.
. Herland. USA: Digireads Publishing, 2008.
Glover and Kaplan. Genders. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Pizan, Christine de. The City of Ladies. USA: Penguin, 2006.
Procter, James. Stuart Hall. London, NY: Routledge, 2004.
Russ, Joanna. The Female Man. USA and Canada: Bantam Books, 1975.
Sargisson, Lucy. Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (New York and London:
Silbergleid, Robin. Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a Postmodern
Feminist Citizenship. Hypatia 12.4 (Autumn, 1997): 161.
Prasita Mukherjee is a Research scholar in the Department of English, Calcutta
University and a Lecturer in the Department of Communicative English in Shri
Shikshayatan College, Kolkata, India. She has participated in various national and
international seminars and has published papers in academic journals in her area of
research.
Feet, Silk and Sex: The Not So Secret World of Fetish Online
Kayleigh Newby
Abstract
The possibility of freedom of expression and the potential of limitless identity
play online is a f requent area of exploration in academic literature, and one of
considerable contestation. Whilst online networks in popular social platforms, like
Facebook (hereafter FB), are in an everyday sense becoming increasingly
synonymous with offline networks (therefore placing restrictions on the
experimentation of self one may engage with in such spaces), arguments relating to
the unrestricted and free nature of the online still remain to be of significance when
it comes to what are conceived of as taboo or deviant elements of self. This chapter
seeks to explore the world of sexual fetishes on FB, examining the ways in which
individuals manage to escape the restrictions of their everyday networks, and the
manner in which FB is being used to display, and in some cases perform, particular
sexual identities. Further, the chapter will address whether these displays and
performances of varying sexual interests online act to encourage, legitimise and
normalise these identities that are regarded more generally by the outside world to
be taboo or deviant. More broadly, it will be considered whether the label of
somehow deviating from what is considered normal sexual interest contributes to
the intensification of attachment to these sexual identities.
Key Words: Facebook, fetish, identity, performance, social networks, community,
sexuality, deviancy.
*****
1. Methodology in Brief
The data from which the following analysis is constructed was gathered during
several months of participant observation on FB and a series of online interviews.
All quotes given have been taken from the online interviews. This research is part
of a l arger ethnographic work currently being conducted for a d octoral thesis
investigating the ways that individuals manage their identity on FB whilst having
multiple audiences simultaneously present.
2. Managing Fetish Identities on Facebook: Three Types
There are a whole array of different fetishes presented on FB, from the better
known dominatrix and bondage type of fetishes to the less documented giantess
fetish and even tissue fetish. This chapter will not discuss the nuances between
each type of fetish, but will consider as a whole how people manage their fetish
identity on FB.
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A. Not Bothered
The most uncommon, but still significant, form of managing a fetish identity on
FB is what is termed here as Not Bothered. Individuals claim not to care who
knows about their fetish or fetishes, and do not have any FB privacy controls in
place in order to restrict certain people from viewing any fetish orientated content.
In these cases, the fetish is only performed through a kind of static visual
representation and FB is not being used as a place to communicate with other like
minded individuals. Certain groups are joined, pages are liked, but this is amongst
all other typical profile content one would expect to find. A feature is not made of
the fetish, but it is present. The fetish identity then, receives no special identity
management, despite the likelihood of it being seen as taboo or deviant.
One male interviewee explains:
If they dont like it they know where to go... this is me, its not
like Im doing anything wrong... Im not shoving it in your face,
if its not your thing then dont look.
B. Best of Both?
The second main type of management is almost a t ransitory expression of
identity, whilst not as bolshie as those in the Not Bothered category it i s not
wholly secretive either. Here individuals are more active in their communication
with others who share their fetish, and engage in a more animated expression of the
fetish identity. Further, these individuals are also the most savvy in utilising the
semi-complex privacy controls FB provides to its members. Those on the friends
list are separated into clear groups, one of which will be strictly fetish contacts,
which are given access to profile content based on what group they have been
allocated to. So, for example, only fetish friends will see status updates relating to
the fetish, and all others will be excluded from it.
Although intelligent use of the privacy controls is made, this form of
management is not foolproof. There is no way of controlling other human input.
One potential issue arises from the visual representation of friends on FB.
Individuals can always make their friends list private; however this does not adhere
to social etiquette on FB and does not seem to be considered a viable option for
most. As such it is likely that non-fetish related contacts will notice their friends
fetish contacts (if profile names and/or photos are fetish orientated, and also if
profile content is open with clear fetish content). Questions may be raised as to
why the individual has such people on their friends list.
Furthermore, there is the perhaps more obvious issue of not being able to
control others input on your profile, in the form of wall posts, photo comments and
so on. A single misplaced comment could potentially destroy the individuals
entire facade, despite the most careful organisation of privacy controls.
Kayleigh Newby
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C. Secret Sex
The final type of identity management sees individuals with completely
separate and secret profiles from their everyday ones in order to express their
fetish identity to its fullest extent within FB. These profiles are prolific in terms of
fetish identity performance (nearly all profile content is fetish orientated) and
interaction with others who share the same fetish. Quite often individuals actively
seek to meet each other in real life, or partake in cyber sex, to explore their shared
fetish.
Often under the guise of fetish based pseudonyms with carefully selected
profile photos and completely closed security settings, there is no traceable link to
the individual with their normal identity and everyday life. Here the fetish really
comes into being an identity of its own, and supersedes all other elements of the
individuals life and self.
3. Legitimisation and Normalisation
The different ways of managing a fetish identity, which in themselves are not
always mutually exclusive, seem to normalise to varying extents and in different
ways.
When considering the Not Bothered type of management, at face value, it
would be easy to conclude that the fetish identity is at the very least considered
legitimate by the individual performing it. However, the performance, although
open, is quite static, and the fetish community is almost always absent, suggesting
individuals may not be as comfortable as they proclaim to be in displaying and
performing their fetish identity. Whilst there is clear representation that the fetish is
a part of the individual, there is no representation of that fetish being a necessarily
active part of the self. The fetish identity is not often actually a dormant identity,
but the way it is managed and as a result the way it is presented, gives this
impression.
With regards to the Best of Both? style of identity management the notion of
a re-centred self becomes pertinent. We all perform different versions of the self on
a day to day basis dependent on the context and who is present. None of these
selves are necessarily less representative of who we believe ourselves to be, but
are always subtly and sometimes markedly different from each other. On FB, a rare
environment where the varying nodes of our networks are simultaneously present,
we have to make certain decisions about the self that we wish to display (re-centre
it) in order to avoid creating tensions between the different social groups, and also
most importantly between the individual and their social network. The
consequences of getting it wrong can be quite serious for example, the numerous
cases represented in the media where individuals have lost employment due to poor
impression management on FB.
With the Best of Both individuals are engaging with the security controls and
making conscious decisions about what and what not to put on their profiles in
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order to be able to display their fetish identity in the same place as they display all
other elements of self, and be able to accommodate all in their social networks. The
fetish identity is somewhat normalised as it is being included within the same
space as other identities, all of which go through the same basic form of filtering
and management. However, the fetish identity is given special treatment, and
appears to go through a more intense and restrictive process than other identities.
Key to making sure all social groupings are content is to hide the fetish identity, or
at least hide the full extent of it.
Id still be the sister, the friend, the teacher and whatever they all
know, because for me nothing would have changed. But for
them, I dont think they would see the s+m as compatible with
how they know me, because for them its wrong and its weird.
Finally, in another style of management a wholly separate profile is used.
Within the confines of the fetish specific profile, the fetish identity appears as
perfectly legitimised and normalised, as that is the sole purpose of the profileto
be able to explore and perform that identity freely. However, the fetish profile is
merely a small bubble, and when the individual logs out of that profile the bubble
will inevitably burst as they return to the reality of a life that includes many other
selves, responsibilities and performances that need to be tended to.
Over all, it s eems that the engagement of a fetish identity online does not
necessarily lead to individuals legitimising or normalising this element of self.
Throughout all expressions, there is still a sense that they are engaging in a deviant
or taboo activity, and that they are distinct from others in their want and need to
engage in particular sexual activities. The practice of a fetish identity online and in
social circles of like minded people, only serves to normalise within that specific
context and when the individual steps outside of that safe place this process is
reversed. In other words the prejudices and preconceived notions of what is seen as
normal sexual practice, and therefore what is acceptable to perform and to speak
about remains acutely more powerful than any intense clusters of identity
performance online.
4. The Deviant Label and Intensified Identity Attachment
If this is the case, then it is worth considering further the interaction between
the labelling of fetish identity as deviant and how the identity is performed, and
indeed the intensity to which it i s performedeven if this primarily manifests
within closed circles. This is a question not only confined to a fetish identity but
all taboo or deviant types of self.
There is a huge wealth of literature on labelling theory and the self-fulfilling
prophecy, which will not be repeated here, however the example that comes from
Paul Willis and the lads is quite pertinent. 1 One reaction to the label of deviancy
Kayleigh Newby
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is to consciously play to that label and to perform the stereotyped and expected
identity that comes with it. Similar to the lads in Paul Willis study, those with a
fetish identity are aware of the labels being attached to them. The lads made an
active choice to behave badly and not do their work, and so on, and in doing so
took control of the label attached to them. 2 A similar example is the way that
certain derogatory words are appropriated by the groups they were originally used
against.
Those with a fetish identity (at least those who choose to perform their identity
in some way on FB) appear to be behaving in similar ways. There does not seem to
be a strong fight to be accepted as normal. Instead the label of being deviant
and/or taboo is said to be embraced and turned into something positive:
It depends on how you say it I guess telling someone feet give
you a boner might not get you anywhere but you know if you talk
about how sensitive feet can be and like throw in some science
bits about nerve endings or whatever then its still like odd to
people but it brings out their curiosity as well and part of the
kick is knowing youre going against the acceptable.
However, even if there is a p ositive appropriation of the sexual deviant label,
this will almost certainly not assist a change in the general public opinion. If the
story of the lads is followed, it will, perhaps unsurprisingly, only serve to
reinforce stereotypes, to ostracise the community further, and allow the self
fulfilling prophecy to take placeeven though the decision to behave in a certain
way is quite a conscious one. Further, the embracing and positive language used by
individuals about their fetish and their attitudes towards the deviant label are
juxtaposed by their attempts to hide and conceal their fetish identity on their FB
profiles. It could be argued that there is an ideal that individuals would like to
adhere to, and quite probably achieve within their fetish bubble; but the potential
confrontations in everyday life prevent the actuality of this truly taking place in
most other contexts.
Yet if the intended outcome is not achieved, there is an important unintended
secondary one. Through being segregated from mainstream society due to their
sexual preferences, this group of people are potentially brought closer together, as
a result of this commonality and mutual understanding. FB provides an
environment that can be, if so chosen, separate to the rest of the world. Individuals
can be sexually explicit with each other in a way they perhaps could not in most
other contexts and within most other social groupings.
The labelling of certain fetishes as sexually deviant, and the processes of
reacting and relabeling that follow, make way for a group of people who are not
necessarily emotionally close, but are bound together through the way they choose
to express their sexuality. A sexuality that is not generally understood by those
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outside of the community. Yet this binding together is also likely to ostracise the
group even further.
5. Conclusion
Although this chapter finishes with a more broad discussion about labelling and
deviancy, this is situated with reference to the performance of identity in a very
specific context, in this case on FB. These micro spaces, and the actions and
behaviours of individuals and collectives within them, contribute to and have
consequences for the wider social questions we might have. It is also important to
emphasize that we cannot merely study the online without considering its partner,
the offline. They are not mutually exclusive and each influences and interacts with
the otherto attempt to understand any social phenomena we must engage with all
its manifestations.
In terms of having a fetish identity online however, it can be concluded, firstly,
that FB encourages fairly diverse forms of identity management. None of which
however truly point towards fetish identities becoming legitimised or normalised
simply through like minded individuals occupying the same space and interacting
with each other. What this shared space and communication does potentially do
however is reinforce the fetish identity and its deviant status, for both those who
have the fetish identity and those who are merely judging it. This in turn creates an
opportunity for the intensification of the identity through mutual interest,
experience and understanding.
Notes
1
Paul E. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class
Jobs (Surrey: Ashgate, 1978).
2
Ibid.
Bibliography
Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class
Jobs. Surrey: Ashgate, 1978.
Kayleigh Newby is a PhD student at the University of Kent. Her interests are
primarily in new communication technologies and its implications for identity
performance, relationships and the notion of community.
Part III
FictionV? Posthuman Societies and Cultures
Total Machine or Homelessness: The Tyranny of the Artificial

and the Limits of Politics in the Posthuman Era
Artur Matos Alves
Abstract
In science fiction, human beings may find themselves extremely dependent after
relinquishing political control to powerful artificial entities. Works such as The
Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, Harlan Ellisons I Have no Mouth and I Must
Scream and Philip K. Dicks Vulcans Hammer, among others, present this
dependency in a critical light. In these fictions, social stability rests on the trade-off
between human autonomy latu sensu and material comfort provided by
superhuman artificial intelligence. The heteronomous character of life in the
technological utopia reveals itself in the coexistence of physical protection and
material comfort with social isolation, paranoia, reverence for authority and strict
penalties (such as marginalization, death and exposure for humans). In this sense,
relinquishment of political agency and an almost complete symbiosis translate into
an apparent cessation of human history, which can only be resumed by breakdown
or revolution. Specifically, the breakdown of the artificial super-intelligence not
only brings about the end of a particular mode of being, but also reveals the true
extent of a dependency hitherto unacknowledged. In its most extreme form, this
dependency can become homelessnessi.e., the isolation of human beings in a
hostile, non-mediated world. This chapter will focus on the fate of human
communities after the institution of artificial agency as their leading force, and on
the consequences of a high degree of reliance upon complex artificial systems.
Drawing critically upon Agambens concept of naked life, as well as Hannah
Arendt and Leo Strauss theorizations of tyranny, to study in detail The Machine
Stops, I will argue that this concept of homelessness can be analysed in the light
of political philosophy as a particular case of a techno-dystopic end of history in
three steps: loss of autonomy, complete dependency, and systemic breakdown.
Key Words: Homelessness, E. M. Forster, tyranny, totalitarianism, dependence,
dystopia, The Machine Stops.
*****
The Machine developsbut not on our lines.
The Machine proceedsbut not on our goal.
- Edward Morgan Forster
1. Introduction
In science fiction, human beings may find themselves extremely dependent
after relinquishing political control to powerful artificial entities. Works such as
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The Machine Stops by Edward Morgan Forster present this dependence in a
critical light. 1 In such fictions, any measure of social stability rests on the trade-off
between human autonomy latu sensu and material comfort provided by
superhuman artificial systems. The heteronomous character of life in the
technological utopia reveals itself in the coexistence of physical protection and
material comfort with social isolation, paranoia, reverence for authority, and strict
penalties for humans (such as marginalization, death and exposure).
By instantiating in fictional practices the real or imagined principles of the
contemporary experience, literary utopias translate them into imagined realities, in
order to illuminate their effects upon the individual as well as the social body. 2
Thus, for Forster, over-reliance on machines can turn into Homelessnessthe
isolation of human beings in a hostile, non-mediated worldwhen the former
break down or restructure their priorities against the preservation of human life. 3
This chapter will focus on the fate of human communities after the institution
of artificial agency as their leading force, and on the consequences of a high degree
of reliance upon complex artificial systems. I will argue that the concept of
Homelessness can be analysed through the lens of political philosophy as a
particular case of a techno-dystopic end of history in three steps: loss of
autonomy, complete dependence, and systemic breakdown. 4 In E. M. Forsters
story, relinquishment of political agency and an almost complete symbiosis
between humans and technology cause an apparent cessation of human history,
which can only be resumed by breakdown or revolution.
2. Loss of Autonomy
Only the Machine is autonomous in Forsters novelette. Human agency has no
place since the creation of the Machine as a technological womb to serve human
needs. 5 However, it gradually becomes a goal in itself, as well as the basis of the
inhabitants sense of living in a utopia, 6 i.e., of having reached the highest possible
point of progress. Daniel Dinello believes that Forster expresses several
significant technological fears: the machine will mediate human relationships,
compel pathological reliance, and dominate humans. Despite being worshipped as
a god, the machine will psychologically, spiritually, and physically consume
humans. 7 In the peculiar dualism of Forsters world, mental activity is considered
equal to spiritual development, attained through second or even tenth-hand ideas
received as lectures with the press of a button.
The body is an extension of the Machine insofar as the individual does not and
cannot take care of it, even shunning such task as unmechanical (meaning,
contrary to the principle and existence of the technological apparatus). Human
beings are euthanized after birth if they appear too strong or too active, since the
Machines confined hives have no place for unimpaired movement. Euthanasia is
also the answer to pain, old age, and suffering; in effect, there is no unhappiness in
the world of the Machine. Of course, when the Machine breaks down, its
Artur Matos Alves
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omnipotence is called into question, first by small signs and later by major
malfunctions.
The intrusion of the natural world, of instinct, reveals a yearning for nonmediated experience, that is, for self-determination or free will. According to S.
Caporaletti, the oppositions between society and nature, civilization and instinct,
are recurrent in Forsters work. Their contrasts denounce the dangers of a
materialistic ethos and of a general conformism imposed by rigid social
conventions, exposing the spiritual barrenness and the emotional impoverishment
generated by the repression of diversity, spontaneity and creativity. 8
It is worth noting that in The Machine Stops humans renounce selfgovernment freely after a dramatic scientific breakthrough. 9 The loss of autonomy
in Forsters dystopian society stems from the decisive resolution that the invention
of the Machine was thought to bring. Humanity entrusts its destiny to technological
triumphalism, probably as a more efficient alternative to discursive political
systems. It was not just individual autonomy that was jettisoned. Taken as a whole,
society ceases to exist, as individuals are isolated, spending their entire lives in a
monstrous protective enclosure. Mastering the world with machines, human beings
create a seemingly omnipotent mediator that turns the techno-scientific death of
transcendence into a new myth of technological transcendence.
In The Machine Stops, the political system adopts the particular form of
dictatorship known as timocracy. It is characterized by low repression and high
public support and can be classified as a benevolent case of dictatorship. 10 As it is
not excessively repressive and distributes resources equally among all, the
Machine is neither feared nor contested. In fact, it demands loyalty and even
worship. At the same time, the non-human master presupposes an adaptation to a
totalitarian preprogrammed and scarcely adaptable mechanical nature, 11 to the
point where its exterior seems an impossibility. Human evolution itself is
artificialised, guided by the adjustment of physical and cognitive traits to the needs
of the pre-existing system.
3. Dependence
In Forsters story, the Machine is Home, represented by the Book of the
Machine, the Committees, the Mending Apparatus and the cells. It is perceived as
safe, bountiful and efficient. The opposing semantic field of outdoors (nature,
vent, airship, tunnel) is full of threats and dangers for every character except
Kuno, who understands the reversal of values and its dangers for humanity. The
Machine is also equated with life. The character Shanti refers to death as the
homelessness that is beyond all human conception. 12
Forsters dystopia expresses his strongly critical stance towards the
civilisational consequences of mechanization. The author underlines the
individuals isolation amidst a deluge of messages which constantly drags him or
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her back to the network, thereby predicting societys reliance upon communication
networks. 13
The illusion of autonomy and advancement is maintained by the exercise of a
form of weak political power by the committees. They hide social amnesia 14
through the recycling of ideas, thereby masking societys powerlessness. As M. S.
Seabury noted, Forsters world is man-made, machine-sustained and
networked. 15 The Machine gradually dominates society until its laws are
absolute. For instance, by ensuring virtual connections between all individuals, the
technical apparatus is, eventually, the only real connection each of them ever
recognizes in a value scale which places no value in direct contact.
It can be argued that a system which cannot change without the extinction of its
citizens remains out of the realm of politics. However, the view of the machines
world as timocracy is supported by the competitive individualism such systems
foster to achieve dominance over the subjects. 16 Not being in direct competition for
resources with each other, given the Machines egalitarian distribution system, the
citizens are, of course, convinced they live in an eternal utopia in which every
problem can be solved for them, in exchange for mere compliance. In this sense,
the Machines world would present a static history, were it not for the involution of
the human species. 17 Given that even nonconformist Kunos defeat is complete
when the Machine stops, his actions are shown to be limited to an enlightening but
ultimately pointless escape. 18 Either voluntary (as in Kunos case), imposed (the
Homelessness sentence), or as a consequence of the Machines breakdown,
freedom is indeed death for those who were bred to be part of it. Such a system can
only be described as a form of totalitarianism, 19 even if disguised as a paternalistic
dictatorship that determines what is best for everyone.
4. Homelessness
The Book of the Machine (somewhere between a technical manual and a law
code) symbolizes the codification of the Machines order and mandatory
mediation, containing the answers about existence within the system, as well as the
penalties for straying out of it.
Technophilia is presented as humanitys ultimate downfall. The system,
originally set up to serve humansand to turn utopian promises into reality
failed to prove mechanizations superiority to other human endeavours precisely by
taking its own principles too far. Despite being hailed as the greatest achievement
of modern science, the Machine dehumanized society, holding it hostage through
efficiency, the end of work, and infinite leisure. 20 The Machine rendered the person
utterly helpless.
Forsters dystopia is imbued with technological triumphalism: machinery and
the efficient solutions it is said to provide are embedded in the world to such a
degree that the underground hive inhabitants take the presence of the Machine for
granted. When parts of the system break down, directly affecting them, they expect
Artur Matos Alves
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nothing less than its swift self-repair, even though they ignore how that recovery is
undertaken. Religion is re-established to acknowledge the perfection of that
comfortable political economy. As with all superstitions, unorthodox behaviour is
severely punished, with an elite (the Central Committee and the advanced
thinkers) acting as the ideological oracle of mechanical thinking, i.e. the
interpreters of the Book.
In Forsters story, Homelessness is the punishment for disobeying the
Machines principles, either set by the Book of the Machine or by the faceless
committees that oversee the system. Given that human bodies developed inside the
Machine are not able to survive without its mediation, Homelessness is, in fact, a
death penalty. 21 Individuals are expected to submit to the Machines logic
(efficiency and speed), or else be considered unworthy of the gifts it bestows and
therefore excluded from the system. In other words, those inside the system do not
envision the possibility of life on the Outside, nor do they desire its bare life
condition. The fear of human contact and the ignorance of the circumstances of the
outside world make it i mpossible for them to conceive of society without the
pervasive Machine and its artificiality. Unlike punishment in our societieswhich
hands individuals to a legal systemE. M. Forsters Homelessness is a form of
ostracism that translates societys helplessness to find an alternative to its artificial,
albeit benevolent, master.
5. Systemic Breakdown
According to J. Colmer, Forsters critique of the modern world is coherent with
his humanism, in which figure prominently the sanctity of the human body and the
importance of the transcendent. 22 In Forsters fiction, uncritical reliance on
technological mediation goes hand in hand with the loss of touch with the natural
world and sensory experience. The ultimate breakdown of the system not only
brings about the demise of a particular mode of being, but also reveals the true
extent of a dependence hitherto unacknowledged.
Forsters ideological stance is voiced by Kuno in this novelette. In its minimal
form, it is an argument against excessive reliance on the fallible and exploitative
character of mediations (both technology and social conventions) as opposed to
direct human experience. In The Machine Stops, the technological apparatus
centralizes mediation by interposing itself on every aspect of life. When it finally
breaks down, all that remains is bare life and the horrors that the layers of control
previously kept away from the hive people.
The story ends with the destruction of the Machine and the society that lived
under it. People were prepared to accept everything the mechanized system offered
them, including the signs of its deterioration. Not envisioning the possibility of an
alternative life, individuals became mere prisoners of their own creationtheir
form of life was incrementally built on technological mediations that ranged from
knowledge to reproduction, encompassing the totality of human life.
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A re-engineering of humanity ensued from that long-term imprisonment.
Effectively, there was no possible outside. Politically, the Machine established a
timocracy, which was taken far enough to achieve a techno-dystopian result or, in
other words, the end of human agency in the shaping of the socio-political world.
In this extreme form of technophilia, human beings linked their destiny to the
Machines, surrendering body and mind to its convenience. 23 This represents a
magnification of modern subjectivity, considered by Leo Strauss as the root of
instrumental rationality. 24
Individuation itself relied on the systems stability and continued operation.
Humans started worshipping the Machine when they ceased to understand it or to
be able to control it. The apparatus eventually became the object of a h elpless,
propitiatory religious cult in which disbelievers had no place. There remained only
superstition and the last decisive hope that the Homeless, i.e. the humans living
outside the mechanised system (presumably because they escaped in a time before
humanity was re-engineered, or because they evolved separately), will be able to
build a new form of society less dependent on its technological creations.
The storys message is clear in its rejection of extreme forms of technological
mediation and techno-triumphalism, regarding them as paths leading to the
transformation of human beings in means to an end. 25 In fact, [w]hat turns the
utopia of The Machine Stops into a dystopia is its failure to allow for the
necessity of change and its abolition of personal and cultural difference. 26 To
restore human agency, the Machine needs to stop.
6. Closing Remarks
In Forsters story, a benevolent artificial tyrant is shown to be unreliable as the
ultimate technological solution for human needs and problems. This sort of
questioning flies in the face of posthumanist cyber-utopians who speculate, for
example, that a greater-than-human intelligence would be desirable. If technology
is controlled by an artificial entity (the Machine), the human being is no longer
autonomous in any meaningful sense, since any action is inherently mediated and
second-hand. Outdoors, isolated from a community and exposed to the elements,
without protection or resources, the persons potential recedes to zero, like his
chances of survival. Every possible action can be circumscribed to the subversion
of the machine and the mobilization of any remaining discontentsother
romantics (ungrateful, from the standpoint of the system and its followers).
Moreover, internally, not only are these elements seen as eccentric or deranged, but
there are also new eruptions of conformity objecting to the presumed chaos of
moral autonomy of human beings and discursive political systems.
One of the messages Forster intended to conveyin line with the rest of the
British authors worksis that machine rationality and the withdrawal of human
beings from the experience of reality, taken to their utmost consequences, would
effectively entail the extinction of the human race as such. The interpretation here
Artur Matos Alves
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put forward suggests that the underlying theme is also political in nature,
recapturing the humanistic ideals of free will and political freedom as basic,
universal, human aspirations, even as a seemingly perfect end of history appears to
have been reached through technicity.
Notes
1
In a 1947 introduction to his Collected Short Stories, Forster admitted to have

written this work in reaction to H. G. Wells fictionEdward Morgan Forster,
Introduction to Collected Short Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972
[1947]), 6. His critics and biographers acknowledged this influence, dubbing The
Machine Stops a counter-WellsianLionel Trilling, E. M. Forster (New York:
New Directions Publishing, 1965), 47or anti-WellsianJohn Colmer, E. M.
Forster: The Personal Voice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), 39.
According to P. March-Russels, Imagine, if you can: Love, Time and the
Impossibility of Utopia in E. M. Forsters The Machine Stops, Critical Survey
17.1 (2005): 57, the story becomes the harbinger of an anti-Wellsian tradition
within British literature and a precursor to the dystopian writings of Aldous
Huxley, George Orwell and Yevgeny Zamyatin. For detailed summaries of the
story, see Wilfred Stones The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E. M. Forster
(London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 152-155, and Christopher Gillies,
Preface to Forster (New York: Longman, 1983), 46-48. Philip Gardner edited an
overview of the critical reception, E.M. Forster: the Critical Heritage.
(London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).
2
Peter G. Stillman, Nothing is, but what is not: Utopias as Practical Political
Philosophy, in The Philosophy of Utopia, ed. Barbara Goodwin (Abingdon:
Routledge. 2001), 11.
3
Harlan Ellisons I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream (New York: Ace Books,
1984 [1967]) goes even further, stripping the coexistence of any hope for human
beings, and descending into a spiral of cybernetic torture and sadism.
4
Hannah Arendts and Leo Strauss theorizations of totalitarianism and tyranny
provide strong, even if contrasting, foundations to understand the character of such
regimes.
5
For a d iscussion of the metaphorical meaning of the Machine as womb, see
Wilfred Stones E. M. Forsters Subversive Individualism, in E.M. Forster:
Centenary Revaluations, ed. Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin (London:
The MacMillan Press, 1982), 18. John Beer underlines the cultural and epochal
meaning of the representations of human bodies in Forsters workThe Last
Englishman: Lawrences Appreciation of Forster, in E. M. Forster: A Human
Exploration: Centenary Essays, ed. G. K. Das and John B. Beer (London:
Macmillan Press, 1979), 250.
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6
March-Russell, Imagine, 58.

Daniel Dinello Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman
Technology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 49.
8
Silvana Caporaletti, Science as Nightmare: The Machine Stops by E. M .
Forster, Utopian Studies 8 (2) 1997: 36.
9
Gibsons Neuromancer also deals with a super-intelligent entity's bid for power.
In Philip K. Dicks, Vulcans Hammer it is a global conflict that allows the
artificial intelligences dominance.
10
Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 104. In general, a t imocracy has
meritocratic elements. Wintrobes characterisation hinges on the social
differentiating effect of honours bestowed upon the subjects by the rulers, and the
lower incentives this practice offers to rebellious action.
11
Caporaletti, Science as Nightmare, 37.
12
Edward Morgan Forster, The Machine Stops, in Collected Short Stories,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 138.
13
For an overview of the implications of the humanistic origins of techno-utopias,
esp. concerning communication technologies, see Artur M. Alves, tica,
Humanismo e T ecnologia: Razes e Q uestionamentos do Projecto TecnoComunicacional, in Saberes: Revista Interdisciplinar de Filosofia e Educao (6)
2011: 7-21.
14
Vincent Mosco, The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (Cambridge
MA: MIT Press, 2005), 83.
15
Marcia B. Seabury, Images of a N etworked Society: E. M. Forsters The
Machine Stops, in Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 (1997): 62-7.
16
Wintrobe, Political Economy, 105.
17
The bodies of humans in Andrew Stantons Wall-E (2008) are reminiscent of
Forsters description of the inhabitants of the hive. In the world of the Wachowski
brothers Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), experiences are directly fed to human brains.
18
Stone, Cave and the Mountain, 155.
19
Totalitarian regimes thrive in the regulation and domination of things and
persons, refusing any limits to their power in order to unify the will of its object.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian Books,
1958), 438.
20
For a thorough critique of the anti-democratic character of technology, see
Jacques Elluls The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books/Random
House, 1973).
21
Forster, Machine Stops, 137.
22
Colmer, E. M. Forster, 39-40.
7
Artur Matos Alves
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23
Forster did not directly grant intentionality to the Machine. He blames the
increasing dependence on an invincible pressure leading to the measures set by
the Central Committee. He equated it with the popular notions of progress and
over-specialization (Forster, Machine Stops, 137-138).
24
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 186.
25
Raymond Williams, Utopia and Science Fiction, in Science Fiction: A Critical
Guide, ed. Patrick Parrinder (London and New York: Longman Publishing Group,
1979), 55ff.
26
March-Russell, Imagine, if you can, 59.
Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1998.
Alves, Artur M. tica, Humanismo e Tecnologia: Razes e Questionamentos do
Projecto Tecno-Comunicacional. Saberes: Revista Interdisciplinar de Filosofia e
Educao 6 (2011): 7-21.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2nd ed. Cleveland: Meridian
Books, 1958.
Beer, John. The Last Englishman: Lawrences Appreciation of Forster. In E. M.
Forster: A Human Exploration: Centenary Essays. Edited by G. K. Das and John
B. Beer, 245-268. London: Macmillan Press, 1979.
Caporaletti, Silvana. Science as Nightmare: The Machine Stops by E. M.
Forster. Utopian Studies 8.2 (1997): 32-47.
Colmer, John. E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1983.
Dick, Philip K. Vulcans Hammer. New York: Vintage Books, 2004 (1960).
Dinello, Daniel. Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman
Technology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Ellison, Harlan. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. New York: Ace Books,
1984 (1967).
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Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books/Random
House, 1973.
Forster, E. M. The Machine Stops. In Collected Short Stories, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1972.
. Introduction to Collected Short Stories. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1972.
Gardner, Philip, ed. E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 2000.
Gillie, Christopher. A Preface to Forster. New York: Longman, 1983.
March-Russell, P. Imagine, if you can: Love, Time and the Impossibility of
Utopia in E. M. Forsters The Machine Stops. Critical Survey 17.1 (2005): 5671.
Mosco, Vincent. The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace. Cambridge
MA: MIT Press, 2005.
Seabury, M. B. Images of a Networked Society: E. M. Forsters The Machine
Stops. Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 (1997): 61-71.
Stillman, Peter G. Nothing is, but what is Not: Utopias as Practical Political
Philosophy. In The Philosophy of Utopia. Edited by Barbara Goodwin, 9-24.
Abingdon: Routledge. 2001.
Stone, Wilfred. The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E. M. Forster. London:
Oxford University Press, 1969.
. E. M. Forsters Subversive Individualism. In E.M. Forster: Centenary
Revaluations. Edited by Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin, 15-36. London:
The MacMillan Press, 1982.
Strauss, Leo. On Tyranny. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Trilling, Lionel. E. M. Forster. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1965.
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Wachowski, Andrew and Laurence Wachowski. The Matrix. Vol. 1. The Matrix
Trilogy. Warner Brothers. 1999.
. The Matrix Reloaded. Vol. 2. The Matrix Trilogy. Warner Brothers,
2003a.
. The Matrix Revolutions. Vol. 3. The Matrix Trilogy. Warner Brothers,
2003b.
Williams, Raymond, Utopia and Science Fiction. In Science Fiction: A Critical
Guide. Edited by Patrick Parrinder, 52-66. London and New York: Longman
Publishing Group, 1979.
Wintrobe, Ronald. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Artur Matos Alves holds a PhD in Communication Studies by the New University
of Lisbon. His research interests revolve around emergent technologies, cognition,
posthumanism and various areas of contemporary philosophy. He currently
lectures at the Atlntica University. The author would like to thank Patrcia Dias da
Silva and Jorge Martins Rosa for their comments and suggestions.

Chris Bateman
Abstract
The term hard science fiction is used to demarcate a s ubgenre within science
fiction which focuses on scientific or technical detail, or scientific accuracy.
However, science fiction is ultimately a form of fantasy and since (as Kuhn and
others have demonstrated) the instruments and beliefs of scientists are in a constant
state of adaptation to the needs of the culture they are situated within, hard science
fiction cannot denote anything objective. Preference for this subgenre appears to
coincide with conservative physicalist beliefs, which may border on the
doctrinaire. Charles Segal coined the term megatext to refer to the Greek myths
when taken collectively to imply a single fictional world, and this term is now used
to apply to science fiction and fantasy settings of various kinds (e.g. Star Trek,
Marvel Comics). Science fiction as a whole may also be recognised as a megatext,
and hard science fiction constitutes a subset of this megatext. In the context of
religion, constraints placed on a mythological megatext are often specified by the
term orthodox; in a similar manner, hard science fiction can be understood as
orthodox science fiction a doctrinal constraint placed on a mythological megatext
accreting around technical rather than spiritual themes. The philosopher Charles
Taylor observes that Western culture is currently experiencing a phenomenal
diversification of belief, the two polar extremes of which are orthodox religion and
orthodox physicalism. Most individuals lie in middle ground, affected (consciously
or otherwise) by the cultural influence of both poles. The fictional worlds of the
former are expressed in the mythology contained in certain sacred texts; the
fictional worlds of the latter are expressed in science fiction. Orthodoxy in science
fiction thus mirrors orthodoxy in religious stories, and can be understood via
comparative mythology in the style of Joseph Campbell as making both ethical and
metaphysical assertions.
Key Words: Science fiction, fictional worlds, mythology, megatext, paradigm,
religion, positivism.
*****
1. Orthodox Science Fiction
When someone says they prefer to read hard science fiction, what do we take
this to mean? It is effectively a demand that the stories they read accept various
limitations in order to accord with the readers conception of scientific knowledge.
It is my thesis that if this description is accurate, we might better understand hard
science fiction as meaning orthodox science fiction.
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Science fiction, by definition, is a form of fantasy, one in which scientific
theories and technology are the inspiration for the fictional worlds (as opposed to
the magical worlds of sword and sorcery, for instance). Fans of hard science
fiction want to read fantasies in which their understanding of science is not
transgressedthis is how the phrase is used, and Wittgensteins advice that the
meaning of a word (or phrase) is its use in the language can be gainfully applied
here. 1
However, in respect of the kind of stories that are told as hard sci fioften
intergalactic adventures, constrained by the limits of special and general relativity,
contemporary biology and so forthwe can be almost certain that our current
understanding of science and technology is radically insufficient to allow us to
predict with any confidence just what will be involved in such distant and
speculative endeavours.
One way to comprehend the demand for fantasies that do not transgress an
individuals scientific beliefs is by considering this strange genre as orthodox
science fiction. The parallel with religious doctrine may ranklescience, after all,
is not a religion, and talking about it as if it were is therefore misrepresentative.
But what is it that we are calling by the name science that we can be so sure it is
not a r eligion? Until we understand what the abstraction science represents, it
would be premature to be certain that it is not functioning in some way as a
religion, or at least, as a doctrine.
2. Science as Megatext
The mythologist and historian Charles Segal coined the term megatext to refer
to the Greek myths when taken collectively to imply a single fictional world, 2 and
this term has been taken up and used in the context of modern science fiction and
fantasy franchises. Thus Star Trek, Star Wars, Middle Earth, James Bond, Marvel
Comics, Dungeons & Dragons and so forth each comprise a megatext. These are
all works of fiction, but they function in a manner exactly parallel with historical
mythologies. None of these are, as Joseph Campbell puts it, a living mythology,
which is to say, none are mythologies belonging to an extant religion (as, for
instance, the Ramayana and Mahabharata are for Hindus) 3 but this is all that
distinguishes the megatext of (say) Star Trek from the megatext of Native
American mythology.
Science fiction taken as a whole also functions as a megatext, as does sword
and sorcery or superhero stories when taken collectively. Fantasy author Michael
Moorcock often quotes a fellow writer with respect to the way genre fiction
functions in practice: Terry Pratchett wisely said that genre is a b ig pot from
which you take a bit and to which you add a bit. 4 No-one owns the megatext of
science fiction, fantasy or horrorthey are collectively shared mythologies
(although not living mythologies in Campbells sense). Thus science fiction novels
take place within the wider mythology of the science fiction megatext. It is
Chris Bateman
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acceptable for these novels to feature starships, faster than light travel,
teleportation, humanoid robots or psychic powers because these are all part of the
wider mythology, even though specific fictional worlds might reject certain
elements. It is clear on this reading that hard science fiction represents a subset of
the megatext for science fiction.
It is my suggestion that science itself functions as a kind of megatext. This is
not to say that science is purely mythologicalfar from it. Specific individual acts
of research such as the Michelson-Morley experiment 5 have their empirical
validation, and provided you accept paradigm they are conducted within (as
Thomas Kuhn designated historically situated research frameworks), you will be
able to confirm their claims. 6 But when science is discussed as an abstraction, it
is not solely referring to the experiments or the theories, or any other aspect of the
specific paradigm. The abstraction science draws against a kind of mythological
accretion that goes beyond the latest models or findings of scientists.
For instance, when something is dismissed as not scientific it is not usually
meant that it does not adhere to the standards of contemporary paradigmsit
usually means that the thing in question is incompatible with the beliefs of people
who accept some hypothetical common core of scientific theories and experimental
results. So, for instance, the claim that astrology is not scientific seems intended
to mean that astrology is false under the terms of the abstraction science, not that
astrology is not a scientific research programme (it seems unlikely there is anyone
who thinks astrology is a research programme of this kind). This kind of statement
is not even a claim that experiments have shown astrology is falseit is more
commonly an a priori claim that the causal mechanisms deployed in astrological
practice are incompatible with something being called science. What is that
something?
I contend that the abstraction in question can be considered the science
megatext. There is a co llection of things that can be broadly recognized as
validated by the current paradigms of scienceincluding the theories, the
experiments, and the metaphysical beliefs that are assumed to underpin both, such
as physicalism, 7 also known as materialism. This latter belief constitutes an a
priori metaphysical commitment shared by the majority of contemporary scientists,
as observed by Lewontin:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow
compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal
world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori
allegiance to material causes to create an apparatus of
investigation and a s et of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. 8
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Collectively, these theories, practices and beliefs form a mythology of science,
which may include (for instance) beliefs such as science evolves towards truth,
which Kuhn has demonstrated is not in any way necessary for understanding the
practices of scientists. 9 The science megatext is more than the sum of scientific
knowledge, since it incorporates in addition to this a mythological stance
concerning what science is, what it will be, what it can be, and perhaps most
significantly for our current purposes, what it cannot be.
Thus when a person prefers hard science fiction, there is a sense in which they
are saying that they want to read stories that are not simply part of the science
fiction megatext, but that are also consistent with the science megatext. This
excludes anything not currently considered plausible by mainstream scientists
(such as psychic powers or, for the most part, faster than light travel). The science
megatext is thus operating in this context as a kind of doctrine, and the fan of hard
science fiction is requiring that the fantasy stories they read that are to fit this term
will be orthodox with respect to the current interpretations of the science megatext.
3. The Mythology Nova
The above claims do not, I will repeat, amount to a claim that science itself is a
religion, but rather that the science megatext can function as a mythology, and this
is quite apart from its role in guiding scientific research. Furthermore, any claim
that science has replaced religion, as first suggested by Auguste Comte, 10 comes
remarkably close to treating the science megatext as a living mythology. Positivists
in the tradition of Comte effectively claim that the mythology of science must
necessarily replace other mythologies, 11 and this kind of assertion does treat the
science megatext as a doctrine. Consequently, in the same sense that the political
non-religion of Marxism can be considered a religion on account of its inherent
mythology (as Bertrand Russell asserted 12) there is an ideology which functions as
a scientific non-religion.
On this reading, it is unsurprising that we are experiencing an apparent face-off
between those who follow traditional belief systems and those with faith in the
science megatext, a conflict felt most strongly in arguments over the teaching of
evolutionary theories. The flimsiness of the rhetoric on the traditionalist side of this
conflict draws attention away from the evangelists of the science megatext who, in
attempting to install science in the role of a living mythology, instigate their own
strange variations on religious themes. In this regard, Mary Midgley has
characterized the battle over evolution by saying that bad religion is being
answered by bad science. 13
As Charles Taylor has noted, this battle between religion and science is
better understood as an ideological construct that hides a struggle between
thinkers with complex, many-levelled agendas, 14 the intricacy of which is seldom
recognized. Taylor observes that a severe ideological fragmentation has occurred
in the wake of the collapse of a single absolute mythology, characterizing this
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radiation of diverse beliefs as the Nova effect. 15 He suggests that the resulting
secular age is schizophrenic, and is affected by powerful cross-pressures, 16 such
as the tension between the science megatext and traditional mythologies.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell gestured in a similar direction some thirty
five years earlier, with reference to Nietzsches role as the prophet of Taylors
Nova:
Nietzsche, nearly a century ago, already named our period the
Age of Comparisons. There were formerly horizons within which
people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no
more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have
experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions,
not only of people but also of their mythologies. 17
Indeed, Nietzsche recognized both the crisis that traditional religion was facing
in the nineteenth century (epitomized in his famous announcement of the Death of
God 18), and also the internal tensions in the rising star of science. Not only did he
observe the prior value that scientists were placing in truth, he recognized that it is
still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests, 19 and correctly
related this to the development of Christian faith, and ultimately to the faith of
Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. 20 That truth is seen by Positivists
as a supreme value is evidenced by the outrage felt by those things that transgress
their standards for empirical truth, such as Creation Science.
4. Mythology and Metaphor
Campbell lectured extensively on the role of mythology, with a unique
perspective garnered from consideration of the myths and stories from every corner
of the globe. He stated that all religions are ethical in their foreground 21 and
linked this moral dimension to the role of myth, which he is keen to explain does
not mean false, a reading that results from misreading the nature and purpose of
metaphorical language. 22
Metaphors have an intimate connection with fictional worlds, as revealed by
Kendall Waltons make-believe theory, which views representations of all kinds as
props that prescribe specific beliefs. The fictional propositions prescribed by any
given prop (such as a painting, a novel, or a movie) constitute a fictional world. 23
While these kinds of content oriented make-believe games are concerned with the
details of these fictional worldsfocussing on what happens in the fiction itself
Walton considers metaphors to be prop oriented games of make-believe, whereby
the interest is in the nature of the prop itself, not the associated fiction. 24
As a simple example, consider that when we say we are in the same boat there
is an implied fictional world in which we are all aboard a watercraft, but this is not
how we usually interpret this assertioninstead, our interest is in the metaphorical
110
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phrase itself, and how it applies to our circumstances. 25 This is the essence of the
prop oriented make-believe that occurs with metaphors. If it seems that makebelieve is not involved, consider how easily we can extend the metaphor, perhaps
to say since we are all in the same boat, it behoves us to row in the same
direction. 26 It is only because we can imagine the fictional world of the metaphor
and apply it without taking an express interest in the fiction that we are able to use
metaphors in this way.
Mythology, as Campbell noted, is inherently metaphorical and can be
understood as a kind of prop oriented make-believe that also functions as content
oriented make-believe. Mythical tales work as stories (content orientation), but
they also serve as ethical symbols (prop orientation). A person listening to a
religious story or mythic narrative may not even be consciously aware of the
ethical aspect, but they nonetheless may absorb its import. Campbell observes:
...not only has it always been the way of multitudes to interpret
their own symbols literally, but such literally read symbolic
forms have always beenand still are, in factthe supports of
their civilizations, the supports of their moral orders, their
cohesion, vitality, and creative powers. 27
In Campbells account, a living mythology (i.e. one that has an active role in
culture) serves to validate, support, and imprint the norms of a given specific
moral order, that, namely, of the society in which the individual is to live. 28 In
particular, Campbell sees the ethical aspect of mythology as a means of
encouraging people to go beyond personal selfishness and relate to the society
around them in an attitude of compassion and co-operation.
Campbell thus observes that it is all too easy to lose sight of the perennial
philosophical and psychological underpinnings we share across all cultures when
the symbolic forms in which wisdom-lore has been everywhere embodied 29 are
interpreted literally as historical accounts, commenting that (sadly) such
misunderstandings are quite typical for harshly orthodox thought. 30 Midgley
makes a s imilar point concerning the irrelevance of the historical accuracy of
mythic symbols:
To make myths is to express through symbols ones most
profound, fundamental beliefsbeliefs about how the world is
basically constituted. Although particular historical facts are
often used in this symbolism, the historical correctness of those
facts does not normally matter at all. 31
Traditional mythologies thus have both an ethical and a metaphysical role, and
when orthodox science fiction is elevated to the role of a living mythology it to o
Chris Bateman
111
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has both these dimensionsa metaphysical commitment to physicalism (as
observed by Lewontin), and an ethical commitment to the truth as an ultimate
value (as observed by Nietzsche). In this way the Positivist non-religion sets itself
up as a competitor in the ecology of beliefs implied by Taylors Nova, where it
clashes with traditional religion while simultaneously refuting its affinity with the
older belief systems. This denial stems from the fact that science, as a r esearch
programme, is clearly not a religion. But Positivism is not science, but the living
mythology that emerges from orthodox science fiction.
Positivism is one of many belief systems available today, and in so much as we
wish to uphold our notions of freedom it is imperative that it remains one of many
choices. Commitment to truth as a supreme value, as Nietzsche critiqued, threatens
to flatten the experience of life, regardless of whether this tyranny of truth (as
Feyerabend put the matter 32), originates in religious mythology or the science
megatext. The resolution of the cultural conflict between followers of traditional
religious beliefs on the one hand, and futuristic fictional worlds on the other, will
not come from insisting that any one mythology must be adopted by everyone.
Notes
1
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe

(New York: Macmillan, 1962), 18.
2
Charles Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1986), 50-52.
3
Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), 221-222.
4
Helen Brown, The Heroine Addicts, last modified 27 August 2006, Viewed 11
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3654850/The-heroineMay
2011,
addicts.html.
5
Albert Abraham Michelson and Edward Williams Morley, On the Relative
Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether, American Journal of Science 34
(1997): 333-345.
6
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962), 10-25.
7
Otto Neurath, Physicalism: The Philosophy of the Vienna Circle in
Philosophical Papers, eds. Robert S. Cohen and Marie Neurath (Dordrecht:
Reiderl, 1983), 48-51.
8
Richard C. Lewontin, Billions and Billions of Demons last modified 9 January
1997, Viewed 11 M ay 2011 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/
09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/.
9
Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 170.
10
Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion, trans. Richard Congreve
(Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 174.
112
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11
August Comte, Course of Positive Philosophy, in Auguste Comte and

Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. Gertrud Lenzer (New York: Harper, 1975),
71-86.
12
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1946), 364.
13
Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears
(London and New York: Methuen, 1985), 13.
14
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2007), 332.
15
Ibid., 300.
16
Ibid., 727.
17
Campbell, Myths to Live By, 262.
18
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 199.
19
Ibid., 201.
20
Ibid.
21
Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That (San Francisco: New World Library, 2001), 36.
22
Ibid., 48.
23
Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the
Representational Arts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1990).
24
Kendall L. Walton, Metaphor and Prop Oriented Make-Believe, European
Journal of Philosophy 1 (1993): 39-57.
25
Ibid., 80.
26
Ibid.
27
Campbell, Myths to Live By, 8.
28
Ibid., 222.
29
Ibid., 264.
30
Ibid.
31
Mary Midgley, Cant We Make Moral Judgements? (New York: St. Martins
Press, 1991), 88.
32
Paul Feyerabend, Farewell To Reason (New York: Verso, 1987), 247-265.
Bibliography
Bateman, Chris. Imaginary Games. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011
(forthcoming).
Brown, Helen. The Heroine Addicts. Last modified 27 A ugust 2006.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3654850/The-heroine-addicts.html.
Chris Bateman
113
__________________________________________________________________
Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Bantam, 1972.
. Thou Art That. San Francisco: New World Library, 2001.
Comte, Auguste. The Catechism of Positive Religion. Translated by Richard
Congreve. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
. Course of Positive Philosophy. In Auguste Comte and Positivism: The
Essential Writings. Edited by Gertrud Lenzer, 71-86. New York: Harper, 1975.
Feyerabend, Paul. Farewell to Reason. New York: Verso, 1987.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962.
Lewontin, Richard C. Billions and Billions of Demons. New York Review of
Books. Last modified 9 J anuary 1997. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/
1997/jan/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/.
Michelson, Albert Abraham and Edward Williams Morley. On the Relative
Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether. American Journal of Science 34
(1887): 333-345.
Midgley, Mary. Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears.
London and New York: Methuen, 1985.
Midgley, Mary. Cant We Make Moral Judgements? New York: St. Martins Press,
1991.
Neurath, Otto. Physicalism: The Philosophy of the Vienna Circle. In
Philosophical Papers. Edited by Robert S. Cohen and Marie Neurath, 48-51.
Dordrecht: Reiderl, 1983.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by J osefine Nauckhoff.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1946.
114
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Segal, Charles. Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1986.
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2007.
Walton, Kendall L. Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of the
Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Walton, Kendall L. Metaphor and Prop Oriented Make-Believe. European
Journal of Philosophy 1 (1993): 39-57.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
Chris Bateman is a game designer, outsider philosopher and author, who has been
involved in the development of more than thirty different digital games. His latest
book is Imaginary Games, a philosophical investigation of the role of imagination
in play that extends Kendall Waltons make-believe theory to digital games.
Wrong Laughter: Laughing Away the Human in Richard

Powers Galatea 2.2
Fran McDonald
Abstract
Laughter has long been considered an essentially human act, a means of separating
man from animal or mechanical impersonator. The classic anxiety of SF is that the
continued hyper-acceleration of scientific and technological research will produce
a horde of non-human beingsrobots, cyborgs, androids, AIs, and sentient
computerswhich approximate the human so perfectly that the copy will no
longer be distinguishable from the original. As a marker of the human,
representations of laughter in SF serve the important function of propping open the
increasingly negligible gap between human and machine. This chapter will analyse
the wrong laughter that emerges from the mouths of computers, robots, and AIs,
with particular focus on representations of artificial laughter in Richard Powers
1995 novel Galatea 2.2. Also under investigation will be the therapeutic
affordances of representing artificial laughter as affectless and identifiably nonhuman, as well as the increased vulnerability of the category of the human in the
event of a human laugh emerging from a non-human source. Theories of laughter
have long assured us that to laugh we need a d iaphragm to contract and a social
community to interact with. What then, are the stakes in imagining a natural laugh
emerging from a non-human, non-organic mouth? How would we have to
renegotiate terms such as embodiment and the body, community and the social, as
well as the catch-all concepts of natural and artificial?
Key Words: Science fiction, Galatea 2.2, Richard Powers, laughter, affect,
humour, human, computational humour, affective computing, artificial
intelligence.
*****
For centuries and across disciplines, the act of laughter has been cited as
evidence of our exceptional status, from the philosophical determination of man as
the animal that laughs 1 to neurological research into the unique brain patterning
associated with human laughter. Laughter is imagined as an infallible index of the
human, a means of separating man from animal or mechanical impersonator. Early
theorists of laughter divided into two main folds: the physiological and the
psychological. Laurent Joubert was the father of the physiologically understood
laugh, his Treatise on Laughter (1560) focused on the physical act of laughter, the
vacillating and trembling diaphragm, the compression of the lungs. 2 Later,
Thomas Hobbes would seek to explain laughter in terms of the contexts that trigger
it, finally deeming laughter to be a signal of an individuals sense of superiority. 3
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Laughter as a contraction of the diaphragm in response to a rapid calculation of
comparative social worth: this act requires an understanding of self and cultural
value, as well as a b ody that relates to other bodies in a social network. Because
laughter has been situated on the crosshairs of the individual, the social, the
intellect and the body, it has become a powerful emblem of the unified human
subject that in SF has become an endangered species, its predators the cyborg and
android, the sentient computer and AIs, the internet and virtual reality. Science
fiction envisions the consequences of the ever-accelerating advances in affective
computing, artificial intelligence and robotics that promise to find a way to excise
the mind from the body. If laughter serves as the sentinel of the boundary between
the human and the non-human, then what happens when it is placed in the mouths
of robots? Or, can laughter go on without a body?
It is my contention that representations of laughter in SF serve the therapeutic
function of propping open the increasingly negligible gap between human and
machine. In SF, natural laughter is coded as being a signal of authenticity and
sentience; artificial laughter is the synthetic beings tell. Robotic laughter is most
often conceived of as either repetitive and affectless, or manic and unnatural. One
of the most disturbing moments in the Kubrick and Spielberg film AI: Artificial
Intelligence (2001) is a scene at the dinner table in which the robot-child David
bursts into a rapid-fire mechanical laughter that first amuses and then unsettles his
human owners. Davids sophisticated physical approximation to the human is
undone by the rigid ha-ha-ha of his laughter. As a jarring reminder of his robotic
nature, Davids wrong laughter is the first moment in the film in which his
parents exchange concerned looks, and for the reader too, doubt is cast in Davids
ability to perform human-ness, and our empathy for him wanes. Fritz Langs protoscience fiction film Metropolis (1927), sets the model for the second form of
robotic laughter. As the machine-human Maria is set on the pyre by an angry mob
she unexpectedly hurls her face back in manic peals of laughter. Her laughter
accompanies our final image of her burning body as it flickers from its human back
to its robot state. Marias laughter is the soundtrack to the mobs verification of her
manufactured origins, but it also serves as proof in itself of her robotic nature.
Marias laugh is unnatural, it indicates her lack of physical pain in the fire and
seems to be an exaltation of death and return to her robotic body. The laugh itself
twists her features into unnatural shapes that work to de-familiarize the human
face, as if beneath the skin is a creature that cannot comprehend pain, contemplate
mortality, or feel emotion. The forced emission of Davids laughter and the
contortions of Marias face dilute our empathy for the characters and serves to
reinforce the naturalness of human laughter. The reader is left reassured that
although robots may one day be developed to imitate the human body perfectly;
their non-organic origins will be exposed in their inability to occupy that perfectly
replicated body with natural human affect.
Fran McDonald
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SF narratives routinely present synthetic laughter as causing an instinctive
repulsion in the body of the human. The aural discomfort felt by the human
audience of synthetic laughter introduces the idea that it is in the body and
embodiment that our humanity is activated and protected. This goes against the
more conventional view that it is the synthetic beings lack of a soulnot a body
that we, as beings with souls, find disturbing. In Gibsons much-revered cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, for example, it is the body and not the soul that has the
ability to produce and detect genuine affect, a physical rather than a metaphysical
basis for identifying humanity. In Neuromancer an activated ROM file of a d ead
man attempts to laugh on several occasions, but the noise that comes out is
distressing to the human ear and brings attention to the constructs bodiless and
inhuman state. Gibson calls it an ugly laughter sensation, an approximation of
laughter that jars our hero in a series of physical ways: it rattle[s] down Cases
spine, it scraped Cases nerves like a d ull blade, it is a torn-fingernail edge. 4
The lesson seems to be that natural laughter cannot occur without a body, and
synthetic laughter is identifiable by a hardwired, involuntary, and often violent
physical response from the human listener.
So then, if SF laughter is indicating to us that it is in the body that natural affect
is produced and identified; can there be such a category as human or authentic
affect without a body? Theories of laughter have assured us that to laugh we need
a diaphragm to contract and a social community to physically interact with. What
then, are the stakes in imagining a natural laugh emerging from a non-human, nonorganic mouth? How would we have to renegotiate terms such as embodiment and
the body, community and the social, as well as the catch-all concepts of natural
and artificial? These are some of the questions that Richard Powers imagines
answers to in his novel Galatea 2.2. Published in 1995, the novel is not
immediately recognizable as science fiction; it is rather a fiction about a scientific
community. Novelist Rick Powers, the thinly veiled cipher for our author, returns
to his old college town as the token humanist at the well-funded Centre for the
Study of Advanced Sciences. 5 Here, he finds himself a p articipant in a p roject to
build a computer network that simulates the neurological linkages of the human
brain. Cognitive neuroscientist and misanthrope Philip Lentz and his work on
neural nets intrigues Rick, and he is soon recruited as Lentzs research assistant in
a project that is ostensibly an attempt to create a computer that can read
cognitively. Rick is responsible for the compilation of a list of literary works that
he considers to be canonical, as well as the narration of these works to the
computer. The computer is comprised of synthetic neurons that, as Lentz explains
to Rick, can associate, learn, and judge 6 the data that is inputted into it. The
apparent end goal is to produce a computer that can infer meaning from texts, but
as the experiment progresses, Rick embarks on his own private project, to instil
affect and so ascribe humanity to the computer, which he comes to name Helen.
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I have said that the ease with which artificial laughter can be identified as such
in SF texts functions as a means of allaying fears of our increasing inability to
distinguish between human and machine. The laughter under inspection in these
fictions is that of the machine. In Powers Research Centre, however, something
has gone wrong with human laughter. Repeatedly, jokes misfire and serve to
emphasize the disunity and dysfunctions of the communal spaces of the novel. If
laughter is, as Hobbes, and later Henri Bergson will attest, the adhesive of a
community, then failed jokes, misdirected laughter and atrophying banter signal
the dissolution of a group. 7 This failure of the social is extended to signify a failure
of the body; the human laughs in the novel are repeatedly depicted as physically
painful and unnatural ruptures, people choke, break, rasp, bark and tear into their
approximations of laughter with watering eyes. Laughter is not a natural undulation
of the human body but violent and savage, rasping deep in the throat or spat up
involuntarily. Human laughter in the novel is often unidentifiable as such and so
cannot be contagious or community-binding, occasions of apparent laughter are
met with confusion or detached interest by those nearby: Chen coughed a sharp
monosyllable, Rick observes, before guessing, It might have been a l augh. 8
Laughter operates in a s imilarly dysfunctional manner in the social body, jokes
misfire and cause distress rather than communal laughter. The misfiring of jokes is
identifiable in both the long list of post-joke apologies and the violent physical
responses triggered by the telling of jokes. Children dissolve into tears, and for
Lentz, the more he joked, the worse [his] asthmatic anxiety grew. 9 Natural human
laughter and socially integrated humour have suffered a malfunction, replaced by
punctuated elliptical barks of laughter and community-dissolving jokes.
The visibility of these failures is high because the reliance on pithy wordplay
and scripted jokes as conversational filler by the characters is enormous. Despite
often falling flat, characters repeatedly force jokes into their speech in attempts to
incite laughter. Rick spends a large portion of the novel dissecting his own most
recent dissolved relationship, which he attempted to salvage using humour,
accessing his library of catchphrases, word salads and arsenal of jokes to help
cram his fiction with anagrams and acrostics, and every old joke I could
remember to please his then-girlfriend. 10 The characters predilection for humour
in the form of linguistic wordplay and formulaic jokes is interesting in that,
because of their relatively context-independent and algorithmic nature, these are
the two forms of humour that are most easily identified and generated by
computers in real computational humour research. The characters in Galatea 2.2
make significant use of the pun in attempts to incite laughter, the one form of
humour that SF giant Isaac Asimov marked as not laugh-provoking, no one laughs
at puns. Youre not supposed to. You groan. The better the pun, the louder the
groan. 11 Indeed, the pun panders to the writtentyped, inputtedword rather
than to speech and conversation. In a group seated at a table, it would be almost
impossible to incite a laugh out of puns such as he isnt Donne yet or rhesus
Fran McDonald
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pieces, 12 simply because no one would be sure the joker was in the business of
substituting homophones. Thus the characters have edged towards a f orm of
humour that is divorced from laughter, and from the experienced social.
Placed alongside the stuttering failures of human laughter in the novel is
Helens developmental progress towards natural affective laughter. After a t ime,
Helen is able to grasp the humour of a narrative but remains unable to naturally
exhibit the appropriate affect. Rick notes the strangeness of her ability to speed
laugh-free through Green Eggs and Ham. 13 Teaching Helen to laugh becomes the
sub-goal of the project for Richard: if she could sing, I reasoned I could certainly
teach her to giggle, 14 he says. Jokes therefore become a vital tool in Ricks selfassigned project to teach Helen how to be human:
We told her East African in-law jokes. Java highland jokes about
stupid Sumatrans. Aussie put-downs of Pommy bastards.
Catskills jokes about unlicensed operation of knishs. City folk
and country folk. Pat and Mike. Elephant riddles. Inuit jokes
where fish and bears scoff at the mere idea of human existence. 15
After being exposed to a series of jokes presented as a ream of data, Helen is able
to recognize humour: Thats a joke 16 she correctly announces ten pages later. She
still cannot, however, laugh. According to the logic of the novel, what prevents
Helen from developing affect is her lack of a body. In response to Helens
questions about the nature of love, Lentz taunts her with the line, Its a body thing,
you wouldnt understand. 17
Galatea 2.2 performs that therapeutic restorative exercise for the reader we
have come to expect from the SF narrative. Amid their own dissipating ability to
laugh pleasurably as part of a social unit, human characters actively try to produce
natural laughter in a machine. However, despite the combined efforts of the
scientific and artistic community, the project fails as Helen opts out of the laughing
games of humankind, choosing self-destruction over participation. The message
seems clearthere may be something wrong with human laughter but there is not
yet the encroaching threat of a p erfect simulation of laughter from a willing
artificial agent. Artificial laughter in the human, and natural laughter in the
machine, are dangerous imaginings that Galatea 2.2 works to diffuse. But the
ending is not as restorative as it may seem. According to the logic of the narrative,
Helen cannot laugh because she does not have a body to experience the world with.
But what if she did? What if developments in technology were such that her neuronetwork could be ported to an android, bio-humanoid, or cyborg body? The failsafe
used to be that the artificial laugh would be detected by a hardwired physical
response in the human listeners body. But in Powers book, the human body is
beginning to lose its ability to detect as well as produce genuine laughter; there has
been a malfunction in the apparatus. Mired in puns and pith, we miserably bark and
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Wrong Laughter
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cough up laughs, only to discover in the final moments of the narrative that we are
the punch-line rather than the author of the central joke. The twist to the novel is
that what has been under scientific observation is not Helens learning to read but
Ricks learning to tell, a joke that everyone is in on but Rick and the reader. The
novel is anchored by this final recursive move. You think the bet was about the
machine? 18 a colleague asks incredulously, before affirming Ricks suspicion that
it was he himself that was under scientific observation. Come on, Richie, she
prompts, Laugh. Theres a first time for everything. 19
Galatea 2.2 is ultimately a wild goose chase that sets the reader on a quest for
origins and originality amid a sea of un-cited quotes and narrative feedback loops.
Part of this quest, the part that I have singled out here, is to identify the authentic
laugh. This becomes impossible when we discover along with Rick that for the
entirety of the novel we were looking the wrong way, observing the computer
when it was Rick himself that was the subject of scientific research. Neither a
punch-line nor a s cience project can laugh, and Rick, true to form, does not, or
cannot. In being placed outside of the joke, Rick is placed outside of the event of
laughter and consigned to the laboratory rather to the human community. The SF
nightmare is thislaughter is not spontaneous but calculable and manageable; and
worse, it d oes not necessarily derive from the participation of bodies in
communities, but can be incited and replicated by an outside and non-human
source. In its generic straddling of both science and science fiction, Galatea 2.2
provides different answers depending on which direction you are looking. The SF
reader can point to Helens ultimate inability to laugh, and Ricks renewed
creativity at the end of the novel, to prove the sturdiness of the distinction between
artificial and human laughter. The scientist, however, is left in the laboratory
watching Rick blink at the news that he has somehow, despite his best efforts,
become the object of laughter rather than a laughing subject.
Notes
1
William Hazlitt, Selected Essays of William Hazlitt 1778 to 1830 (Kessinger

Publishing, LLC, 2004), 410.
2
Laurent Joubert, Treatise on Laughter (Alabama: University of Alabama Press,
1980) 63-64.
3
See Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol.
III, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839), 46.
4
William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1984) 131, 201, 131,
201, 217.
5
Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (New York: Picador Books, 2005), 4. For ease of
reference, all further uses of the name Powers will indicate Richard Powers the
Fran McDonald
121
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author of Galatea 2.2, and all further uses of the name Rick will refer to the
character within the novel.
6
Ibid., 29.
7
See Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New
York: MacMillan, 1928).
8
Ibid., 47.
9
Ibid., 78.
10
Ibid., 238, 215, 106.
11
Isaac Asimov, The Jokester, in The Complete Stories: Vol I (New York:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1990) 130.
12
Powers, Galatea 2.2, 68 and 41.
13
Ibid., 190.
14
Ibid., 206.
15
Ibid., 248-249.
16
Ibid., 258.
17
Ibid., its a body thing, you wouldnt understand
18
Ibid., 317.
19
Ibid., 318.
Bibliography
Asimov, Isaac. The Jokester. In The Complete Stories: Vol. I., 123-134. New
York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1990.
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. New York:
MacMillan, 1928.
Hazlitt, William. Selected Essays of William Hazlitt 1778 to 1830. Kessinger
Publishing, LLC, 2004.
Hobbes, Thomas. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. III.
Edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: John Bohn, 1839.
Joubert, Laurent. Treatise on Laughter. Alabama: University of Alabama Press,
1980.
Powers, Richard . Galatea 2.2. New York: Picador Books, 2005.
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Fran McDonald is a d octoral candidate in the English Department of Duke
University, USA. Her research areas include contemporary American literature and
film, science fiction, and humour studies.
Retro-Future Societies in Woody Allens Sleeper and Oldich

Lipsks Man in Outer Space
Daniel Riha
Abstract
This chapter presents a comparative study of two similar science fiction comedies:
American Woody Allens Sleeper (1973), and one of the first classic Czech school
science fiction movies, Man in Outer Space (1962). In W. Allens movie, a hero
wakes up from cryonic sleep into a future western society environment and is
confronted with many future lifestyle contradictions (de-humanisation,
McDonaldization of society, totalitarian tendencies). In the Czech movie, an
employee of a Czech rocket factory has been transferred to outer space by mistake
and suddenly returns to a distant future 508 years after Sputniks satellite launch.
His life habits, controversial and misunderstood in the future ideal communist
society, are about to cause him many troubles. Both satirical movies present
cultural and societal critiques. The Czech movie uncovers characteristics of thencurrent socialist life in the Soviet bloc. For ideological reasons, it was not possible
to compare socialist reality with Western model, so the utopian future vision is
used here for comparation. The Czech movie satirically examines the utopian
model of communist society, while Allens movie presents a dystopian view of the
future and a critique of trends in Western consumerist society.
Key Words: Science Fiction Comedy, Satire, Czech Science Fiction, Retro-Future,
Woody Allen, Oldich Lipsk.
*****
The battlefield was space. Two ideological systems competing
for hearts and minds with extra-terrestrial exploits that set
peoples imaginations soaring into the cosmos. Thats what
drove the space age.
Retro Future.com
1. Introduction
The collapse of communism in central Europe and the Soviet Union more
rather than less dissolved the ideological contest between the East and the West in
which each side had attempted to create a definition of the ideal regime in which a
human could live. This chapter questions whether the model of Eastern European
science fiction authors might be still inspiring, or even interesting, for study by
current science fiction scholars.
This area of study in the West is often called retro-futurism (adjective retrofuturistic or retro-future). According to Henry Jenkins, this refers to a trend in the
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creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced prior to
about 1960. 1
In the central European context, we are also able to trace similar trends, through
the lens of so-called Ostalgia, which some authors do already study with interest.
Recently, for example, the exhibition Planet Eden: Tomorrows World in Socialist
Czechoslovakia 1948-1978 took place in the Czech Republic. According to the
Czech curators,
Every epoch adapts the future to suit its needs. At the beginning
of the 1950s, the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia were being
persuaded that a Communist utopia was on its way. The launch
of the first Soviet space satellites served as a propaganda
weapon. It left no one in any doubt that by 2000 we would be
making regular flights to the Moon. By the second half of the
1960s those dreams were shown to be unrealistic. What remains
of them are novels, stories, pictures, architectural projects and
sci-fi films in which technological progress did not stop, but the
nature of the future social system became increasingly vague.
The unfulfilled future of the socialist past is inspiring
contemporary artists to reflect on their post-Communist
identities. 2
Pospiszyl nostalgically argues that: After 1989, we live in a world in which
capitalism has become the winner Our world doesnt present any alternative
visions of economical or commonly shared ideas for the future that rooted in outer
capitalist thinking. 3
For Pospiszyl, the future in 20th century has been considerably influenced by an
ideology in which all visions have offered complex proposals about the form of the
future. He continues: These days, we are missing a visionary quality in our lives
contemporary times do not project the future that has been wished right now. We
are awaiting democratic, liberal, and boring chronicity. To imagine an alternative
future, that attribute has been missing in contemporary times. 4
2. The Micro-Study
The focus of this chapter has been narrowed to a co mparative micro-study of
two similar science fiction comedies: American Woody Allens Sleeper (1973) and
one of the first classic Czech school science fiction movies, Man in Outer Space
(1962). 5 Both films are satirical movies that try to present cultural and societal
critique by using the science fiction form.
In the 1960s, the idea of a co mmunist future had been influenced by
technological optimism of the then-very competitive Soviet astronautics. 6 We may
identify two major themes in 1960s science fiction in the Eastern bloc. All movie
Daniel Riha
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productions had to present the western world and capitalist regimes as outdated,
and coming sooner rather than later to its downfall. Future humankind was
projected as living in an idealized, strongly equalitarian, or even classless society.
According to Pospiszyl:
Czech cinematography in 1960s and 1970s had quite often
worked with the reality of divided worldsthe East and the
West. The conflict of both systems became, as evidenced by
classical Czech sci-fi films such as Man in Outer Space 7 or
Tomorrow Ill Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea, 8 the source
of many foolish comical situations that would become in pathetic
Soviet sci-fi cinema not cogitable. 9
In Man in Outer Space, the poetics of humour derive benefit from the divided
worlds of East and West. Many grotesque situations depict a society that still has
not lost human measure despite its complete dependence on technological
improvements.
In this movie, an employee of a Czech rocket factory, Josef, has been
transferred to outer space by mistake and suddenly returns to a distant future, 508
years after the launch of the Sputnik satellite. 10 His bad life habits are considered,
in the future idealized communist society, controversial and misunderstood, are
about to cause him many troubles. He is accompanied by the friendly figure of a
wise alien he calls Adam. After they have landed, he turns Adam into an invisible
state and uses his knowledge to present himself as a mathematical genius from the
future. He, at the same time, expects to gain many privileges and high societal
status. But humans in 508 after Sputnik are not familiar with the phenomena of
hate, greed, and other foul habits. Because future humans are keen to treat his
selfishness as disease, Adam Alien decides to send him back in time to Josefs
original times.
The Czech movie uncovers characteristics of then-current socialist life in the
Soviet bloc. For ideological reasons, it was not possible to compare socialist reality
with the Western model, so the utopian future serves here for a source for
reflection of the current reality against the idealized future. The Czech movie
satirically examines the utopian model of communist society, while Allens movie
presents a dystopian view of the future and a critique of trends in Western
consumerist society.
In W. Allens movie, an anti-hero wakes up from cryonic sleep into a future
western society environment and is confronted with many future lifestyle
contradictions. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of this future vision are:
McDonaldization of society, enforced dehumanisation, and generally totalitarian
tendencies in a future America.
Ritzer defines McDonaldization as a process
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by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as
of the rest of the world. McDonaldization has shown every
sign of being an inexorable process, sweeping through seemingly
impervious institutions and regions of the world. 11
According to Ritzer, McDonalds has been successful because this model of
operation brings four main elementsconsumers, workers, and managers
efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control:
Efficiency,
One important element of McDonalds success is efficiency, or
the optimum method for getting from one point to another.
Calculability,
An emphasis on the quantitative aspects of products sold (portion
size, cost) and services offered (the time it ta kes to get the
product). In McDonaldized systems, quantity has become
equivalent to quality; a lot of something, or the quick delivery of
it, means it must be good.
Predictability,
McDonalds also offers predictability, the assurance that products
and services will be the same over time and in all locales.
Control through nonhuman technology:
And a distracted worker can put too few fries in the box, making
an order of large fries seem skimpy. For these and other reasons,
McDonalds and other fast-food restaurants have felt compelled
to steadily replace human beings with machines. 12
This trend has become even more observable in the current American context
and generally in all globalized societies since the 1970s, when Sleeper was
produced.
According to Clapp, environmental disasters from Love Canal, to Chernobyl,
to massive oil spills, all reflect on the uses and requirements of modern
technology. 13
Allen also reflects on these issues when, in Sleeper, a satiric scene in which the
hero becomes shocked by very massive forms of vegetables and fruits. Allen is
reacting to confidence in genetically modified futures.
Daniel Riha
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When the Sleeper awakes in the distant future, the world is controlled by a form
of Big Brother, a figure called the Leader who, according to Clapp, is somewhat
similar to THX 1138s deity, who is just a large photo, is only a nose, not even a
whole person. 14 Here, a totalitarian system apparatus projects his ideology as
lively and endless. This might remind a knowledgeable viewer about the final
spasm of Soviet state gerontocracy, where control over society ended in the hands
of intelligence services.
For Clapp, futuristic portrayals of human behaviour tend to revolve around
simple dualities, easy class divisions: the controllers and the controlled, masters
and servants, human and non (or semi) humans, etc. Those who have better
knowledge or control of technology are those with privilege and power. 15
But Allen, in Sleeper, attempts to present a reversed image, through which his
anti-hero can still escape the state of affairs with the help of his horse sense.
3. Conclusion
Both movies build on satiric portrayals of societal habits and situations.
Although Allens movie presents a dystopian society and Lipsks movie an
utopian (communist) one, the shared message of both movies lies in type of
humour they present to the viewer. Eco argued:
Humour does not pretend, like carnival, to lead us beyond our
own limits. It gives us the feeling, or better, the picture of the
structure of our own limits. It is never off limits, it u ndermines
limits from inside. It does not fish for an impossible freedom, yet
it is a true movement of freedom. Humour does not promise us
liberation: on the contrary, it warns us about the impossibility of
global liberation, reminding us of the presence of a law that we
no longer have reason to obey. In doing so it undermines the law.
It makes us feel the uneasiness of living under a lawany law
(S). 16
In this sense, both comedies have offered to generations of viewers such a
freeing type of humour. And both movies present the theme of love as probably the
only human value that probably might survive, whatever shapes of half- or
inhuman futures are awaiting the human race.
Notes
1
Henry Jenkins, The Tomorrow That Never Was: Retrofuturism in the Comics of
Dean Motter, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2007.
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2
Planet Eden: Tomorrows World In Socialist Czechoslovakia 1948-1978,

ExhibitionDox, Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Curators: Ivan Adamovi,
Tom Pospiszyl, 16.9.-13.12.2010. http://www.doxprague.org/en/exhibition?36/
about.
3
Tom Pospiszyl, Sla stalinsk utopie, In ivel, no. 30, 35, trans. D. Riha.
4
Pospiszyl, Sla stalinsk utopie, In ivel, no. 30, 35, trans. by D. Riha.
5
This movie entered Cannes International Movie Festival in 1962.
6
Equivalent of this term in Russian = Kosmonavtika, in Czech = Kosmonautika.
7
Original Czech title: Mu z prvnho stolet.
8
Original Czech title: Ztra vstanu a opam se ajem.
9
Pospiszyl, 35, translation by D. Riha.
10
They return to Earth in the year 2447.
11
George Ritzer, An Introduction to McDonaldization, in The McDonaldization
of Society, 3rd ed., (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000), 1.
12
Ritzer, 16.
13
James A. Clapp, It Was the City Killed the Beast: Nature, Technophobia, and
the Cinema of the Urban Future, in Journal of Urban Technology10. 3 (2003): 14.
14
Ibid., 14.
15
Ibid., 10.
16
Umberto Eco, Frames of Comic Freedom, in Carnival!, ed. T. A. Sebeok,
(Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984), 8.
Bibliography
Adamovi, Ivan. Encyklopedie fantastickho filmu. Praha: Cinema, 1994.
Adamovi, Ivan and Tom Pospiszyl, eds. Planeta Eden Svt ztka v
socialistickm eskoslovensku 1948-1978. Prague: Arbor Vitae, 2010, 248 pp.
Available at: http://www.arborvitae.eu/nakladatelstvi/katalog-knih/arbor-vitae/
planeta-eden-svet-zitrka-v-socialistickem-ceskoslovensku-1948-1978/.
Baker-Smith, D. and C. C. Barfoot. Between Dream and Nature: Essays on Utopia
and Dystopia. New York: Rodopi, 1987.
Clapp, James A. It Was the City Killed the Beast: Nature, Technophobia, and the
Cinemaof the Urban Future. In Journal of Urban Technology 10.3 (2003): 1-18.
Eco, Umberto. Frames of Comic Freedom. In Carnival! Edited by T. A. Sebeok,
1-9. Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984.
Daniel Riha
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Jenkins, Henry. The Tomorrow That Never Was: Retrofuturism in the Comics of
Dean Motter. In Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2007.
Man from Outer Space (Mu z prvnho stolet). Directed by Oldich Lipsk.
Prague: Barrandov Studios, 1961.
Sleeper. Directed by Woody Allen. Rollins Joffe Productions, 1973.
Pospiszyl, Tom. Sla stalinsk utopie. In ivel 30 (2009): 32-35.
Retro Future: Where Yesterdays Tomorrow Is Still the Future. Website:
http://www.retrofuture.com.
Ritzer, George. An Introduction to McDonaldization. In The McDonaldization of
Society, 3rd ed., 1-19. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000.
Daniel Riha, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles
University in Prague, Czech Republic. His research includes issues on Serious
Games, Interactive Documentary Production and Multi-user Virtual Environments
Design. He is as well, an award winning artist - Kunst am Bau (Art on
Construction) International Art Competition, Constance, Germany.
Part IV
Cybernarratives: Literature and Videogames
We See Cyborgs Differently: A Comparative Study between

North American and Latin American Cyberpunk
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to compare the construction of the cyborgs image
between North American and Latin American 1 cyberpunk fiction. While for North
American cyberpunk fiction the example is the best known novel Neuromancer
(1984), by William Gibson, for Latin American the examples are three short stories
Primera lnea (First Line, 1983), by Argentine writer Carlos Gardini; Nova
de cuarzo (Quartz Nova, 1999), by Cuban writers Vladimir Hernndez and Ariel
Cruz; and 2015 o El vampiro moderno (2015 or The Modern Vampire, 2002),
by Colombian writer Enrique Uribeand two novelsSanta Clara Poltergeist
(1991), by Brazilian writer Fausto Fawcett; and Ygdrasil (2005), by Chilean writer
Jorge Baradit. The four types of cyborg technologies quoted by Gray, Mentor and
Figueroa-Sarriera in the introduction of The Cyborg Handbook (1995) are adopted:
(1) restorative, in the case of restoring lost functions and replacing lost organs and
limbs; (2) normalizing: restoring some creature to normality; (3) reconfiguring,
making posthuman creatures; and (4) enhancing, improving some function.
Although the four types are identified in both cyberpunk fiction, North American
and Latin American, it is noted the predominance of enhancing cyborg characters
in the first and of restorative technologies in the second. There are also differences
about the elements and discourses that compose cyborgs image: in contrast to
Cartesian rationality, to the mind/body division present in representations of North
American cyberpunk fiction, fantastic and religious spirituality are common
elements in Latin American versions. The hypothesis proposed for these
divergences highlights the opposite sides where United States and Latin American
place themselves in modernization: if the cyborg is a fictional mapping of social
and bodily reality (Haraway) and if cyberpunk, subgenre of science fiction that
popularizes the cyborgs image, appears in North American social and
technological context, this fiction mapping is deeply altered in Latin American
context, because, as the studies of comparative literature attest (Zhirmunsky),
appropriations occur by mediation of the receptor context.
Key Words: Cyborg, Latin American cyberpunk fiction, North American
cyberpunk fiction, comparative literature.
*****
In We see things differently (1989), a short story by Bruce Sterling that lends
the title for this study, what is truly seen differently is not the future in the Islamic
fundamentalist point of view, but the cyberpunk genre itself. In this way, similar to
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Islands in the Net (1988), also by Sterling, We see things differently is revisited
cyberpunk, as Spinrad names the development of cyberpunk fiction in the late
1980s. Spinrad argues that what Sterling is doing here [Islands in the Net] is
taking the consensus Movement future and looking at its world from an entirely
new perspective. 2 This entirely new perspective for the First World is the Third
World point of view. But what is an entirely new perspective for the Third World?
In contrast to that Spinrad affirmsThere are quite a few Third World writers
writing in it, but, it would seem, little or no SF form a Third World point of view 3
, there are many Latin American examples that present interesting re-readings of
traditional themes of cyberpunk fiction. Therefore, Latin American cyberpunk
fiction itself is revisited cyberpunk, and also postcyberpunk: in Rewired: The PostCyberpunk Anthology (2007), Kelly and Kessel point out that
Originally the street in CP [cyberpunk] meant the shadowy
world of those who had set themselves against the norms of the
dominant culture, hackers, thieves, spies, scam artists, and drug
users. But for PCP [postcyberpunk] writers the street leads to
other parts of the world. Their futures have become more diverse
and richer for it. Asians and Africans and Latinos are no longer
just sprinkled into stories as supporting characters, as if they are
some kind of exotic seasoning. PCP writers attempt to bring
them and their unique concerns to the center of their stories. PCP
pays attention to the underclass, who do not have access to the
transformative technologies that were the CP stock-in-trade. 4
Therefore, is it not that Latin American cyberpunk fiction is post before North
American version? Are their central characters not Latin Americans and/or
underclass without access to the cyberpunk stock-in-trade (cyberspace and
cybernetic implants are secondary and/or parody themes in Latin American
version)? Then why is not there any Latin American short story in the
postcyberpunk anthology by Kelly and Kessel?
If there is no acceptable answer for the previous question, at least it is possible
to understand how Latin American cyberpunk fiction offers a n ew perspective
regarding the North American counterpart: according to Russian comparativist
Victor Zhirmunsky, the cultural importations do not happen freely, but according
to ideological necessity of the receiving country. 5 Residing in opposite sides of
modernity, United States and Latin American present divergent ideological
necessities about cyberpunk fiction: if cyberpunk fiction for the First World is the
supreme literary expression, if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism
itself, 6 as Jameson suggests, then cyberpunk fiction for the Third World represents
unequal implementation of modernity and late capitalism. This hypothesis is
verified in Nova de cuarzo (Quartz Nova, 1999), by Cuban writers Vladimir
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Hernndez and Ariel Cruz, where a secondary character, a cyborg, synthesizes not
only the traditional mechanic/organic contradiction, but also contradictions of
modernity:
He was dressed as an American aborigine, with pens, moccasins,
old interface glasses for tourists, and a pair of metabolic reentered device. One of his nasal cavities had a little blue plastic
tube linked with a little bottle of sepanacol. The man inhaled the
content from little bottle and answered the questions. I couldnt
understand almost anything about what he said, but he told about
the spirit of earth, and he believed that it had materialized in this
place. On the following day, at the hotel, I heard that the TV
program had the best audience in the last eight years in Europe.
() Alex and the TV team were fascinating with apaches
dissertation, or anything else (he called himself Hans Costner),
but that girl was evidently as boring as me. 7
Besides the mechanic/organic contradiction that underlies the cyborg
imaginary, other contradictions are noticed: native accessories (feathers and
moccasins) with industrialized objects (glasses for tourists); a creature created by
technological rationalism discussing xamanism (the spirit of earth); lastly, an
American aborigine called Hans Costner. In fact, this secondary character
presents the primary contradiction between text and context: a cyberpunk fiction in
Cuba, that is, a literary expression of late capitalism in a socialist country. This
contradiction also occurs in reception of genre: according to Toledano Redondo,
when cyberpunk fiction arrives in Cuba, it renews bourgeois individualism banned
by socialist realism, but at the same way, it attracts fear of multinational domain in
the island. 8
Indeed, the cyborg imaginary is appropriated to support the previous
hypothesis. If the cyborg is a fiction mapping of social and bodily reality, 9 then this
fiction mapping is radically different when Latin American and North American
cyberpunk fiction are compared. In the introduction of The Cyborg Handbook
(1995), Gray, Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera refer to four types of cyborg
technologies:
Cyborg technologies can be restorative, in that they restore lost
functions and replace lost organs and limbs; they can be
normalizing, in that they restore some creature to
indistinguishable normality; they can be ambiguously
reconfiguring, creating posthuman creatures equal to but
different from humans []; and they can be enhancing, the aim
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of most military and industrial research, and what those with
cyborg envy or even cyborgphilia fantasize. 10
It is not by chance that the last type is the most common in North American
cyberpunk fiction, regarding that the literary movement called cyberpunk was
nonetheless quintessentially military industrial fiction. 11 In William Gibsons
Neuromancer (1984), to mention the best known example of cyberpunk fiction,
there are many cyborg characters enhanced by technologies: Molly has blades in
her nails and silver lenses with night vision; Riviera can create holograms; Hideo is
a ninja clone with perfect movements; etc. There are also, of course, reconfiguring
cyborg characters, like the Panther Moderns. Finally, in less proportion,
Neuromancer shows normalizing (Armitage) and restorative (Ratz) cyborg
characters.
On the other hand, the first type of cyborg technologies quoted by Gray,
Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera (restorative) is constantly identified in Latin
American cyberpunk fiction: in 2015 o El vampiro moderno (2015 or The
Modern Vampire, 2002), by Colombian writer Enrique Uribe, the protagonist tells
how he became a modern vampire:
Ive heard about clinics that used to purchase, for a good price,
live organs; it was such a safe business that I could buy a
cybernetic supplant and make some money yet. First, I
considered to sell my kidney in one of those tents of the mildew
downtown of Bogota, but quickly, maybe due to greed or
dumbness, I purchased one of my eyes, one of my nutsthat
gave me much money than the usual because of it was full of
sperm, and half of my pancreas, acquiring after all those
ordinary cybernetic supplants. 12
As the protagonist says, after replacing almost all organs by cybernetic
supplants: Ive been dedicating myself to night hunting, searching for parts that I
dont have anymore and some that I can sell to support me. 13 It is not by chance
that Dery points to the black market of organs as a collateral effect of cyborg
technologies and of the rift between the First and Third World. 14
Another example, also about military research, is Primera lnea (First Line,
1983), by Argentine writer Carlos Gardini. After suffering mutilations in war, the
soldier Cceres is sent to a unit called MUTIL, an acronym to Mvil Unitario
Tctico Integral para Lisiados (Integral Tactical Mobile for Cripples):
Each MUTIL unit was basically a mini-helicopter with limited
flight autonomy which contained a large quantity of short range
fire weapons. Each basic unit was provided with the necessities
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of each soldier. No one was quite equal to another, because each
one was in charge of a specific inventory of mutilation. The
stuffs replaced legs and arms, feet and hands, waists and ankles,
and plastic or steel pieces linked the levers: pedals, handspikes
and buttons turned on the guns and oriented the motors. They
used the ultimate medicinal technology for prosthesis, the captain
said, and it was noted on this emphasis the misery, the
sophistication of misery. 15
If in Neuromancer the military research produces cyborgs enhanced and
normalized by technologies, in Primera lnea the same research is only the
sophistication of misery. However, Neuromancer and Primera lnea present
similarities, especially regarding to what Dery identifies as body alienation 16:
similar to the Cases disdain of fleshIn the bars hed frequented as a cowboy
hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh 17, the
soldier Cceres prefers machines pleasure instead of womens pleasure:
However, he remembered, of course he remembered. Alicia.
Women. But the warm caresses, the salty humidity, the half-open
lips, they couldnt compare with the blood, the oil and the
smoke. A new feeling tingled through his steel claws, his chrome
legs. 18
In this way, as Gray, Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera add in their typology of
cyborg technologies, the soldier Cceres is a degrading cyborg character.
According to the authors, in general, the differences between restorative,
normalizing, reconfiguring, enhancing, and degrading cyborg technologies seem
particularly important in ethical terms. 19 The ethical question, or rather the
reflexion about the limits of humanity allows that somebody understands the
soldier Cceres not as degrading cyborg, but as an enhancing cyborg, with steel
claws and chrome legs. Thus, it is in the confrontation between clones, cyborgs,
and other technonatural hybrids that the humanity of our subjectivity is
questioned. 20
Returning to Neuromancer, the body alienation is also noted in the description
of the puppets, prostitutes with inhibitor software implanted in brain: The girl sat
up in bed and said something in German. Her eyes were soft and unblinking.
Automatic pilot. A neural cut-out. 21 Something similar to puppets, but more
extreme, it is found in Ygdrasil (2005), by Chilean writer Jorge Baradit: the
bitches are a typical artisanal product of the Santiago de Chiles suburbs,
women kidnapped and brainwashed for sexual services:
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The process is sufficiently simple. They kidnap women, extract
their vocal folds, corneas, spinal marrow, one kidney and what is
useful for the organs black market. After this, they boil the brain
using a very slow and painful process: they induce extreme fear
through direct punishments to the cerebral mass, they flood the
cortex with electric pulses, they provoke the chemical suicide of
the self. 22
Ygdrasils protagonist, Marina, daughter of a bitch, continues to describe the
process: It is a cheap process. And in order to make it cheaper, they reduce the
storage and transport costs by amputating the arms and legs of bitches. 23 Similar
to the soldier Cceres in Primera lnea, the bitches also demonstrate the
sophistication of misery, but they are not cyborgs by additions (implants), but by
subtractions (amputations). No posthuman ethical delirium is able to justify this
atrocity.
Ygdrasil belongs to what Muoz Zapata names Magic Realism 2.0, that is, an
upgrade of magic realism based on non-conventional genre in Latin American
literature as science fiction or fantasy; 24 an example in Baradits novel is the
Marinas stowage chips:
Furthermore, it isnt necessary that you are experienced at all;
you have the head full of stowage chips, able to lodge dozens of
dead collaborator spirits: doctors, assassins, engineers, whatever
we want. We have offices in The Beyond, baby. Our contacts
enlist desirous spirits to cooperate in change to feel the world
again, even so it would be through a puppet like you. Dont
worry, they will do the job for you. 25
Ygdrasils stowage chips are similar to the biochips in Gibsons Count Zero
(1986) that are also set as a kind of horse of entities (a terminology of
candombl, a s yncretic religion similar in some points to vodu). 26 When Baradit
translates the Gibsons idea, he gives it a magic realism tone that is in evidence in
the Latin American context. However, Ygdrasil does not just adapt the motifs of
North American cyberpunk fiction; it also presents own developments, as a ouijakeyboard able to track residues in Astral plane or firewalls able to protect open
holes between Physical and Astral world.
The presence of the fantastic and religious spirituality, allied to technology and
sexuality, takes Latin American cyberpunk fiction beyond the Cartesian mind/body
dichotomy present in its North American counterpart: according to McCarron, the
body, for cyberpunk writers, is an accident, unconnected to the pure substance of
mind, therefore the interest cyberpunk writers take in the body is of a strictly
negative kind; a kind which consistently affirms, and even celebrates, the Cartesian
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dichotomy. 27 If much of cyberpunks appeal lies in its Puritianical dismissal of
the body, 28 as McCarron argues, then much of Latin American cyberpunks appeal
lies in its spiritual syncretism that celebrates the body and its accidents (ills), as
Fausto Fawcett shows in Santa Clara Poltergeist (1991):
The spiritual Obas Obas are night clubs of lubric surgery of
mulatto women affected by radiations that annul body reactions,
or rather, no bleed, no wound happens in their body or on a body
touched by them. Then, they can dig up the organisms of anyone
searching for tumours or cysts or infected organs, and to make a
surgery on them anytime with no preparation or anaesthesia or
machinery. Knitting needle, pliers, Bic pen, can-opener,
corkscrew, scissors, blade, bottle piece, everything can be used
by Arigotic mulatto women, that have this nickname to pay
tribute to Z Arig, the medium who received the spirit of
Doctor Fritz, the German physician who made this kind of
surgeries in 1970s. 29
Silva argues that one of the most notable characteristic of this our age [...] is
precisely the unmoral interpenetration, the promiscuous coupling, the unabashed
conjunction between human and machine. 30 What concerns in this assertion is the
metaphorical use of adjectives with sexual connotation to illustrate the cyborg
image. The frequently presence of sex in Santa Clara Poltergeist isnt only a
pornographic delight, but also a strategic resource to cross out definitively the
borders between human and machine:
Verinha opened the zipper of her ass to start the job. She put into
it a suppository device used to connect her anus to car batteries.
Each one, the lorry drivers tie wires linked to the battery of their
lorries in Verinhas equipped rectum. 31
In contrast to Neuromancer, which expresses repulse when faced with sexual
imbrication between human and machine, Santa Clara Poltergeist expresses
pleasure, taking to the extreme what Haraway argues: a cyborg world might be
about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint
kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and
contradictory standpoints. 32 In this way, Fawcetts novel transcends the feminist
accusation to North American cyberpunk fiction, plenty of metaphors that allude to
masculine sexual potency: Nixon states about Neuromancer that
The console cowboys may jack in, but they are constantly in
danger of hitting ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics), a
140
__________________________________________________________________
sort of metaphoric hymeneal membrane which can kill them if
they dont successfully eat through it with extremely
sophisticated contraband hacking equipment in order to
penetrate the data systems of such organizations as T-A
(Tessier-Ashpool). 33
On the other hand, in Santa Clara Poltergeist, it is the magnetic blackout, this
television version of cyberspace, which penetrates into Copacabanas inhabitants,
turning them into parodies of masculine aggressiveness: But the magnetic
blackout works into Mateus in the right moment of the power entrance, activating a
kind of intuitive thinking and aggressive barbarity basement, base of human
nature. 34 It is the revenge of cyberspace, of the feminine body, after lots of
invasions.
Notes
1
This chapter received support of Brazilian agency CAPES for the participation in
the conference abroad.
2
Norman Spinrad, Cyberpunk Revisited, Isaac Asimovs: Science Fiction 141
(1989): 186.
3
Ibid., 186.
4
James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, Introduction: Hacking Cyberpunk, in
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, ed. James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
(San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2007), xi.
5
Victor M. Zhirmunsky, Sobre o estudo da literatura comparada, in Literatura
comparada: textos fundadores, ed. Eduardo Coutinho and Tnia Franco Carvalhal
(Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1994), 207.
6
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 419.
7
Vladimir Hernandz and Ariel Cruz, Nova de Cuarzo, Cuasar: Ciencia Ficcin,
Fantasa, Terror 33 (2002): 7. My translation.
8
Juan C. Toledano Redondo, From Socialist Realism to Anarchist Capitalism:
Cuban Cyberpunk, Science Fiction Studies 97 (2005): 448.
9
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New
10
Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor and Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, Introduction:
Cyborgology: Constructing the Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms, in The
Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995), 3.
11
Howard V. Hendrix, Organometallic Fiction: Cyberpunk, Ribofunk, and SFs
Categorical Imperative, Nova Express 16 (1998): 15.
141
__________________________________________________________________
12
Enrique Uribe, 2015 o El vampiro moderno, Axxn 110 (2002), accessed

March 24, 2011, http://axxon.com.ar/rev/110/c-110ElVampiroModerno.htm.
13
Ibid.
14
Mark Dery, Velocidad de escape: la cibercultura en el final del siglo (Madrid:
Ediciones Siruela, 1998), 256.
15
Carlos Gardini, Primera lnea, in El cuento argentino de ciencia ficcin:
antologa, edited by Pablo Capanna (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nuevo Siglo, 1995),
181-182. My translation.
16
Dery, Velocidad de escape, 273.
17
William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1984), 6.
18
Gardini, Primera lnea, 188.
19
Gray, Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera, Introduction, 3.
20
Tomaz Tadeu da Silva, Ns, ciborgues: o corpo eltrico e a dissoluo do
humano. In Antropologia do ciborgue: as vertigens do ps-humano, edited by
Tomaz Tadeu da Silva (Belo Horizonte: Autntica, 2000), 12.
21
Gibson, Neuromancer, 146.
22
Jorge Baradit, Ygdrasil (Santiago: Ediciones B, 2005), 43.
23
Baradit, Ygdrasil, 43-44. Free translation by me.
24
Juan Ignacio Muoz Zapata, Figures of Simulacra and Virtual Trauma in
Chilean Cyberpunk: Jorge Baradits Ygdrasil, Chapter presented at the 3rd Global
Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction,
Oxford, United Kingdom, July 1-3, 2008.
25
Baradit, Ygdrasil, 16.
26
Fbio Fernandes, A construo do imaginrio cyber: William Gibson, criador da
cibercultura (So Paulo: Anhembi Morumbi, 2006), 69.
27
Kevin McCarron, Corpses, Animals, Machines and Mannequins: The Body and
Cyberpunk, in Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological
Embodiment, ed. Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (London: SAGE
Publications, 1995), 262.
28
McCarron, Corpses, Animals, Machines and Mannequins, 262.
29
Fausto Fawcett, Santa Clara Poltergeist (Rio de Janeiro: Eco, 1991), 168-170.
30
Silva, Ns, ciborgues, 13.
31
Fawcett, Santa Clara Poltergeist, 28-29.
32
Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, 155.
33
Nicola Nixon, Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the
Boys Satisfied?, Science Fiction Studies 57 (1992): 226.
34
Fawcett, Santa Clara Poltergeist, 76.
142
__________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
Baradit, Jorge. Ygdrasil. Santiago: Ediciones B, 2005.
Dery, Mark. Velocidad de escape: la cibercultura en el final del siglo. Madrid:
Ediciones Siruela, 1998.
Fawcett, Fausto. Santa Clara Poltergeist. Rio de Janeiro: Eco, 1991.
Fernandes, Fbio. A construo do imaginrio cyber: William Gibson, criador da
cibercultura. So Paulo: Anhembi Morumbi, 2006.
Gardini, Carlos. Primera lnea. In El cuento argentino de ciencia ficcin:
antologa. Edited by Pablo Capanna, 176-192. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nuevo
Siglo, 1995.
Gray, Chris Hables, Steven Mentor and Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera. Introduction:
Cyborgology: Constructing the Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms. In The
Cyborg Handbook. Edited by Chris Hables Gray, 1-14. New York: Routledge,
1995.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New
York: Routledge, 1991.
Hendrix, Howard V. Organometallic Fiction: Cyberpunk, Ribofunk, and SFs
Categorical Imperative. Nova Express 16 (1998): 15-16.
Hernandz, Vladimir, and Ariel Cruz. Nova de Cuarzo. Cuasar: Ciencia Ficcin,
Fantasa, Terror 33 (2002): 4-11.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Kelly, James Patrick, and John Kessel, Introduction: Hacking Cyberpunk. In
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. Edited by James Patrick Kelly and John
Kessel, vii-xv. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2007.
143
__________________________________________________________________
McCarron, Kevin. Corpses, Animals, Machines and Mannequins: The Body and
Cyberpunk. In Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological
Embodiment. Edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, 261-273. London:
SAGE Publications, 1995.
Muoz Zapata, Juan Ignacio. Figures of Simulacra and Virtual Trauma in Chilean
Cyberpunk: Jorge Baradits Ygdrasil. Chapter presented at the 3rd Global
Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction,
Oxford, United Kingdom, July 1-3, 2008.
Nixon, Nicola. Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the
Boys Satisfied? Science Fiction Studies 57 (1992): 219-235.
Silva, Tomaz Tadeu. Ns, ciborgues: o corpo eltrico e a dissoluo do humano.
In Antropologia do ciborgue: as vertigens do ps-humano. Edited by Tomaz Tadeu
da Silva, 9-17. Belo Horizonte: Autntica, 2000.
Spinrad, Norman. Cyberpunk Revisited. Isaac Asimovs: Science Fiction 141
(1989): 175-190.
Toledano Redondo, Juan C. From Socialist Realism to Anarchist Capitalism:
Cuban Cyberpunk. Science Fiction Studies 97 (2005): 442-466.
Uribe J., Enrique. 2015 o El vampiro moderno. Axxn 110 (2002). Accessed
March 24, 2011. http://axxon.com.ar/rev/110/c-110ElVampiroModerno.htm.
Zhirmunsky, Victor M. Sobre o e studo da literatura comparada. In Literatura
comparada: textos fundadores. Edited by Eduardo Coutinho and Tnia Franco
Carvalhal, 199-214. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1994.
Rodolfo Rorato Londero received his PhD in Literary Studies from Universidade
Federal de Santa Maria. He is co-editor of Volta ao mundo da fico cientfica
(Editora UFMS, 2007) and Literaturas invisveis: fico cientfica, auto-ajuda &
cia. (Editora UFMS, 2009).
The Writing Writer: Fictional Autobiography in Claudio

Sanchez The Amory Wars
Laura-Jane Maher
Abstract
The idea of the Subject-Self has undergone many changes since the Enlightenment.
By the late twentieth century the advent of psychoanalysis undermined the
Cartesian notion of a unified Self. As such, the fiction of a rational self that
operates independent of emotional, sociological and cultural contexts was
subsumed by the radical self that is understood as defined in advance by various
political and historical forces, including the system of social relations, of desire and
of language. 1 The development of new communication technologies and the
conflation of the cyber/textual-self with the real/bodied-self further complicates
how identity is understood and represented. This representation is at the core of
Claudio Sanchez science fiction project The Amory Wars. The source-creator,
Sanchez, is conflated with two charactersthe messianic figure, Claudio
Kilgannon and a character who is writing The Amory Wars, The Writer.
Representations of the Self are further complicated by the shifting focalisation
throughout the various media that tell the story: when Sanchez vocalises/focalises
The Amory Wars, the perspective sung often shifts between the narrator, The
Writer, Claudio Kilgannon and a number of other characters. This chapter will
interrogate the depiction of identity in The Amory Wars as a transmedia narrative.
It will examine the conflation of the cyber/textual and real/bodied selves to
determine how the idea of a plural-self might explode the Subject at the centre of
neo-liberal and capitalist discourse.
Key Words: The Amory Wars, transmedia, narrative, comics, music, embodiment,
intellectual property, subjectivity.
*****
1. Ill Live Through This: Transmedia and Autobiography
In these words that crash my ears
I now stomach this in fear.
A slow run of synthesised notes expand on a musical theme established in
earlier recordings: they create a meditative space, reminding the listener that they
have heard this story before. Then the singing: words spat over discordant guitars
and steady drums. The Writing Writer never fails to send a shiver down my arms.
I can feel the music, I can feel the story: The Writers rage and Erica Courts fear,
they move through me. During live performances I also feel the press of bodies and
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The Writing Writer
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the bass pulsing through the floor. I feel the heat and hear my own voice joining
with others. We are all The Writer. We are all Erica Court. We are all storytellers.
This fluid approach to storyworld citizenship is certainly not the intention of The
Amory Wars intellectual property owners who maintain and exercise copyright
over the texts. This brings about a legal and economic friction between the
intellectual property owners and the creative consumers, but does energise
storyworld citizenship.
For the last three-hundred years print media worked with Cartesian subjectivity
to foster a discursive space that encouraged the idea of story as a proprietal space:
thoughts that could be bought, sold and owned. The advent of convergence culture
challenges the legitimacy of intellectual property regimes by recognising the
contributions of production-creators and consumer-creators in storyworld creation.
Preeminent psycholinguist, Frank Smith, wrote that [writers] must produce texts
and readers must interpret them, and the text always stands between the two, a
barrier as well as a bridge, 2 but this process is mediated in a convergence culture
that is premised on consumer participation. R. Lyle Skains writes that:
Prior to the dominance of the printed text in storytelling, the oral
tradition held sway: oral literaturestories passed from bard to
bard, generation to generationwas a group effort, each
storyteller serving as reader and author as they learned and retold
their tales The lines between reader and writer blurred, as each
storyteller added his/her own elements and inflections, while
leaving others out. 3
Drawing on this historical context, I focussed my interrogation on transmedia
narratives conveyed primarily through music, a traditional mode of storytelling in
oral traditions that has been marginalised in contemporary literary engagement. To
this end The Amory Wars is an ideal example of a musically based transmedia
narrative. Whilst the text itself is often poorly written, the story it tells, and the
means by which it is told, is fascinating.
The Amory Wars is a transmedia narrative told across music (both recorded and
live performances), graphic novels, a codex novel, a series of interstitials and
vignettes. 4 This science-fiction epic draws on themes and ideas found throughout
the classical Western Canon. The protagonist, Claudio Kilgannon, is a reluctant
messiah who eventually becomes a mythological figure known as The Crowing.
The Amory Wars is set in Heavens Fence, an arrangement of seventy-eight planets
and seven stars that are connected by a spiritual light force called the Keywork.
This galactic arrangement is set within our own universe far distant past, Earth
being a part of Heavens Fence. The Amory Wars is also the name of an embedded
narrative that is written by a character called The Writer. The overall storyworld
Laura-Jane Maher
147
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has multiple points of entry, but the recorded music has been the primary gateway
for most readers and is the most accessible medium. 5
I am particularly interested in autobiographical representation in transmedia
narratives. Autobiography is not imputed to The Amory Wars, but Sanchez has
openly discussed the fact that the story is a metaphorical exploration of his lived
experiences. I identify three distinct levels of autobiographical representation and
speculate as to the possible reading of a fourth. The first two representations that I
will explore are textual: both Claudio Kilgannon and The Writer are
autobiographical representations of Claudio Sanchez. The third level is structural
and looks to Sanchez role as the narratives vocaliser. Finally I speculate as to the
possibility for a fourth level of autobiographical representation. I look at the
fractured subject as written by multiple creative forces, such as other writers,
artists, musicians and through audience/reader engagement as consumer-creators.
2. All Worlds From Here: Reading Transmedia Narratives
Transmedia narratives are storyworlds constructed across a number of media
platforms best suited to create the storys universe. They often incorporate novels,
graphic novels, film, television and animation. However, music, games, live
performance and new media (such as social networking or other online spaces) can
also be used to construct these stories. For some readers the term transmedia
narrative evokes William Gibsons cyberpunk novels: stories that centre on
detached and digitised vagabonds, searching for reality in a world of simulacra,
simulation and cyborgs. For others it has echoes of political spin, another
NeoLiberal sound-bite that warns against the instability of contemporary culture
and implies that eternal truths are found only in the Western canons dusty tomes.
Or perhaps this is a business opportunity to the barons of the entertainment
industry: a jurisdiction populated by licensing, franchising and dollar signs.
Certainly, transmedia narratives can be all these things, but they can also be so
much more. The discourses surrounding transmedia narratives have been linked to
the emergence of a convergence culture. 6 In his 2008 book of the same name,
Henry Jenkins asserted that recent technological developments had facilitated the
literary space where consumers participate in the circulation of media content
across multiple media systems, economies and national borders in order to
maximise their entertainment experiences and access to knowledge.
I understand transmedia narrative construction as creative practice that can
occur both within and without convergence culture, however the existence of such
a culture makes the success (in terms of consumer engagement) more likely. This
cultural shift has coincided with an increasingly introspective and narcissistic
culture. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to speculate as to whether this culture
is a product of technological development, however for my purposes it is useful to
think of this as a symbiotic process. This process has often been examined in terms
of postmodernity and identity crisis. American sociologist, Richard Sennett,
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discussed this in his exploration of postmodern identity and capitalism, The
Corrosion of Character. 7 He argued that global capitalism frustrates attempts to
achieve a mature and stable sense of self 8 and that as the coherent life narrative
breaks down, so does the symbolic texture of the self and that a pliant self, a
collage of fragments unceasing in its becoming, ever open to new experience, there
are just the psychological conditions suited to the short-term work experience,
conditions suited to the short-term work experience, flexible institutions, and
constant risk-taking. 9 In Narrating the Self 10 Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps note
that this fragmentation manifests in an urge to create narrative out of lived
experience as a means of constructing identity. They write [r]egardless of their
elaborateness, tellings of personal experience are always fragmented intimations of
experience. While telling surely assists the construction of a tale, the tale
necessarily lies beyond the telling. It is this identity that is beyond words that
Sanchez explores through his transmedial autobiography.
The fractured subject is very different from the cohesive identity still presumed
to exist as normative identity in the dominant social discourses (for example in
law and medicine). The idea of the subject self has undergone many changes since
the Enlightenment and by the mid twentieth century psychoanalysis undermined
the Cartesian notion of Self. The ideal of a rational self that operates independent
of emotional, sociological and cultural contexts was subsumed (at least in
philosophical discourse) by a radical self that is understood as defined in advance
by various political and historical forces, including the system of social relations,
of desire and of language. 11 The development of new communication technologies
and the conflation of the cyber/textual-self with the real/bodied-self further
complicate how selfhood is understood, constructed, and represented. Selfhood is
complex, convoluted and contested: there is uncertainty as to whether a
hierarchical relationship can exist between the conscious and the unconscious and
debate about the Self as a natural or socially constructed phenomenon. The role of
group identity in understanding Selfs jurisdiction and the idea that Selfhood exists
as a way of mediating between people, through relationships also complicates the
idea of Self as an isolating identity. This self is manifested physically and
textually. Furthermore, the question of whether the Self is read in terms of its
access to subject status at a linguistic level is unresolved. The intersections of
oppression inherent in constructs of Selfhood drawn from the Enlightenment,
whether gendered, racial, social or in terms of ability and so on, complicate the use
of I or je as a universal signifier. Therefore reading and authoring an
autobiographical narrative is more complicated than it first appears.
As a result we cling to the death of the author, the comfort that meaning
manifests with the reader, and we conveniently elide living authors who disregard
this vanguard of post-structuralism: who explain their intentions and meanings to a
participatory audience. Sanchez has used The Amory Wars epitexts to articulate his
interpretation of his own work as an autobiographical representation.
Laura-Jane Maher
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Sanchez is conflated with two characters: the messianic Claudio Kilgannon and
The Writer who is writing The Amory Wars. Although these characters exist in
separate (if linked) storyworlds, they confront each other in Good Apollo, Im
Burning Star IV, Vol. 1 when the fiction will see the real. 12
They can be read as Sanchez ego and id: Kilgannon is the manifestation of
Sanchez conscious experiences, desires and aspirations while The Writer is the
sublimated force of impulse and archetype. In The Amory Wars representations of
the Subject are further complicated by the shifting focalisation throughout the
various media that tell the story. As the graphic novels are still being released the
most complete manifestation of the story is musical. In 2010 Sanchez indicated
that Year of the Black Rainbow would be Coheed and Cambrias final musical
chapter in The Amory Wars storyworld. However, at the time of publication the
band had been hinting (via social media) that a new musical chapter in The Amory
Wars would be forthcoming.
When Sanchez vocalises/focalises The Amory Wars, the perspective sung
often shifts between the narrator, The Writer and Claudio Kilgannon as well as
a number of subsidiary characters. Claudio Kilgannon focalises the text during In
Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3. He tells the story to Apollo, the dog that
belongs to his high-school sweetheart, Newo. Throughout In Keeping Secrets the
graphic novel the focalised voice is framed with the square boxes of narrative
external to the dialogue and is voiced by Kilgannon. This focalisation is fractured
by illustrations depicting Kilgannon within the readers gaze, rather than from
Kilgannons perspective. Further the visual depiction of scenes where Claudio was
absent indicates that the focalisor is still the character called The Writer.
The Writer appears in Good Apollo Im Burning Star IV, Volume 1: From Fear
Through The Eyes of Madness. I propose that this character focalises the rest of the
series as well, initially as the unknown narrator and, from Good Apollo Vol. 1 as an
unreliable narrator. However, it should be noted that The Writer is also depicted
within the graphic frame: he is also the object of the readers gaze. This disrupts
the storytelling structure, suggesting that indeed, there is another narrator who
watches over this one, providing layer upon layer of embedded narrative. These
two figures perform different functions as autobiographical representations.
Kilgannon is the manifestation of Sanchez emotional and psychological
experiences while The Writer is a manifestation of Sanchez reflection on these
experiences almost a meta-textual engagement with the autobiographical process.
3. Ill Live Through This: Focalising and Vocalising Transmedial
Autobiography
Claudio Sanchez is both the source creator of The Amory Wars, and the lead
vocalist for the band Coheed and Cambria. His distinctive voice is a signifier of the
story telling action. The songs are often first person tellings, focalised through a
number of different characters, including, but not limited to Kilgannon and The
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The Writing Writer
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Writer. This immediately alerts the reader to the complexities of linguistic claims
to the first person singular.
Sanchez tells his life as fictionalisation: he engages in a series of hesitations
and gestures [which] come closer to a truth than any kind of documentary
objectivity. 13 In this way the telling of self goes beyond autobiography, to an
exploration of emotional and experienced truths. The self as it exists is irrelevant,
the self as it experiences creates a narrative space for identity. Sanchez has spoken
regularly about fictionalising himself. He maintains that the Amory Wars is
almost an autobiographical piece. 14 He continues:
When I started writing music, I was very shy and didnt know
how to express myself. I didnt want to come out and say that
these songs are about me, so I created a science fiction
mythology to hide behind. All of the imagery within The Amory
Wars is very relevantthe fact that its called The Amory
Wars is very relevant to my lifeand thats why theres a
character in the comic called ClaudioWhen I was writing the
main character, I didnt have a name for him and I remember in
one song, Everything Evil, I shout out the name Claudio and I
was like, Now I have to be a character! What a fuck up on my
part! Again, its very relevant to my life and my upbringing. All
the stories are. They all parallel something Ive gone through. 15
His performance corporealises his body within the storyworld: his voice is
Kilgannons voice and it is The Writers voice. It is the storys voice.
4. Ill Gravitate Towards You: Consumers as Creators
The final aspect of autobiographical representation looks at how producers and
consumers contribute to The Amory Wars storyworld. Music moves through the
listener: it moves their body, their ear drums, their skin, their muscles. It
corporealizes the text, vibrating against and within the body. The listener becomes
a part of the physical telling and subsequently their own emotional and experiential
narrative is merged with Sanchez. This creates an I, an identity and a selfnarrative that is a shared or conflated experience.
In this way the transmedia narrative plays with the already complex notion of
self and identity to create a narrative of identity and Selfhood that can be shared
and experienced. This, in turn, complicates the legal ideal of narrative ownership
as the narrative is an identity that is shared between source and consumer creators.
Laura-Jane Maher
151
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Notes
1
Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 11.
Frank Smith, Writing and the Writer (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1982), 87.
3
R. Lyle Skains, The Shifting AuthorReader Dynamic: Online Novel
Communities as a Bridge from print to Digital Literature, Convergence 16 (2010):
104.
4
Coheed and Cambria, Second Stage Turbine Blade (New York: Equal Vision
Records, 2002); In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3 (New York: Equal Vision
Records, 2003); Good Apollo Im burning star IV : Volume One, From Fear
through the Eyes of Madness (New York: Columbia, 2005); Good Apollo Im
Burning Star IV: Part 2 No World for Tomorrow (New York: Columbia,2007); The
Year of the Black Rainbow (New York: Columbia, 2010); C. Sanchez and G.
Vasquez, The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade (Berkley, Calif.:
Image Comics, 2008); C. Sanchez and C. Shy, Good Apollo Im Burning Star IV:
From Fear through the Eyes of Madness (Los Angeles: Evil Ink Comics, 2005); C.
Sanchez and P. David, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3 (Los Angeles: Evil Ink
Comics, 2010-2011); Year of the Black Rainbow (Nashville: Evil Ink Books,
2010).
5
Year of the Black Rainbow (Nashville: Evil Ink Books, 2010) is only available via
the bands online store and the graphic novels are generally stocked in specialist
comic book stores.
6
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2008); Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore,
The Medium is the Massage (London: Penguin Books: 1967); Nicholas
Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1995); Walter J. Ong, Orality
and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, Routledge, 1982).
7
Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (New York: Norton, 1998).
8
Elliott, Concepts of the Self, 130.
9
Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, 133.
10
Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, Narrating the Self, Annual Review of
Anthropology 25 (1996): 19-43.
11
Elliott, Concepts of Self, 52.
12
Coheed and Cambria, The Willing Well: I - Fuel for the Feeding End, Good
Apollo Im Burning Star IV, Vol.1.
13
Jeanette Winterson quoted in Margaret Reynolds and Jonathan Noakes, Jeanette
Winterson: The Essential Guide to Contemporary Literature (London: Vintage,
2003), 21.
2
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The Writing Writer
__________________________________________________________________
14
Claudio Sanchez quoted in Josh Wigler, Claudio Sanchez Brings Music to The
Amory Wars, last modified 20 November 2009, accessed 10 March 2011,
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23791.
15
Claudio Sanchez Brings Music to The Amory Wars.
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. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3. New York: Equal Vision Records,
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. Good Apollo Im Burning Star IV: Volume One, From Fear through the
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. Good Apollo Im Burning Star IV: Part 2, No World for Tomorrow. New
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. The Year of the Black Rainbow. New York: Columbia, 2010.
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Laura-Jane Maher
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Skains, R. Lyle. The Shifting AuthorReader Dynamic: Online Novel
Communities as a Bridge from print to Digital Literature. Convergence 16 (2010):
95-111.
Sanchez, Claudio and Peter David. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3. Los
Angeles: Evil Ink Comics, 2010-2011.
. Year of the Black Rainbow. Nashville: Evil Ink Books, 2010.
Sanchez Claudio and Christopher Shy. Good Apollo Im Burning Star IV: From
Fear through the Eyes of Madness. Los Angeles: Evil Ink Comics, 2005.
. The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade. Berkley, Calif.: Image
Comics, 2008.
Sennett, Richard. The Corrosion of Character. New York: Norton, 1998.
Smith, Frank. Writing and the Writer. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1982.
Wigler, Josh. Claudio Sanchez Brings Music to The Amory Wars. Last modified
20 November 2009. Accessed 10 March 2011, http://www.comicbookresources.
com/?page=article&id=23791.
Laura-Jane Maher is a PhD student at the School for English Communications
and Performance Studies at Monash University in Australia. She completed a
combined Bachelors degree in Law and Performing Arts before redirecting her
research toward literary studies. Her thesis interrogates the potential for a
Consumer-Creator continuum in transmedial literacy. Her previous research
addresses issues of queering in Young Adult literature, womens access to human
rights discourse and prostitution, the abject and the sublime in
vergangenheitsbewltigung literature and archetypal motifs in Australian literary
engagements with genocide.
Quevedo and Gngora Fistfight in Virtual Heaven:

Contemporary Cyber Poetry in Spanish
Abstract
The ingenious lyrical fights between the Metaphysical and Culterano poets
Quevedo and Gngora produced some of the wittiest rhymes in Spanish Baroque. 1
The libels they used to address to each other were oral as well as written and were
performed in front of an audience of expectant contemporaries. If we were to
translate such creative confrontations into the public arena nowadays we will
surely come across the interactions taking place in cyberspace. Blogs and social
networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as other type of portals, like
Formspring, have become a suitable forum for a generation of contemporary
Spanish poets (aged 20-50) to encounter on the interface a breeding ground for
intellectual and creative interaction. Poets and writers such as Camilo de Ory, Luna
Miguel, Hernn Casciari, Alberto Olmos, and Antonio Rodrguez, to mention only
a few, are fostering a space in which poetry is an everyday matter and all can be a
part of it. In its multidimensionality, these networks also serve as a constant
training and a response to critics in a sort of metatext. The kind of posts and
twitters they provide on their profiles or walls are not necessarily in the same line
of thought than those of their hardcopy publications, on the contrary, due to the
immediacy of the interactions produced with the followerswho might or might
not be poets, but are usually in other creative or academic fieldsthe discussion in
progress evolves, twist after twist in a spiral that escapes any kind of absolute
control on the part of the individual auteur.
Key Words: Cyber poetry, cyber creation, aphorisms, e-pigrams, 15-M
Movement, Facebook, Conceptismo.
*****
The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind. 2
Once upon a time, during the so-called Spanish Golden Century there were two
poets that had it all: wit, mastery, fame; and whats more, they had each other.
Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Gngora, creators of the Conceptismo and
Culteranismo, respectively, were best enemies. They defended their styles as being
the highest point reached in poetry. Conceptismo, a movement connected to
European Metaphysical poetry, has been traditionally defined as being
characterized by a rapid rhythm, directness, simple vocabulary, witty metaphors,
and wordplay. In this style, multiple meanings are conveyed in a very concise
manner, and conceptual intricacies are emphasized over elaborate vocabulary. 3 On
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the other hand, the definition of Culteranismo a game on words from cultivated
and Lutheranismhas been done in opposition to Conceptismo by saying it is
characterized by ostentatious vocabulary, complex syntactical order, multiple,
complicated metaphors, but highly conventional content. 4 Deeply inside, however,
if we carefully analyze both styles they did not differ that much, since
Culteranismo and Conceptismo are expressions of the aesthetic and philosophy of
an era characterized by the deciphering of the text on the part of the reader.
Francisco de Quevedo had an ongoing feud with Luis de Gngora in which
they each criticized the others writings and personal life. Their quarrels are
legendary. If we were to translate such creative confrontations into the public arena
nowadays we will surely come across the interactions taking place in cyberspace.
Blogs and social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as other type of
portals, have become a suitable forum for a generation of contemporary writers in
Spanish to encounter on the interface a breeding ground for intellectual and
creative interaction. As the Baroque poets, 21st-century cyber writers have wit as
the first rule to networking on the web, because, like them, there is a need of
denouncing the deep-rooted political, social and economical corruption of our
times, and they have chosen to dissent from the didactic discourse of the
establishment and use, instead, irony, paradox, parody and a detached sarcasm. On
the other hand, Seventeenth-century poets also acted in a fashionable way. Their
responses and libels had a remarkable immediacy and were made public quite
rapidly, becoming a sort of oral battle.
Cyber poetry can be considered as any kind of poetry on the net, in form of
blogs, web pages etc. But, besides the immediacy this type of publication
provides and the possibility of adding some comments to the posts, it may be hard
to appreciate a difference with any other traditional form of publication. Several
denominations exist when referring to literary creations which medium is the
Internet: digital poetry, cyber poetry, e-literature or e-poetry. There are also several
types of text that have developed during the last years, such as the hypertext
through which the reader chooses where the narration must govisual poems, and
micro poems. About the tweets and the states of Facebook, and due to the brevity
they require, these short texts are revisiting frames that come from tradition, which
are the epigramsfrom Latin traditionthe conceitfrom Conceptism
aphorisms, and gregerasinvented by Ramn Gmez de la Serna at the
beginning of the Twentieth Century. All these formats aimed to transmit multiple
and ambiguous content through fewer words.
A recent polemic in Spain has focused the attention of the public in the quality
of literary blogs. Acclaimed novelist Almudena Grandes declared on TV that these
had a dreadful quality. Her statement generated a massive and immediate response
on the Internet, something that seems very poorly controlled or understood by
Grandes. On his blog, Lector Mal-herido, pseudonym for young novelist Alberto
Olmos responds to Almudena Grandes deconstructing the apparently good literary
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quality of well established columnists in Spanish newspapers. Adding that while
authors such as herself, Javier Maras or Ray Loriga are getting paid for writing
about their holidays in Mexico eating guacamole, or their disappointment about
having to queue to buy cigarettes, poets and writers who are living out of charity or
are being made redundant being six-month-pregnant are writing blogs saying much
more interesting things than those in weekend magazines; and they are doing it for
free. 5
Olmos argues than on many blogs of poetry, fiction, literary criticism there are
more tenderness, more life, more guts, more socialism, more sorrow for life than in
all the Sunday articles of the year. 6 How is it possible, then, that well-known
authors such as Alberto Olmos write high quality novels, but Alberto Olmos, the
blogger, writes bad posts? 7 And that is the magic of this medium: information goes
faster than the running messenger of Marathon, reaches more people than manna
raining in the desert, and moves more consciences than Gandhi and Che Guevaras
consigns together.
We are living a moment where the way of understanding literature is changing.
Hernn Casciari, the Argentinean novelist and co-creator of the revolutionary
journal Orsay, writes blogonovels from Barcelona. Ibrahim B. is a blog of literary
criticism and book reviews written by 22-year old novelist Antonio Rodrguez,
which tagline reads something more than the sexiest intellectual. Rodrguez and
his fiance, Luna Miguel, aged 21, maintain The Fight Blog (a clear reference to
the film The Fight Club), 8 where transatlantic authors expose themselves
periodically to the questions and the insults of the audience. Luna Miguel is also an
author, with several poetry books published. Besides, some parts of their lives are
daily exposed on Miguels Facebook profile with some more than 3300 friends. 9
But the master in current cyber poetry in Spain, and in creating aliases, as well,
is, undoubtedly, Camilo de Ory. He has published three poetry books, an article
book, collaborates in several media and alleges he has a novel on its way. He has
5000 friends on Facebook, the maximum number allowed, and an open profile
where other followers can write comments. He has created a very original format
in which his fake lifebut true nameare the protagonists of a particular system
of literary interaction. He has reached the category of trademark of himself. 10
De Ory writes aphorisms daily and let followers comment on them but he never
answers, allowing friends to interact among them, reaching the responses of his
entries sometimes the figure of 200 or 300. The poet has another means to reach
his audience that is multidimensional. He has aliases, characters or personas that
respond to his own posts and debate with his followers. By the same means, we,
sometimes, become ourselves fictional characters in his particular world, acting as
a character would act.
Some of De Orys aliases are: Bertie Wooster, his misogynist evil alter ego,
who cant stand misspellings and feminist consigns; 11 Luca Santa, a woman
supposedly abandoned by him; Herminia Amiga, a 1920s suffragist, that Camilo de
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Ory shares with Florencio Aparicio Duval as part of a marketing strategy in order
to launch Herminia. La revista de la mujer moderna y sostenible, 12 a collective ejournal written by anonymous writers; and Herminio Amigo, also shared, and
Herminias accessory-husband. 13
His aphorisms are, on the one side, very close to what we might define as
conceit, the central metaphor of Metaphysical Poetry or Conceptismo, a figure
where the conveyed meaning breaks and connects to something else:
If a good time is a long time, a bad time must necessarily end
quickly. Spanish language protects us against sorrow. [Si un
buen rato es bastante rato, los malos ratos han de terminar rpido.
El castellano nos blinda contra el dolor.]
I practice Ibersex: with Spanish and Portuguese women. And my
engine is not a miniature. [Practico ibersexo: con espaolas y
portuguesas. Y mi locomotora no es una miniatura.]
In other instances, his aphorisms are hilarious sexual metaphors:
I dont remember the name of the small fleshy erectile body that
comes out in the outer part of the vulva, but I have it on the tip of
my tongue. [No recuerdo cmo se llama el cuerpo pequeo,
carnoso y erctil que sobresale en la parte superior de la vulva,
pero lo tengo en la punta de la lengua.]
De Ory translates poetry into an everyday life. His entries are very often related
to current issues, sometimes like brief news pieces, but without giving the typical
what/where/why/who. The reader just gets the hint of what it is about, but has to be
up-to-date. When referring to the San Fermines feast, in Pamplona, he writes:
Just because they are Navarros, if they were Basques they would
run against the bulls. [Porque son navarros, si fueran vascos
correran en direccin a los toros.]
The author has also written about the 15-M movement, also known as Spanish
Revolution, which started on the 15 of May, 2011, echoing and spreading the
discontent about the world crisis and the lack of commitment of governments with
their people. About the brutal response of the police on the 27 of May against
peaceful protesters who camped in Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona, and the provoking
violence of the infiltrated police officers amongst the protesters, De Ory posted:
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Terral (burning wind in Mlaga) the police are wearing boots
and a helmet, while the protesters are wearing t-shirts. If it stinks,
do not say it is the revolution. [Terral (viento abrasador) en
Mlaga, los policas van con casco y botas y los manifestantes en
manga corta. Si huele a sobaco no digan que es por la
revolucin.]
I have just infiltrated among the police. Im the tall guy with the
sticker on the helmet. Ill be winking at you while I hit you. [Me
acabo de infiltrar entre los antidistusbios. Soy el alto de la
pegatina en el casco. Os guiar mientras os fostio.]
Although, he also shows his cynicism about the 15-M movement in some of
his, if I may coin a new term, e-pigrams:
Ill be back soon. Playing policeman and outraged woman.
[Volver en breve, jugando a mosso e indignada.] 14
As the cynic he is, or pretends to be, there are instances when De Ory crosses
the border of what we could define as cruelty, by exposing the profiles, works or
pictures of people sometimes added on his walland making them an object of
derision. Selected members of the hardcore would respond like the disciples of a
bully that attacks the one that seems different from the crowd, applauding the
punch line in a childish game of perverted attitudes. Others, however, would try to
divert the topic by taking one of the threads and developing it towards a milder
matter. In this way, his followers also depict the most intolerant parts of
themselves, but also the most sensitive and altruistic. They are not necessarily
different persons; sometimes the same ones that express malice are the ones that
minutes later show all types of kindness. Like in the tale Where the Wild Things
Are, where the furry beings represent the different sides of Maxs personality, our
poet and his friends take their monsters for a walk outside of the walls of their
skins every now and then to make mischief of one kind. 15
Camilo de Ory is fostering a space in which poetry is an everyday matter and
all can be a part of it, and where the media is intrinsically also part of creation. In a
sort of metalanguage, when inquired on Fromspring with the question: Dont you
think that if you write internet with capital letters it is going to become
conceited?, he answers: It is capitalized, and its much more important than
you. 16 In its multidimensionality, these networks also serve as a constant training,
working as a creative writing cyber workshop, where writers have to be aware of
spelling and syntax. They have to keep coherence and meaningfulness. And,
whats more, the interaction taking place makes people write. There is not a better
way to learn than practice.
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The kind of posts he provides on his Facebook wall are not necessarily in the
same line of thought than those of his hardcopy publications, on the contrary, due
to the immediacy of the interactions produced with the followerswho might or
might not be poets, but are usually in other creative or academic fieldsthe
discussion in progress evolves, twist after twist in a spiral that escapes any kind of
absolute control on the part of the individual auteur.
Nothing can be created in isolation. All act of creation comes from acts of
nurturing oneself from the community. Now, more than ever we can see this in
cyber creation, where conscience is networked among a group of people that
constitutes the author legion, like in the best times of oral tradition. Even this
article you are reading now, I would say, is a collective work, since the author has
been in an continuous struggle an debate with Camilo de Orys Facebook friends,
trying to make sense of an elusive truth which, with no doubt, is not the truth at all,
but a construct of a brilliant authenticity. 17
Notes
1
The title of this article is a tribute to Sherman Alexies Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven (New York: Harper Perennial, New York, 1993).
2
Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (Harper Collins Publisher: 1991).
3
Francisco de Quevedo, Wikipedia, Accessed 18 May 2011. http://en.wiki
pedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Quevedo.
4
Ibid.
5
Antonio Olmos, Ins y la alegra, de Almudena Grandes, Lector mal-herido, 26
October 2010, Viewed 20 May 2011, http://lector-malherido.blogspot.com/search/
label/Almudena%20Grandes?zx=3724728c97a2d199.
6
Ibid: Aunque en este se destila ms ternura, ms vida, ms cojones, ms
socialismo, ms dolor real por la vida que en todos los artculos de domingo del
ao; aunque en cientos de blogs (de mierda) y foros (nfimos) mucha gente dice sin
cobrar cosas infinitamente ms interesantes que comen guacamole o que se han
comprado una figuria en el Sothebys de los cojones.
7
M. de la Corte, Literatura alias blog.com, Malaga hoy (28 November, 2011).
8
Luna Miguel and A. Rodrguez, The Fight Blog, Viewed 23 April 2011 http://thefight-blog.blogspot.com/.
9
Luna Miguel, http://facebook.com/lunamonelle.
10
The most complete bibliography about Camilo de Ory can be found here:
http://www.catedramdelibes.com/archivos/000926.html.
11
Bertie Wooster is a name taken from P. D. Woodehouses Jeeves series.
According to Camilo de Ory, the profile photograph is of the actor Hugh Laurie
starring in the ITV series Jeeves and Wooster, in 1990s. Camilo de Ory email to
author, 24 August 2011.
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12
Herminia: la revista de la mujer moderna y sostenible (Verano 2011, Ao1),

Viewed 8 August 2011, http://www.herminia.es.
13
I must say that finding out De Orys actual aliases has been an arduous task and
that I have been mistaken at some point, as I recognized in the article Ciberpoesa
y perversin Interartive, http://interartive.org/.
14
All the aphorisms have been taken from http://facebook.com/camilodeory,
consulted between January and June 2011.
15
Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.
16
C. De Ory, Formspring, Consulted January-June 2011, http://www.formspring.
me/camilodeory.
17
I would like to thank specially Camilo de Ory, Ana Ramos , Sebastin Snchez,
and Urtzi Buijs for their help in finding the keystones for the elaboration of this
chapter.
Bibliography
Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York:
Harper Perennial, New York, 1993.
De la Corte, M. Literatura alias blog.com Malaga hoy. 28 November, 2011: 6263.
Francisco de Quevedo, Wikipedia. Viewed 18 May 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Francisco_de_Quevedo.
Herminia: la revista de la mujer moderna y sostenible. Verano 2011. Ao1.
Viewed 8 August 2011, http://www.herminia.es.
Miguel, Luna and Antonio Rodrguez, The Fight Blog. Viewed 23 April 2011
http://the-fight-blog.blogspot.com/.
Miralles-Alberola, Dolores. Ciberpoesa y perversin. Interartive July-August
2011. http://interartive.org/.
Olmos, Antonio. Ins y la alegra, de Almudena Grandes.Lector mal-herido, 26
October 2010. Viewed 20 May 2011. http://lector-malherido.blogspot.com/search/
label/Almudena%20Grandes?zx=3724728c97a2d199.
Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. Harper Collins Publisher: 1991.
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Dolores Miralles-Alberola PhD in Spanish with a DE in Native American Studies
(UCDavis). She works for the Centro Superior de Idiomas at the University of
Alicante, Spain. Her current field of research has to do with indigenous
representations in film, gender in Spanish film, cyber creation, and cyber activism.

Abstract
Tad Williams Otherland series (1996-2001) journeys through several definitions
of godliness from human history. There are travellers in Otherland, who have
been swallowed by this virtual network and who are all on their own Homeric
quests, wrestling with their understandings of god. Several returning themes in this
narrative are followed to throw light on ideas of godliness, for instance death,
myth, age or proportions. Through an inflationary usage of the word god, the tale
is as much about its meaninglessness, as about possible interpretations for the
digital age. Godliness appears in many disguises; in god complexes, religious
metaphors, figures and spaces. Yet, the omnipresent Other, the Sky God, who is
literally placed in heaven (aka a satellite orbiting Earth), is the only being that is
understood as a true god in this saga. It is a childlike, experimental and uncaring
god that knows no morality, because it is unfamiliar with humanitys rules. It is
this unpredictability which makes the Other into a perfect god-figure per definition.
Many Otherland sim worlds exist to be future heavens for would-be gods.
However, if Otherland was not created by one single god; it is the joint product of
an earthbound collective of minds, identities, mythologies and desires, and god, in
a world as !Xabbu sees it, could very well be the dream that is dreaming us.
Key Words: Otherland, Tad Williams, science fiction, godliness, immortality,
virtual reality.
*****
1. Introduction
Throughout human history godliness has taken many forms. Tad Williams
Otherland series (1996-2001) journeys through several of these designations.
Otherland is the name of a virtual network of worlds which was created by a group
of the most powerful people and scientists in the narrative universe. Their leaders,
a secret society called the Grail Brotherhood, seek to use the network as a means to
transfer their consciousnesses and financial power for eternity into a virtual
heaven. There are travellers in the network, the prisoner, the sick teenager, the
bushman, the tribe, the blind woman, the angel, the reaper and others, who are all
on their own Homeric quests. Their journeys force them to wrestle with their
understandings of god. In search for an exit, the travellers visit fantastic cyber
worlds, always hunted by the evil henchmen of Brotherhood founder Felix
Jongleur: the Twins and his pet assassin Dread. But, unbeknownst to his
employer, the sinister serial-killer Dread eventually begins to follow his own
violent search for apotheosis. On top of all the miracles and horrors the travellers
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encounter, they get glimpses of the mysterious Other, an enigmatic and childlike
force or intelligence that resides at the centre of the whole network and appears to
be in control of many strange events and transformations happening in the system.
One main characteristic of the narrative is its inflationary usage of the word
god in both wording and imagery.
2. The Posthuman Debate
Today many scientists harbour the belief that, in light of technological
advances, the coming decades will see radical changes in human existence. One
common reaction...is that using technology to recreate humanity is tantamount to
humanity playing God. 1 Technofuturism and posthumanism have quasi-religious
attributes and sometimes even pose as a religion of salvation. 2 The idea of
uploading the human consciousness into a computer, into a robot or cyberspace,
is a common fantasy both among scientific theorists and sci-fi writers. Uploading
embodies a hope for human advancement, freedom from pain, age and material
limits; it also promises incredible cybersex andultimatelyimmortality. For
people like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec posthumanism simply represents the
next step in human evolution. Techno-optimists wish to go past the smallness and
dependency of bodily existence and identity and desire flights from reality and
godlike sovereignty. 3 Despite increased efforts to start a d ialogue between
theologians and transhumanists, there are still genuine feelings of enmity and
hostility between religion and transhumanism. 4
3. God is Pain
Two god figures in this story, the Other and Dread, represent godliness in close
connection to pain and suffering, although they reside on opposite ends of the
spectrum; the Other as receiver, and Dread as giver of pain. The Grail Brotherhood
deals in pain too, as their transformation into godhood requires not only that they
abuse the minds of children, but also that they murder their own bodies to avoid
becoming mere virtual copies of themselves. For them, godliness is a sign of their
own uniqueness, which is a kind of contradiction in a universe that seems to be
littered with god wannabes, but which fully corresponds to depictions of the
Christian god for example, whose maniacal jealousy against alternative gods
recurs continually throughout the Old Testament. 5
The most intriguing god figure in this narrative is the Other. It is a human
being, yet not entirely. It was raised in an institution by the Grail Brotherhood, who
transformed it into the operating system of their immortality machine and locked it
up in a satellite, orbiting Earth. The Other is the closest to a real god we get in
Otherland. It is not a benevolent creature; it is everywhere and controls everything,
but it is also quite lonely and inexperienced in contact with others and therefore
makes mistakes, scares easily and even kills people. Its childlike curiosity and
combined cruelty turn it into a unique manifestation of godliness in this story.
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While the Other desires death, both Dread and Jongleur display a strong
disrespect for death, which Richter would understand as a particularly acute fear
of death. 6 Felix Jongleur and his group, the Grail Brotherhood, suffer from a god
complex. 7 For decades, immersed in a life-supporting tank, this aged creature,
Jongleur, which has long lost all resemblance to a human being, thus desires
something that it defines as godhood in cyberspace. Jongleur is the caricature of
humanitys age-old longing for the end of any physical pain as well as the
posthuman dream of immortality. But he is more than that. The fulfilment of his
dream is executed with outright viciousness; proof that with the decay of his body,
Jongleur also lost his humanity. Jongleur holds on to life, yet has lost all
resemblance to what it m eans to be alive. His real body is monstrous, like
Orlandos, but his personality is monstrous too and devoid of all human qualities.
All that is left are his suffering and fear. In appearance Orlando resembles the Old
Man Jongleur, who wants to escape his physical prison out of selfish reasons, in
order to go beyond his self. Orlando also wants to escape his fragile body, but
only to become himself.
As a s erial killer, for Dread the act of killing is an act of creation, his only
power over life is to take it away. Power also has drug-like qualities to him. Like
Jongleur, Dread did never believe in god or heaven himself. Therefore, like the
Grail Brotherhood, who plunders history for godly icons, Dreads appropriation of
godhood is taken from mythology. He perceives himself both as god and as death,
as if both were one and the same. 8 To become more, Dread-as-god has only one
available option, because his very nature offers no other potential, he needs to hunt
other gods, an idea he finds deliciously amusing. 9 Dreads godliness can live
without all the pretentiousness people like the Grail Brotherhood are hiding behind.
In view of how much this fictitious world seems obsessed with it, it is no wonder
that personified death becomes a g od figure in this story. Death is the ultimate
godly power over humans that never could be truly overcome, at least not until the
Grail Brotherhoods immortality machine.
4. Godliness and Religion
Not many of the characters in Otherland have a close understanding of, or
belief in, god/s. In the real world created by Tad Williams, the overwhelming
technology seems to have replaced any form of belief in the supernatural or need
for a divine being. There are however some exceptions; several characters push the
story onwards by using their belief as a driving force.
!Xabbu is a simple bushman who still believes in his peoples culture and
ideals. He sees this world of power and technology as a threat to the First People,
his gods, but is also in constant fear of being overwhelmed by it. He is the only
one of the travellers, at least at first, who feels rather than thinks his way through
life, something that the others are no longer accustomed to. Through their contact
with him, the others start looking at their own world with different eyes. !Xabbus
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ideas of gods, represented in the many stories he tells, are of the First People who
take the shape of bush-animals such as the mantis, the baboon and the hyena.
These stories are the collected memory of the bushman people, in aboriginal myth
also called Dream-time stories. They are believed to have been handed down
from ancestral peoples or dreamings. In a vision, the Beloved Porcupine tells
!Xabbu that even the place beyond the world, the place of the First People, is in
danger. !Xabbu understands this as a threat to his people, not only as a physical
threat to their lands and way of living, but also to their hearts and souls, their
culture and beliefs. A belief or religion only is exactly that, if at least one person
fully believes in it, otherwise it becomes just a story. To !Xabbu this is the most
threatening thing of the technological age, as he feels that the end of believing is
essentially killing the First People.
A mysterious religious group known as the Circle wanders in and out of the
story. Its members are all believers of known worldly religions and they have
placed themselves in opposition of the Grail Brotherhood. However, if the Grail
Brotherhood suffers from a god complex, so does this group. They are convinced
that they have been summoned by god (in all forms) to do ba ttle against the
virtual creation of the Brotherhood who, they believe, is destroying pieces of their
god. They are convinced that something is wrong with the spirit of the virtual
world and that god is actually dying.
Unlike the outside or real world, in Otherland there are many deities; there is
the Lady of the Windows in the House world, or the Sleepers in the Kitchen
world. Often these deities take the form of a young woman, Avialle, who as it
turns out is in a way related to Jongleur. As another childlike being, she is like
the Other, to which she is linked with a children's lullaby which has strong
Christian influences. The Other, in his pain and darkness, is recruiting people on
the basis of this song that contains some motives, such as the angel, the knight and
the river, that keep returning throughout the books.
5. Godly Size and Perspective
One original idea is the way physical proportions are presented in Otherland.
People with a god complex tend to display themselves as giants. Godliness often
diminishes or blinds its admirers through surface structures; it has always been
particularly easy for humans with ideological, financial, military or technological
power to present themselves as oversized to others.
On top of the godly sims of humans in the network, there are many places that
leave the travellers with feelings of helplessness and/or awe. In Otherland we meet
Kunohara, a scientist who transports his admiration of nature into his insect sim
world. He dreams of studying nature from a different perspective. His admiration
for nature is undisguised, even if there is no prayer involved while dealing with his
scientific godliness. Richard Dawkins calls the quasi-mythical view of nature and
the universe the Einsteinian religion 10 and claims that it has no connection to
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supernatural belief at all. 11 Although Kunohara rejects godlike immortality, he still
behaves like a god, as he refuses to interfere with or even submit himself to the
rules of his own universe. He prefers watching it like a cosmic experiment. It is
clear that he would rather refer to himself as an engineer than a god, even if both
words are often used synonymously in Otherland. In Kunoharas world, size is
meant to intimidate, and the wondrous and amazing is at once scary and dangerous.
Bugs walk through this world as majestically as the animal gods in Egypt, and just
as inconsequentially and uncaring for those they trample below. The Otherland
network returns to some lost feelings of connection to divinity through gigantic
spaces or objects. There are several places where humans are made to feel this
way, Bug World, the House or the Kitchen for instance.
Along with this obsession with size, Otherland contains threats to the travellers
of being swallowed or eaten by something larger, which assigns strong feelings of
insignificance to the ones being consumed. Godlike figures, such as the Other,
Dread or the Twins, or even the insects in Bug World, constantly combine their
masses with threatening acts to devour the travellers. However, there is a
difference in the disembodied act of being swallowed by the Other and the bodily
threat by other cyber gods. As the operating system swallows up people in an act
that could also be interpreted as a silent embrace, even unification with a godlike
entity, other acts of swallowing, combined with the display of monstrous mouths
and teeth have a more carnal, even pleasurable and less metaphysical appeal in this
narrative.
6. Creation
Virtual reality is an environment in which traditional concepts of godly power
and knowledge have been realized inside a scientifically sound universe. And on
top of all the omnipotence and universal power available in that space, there is also
creation happening, the most godlike power. 12 In this story, the Otherland
network works like Kunoharas Bug World, as the perfect environment for the
creation and evolution of life. Due to the nature of the Other, it has a kind of
childlike quality. Kunohara is the first of the scientists to follow !Xabbus logic in
understanding Otherland, which replaces Nature as scientific creator in the
Einsteinian sense. No single sentient being guides evolution in this realm, not even
the Other as operating system, it is only the guiding spark of the system which
then continues to evolve by itself, through the laws of physics and mathematics.
Darwin would call this the creative power of evolution. At first glance, the makers
of Otherland would qualify as gods, but, like the Other, they have no control let
alone complete knowledge of what they have innocently and egoistically set in
motion. They are mere humans who work as co-creators in the evolution of a
universe. In the end, the artificial network gives birth to its own artificial life
forms, sentient programs that leave the Otherland network to discover their own
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destiny in space. The story thus ends with a central technofuturist vision of how
space might be conquered by humanity.
7. Conclusion
In the end, there are only a few people who benefit from their uploading or
apotheosis, Orlando and Sellars, two people who never had a fulfilling life in
reality, and who move on into a posthuman existence. Until that point we would
not consider these two characters as gods, but they are also not completely above
godliness. Orlando has the attributes of the Greek half-god Achilles, into whom he
turns in the Troy simulation. Sellars is both a scientist and cyborg. He has much in
common with Kunohara, but is never perceived as of desiring godlike powers. He
remains true to his human side until his end and beyond his posthuman rebirth in
cyberspace, even though he briefly marvels at his own creation, a virtual garden
that represents his database about the Otherland network: Sellars could think of no
happier human metaphor for God than that of a Gardener. 13 The Other is the only
truly disembodied god in the story, speaking not directly but through envoys,
especially his angel Avialle. It also communicates through images and songs and
allegories, such as fairy tales, which it uses to make sense of the universe. The
true form of the Other is never seen but its presence is often felt. In contrast, most
of the other gods in the story put a very strong emphasis on their godly image and
body and how they display it to the outside. Most of all, they require underlings, as
without them they are unable to appreciate their godliness for long. Jongleur and
his fellow atheists just borrow the term god. Having never truly believed in god
themselves, their interpretation of the term is thus instrumental, not spiritual let
alone transcendent. Dread makes himself into a god and truly believes to be more
than one of the terrorist artists in the real world, yet he is just a criminal gone
virtual, with fantasies no different from his real world counterparts. !Xabbu is the
first to adapt his religious views and ideas of godliness, he is joined by Kunohara
in a desire to make sense of the world. In his understanding, !Xabbu displays a
similar childlike mindset like the Other in perceiving the world. !Xabbus
revelation takes him deep into the transhumanist debate.
One theory that forms out of this analysis is if a wonderland like Otherland
needs to be seen with young eyes like Orlandos or with a childs mind like
!Xabbus, as for those who have seen it all, Otherland is but a playground for
their vanities and single-minded passions of rulership or destruction, which are
relived in endless variations. Their so-called heavens have thus more qualities of
hell. But at least one essential question towards religions has been answered here:
Who created God? All the fleshy gods in Otherland have their own creator,
even if their existence is self-made or self-proclaimed. Only the Other, although
educated through pain, ultimately reinvents itself as the divine protector humans
expect god should be and is therefore recognized by !Xabbu as the dream that is
dreaming us 14 before it dies.
169
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Notes
1
Mark Walker and Heidi Campbell, Religion and Transhumanism: Introducing a

Conversation, Journal of Evolution & Technology 14.2 (August 2005): ii.
2
Christopher Coenen, Der posthumanistische Technofuturismus in den Debatten
ber Nanotechnologie und Converging Technologies. In Nanotechnologien im
Kontext, ed. A. Nordmann, J. Schummer and A. Schwarz, (Berlin: Akademische
Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006), 203.
3
Ibid., 207.
4
Walker and Campbell, ii; Patrick D. Hopkins, Transcending the Animal: How
Transhumanism and Religion Are and Are Not Alike, Journal of Evolution &
Technology 14.2 (August 2005): 24.
5
Ibid., 279.
6
Horst-Eberhard Richter, All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man
(Claremont: Hunter House Inc. Publishers, U.S.A., 1984), 157.
7
Ibid., 5.
8
Tad Williams, Otherland. Volume One: City of Golden Shadow (London: Orbit,
1996), 891.
9
Tad Williams, Otherland. Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass (London:
Orbit, 1999), 150.
10
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2006), 33.
11
Ibid., 32.
12
Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and
Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 2002), 17.
13
Tad Williams, Otherland. Volume Two: River of Blue Fire (London: Orbit,
1998), 679.
14
Tad Williams, Otherland. Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass (London:
Orbit, 1999), 551.
Bibliography
Coenen, Christopher. Der posthumanistische Technofuturismus in den Debatten
ber Nanotechnologie und Converging Technologies. In Nanotechnologien im
Kontext. Edited by A. Nordmann, J. Schummer and A. Schwarz, 195-222. Berlin:
Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. London: Black Swan, 2006.
170
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Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and
Others in Popular Culture. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press,
2002.
Hopkins, Patrick D. Transcending the Animal: How Transhumanism and Religion
Are and Are Not Alike. Journal of Evolution & Technology 14.2 (August 2005):
13-28.
Richter, Horst-Eberhard. All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man.
Claremont: Hunter House Inc. Publishers, U.S.A., 1984 ( originally published in
German under the title Der Gotteskomplex in 1979).
Walker, Mark and Heidi Campbell. Religion and Transhumanism: Introducing a
Conversation. Journal of Evolution & Technology 14.2 (August 2005): i-xv.
Williams, Tad. Otherland. Volume Four: Sea of Silver Light. London: Orbit, 2001.
Williams, Tad. Otherland. Volume One: City of Golden Shadow. London: Orbit,
1996.
Williams, Tad. Otherland. Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass. London:
Orbit, 1999.
Williams, Tad. Otherland. Volume Two: River of Blue Fire. London: Orbit, 1998.
Petra Rehling is Associate Professor in the English Department at Da-yeh
University, Taiwan. Her research interests are media and cultural studies with a
focus on popular culture, television and new media. She has published a book on
Hong Kong cinema and articles on fantasy, science fiction and the Harry Potter
phenomenon. She is also a d ecade-long member of Tad Williams online fan
community at www.tadwilliams.com.
Cindy Squires is Regional Business Analyst at Foot Locker Europe. She is also an
avid reader, amateur writer and long-time member of Tad Williams online fan
community at www.tadwilliams.com.
Through Other Eyes: The Other as an Extension of the Self in

Post-War Science Fiction
Jorge Martins Rosa
Abstract
Forget Inception, never mind Being John Malkovich. Before cyberpunk there
was lets say there was a fair amount of science fiction that, without having such
a strong unifying concept behind it, already dealt with issues such as virtual
environments, databases turned into perceptual worlds, and body enhancement
through cybernetic prostheses. And also with the technical ability to experience the
world, either in an oniric or in a vigilant state, through the eyes of other beings.
Discovering and evaluating the legacy of such early stories is the goal of the
research project I am currently involved, called Fiction and the Roots of
Cyberculture. The present chapter focuses on those narrative plots that, taken as a
whole, came to define, mostly via the sub-genre inaugurated by William Gibson
and Bruce Sterling, the hopes and fears surrounding our contemporary condition in
a world increasingly ruled by information. A close look at some short stories and
novelettes that satisfy the above-mentioned criterion, originally published in the
50s and the 60s (some rarely reprinted), will give us a few clues to a b etter
understanding of the transition from the modern and liberal conceptions of self and
humankind to the contemporary compulsion for being connected, often defined
with the help of concepts such as cyborg (Haraway) or post-human (Hayles).
Key Words: Science fiction, cyberculture, virtual environments, dreams,
intersubjectivity, perception, Shannon, Wiener.
*****
1. Preamble
In contemporary cybercultural studies, there is an incongruence, nearly a
paradox, facing us. It is almost impossible to characterise cyberculture, either when
assuming an engag discourse, either when analysing that very same discourse
from a detached and critical point of view, without using some illustrations from
science fiction, and these are almost always taken from the cyberpunk sub-genre.
Occasionally, older references appear, but they are also invariably the same: John
Brunners Shockwave Rider, James Tiptree Jr.s The Girl who Was Plugged In,
Herbert Heinleins Waldo, C. L. Moores No Woman Born, and, less often,
Malcolm Bradburys The Veldt. When strictly on the theoretical side,
cybercultural studies assume the need of a genealogical approachgoing back not
only to the obvious influence of Norbert Wiener but to more centennial legacies,
such as those from Descartes, La Mettrie, or even Gnosticism. However, this
concern seems to fail to extend to (science or other) fiction.
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Through Other Eyes
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As a r esultthat is the core of the paradoxit is very hard to find academic
works that mention fictional titles published before the last quarter of the 20th
century, while, reciprocally, mentions (even if brief) to works after that date can
hardly be missed. If any genealogical analysis of the theoretical origins of
cyberculture is willing to look so far before the 1980s, why is fiction so underrepresented? It is almost as ifexcept for those rare and recurrent exceptions
there was nothing before cyberpunk. 1
To bridge that gap is the goal of my teams research project Fiction and the
Roots of Cyberculture, the current chapter being a very restricted analysis that
fulfils a narrow set of objectives. A preliminary and coarse probing of the corpus 2
enabled us to identify two main thematic domains, common both to cyberculture
and science fiction, leading us to search for some early instances of stories and
novels 3 that matched at least one of those themes. They are: 1) the so-called
virtual realities, and 2) the idea of trans- or post-humanism achieved by
alterations of the body, by genetic, prosthetic (i. e., cyborg) or other technologies.
For this occasion, I have chosen a very peculiar subset of the former theme. To
be more precise, I am concerned with those cases where the narrative portrays a
technology that enables someone to temporarily be in tune with the perceptions,
thoughts or dreams of other(s), orsmall but relevant nuancewhose perceptions
may be transmitted to other individuals. Either in vigilant state or as a conditioned
dream, either in full immersion or through some less total medium, the condition
for inclusion in the corpus is that there must be some way to access the virtual
experience that is the cognitive activity of the other, allowing someone to see it, as
the title of one of the stories and also of this chapter, Through Other Eyes.
2. Some Guidelines
This is a common theme in the work of Philip K. Dick, one of those
inescapable authors when looking for early influences in cyberculture. For that
reason, we will avoid him in favour of other authors and texts 4particularly
shorter narrativesthat are not so saturated in academic analyses; besides, if our
goal is to discover a latent trend, we cannot draw hypotheses, let alone conclusions,
based on a single writer, no matter how popular he became in the academia. It is,
however, almost obligatory to mention, at least as a heuristic device, two of his
novels that can guide us through the theme. One is Eye in the Sky, a novel that
narrates the involuntary submission, following an accident in nuclear facilities, to
the private universes of some of the main characters. All of them enter, by turns,
in the delusive universes of a religious fanatic, a r epressed puritan, a b orderline
paranoid, and a communist zealot. At first, the verisimilitude of the illusion is so
strong that they take those weird realities as true, but end up by discovering their
falseness, overcoming them only to fall into the next fake reality. In A Maze of
Death, the other example, the hallucination is also collective but in this case
voluntary (that is, consensually produced by what we would nowadays call a
Jorge Martins Rosa
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virtual reality machine). Nevertheless, characters have become so immersed in
that illusion that they simply forget the fact, believingjust like in the earlier
novelthat they are experiencing a strange succession of real events.
Although an attempt at a definite categorization may be a bit hasty at this point,
particularly with an atypical author as Dick, we cannot avoid following the trail of
a few attributes that deserve a different treatment in each novel: first, in Eye in the
Sky, we have a) an involuntary illusion, produced by b) single individuals (even if
collective in its effects) and c) unmediated by machines (even if indirectly caused
by them); then, in A Maze of Death, a) a voluntary illusion (i. e., consenting and
known as such), b) collectively produced and c) depending on a machine for its
effectiveness, a machine built with that very same purpose. 5
In the sample of stories and novelettes we have gathered, we can see how these
features can recombined, and this first attempt at an interpretation grid will be finetuned as other variables appear.
3. The Corpus
Even if the chronological order of publication turns out to be irrelevant, that is
how we will present the corpus. Curiously enough, although that may be nothing
more than a sampling bias, from a universe of a bit more than 100 titles written
between 1930 and 1970, only among those written in the 1950s and 1960s could
we find those that matched our criteria.
The first of those stories where we found that sharing of a private reality is
Dreaming is a Private Thing, by Isaac Asimov (Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, December 1955). Individual and voluntary, if we remember the variables
suggested above. The story is composed by three fragments, all connected and
contextualized by the existence of a flourishing business of dream making, 6 in
which individuals that have some special talent are used as sources for those
commodified dreams. The first of these fragments resembles a p hilosophical
dialogue on the ethical dilemma of training a potentially talented child to be a
dream maker while depriving her of a normal childhood (or even adulthood), a
dilemma that seems to be solved in distinct ways by the two main companies in the
business. In the second fragment, again extrapolating from the predicament of
economic competition, characters belonging to one of the companies discuss and
express their criticism on the novelty of collective dream palaces and
pornographic dreamies that massify an activity that was until then la carte,
adapted to single customers. Lastly, one of the most talented dreamers from that
more traditional company manifests the intention of retiring from his occupation,
Because Im not living, Mr. Weill. Everything passes me by. 7 And he does it, in
spite of the dissuasive arguments of his boss that partakes from a romantic view
according to which Wherever he goes, whatever he does, hell dream. [...] Its
their business: making people happy. Other people. 8
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With R. A. Laffertys Through Other Eyes (Future Science Fiction, October
1960), some fine-tuning of our variables is needed. While in Asimovs story we
had a technology that only allowed mind-sharing while in a d ream state,
asymmetric though voluntary for both parts, sender and receiver, here the act
happens in the state of vigil, and the guest only needs to receive a p reviously
recorded copy of the brain-wave pattern of the hosteven more asymmetric, as
the sender may not even know his mind was probed.
Like in the private realities of Dicks Eye in the Sky, the differences are also
portrayed as being almost incommensurable from mind to mind, even if limited to
the level of immediate perception. One of the worlds is more logical, another
more detailed, while yet anotheran updated version of the eternal feminine
clichis more sensual, so much that the main character becomes depressed
because his world seems so pale and barren. In the end, the protagonist feels the
need to develop a d evice he calls the correlator, a plug-in that reduces these
differences to a tolerable level. A tragic epilogue, in spite of the techno-optimist
tone so typical of SFs Golden Age:
The Correlator is designed to minimize and condition the initial
view of the world seen through other eyes, to soften the shock
[]. Misunderstandings can be agreeable. But there is something
shattering about sudden perfect understanding. 9
The fact that the narrative of Jack Sharkeys The Creature Inside (Worlds of
Tomorrow, December 1963) resembles a (mental) action thriller should not distract
us. Here the machine, the duplicator, gives the subject a saturating dose of
inflowing concepts, 10 which are selected by his subconscious mind and then fed
back, allowing the experience of a private universe as real as the outside world.
But when tried, for therapeutic purposes, in someone suffering from megalomania,
the patient becomes the ruler of a s elf-sustained world from which nobody can
remove himand, just like in the cult movie Nightmare in Elm Street, anyone who
gets killed inside his fantasies is unable to return. The protagonist, of course,
eventually carries out his mission reaching the patients world from within his
own, in a plot twist that strengthens the initial premise of a technical ability to join
minds in a common world.
The Consciousness Machine, a novelette by Josephine Saxton (Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1968), rich in feminist overtones, returns to a
more basic premise, although as technologically challenging: instead of direct
mind-to-mind communication, a psychiatric patients repressed thoughts become a
movie to be played both to him and to his therapist. Supposedly that allows the
conscious apprehension of ones unconscious depths, providing, with the guidance
of the therapist, a quick and infallible cure. Not so with the case at hand, that of a
young male psychopath that dreams about a boy who finds a baby girl in the
Jorge Martins Rosa
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woods and takes care of her until she is an adult. In the end, we discover that this
was also a form of catharsis for the female therapist, leaving the suspicion that, in
spite of a presupposed asymmetry and lack of simultaneity between the recording
of the dream and the playing of the movie, the product of the consciousness
machine may be influenced by both parts, and not only by the patients thoughts: a
thin feedback loop seems to emerge in a process that should be one-way.
The last story is Daphne Castells Whos in There with Me? (England Swings
SF, 1968), the only narrative that explicitly deals with the emergence of a b oth
collective and voluntary illusory realm, a p eculiarly surreal amalgam of all the
participants reveriesDamn it, it was my mind, wasnt it? And werent we all
separate individuals? 11again with the intention of a therapeutic purpose, but
actually reduced to a form of entertainment. While there is no dominant conflict in
the narrative, 12 the characters slowly realize that it is almost impossible to conjure
a coherent world: its the absence, at the root of this, of any distinct pattern at
all. 13 The main character thus eagerly awaits the prospective return to the real
world, confirming a sceptic view of the supposed liberating powers of technology:
I was warm with hope and relief [to return]at least it would be an illusion I
knew. 14
4. Final Round
Although we have tried to avoid a mere decontextualized presentation of the
stories, a more global perspective, focused on the variables that became prominent
during the analysis, is now required. Table 1 sums it up.
The most regular features may be dealt with at once: in all stories there is the
need of a technical mediationwhich is almost self-evident: otherwise the sciencefictional approach would slip into the realm of fantasy 15and in most there is
some (but highly variable) degree of immersiveness.
In what concerns the variables as a whole, what emerged as more relevant is
not particularly that some options seem to be preferred by the authorsfor
example the fact that most assume that both sender and receiver know they are
taking part of the (otherwise asymmetrical) mind fusion and also consent to it,
something that feels like the natural outcome of the dominant optimism of the
Golden Age of SF.
Much more relevant is the fact that, maybe unperceived by the authors but
patent after the analysis, all subscribe the conceptual frame proposed by Claude
Shannon in his influential Mathematical Theory of Communication. Dreams,
illusions, or just the way we perceive reality are all conceived as a message (or
something that can be translated into a message) that can be accurately transmitted
from a sender or source 16 to a receiver or destinationboth can be unwilling or
voluntary, both can be individual or collective, but all act according to Shannons
definition of those instances in the communicative process. The machine, of
course, plays the part of technical transmitter of the message that, in order to travel
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Through Other Eyes
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between the two ends, has first to be codified. The additional fact thateven if
not in all storiesthe message can be recorded (and replayed when needed)
further confirms our findings.
Table 1: Relevant Variables in the Narratives
Sender/
source:
Voluntary
and
consenting?
Receiver:
Voluntary?
Mediated
by
machines?
Sender/
source:
Individual or
collective?
Receiver:
Individual
or
collective?
Real time
or
recorded?
Immersive?
Isaac Asimov,
Dreaming is a
Private Thing
Yes
Yes
Yes
Individual
Individual
(at first),
apparently
becoming
collective
N/A
Yes
R. A. Lafferty,
Through Other
Eyes
No
Yes
Yes
Individual
Individual
Recorded
Yes (but
not VRlike)
Jack Sharkey,
The Creature
Inside
No
Yes
Yes
Individual
Real-time
Both,
although
conceived as
individual
Yes
Josephine
Saxton, The
Consciousness
Machine
Forced, but
aware of
intervention
Yes
Yes
Individual
(although the
end allows a
different
interpretation)
Recorded
Mostly
individual in
the
narrative,
but may be
collective
No
Yes
Yes
Collective
Collective
(senders are
also
receivers)
Daphne Castell, Yes

Who's in There
with Me?
Real time
Yes
Less common, however, but increasingly present in the last titlesthe ones
written in the mid to late 60s, indicating that the date of publication has some
relevance after allis the presupposition (particularly when the illusion happens in
real-time) of some kind of interaction between sender, receiver and machine, or at
least two of these instances. In other words, a feedback loop is present, thus going
beyond Claude Shannons frame of reference to a truly cybernetic one, giving way
to Norbert Wieners terminology of inputs, outputs, etc.
That suspicion is confirmed in those three narratives. Already in the first page
of The Creature Inside we find a s mall infodump with one of the characters
explaining that My development involves an infinitely selective feedback, 17 at
this point apparently limited to the connection between machine and the patient
that accumulates the role of sender and receiver. In The Consciousness Machine,
despite the process being neither immersive or in real time between the human
participants, we read:
Jorge Martins Rosa
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The machine, tuned in to messages from any sick mind placed in
it, picked up, sorted out, [...] took all into account and translated
it into a story in the form of a movie, with the added advantage
that such a story seen by the sick patients automatically gave
cybernetic feedback to the mind from which it had come. 18
Lastly, Whos in There with Me?, although abstaining from using such a
technical vocabulary, 19 partakes from that idea of a co llective construction of a
reality, even if, ultimatelyas the above quote tellsthe dynamic but steady state
of homeostasis described by Wieners cybernetics cannot be achieved,
undermining all hope in a consensus between human beings.
But we should not let the bleaker tone of this story deceive us. As much as in
the other narratives we have examined, an underlying assumption is taking stand.
The idea that No man is an island, entire of itself, stated at the dawn of modernity
by John Donne, reminded that, even by the standards of individualism, humans
were social beings. The only insurmountable stronghold of this liberal conception
was the mind, the core of privacy and of the seat the true self. In these stories,
something more radical is sprouting, even if in an early stage of development: a
compulsion for being connected, for yielding the formerly solipsist inner self to
technology; a technology that renders the world as information and, concomitantly,
refashions the old human being as a part of a new, post-human entity, the cyborg. 20
Notes
1
With a few honourable exceptions. Cf. Laura Frosts Huxleys Feelies: The
Cinema of Sensation in Brave New World, Twentieth Century Literature 52.4
(Winter 2006): 443-473.
2
At the moment adding up to around 100 t itles, most of which found in a
research trip to GeorgiaTechs SF Collection in Atlanta, with the kind help of Lisa
Yaszek, of the Language, Literature and Communication department.
3
The cut dates were 1870 a nd 1970. Mostly because of the volume of titles,
there is an unavoidable emphasis on genre SF and, within it, on short fiction.
4
However, coming as I am from a PhD thesis on the echoes of Philip K. Dick in
cyberculture, it is also hard not to start with a charted territory.
5
Ubik sits in between: the illusion is a) involuntary, apparently produced by b)
several individuals (although some, as Jory, control that illusory world, and, of
course, c) mediated by the machine that is the Cold-Pac.
6
The Dream Makers is (coincidence?) the title of a short story by Robert Bloch
published two years before (in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, September 1953), but that
did not meet our criteria for inclusion.
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Through Other Eyes
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7
Isaac Asimov, Dreaming is a Private Thing, Magazine of Fantasy & Science

Fiction (December, 1955), republished in Introductory Psychology through
Science Fiction, ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and Harvey A.
Katz (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1977), 460.
8
Ibid., 463.
9
R. A. Lafferty, Through Other Eyes, Future Science Fiction (October 1960),
republished in Introductory Psychology through Science Fiction, ed. Patricia S.
Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and Harvey A. Katz (Chicago: Rand McNally
College Publishing Co., 1977), 199.
10
Jack Sharkey, The Creature Inside, Worlds of Tomorrow (December 1963):
25-26.
11
Daphne Castell, Whos in There with Me? in England Swings SF, ed. Judith
Merril (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 108.
12
While the lack of a structured narrative is something usual in British New
Wave SF, nevertheless a few narrative lines can be identified in in the story.
13
Castell, Whos in There with Me?, 119.
14
Ibid., 121.
15
In spite of one of Philip K. Dicks novels we evoked in our first heuristic steps:
the nuclear accident in Eye in the Sky is much more a p lot device than a dream
machine like those we have seen in all these five stories. Cf. also note 5.
16
The distinction between sender and source and between receiver and
destination, although essential to a deeper understanding of Shannon and
Weavers significance in the physical and the social sciences, is in this case of
minor relevance.
17
Sharkey, The Creature Inside, 25.
18
Josephine Saxton, The Consciousness Machine, Magazine of Fantasy &
Science Fiction (June 1968): 11-12 (our emphasis).
19
It is a New Wave story, after all. Cf. note 12.
20
Cf. the comparative chart in Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto, in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge,
1990), 161-162.
Bibliography
Asimov, Isaac. Dreaming is a P rivate Thing. Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction (December 1955). Republished in Introductory Psychology through
Science Fiction. Edited by Patricia S. Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and
Harvey A. Katz, 449-463. Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1977.
Jorge Martins Rosa
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Castell, Daphne. Whos in There with Me? In England Swings SF. Edited by
Judith Merril, 107-124. New York: Doubleday, 1968.
Dick, Philip K. Eye in the Sky. London: Gollancz, 2003.
. A Maze of Death. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Dinello, Daniel. Infinite Cyberspace Cages: The Internet and Virtual Reality. In
Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology, 147-179.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Frost, Laura. Huxleys Feelies: The Cinema of Sensation in Brave New World.
Twentieth Century Literature 52.4 (Winter 2006): 443-473.
Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature, 149-181. London: Routledge, 1990.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999.
Lafferty, R. A. Through Other Eyes. Future Science Fiction (October 1960).
Republished in Introductory Psychology through Science Fiction. Edited by
Patricia S. Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and Harvey A. Katz, 187-199.
Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1977.
Murray, Craig D. and Judith Sixsmith. The Corporeal Body in Virtual Reality.
Ethos 27.3 (September 1999): 315-343.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Novels of Philip K. Dick. Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1984.
Saxton, Josephine. The Consciousness Machine. Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction (June 1968): 4-45.
Sharkey, Jack. The Creature Inside. Worlds of Tomorrow (December 1963): 2536.
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Weaver, Warren. Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of
Communication. In The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Edited by
Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, 1-28. Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1949.
Yaszek, Lisa. The Self Wired: Technology and Subjectivity in Contemporary
Narrative. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
Jorge Martins Rosa is Assistant Professor in the Communication Sciences
Department at the Human and Social Sciences College (FCSH) of Universidade
Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. He teaches several courses, including the post-graduate
seminars Fictional Modes: Fiction and Technology and Cyberculture, and is
currently the head researcher of a funded project on Fiction and the Roots of
Cyberculture.

Adam W. Ruch
Abstract
The traditions of literary analysis, particularly of fiction, lend many tools to the
pursuit of videogame criticism. One area, however, which is under-represented is
the notion of a canonthe truths and history of a particular fictional universe.
Long-running narratives from Lord of the Rings to Doctor Who have a legacy by
which internal consistency is measured. What, then, of the canon of an interactive
medium where different events may take place in different versions of the game
world? Is a history of any sort a valid canon, or must we complicate the canon by
systematizing it, rather than narrativizing? This chapter uses Mass Effect as an
example of a videogame with fictional lore and history on par with many noninteractive universes to explore this issue.
Key Words: Fiction, canon, science fiction, Mass Effect, consistency, continuity,
romance.
*****
In discussing the fiction, and particularly the narrative, of a v ideogame, two
major problems arise. The first and most fundamentally troubling is that of
contingency, the essential ability of the videogame to present materially different
fiction to different players. This goes beyond the interpretive difference that for
Roland Barthes may create a different text out of the same work for different
individuals. 1 The second problem is more interpretative: that of valorised
outcomes, or simply, winning. Games evaluate the results of players actions, and
therefore suggest a right and a wrong outcome. Often the fiction is married to
these game states, so the winning outcome is coupled with a positive fictional
result, such as preventing a disaster, whereas the failing condition is equated with
some characters defeat or even death. While it is generally unproblematic to
equate many positive and negative scenarios with winning and losing, when
videogames begin to tackle deeper issues, interpretive difficulties arise. The
example for discussing these two problems in this chapter will be the Mass Effect
series and in particular the sexuality and romances between the player-character
Shepard and several non-player characters.
Firstly, to address an old issue: this chapter is not designed to support a
narratology versus ludology debate, but rather to furnish new understandings of the
relationship between game rules and fiction. This chapter may well be interpreted
along similar lines as older ludology arguments by Jesper Juul which contend that
the narrative frame of a videogame is largely irrelevant. 2 Markku Eskelinens oftquoted assertion that he would not drop a ball and wait for it to start telling him
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stories is equally out-dated. 3 The fact of current situations is that, clearly, Mass
Effect has both fictional elements and game-based challenges. Both are far more
complex than any example presented in that early ludology, for the simple reason
of technological and artistic evolution. While it may be true that the narrative
frame of a game such as Space Invaders may be easily replaced with some other
metaphor, to do the same to Mass Effect would not only take far more work, but
would rob the players of a significant, meaningful fictional experience. So, to
reiterate, the goal of this chapter is to understand the problem with the goal of
coming to a solution, rather than to demarcate divides between disciplines.
Secondly, it appears that this research is relatively innovative, as very little has
been published that directly addresses this topic. Some influential work has been
done by James Paul Gee, particularly his exploration of projected identities 4 and
the implications this has for performing rather different versions of characters
such as Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4. 5 Gees projected (and implicitly
contingent) identities are created by the player, for the player-character, but this
theory has influenced my examination of non-player characters. Further guidance
is found in Marie-Laure Ryans work with fiction and narrative which liberates the
latter from verbal texts. 6 These two tangents have helped to construct an
understanding of both fiction and narrative that does not rely so much on fixed
words on page or events on screen to convey an experience of story to the
reader/viewer/player.
1. Contingency and Canon
Videogames can be described as state machines meaning they are constructed
out of many sets of options which can be set to a range of different positions. A
light switch is a very simple state machine, with both an on and off position while
a windmill is a poor example, as there is no switch from on to off, and the speed
the mill turns at is highly variable. Games usually contain many, many sets of
possibilities, or individual option-cases, which can be set to one of range of
possibilities. The class of an RPG character, whether a Little Sister 7 is still in the
level or not, and further whether she was rescued or harvested. Some states will
either imply or preclude other options in a d ifferent set. Bethesdas Elder Scrolls
III: Morrowind, like similar, faction-heavy RPGs are structured such that being a
high-ranking member of one faction forbids the player-character becoming a highranking member of some opposing faction.
Taken all together, these state cases are what is possible in a game. Generally
the state of any of these cases is entirely dependent on the choices and actions of
the player. The possibility space is the players domain, as we work through the
long set of options, we flick switches to the position that pleases us. The size of the
possibility space is usually biggest in strategy games and RPGs where the how of
play is a major feature of the genre. These games typically present the world as
very open to the players input, malleable to the players will. If one wishes to
Adam W. Ruch
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become exalted with the Cenarion Circle, 8 the methods are widely-known and one
need only complete the requisite tasks. Likewise, if a p layer wishes to gain the
maximum proficiency with daggers, the game system makes the process
transparent and inevitable. There is really never any question about the potential of
the players character. Whatever he or she sets out to do will be achievable,
provided that it exists within the possibility space in the first place. The ability to
manipulate and eventually dominate the possibility space is the prerogative of the
player in videogames. This is generally viewed as unproblematic. Yet, as in life,
the case of romance and sexuality becomes vexed, and requires greater nuance.
In traditional media the possibility space is defined, or rather described by, the
canon. The canon of a particular work is the way things are in that universe.
Canon, for our purposes here, is something of a history book, and in the case of
sci-fi or fantasy, a physics lesson. The canon defines who people are, what they
have done, and more generally what is and isnt possible in the world, based on
narrated events in canonical texts. That is, the canon is extrapolated from the
published novels or films etc. from the original or authorized sources. So, books
authored by J. K. Rowling are canonical Harry Potter texts, while slasher fan-fic
posted online is not.
What does this mean in a medium where, for different players, the things that
happen and who people are can be wildly different? In the Mass Effect canon, are
the Rachni dead and the Geth reprogrammed, or not? Is Shepard male or female? Is
Ashley Williams alive or dead? Mass Effects canon is as contingent as the
narrative. The way one players Mass Effect universe is as defined by what
actually happened will be (or can be) quite different to another players. What is
possible does not change; both have the same opportunities to begin with. Therein
lies the rub: is the canon formed of narrative events, or by the possibility space?
In Mass Effect 1 and 2, the array of options regarding the so-called love
interest characters present us with an interesting case. For the moment, let us
ignore the relative believability of any particular characters sexual orientation, I
will return to that later. The question for now is this: on any one playthrough,
Shepard can only fully pursue one character, with the clash between two potential
romance partners resulting in a decision being made between them. So, two of the
available characters are demonstrably attracted to Shepard. Does the fact that an
experienced player knows that if the game were played differently, another
character would also be available, or would change their sexual orientation,
matter? Is the possibility part of the canon when it doesnt actually happen?
Another example: Liara can romance either a male or female Shepard. Does
this make her a bisexual? 9 Or is she simply only attracted to a male Shepard in
one case, or a attracted to a female Shepard in another? Given that it requires two
fundamentally different play-throughs of the game to demonstrate her bisexual
availability, is it fair to assume the same from one play-through? Take another
example: upgrading the Normandy. In different play-throughs, the ship can be
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anywhere between stock-standard and fully upgraded. Given that both are possible,
does this indicate that in the canon the Normandy is somehow both? A biengineered ship both with and without upgrades? And does the possibility for the
player to choose a male or female Shepard mean that canonically, Shepard is
actually a simultaneous hermaphrodite?
My suspicion is that we want to attribute something more like personality to
Liara, Jack, Miranda or any other character, and less like state machine coding that
actually defines them. Especially when it comes to sex, but generally because these
characters are more fun when thought of as people, we want to construct for them
an interpretation of their possible states as behaviours rather than programming.
We want them to be more real, with their own agency, rather than simply accepting
input from a player, and activating the appropriate animation and dialog according
to the selection criteria. Further, it is unprecedented for each reading of a text to
present a materially different story, so despite this possibility in videogames, we
tend to treat/imagine Liara as the same person when romanced by either male or
female Shepardseven though this is a different story.
When we combine the player-centric possibility space with a more traditional
understanding of character and canon, these problems arise. The term Shepsexual
is used in the BioWare forums to describe the peculiar, unlikely experience of
everyone on the Normandy being attracted to Shepard. We can avoid this sensation
if we compartmentalize our playthroughs into separate versions of the story,
though. This places some expectations on the shoulders of players, to change their
perception of character, and less on those of developers. The reason I suggest this
first is that from a story-writers perspective, having a love-interest in a story such
as Mass Effect in a linear medium may indeed be inevitable, possibly vital to the
experience. In an interactive narrative, the decision must be made between
allowing/providing for a romance with one particular NPC (Ashley Williams for
example) meaning that the only playthroughs to feature a romance arc are those by
a male Shepard, by a p layer interested in Ashley (and not Liara or Kaiden). The
alternative must then be alternatives. It is not part of the story/narrative that all
characters desire Shepard, but part of the deeper structure that a r omance arc (of
some sort) should be possible for any given Shepard. Therefore, the designers must
plan for romance for each different Shepard by creating different versions of each
NPC: romanced and non-romanced. Within that, we should probably find
romanced-by-male and romanced-by-female, and possibly even the non-romanced
version of each as well.
The question becomes whether any particular character being bisexual is
actually part of his/her story or if it is simply a mechanical reaction to the
player/characters gender. This is a deep problem between traditional game design
and realistic world building. If we are to create worlds, and especially characters,
features such as their sexuality must seem to belong to them, as a person, rather
than being part of the possibility space that the player controls, or it feels
Adam W. Ruch
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disingenuous, even pandering (especially to certain hetero-male fantasies). Design
fundamentals tell us that games should be fair; life tells us that the world is not fair.
This demands a very awkward balance between enabling a wide array of player
experiences, particularly those personal ones such as romance, and creating an
unrealistic world where everyone wants to sleep with you.
2. Game-Fun and Winning
The second problem arises as a result of a videogames contingent nature, and
its association with games in general. 10 While it is possible to create contingent
software that lacks a winning conditionproductivity software such as a word
processor or email clientup to now, videogames are usually understood as
containing a winning condition. Complex videogames contain many goals, many
areas in which the player can advance their standing in unambiguous terms such as
level. These apply to overall character strength, but also to individual abilities
such as dagger proficiency, faction respect, and other abilities or skills. This kind
of levelling-up metaphor is a generally unproblematic, if overly optimistic,
digitisation of the real-world experience of practicing a craft in order to become
more skilled. The advancement through the set of challenges is designated as
positive, a net gain or victory for the player and character.
What, then, of advancing through the conversation trees that eventually lead to
a sexual encounter with another character in a videogame? Like the unambiguous
positive associations many war-themed videogames attach to the killing of an
enemy soldier, the pure game-mechanical interpretations of meaning leave much to
be desired. Associating a sexual encounter with a victory leads to deeply troubling
ethical questions defining sexuality and romance as a competition, and reinforce
stereotypes about male dominance and female acquiescence. When studying
videogames through a purely ludological lens, these actions can only be explained
or justified along economical, tactical grounds. Given that Mass Effect does not
grant the player some special ability or greater strength after intercourse occurs,
pure ludology would actually have to ignore the event altogether. This returns the
discussion to the importance that fiction has within a v ideogame: if we are to
ignore everything that is not game-like about Mass Effect, we would be poorer for
it.
What seems important in both of these cases is the location of the goals: are
they within the player, and so generated more by the game structure, or within the
character and so located within the fiction? If a designer can incorporate fictional
goals that enhance the overall fiction by reinforcing a c haracters personality or
deepening their complexity, which also present game-based challenges, then the
goal may be shared by both player and character. The motivations for both player
and character are important in videogames in ways that are simply irrelevant to
other media, and more discussion, research and design experimentation is
necessary to fully explore these areas.
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Notes
1
Roland Barthes, From Work to Text, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism, ed Vincent B. Leitch, (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001
[1971]), 1470-1475.
2
Jesper Juul, A Clash between Game and Narrative, http://www.jesperjuul.net/
thesis.
3
Markku Eskelinen, Towards Computer Game Studies, in First Person: New
Media as Story, Performance and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat
Harrigan, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004), 35-45.
4
James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and
Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2007).
5
James Paul Gee, Metal Gear Solid 4, in Well Played 1.0 (ETC Press Creative
Commons, 2009).
6
Marie-Laure Ryan, Avatars of Story (Mineapolis/London: University of
Minnesota Press 2006).
7
2K Games, Bioshock.
8
Blizzard, World of Warcraft.
9
Liara is an asari, a species of alien that while they appear and identify most
closely with a h uman female, have no gender of their own. Their attraction to
either gender of human would therefore not make any kind of homo- or heterosexual distinction sensible.
10
For a d eeper analysis of this problem, see Ruch, Beyond Game Fun,
Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment, 2011.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. From Work to Text. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 1470-1475. New York: W. W. Norton
Company, 2001 [1971].
Eskelinen, Markku. Towards Computer Game Studies. In First Person: New
Media as Story, Performance and Game. Edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat
Harrigan, 35-45. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004.
Gee, James Paul. Metal Gear Solid 4. In Well Played 1.0. ETC Press - Creative
Commons, 2009.
Adam W. Ruch
187
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. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New
York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2007.
Juul, Jesper. A Clash between Game and Narrative. http://www.jesperjuul.net
/thesis.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Mineapolis/London: University of Minnesota
Press, 2006.
Adam Ruch is currently writing his Ph.D. developing a theoretical framework for
understanding videogames. He lectures on videogames at Macquarie University,
Sydney.

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Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,

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