David Hirst 250 472 638 MIT 3436 Professor Mary Bunch March 10 2011 Cyberpunk Aesthetic: Rhizomatic

Conclusions of Technological Will it is important to note that humans are creatures of representation. That is to say, intrinsic to the social nature of the human constitution is the necessity for symbolisms. Advanced communication is at the heart of the human condition, so much so that we have become able to communicate through images on multiple levels, as Barthes illustrated in his exploration of myth. As with other literary forms, science fiction is a mirror to which one can derive a cultural reflection, or dream, about the way in which humans, in this specific instance, conceive of technology and their relationship to it. The event of cyberpunk with William Gibsons Neuromancer has profoundly changed the way in which these cultural reflections have come to understand this relationship. The interface of human and technology in the cyborg presented there within seems to entirely obscure the boundary at which human beings start and machine ends and vice versa which, in turn, reflects posthuman and postmodernist doctrine. However, Gibson seems to have inadvertently, through cyborg manifestations in Neuromancer, illustrate the polar extremes of the conclusions of rhizomatic thought. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the cyberpunk aesthetic of Neuromancer to elucidate the potentials of the rhizome. As with most theory, the rhizome and rhizomatic thought are an abstraction. They are an idea, or an assemblage of ideas, apart from a material reality that seek to pertain to

an aspect of an epochs paradigm or alter or shift the perspective of that period, or even the perception of a historical phase. This has implications, in the occurrence of Deleuze and Guattaris Rhizome the theory has no set trajectory. That is to say it is pregnant with potentials in its implications. The way in which rhizomatic thought could materialize and the subsequent ramifications implicit within the adoption of its practice could, in effect, have a surplus of conclusions. Thus when one should mention the polar extremes of rhizomatic thought one is referring to this phenomenon. For Gibson we see this in Neuromancer as the transhumanist ideal of transcending the flesh through the cyberspace matrix and, on the other end of the spectrum, simstim. True to transhumanist ideals, when Case plugs into the matrix and enters cyberspace he is in fact discarding the body for the complete lightness of mind to traverse the matrix with complete autonomy. This interface between man and the paradoxical space of technology is the merging, or conglomeration of the neurology of humans with machine, allowing for the enhancement of human capabilities within communication and communication systems; in essence, a cyborg. The matrix itself is just a representation of data taking the form of space itself. It has no beginning or end; it does not care for individual forms but places emphasis on the primacy of connections; connections between people, between people and information or data, and between people and the environment itself. As one becomes light itself in the matrix, you are in fact data, or a data transfer, there is no difference in your constitution and that of the environment around you. These are all attributes shared with the form of a rhizomatic approach to the world. As the matrix resides in the abstraction of what is flux, a never-ending trajectory of communication systems, so to the rhizome is:

Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five etc. It is not a multiple derived from the One, or to which one is added (n + 1). It is composed of not units but of directions, or rather directions in movements. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistencies (Deleuze & Gauttari 21)

If one is to understand the matrix within the rhetoric of the rhizome it is in fact the rhizome itself subtract a trail of movement attributing the matrix the illusion of a dichotomy between subject and object. The matrix, like the rhizome, has no fixed point of unity and origin; it is a grid where one is bodiless, an expanse of pure mind, where one does not exist independently of the system to which they are taking part. In the nonspace of the matrix, the interior of a given data structure possessed unlimited subjective dimension, both the matrix and the rhizome possess n dimensions; they are both pure potentialities (Gibson 83). The rhizome, as paraphrased as succinctly as possible, is a way of thinking focused around connections. In essence there is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather an assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these order (Deleuze & Gauttari 23). In other words, it is connections, or the potential of connections, always at the ready. The grid nature of the matrix works to this same effect. As one exists solely as light the potentials for connections, the transferring of data, is always there; the grid is charged with the potential

of infinite connections. As the cyborg in this instance is the amalgamation of human neurology with technology it becomes a hybrid of man and machine but also of man and representation, or communication itself. This is because technology itself is a representation, it is our connection to an ideal, a mode of communication an objective. Thus it becomes observable that the matrix and its human compatriot is the cyborg equivalent to the rhizome. It is interesting, however, that this rhizome is the result of neoliberalist laissezfaire politics. The construct of data transfer, where data transfer has replaced capital altogether, is in fact the medium of the transnational corporation. Throughout Neuromancer there is no mention of any state governance, capital and data are the only influences in this respect. As both global capitalism and technology share a common goal, efficiency, the amalgamation of one to the other seems not far from the mark. If the Internet is the reality most akin to the matrix, our own kind of decentralized technological rhizome, this trend has already begun taking place. As communications companies vie for control by attempting to levy billing by data usage to the increasing preponderance of market forces trying to shape internet consumer use and to the proliferation of ecommerce the internet and data are not far off from becoming the instruments of power and exclusivity levied by the lucrative corporations in the cyberspace of Neuromancer. This is one example, or potential, representation of the rhizome proposed in theory within Plateaus. The introduction of simulated stimulation, or simstim, only accentuates the rhizomorphic tendency of the matrix. It allows Case to enter into the mind of another and see what they see and feel what they feel. It is the new form of connectivity; a symbiosis

of human to machine to machine to human and human to environment etc. Although simstim is an offshoot of cyberspace, that is to say the matrix facilitates simstim, simstim simultaneously embodies a central facet of rhizomatic thought; connections, the stressing that a rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb to be, but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, andandand a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle (Deleuze & Guattari 25). The link between Case and Molly in this instance manifests in the aforementioned explanation of connection as is evident when he keyed the new switch. The abrupt jolt into other flesh. Matrix gone, a wave of sound and colour. She was moving through a crowded street, past stalls vending discount software Smells of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill. For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the passenger behind her eyes Her body language was disorienting, her style foreign He found himself wondering about the mind he shared these sensations with. What did he know about her? (Gibson 56). The connection, or the middle that picks up speed, is the cyborg, the fusion of human to machine to human itself. But it does not begin or end in any specific instance; instead the rhizome facilitates the unending middle of Case to the matrix to Molly to the world and her sensations and his understanding and feeling those sensations. Case is on one end the potential of his own physical limitations which has no real beginning, one facet of that potential is the grid of the matrix which opens up to infinite potentialities on its own which one, simstim, is

capitalized upon, which in turn connects case to the sensorium of Molly a new infinite progression of capacities for connections. While the matrix on its own seems to be the conclusion of neoliberalism, a world where the term representative government is arbitrary and the market has become the governing force of the global nation, simstim is a testament to the human potential of the rhizome, more akin to what the authors set out to discover. Inherent to the idea of simstim as a material exhibition, or metaphor, for rhizomatic thought is empathy. Ultimately to understand one and other we need to put ourselves in the others shoes, so to speak, and in so doing eliminate the illuminate the nature of a false duality. In this way we might diffuse the tensions garnered by a sense of individuality programmed at the zenith of Fordism whose implications separate the will and ideals of one from the other by providing the visceral intensity of unrelenting human hybridity of an entity to potentially everything. The cyborg amalgamation of the human-communication system interface as imagined by Gibson in Neuromancer, aptly bestowed the name the matrix, or cyberspace, straddles a queer ambivalence of the potentials of the rhizome. Strangely enough, the more sinister of the two, the matrix itself as the medium of the corporation facilitates the more human and altruistic dimensions of the rhizome embodied by simstim. This cyborg becomes bodiless, the form to which it takes part, the matrix. The matrix itself, referred to as the grid, has no beginning or end. It is the paradox of space itself, that is to say space where there is no space in any traditional sense. The grid becomes entirely a middle that connects any point to any other point, even back to the physical world itself. In this way

Gibsons projections might embody a physical representation of what the rhizome might be.

Works Cited Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987. Print. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 2004. Print.