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L’artificialisation du corps dans la littérature science-fictionThe artificialisation of the body in science-fiction literature
Călina Bora
Université Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
calinabora@gmail.com
L’artificialisation du corps dans la littérature science-fiction /
The artificialisation of the body in science-fiction literature
Abstract: This study sets out to establish what the body means in science-fiction literature and to identify some of the reasons why the body moves from a morphological and biological structure to an artificial structure (the robot and the program) or a partially artificial one (the cyborg). The study will try to define the ex-somatic thing, the process of transformation undergone by the biological body, with emphasis on the break between body and mind.
Keywords: Science-fiction; Cyborg; Artificial body; Program; Robot.
David Le Breton propose, dans L’Anthropologie du corps et modernité, une définition du corps en tant qu’« origine identitaire de l’homme »[1]. David Le Breton, sociologue et anthropologue en même temps, met en évidence deux idées essentielles, qui seront également au cœur de la présente étude. Premièrement, il affirme que dans les sociétés modernes, entre l’homme et son corps intervient une séparation, et deuxièmement, que cette séparation entraîne le phénomène d’objectivation du corps. L’homme ne se confond plus avec son corps, soutient Le Breton, mais ce dernier devient un symbole pour lui[2].
À l’origine de cette grande séparation se trouverait la tendance obsédante de l’homme à (se) dépasser et à répudier le biologique (l’humain) à tout prix. Cette tendance suppose, en fait, le désir de vaincre la mort. Que devient le corps dans ces conditions ? Une machine parfaite, dont les pièces usées peuvent être remplacées sans problème, libérée de la mort et, en même temps, le chemin vers le rêve des « extropians » de pouvoir vivre indépendamment du corps biologique.
Ce qui représente un réel intérêt pour cette recherche est la manière dont Le Breton explique le phénomène d’objectivation du corps. Celui-ci note, dans l’étude déjà mentionnée, que la grande séparation homme-corps est due à trois grandes ruptures intérieures éprouvées par l’homme des sociétés modernes : la séparation de l’univers, des autres et de soi-même.
La séparation de l’univers est la conséquence de l’individualisme. L’homme ne peut plus se connaître, en se repliant sur soi-même, puisqu’à l’intérieur il ne peut plus trouver « l’univers et les dieux », comme l’enjoignait une variante de l’adage delphique. On ne peut plus les trouver, puisque, d’après Nietzsche, les dieux et Dieu sont morts. De ce fait, l’homme ne peut et ne veut plus s’identifier avec la nature, avec les autres ou avec la divinité.
Bien plus, même la connaissance du corps, observe l’homme moderne, ne dépend pas d’une cosmologie[3]. En échange, plus l’homme se penche sur soi-même, plus son corps (sa propriété immédiate) devient de plus en plus important. De là découle ce que Le Breton appelle l’objectivation complète : « le corps devient une doublure, une clone parfaite, un alter ego »[4]. L’aliénation complète du corps suppose donc la possibilité de le modeler fidèlement sur l’image de soi. À partir de ce point, nous assistons à ce que Jean-François Lyotard nomme l’avènement de l’homme postmoderne[5].
La littérature science-fiction est un manifeste du combat de l’homme avec sa propre condition biologique, qu’il s’agisse de la confrontation entre l’intelligence humaine et les intelligences d’autres planètes (la résistance du corps biologique loin de son milieu naturel), ou de la multitude de transformations que le corps doit subir pour améliorer son rendement. Les auteurs de ce genre de littérature mettent en scène des cyborgs, des robots, des enfants conçus de façon transgénique, des ordinateurs et logiciels qui agissent par eux-mêmes etc. L’homme semble être, dans les romans de certains auteurs comme William Gibson, Orson Scott Card ou Ursula Le Guin, une créature physiquement imparfaite, qui doit dépasser ses imperfections pour les impératifs de performance, de vitesse de communication et d’efficacité demandés par l’avenir.
Gunther Anders, dans L’obsolescence de l’homme, explique la tendance d’objectivation du corps identifiée par Le Breton en comparant l’homme avec les produits fabriqués par lui-même. Anders remarque le fait que la révolte de l’homme contre son propre corps commence avec sa capacité à fabriquer des objets. Autrement dit, l’homme, qui n’est pas fabriqué, serait inférieur à ses produits[6]. Or, être inférieur à ses produits, dit Anders, implique le risque de perdre le contrôle des produits respectifs, parce qu’ils sont supérieurs à leur créateur.
Mais jusqu’où peut aller la séparation entre homme et son corps ?
Le Breton et Anders semblent être sûrs que l’homme pourra se séparer totalement de son corps, et cela, non par l’invention des extropians, mais grâce à l’intelligence humaine, capable de s’élever au-dessus de sa carcasse biologique, capable d’en remplacer les composants. La différence entre les idées de ces deux chercheurs est dans la position subjective qu’ils adoptent à ce sujet. Le Breton semble être inquiet du cours accéléré des transformations subies par les sociétés modernes, et attire l’attention que le cyborg n’est plus le grand mythe proposé par Gibson avec le roman Neuromancer et développé par d’autres auteurs de littérature science-fiction, mais que le cyborg existe déjà en médicine (par les prothèses qui remplacent des membres amputés, par exemple) et, d’une certaine manière, par la connexion de chaque individu à un réseau de communication virtuelle (ou à une plateforme virtuelle). Au contraire, Anders semble convaincu que l’homme progressera en dépassant totalement son humanité. Ce progrès implique la digitalisation et la robotisation de l’homme, qui ne supposent pas seulement de détruire le corps, mais aussi de détruire l’identité.
Concernant une hypothétique destruction de l’identité, les opinions de chercheurs sont divergentes. Par exemple, Donna Haraway, dans Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature, soutient que les seules identités détruites, suite à la transformation du corps, sont les identités de sexe, de genre, de classe, d’ethnie et d’âge. À ses yeux, ce n’est pas l’identité de l’homme qui est abolie, mais seulement le phantasme de cette identité, « pour faire de l’identité une décision de soi »[7]. Le Breton, au contraire, souligne le rapport étroit entre identité et corps biologique, et considère que détruire le corps en le transformant en cyborg signifie, en même temps, détruire l’identité humaine. Être cyborg, habiter dans les plateformes paradisiaques de l’Internet, suppose obligatoirement le renoncement au corps, l’absence d’une identité physique. Victoria Pitts[8], d’autre part, considère que l’identité de l’homme n’est pas détruite et que l’homme branché à Internet (l’homme cyborg) n’abolit pas son identité, mais il apprend comment jouer avec elle et connaître ses masques.
De mon point de vue, par la transformation en cyborg, l’homme ne perd pas l’identité construite à partir de son corps, mais il l’amplifie par la construction d’un corps virtuel, à l’aide duquel il peut agir dans l’espace cybernétique. Nous considérons exemplaires dans ce sens les situations imaginées par Cage dans Neuromancer, par Turner[9] dans Le Comte Zéro ou par Ender[10] dans Ender’s Game.
Pour Cage, comme pour les autres personnages connectés au cyberespace, le corps physique n’est qu’un « fourreau »[11]. Mais c’est un fourreau par l’intermédiaire duquel Cage perçoit le monde physique (temps et espace) et, en même temps, il est le moyen par lequel Cage peut se connecter à l’espace cybernétique. Si son corps était aboli en totalité, Cage serait condamné à vivre définitivement dans l’espace cybernétique, mais cela non plus n’abolirait l’identité acquise par le corps physique. Au contraire, qu’il soit cloître seulement un visiteur de l’espace cybernétique, Cage ne peut pas agir dans un espace étranger pour lui, seulement par la fabrication d’un autre corps, différent de celui physique, corps qui contient totalement l’identité de Cage.
En quoi consiste la différence entre les deux corps ?
La première différence concerne le milieu, l’espace où les corps peuvent agir. Dans le monde physique, Cage est une entité prisonnière dans un corps qui ne le représente peut-être pas, alors que dans l’espace cybernétique, l’entité Cage est l’équivalent du corps virtuel par le biais duquel il agit. Le corps humain est limité à sa nature, au sensoriel, tandis que le corps virtuel a une capacité fantastique de s’entraîner et de se développer, pouvant s’étendre à l’infini. Il serait utile ici de définir ce qu’est l’espace cybernétique.
Certains chercheurs considèrent l’espace cybernétique un non-espace ou une non-réalité (v. Scott Bukatman[12]), tandis que d’autres le définissent comme un espace parallèle au monde physique, un espace qui libère la conscience de la matérialité et, implicitement, de la mort. L’espace cybernétique n’est pas délimité, c’est une matrice, de consistance rhizomatique (dans le sens de Guattari et Vattimo), en continuelle expansion. Pratiquement, à mon avis, l’espace cybernétique est le moyen pour le corps de se libérer de la contrainte spatiale imposée par le monde physique.
Qu’est-ce qui se passe, dans ces conditions, avec les personnages de Cage et de Turner ? La dichotomie sujet-objet est abolie. Autrement dit, la disjonction corps (objet) – conscience (sujet) disparaît, et l’artificialisation devient certaine.
Les deux personnages, pour se connecter à l’espace cybernétique, ont besoin d’un corps physique et d’une prothèse. Dans les deux situations, il s’agit d’une prothèse mise à l’intérieur du corps, autrement dit d’une prothèse intérieure, nommée par Gibson deck : « des jouets qui te portaient dans les étendues infinies de l’espace qui n’était pas un espace, l’hallucination cosensitive complexe de l’humanité, la matrice, le cyberespace, le lieu où les noyaux chauds des grandes corporations brûlaient comme des navires de néon, informations si denses qu’on éprouverait des surcharges sensorielles si on essayait de comprendre plus que les contours les plus approximatifs »[13].
À preuve du fait qu’entre Turner/Cage et leurs corps physiques il n’y a pas de séparation définitive, les personnages, après leur découplage de l’espace cybernétique[14], évoquent des symptômes qu’ils avaient ressentis dans cet espace[15].
Finalement, Cage et Turner fonctionnent dans les deux espaces, dans l’espace réel, en sentant avec le corps physique ce que le corps virtuel vit dans l’espace cybernétique. Si Cage pouvait se distancer définitivement du corps physique (par un processus ex-somatique total), il cesserait de fonctionner comme cyborg, et deviendrait un logiciel (v. Jane, Ender’s Game).
Avec son casque implanté derrière l’oreille, Ender est lui aussi un cyborg, même si sa nature est différente de la nature des personnages de Gibson. Pourquoi ? Premièrement parce que le type de prothèse est différent. Turner et Cage ont des prothèses extérieures. Ils ne peuvent pénétrer dans l’espace cybernétique qu’au moyen du deck. Ainsi, les deux ne vivent pas en permanence dans le cyberespace. Ender, en échange, a une prothèse intérieure, l’implant posé pendant son enfance, et le logiciel qui surveille Ender en permanence est Jane, une entité complètement artificielle.
« Même si elle n’est pas autre chose qu’un système de logiciels qui se réécrivent et s’optimisent seuls. (…) Elle ne fait qu’interpréter l’algorithme qui lui avait été imposé dès le début. Elle n’a pas de libre arbitre. Elle est une marionnette, pas une personnalité »[16].
Le casque à l’aide duquel Ender se connecte à Jane est essentiel pour lui, puisqu’il optimise ses capacités et ses habiletés. Grâce à ce casque, Ender devient un grand conquérant du cosmos, aidant l’humanité à s’élargir. Autrement dit, si Turner et Cage, par la connexion au deck, s’infiltrent à l’intérieur de la matrice (de l’espace cybernétique), Ender, connecté par l’intermédiaire du casque à l’entité qu’il nomme Jane, ne fonctionne pas dans un autre espace, mais dans le monde physique. La disjonction corps-esprit (objet-sujet) se produit dans son cas à un autre niveau. En apprenant qu’il est une construction des autorités terrestres, Ender commence à se poser des questions concernant sa propre humanité.
À un moment donné, Ender arrive à se confondre avec Jane (le logiciel) : « Jane est réelle et vivante en permanence, son esprit n’est pas dans l’espace cosmique, mais en moi. Elle est connectée à moi »[17].
En fait, ce qui se passe dans cette situation prouve que par le processus ex-somatique on ne perd pas l’identité de soi, mais que, par contre, comme le suggère Donna Haraway dans « Le Manifeste cyborg », à l’aide de ces prothèses (intérieures, extérieures) l’identité s’étend. Jusqu’où ? Jusqu’au-delà de l’humanité[18].
Merleau-Ponty, dans sa Phénoménologie de la perception, explique la dépendance de l’homme de son corps physique par le fait que le corps est essentiel pour l’homme pour la perception de l’espace. S’habituer avec un chapeau, suggère Merleau-Ponty, avec une voiture ou avec un bâton signifie s’installer dans ces objets, ou, à l’inverse, les faire participer au volume du corps propre.
Avoir une puce implantée à l’intérieur du corps signifie pour Ender non seulement la cohabitation (la familiarisation) avec le logiciel de cette puce (Jane), mais aussi l’extension de son identité au moyen de ce logiciel, par la fusion de son identité dans la structure du logiciel. Être attachés au deck signifie pour Turner et Cage sortir du corps physique et transférer leur identité dans un autre corps (le corps virtuel), mais sans se séparer du point de vue sensoriel du corps physique.
Finalement, l’homme ajoute de nouveaux instruments pour son corps et, s’habituant à ces nouveaux instruments, il sort de son propre corps (le processus ex-somatique). Cette sortie du corps suppose l’extension de l’identité par le dépassement de la disjonction corps-esprit. Que reste-t-il du corps physique ? Il demeure la dernière frontière que l’homme doit conquérir et, en même temps, la matrice de base que le cyborg se rappellera toujours.
Que suppose le processus de transformation en cyborg ? La transformation du corps en image. L’homme n’a pas besoin d’informations seulement pour s’informer, mais il veut implanter l’information dans son propre corps pour aller au-delà de sa propre humanité.
Bibliographie
Le Breton, David – Anthropologie du corps et modernité, Paris, PUF, coll. « Quadrige Essais Débats », 2008 (version roumaine par Liana Rusu, Bucarest, Cartier, 2009).
Haraway, Donna – Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature,New York, Routledge, 1991.
Anders, Gunther – L’obsolescence de l’homme, Paris, Ivrea, 2001 (titre original : Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen: Über die Seele in Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution, C. H. Beck, München 1956, et Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen II: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution, C.H. Beck, München 1980).
Lyotard, Jean-François – La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1979 (version roumaine Bucarest, Babel, 1993).
Mattéi, Jean-François – La Barbarie intérieure, Paris, PUF, coll. « Quadrige Essais Débats », 2004 (version roumaine par Valentina Bumbaş-Vorovbiev, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2005).
Card, Orson Scott – La stratégie Ender (Ender’s Game), version française par D. Lemaine, Paris, Opta, 1985 (version roumaine Mihai Dan Pavelescu, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005).
Card, Orson Scott – Xénocide, version française par B. Sigaud, Paris, Laffont 1993 (version roumaine par Constantin Dumitru Pălcuş, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005).
Bukatman, Scott – Terminal Identity. The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press,Durham andLondon, 1993.
Borbély, Ştefan – Civilizaţii de sticlă. Utopie, distopie, urbanism,Cluj-Napoca, Limes, 2013.
Pitts, Victoria – In the Flesh. The Cultural Politics of Body Modifications,New York, Palgrawe Macmillian, 2003.
Gibson, William – Count Zero, version française par J. Bonnefoy, Paris, La Découverte 1986 (version roumaine Bucarest, Fahrenheit, 1999).
Gibson, William – Neuromancien (Neuromancer), version française par J. Bonnefoy, Paris, La Découverte 1985 (version roumaine par Mihai Dan Pavelescu, Bucarest, Univers, 2008).
Notes
[1] David Le Breton, L’anthropologie du corps et la modernité, Bucarest, Cartier, 2009, p. 21.
[2] Ibidem.
[3] Jean-François Mattéi, La Barbarie intérieure, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2005.
[4] David Le Breton, op. cit., p.293.
[5] Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne, Bucarest, Babel, 1993, p. 44.
[6] Gunther Anders, L’obsolescence de l’homme, Paris, Ivrea, 2001, p. 40.
[7] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature, New York, Routledge, 1991, p. 150.
[8] « The internet is a formidable institution of the mask, the one using the internet is no longer subjected to the constraints of an identity, which is settled in the person’s bearing » Victoria Pitts, In the Flesh. The Cultural Politics of Body Modifications, New York, Palgrawe Macmillian, 2003, p.157.
[9] William Gibson, Le Comte Zéro, Bucarest, Fahrenheit, 1999.
[10] Orson Scott Card, La stratégie Ender, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005.
[11] William Gibson, Neuromancien, Bucarest, Univers, 2008.
[12] Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity. The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press,Durham andLondon, 1993.
[13] William Gibson, Comte Zéro, p. 55.
[14] Ibidem, p. 219.
[15] Ibidem, p. 36.
[16] Orson Scott Card, Xénocide, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005, p. 439.
[17] Ibidem, p. 154.
[18] « L’homme peut être sauvé ou il peut atteindre sa libération, en revanche le cyborg reste en dehors de ce scénario » Ştefan Borbély, Civilizaţii de sticlă. Utopie, distopie, urbanism, Cluj-Napoca, Limes, 2013, p. 86.
Călina Bora
Université Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
calinabora@gmail.com
L’artificialisation du corps dans la littérature science-fiction /
The artificialisation of the body in science-fiction literature
Abstract: This study sets out to establish what the body means in science-fiction literature and to identify some of the reasons why the body moves from a morphological and biological structure to an artificial structure (the robot and the program) or a partially artificial one (the cyborg). The study will try to define the ex-somatic thing, the process of transformation undergone by the biological body, with emphasis on the break between body and mind.
Keywords: Science-fiction; Cyborg; Artificial body; Program; Robot.
David Le Breton propose, dans L’Anthropologie du corps et modernité, une définition du corps en tant qu’« origine identitaire de l’homme »[1]. David Le Breton, sociologue et anthropologue en même temps, met en évidence deux idées essentielles, qui seront également au cœur de la présente étude. Premièrement, il affirme que dans les sociétés modernes, entre l’homme et son corps intervient une séparation, et deuxièmement, que cette séparation entraîne le phénomène d’objectivation du corps. L’homme ne se confond plus avec son corps, soutient Le Breton, mais ce dernier devient un symbole pour lui[2].
À l’origine de cette grande séparation se trouverait la tendance obsédante de l’homme à (se) dépasser et à répudier le biologique (l’humain) à tout prix. Cette tendance suppose, en fait, le désir de vaincre la mort. Que devient le corps dans ces conditions ? Une machine parfaite, dont les pièces usées peuvent être remplacées sans problème, libérée de la mort et, en même temps, le chemin vers le rêve des « extropians » de pouvoir vivre indépendamment du corps biologique.
Ce qui représente un réel intérêt pour cette recherche est la manière dont Le Breton explique le phénomène d’objectivation du corps. Celui-ci note, dans l’étude déjà mentionnée, que la grande séparation homme-corps est due à trois grandes ruptures intérieures éprouvées par l’homme des sociétés modernes : la séparation de l’univers, des autres et de soi-même.
La séparation de l’univers est la conséquence de l’individualisme. L’homme ne peut plus se connaître, en se repliant sur soi-même, puisqu’à l’intérieur il ne peut plus trouver « l’univers et les dieux », comme l’enjoignait une variante de l’adage delphique. On ne peut plus les trouver, puisque, d’après Nietzsche, les dieux et Dieu sont morts. De ce fait, l’homme ne peut et ne veut plus s’identifier avec la nature, avec les autres ou avec la divinité.
Bien plus, même la connaissance du corps, observe l’homme moderne, ne dépend pas d’une cosmologie[3]. En échange, plus l’homme se penche sur soi-même, plus son corps (sa propriété immédiate) devient de plus en plus important. De là découle ce que Le Breton appelle l’objectivation complète : « le corps devient une doublure, une clone parfaite, un alter ego »[4]. L’aliénation complète du corps suppose donc la possibilité de le modeler fidèlement sur l’image de soi. À partir de ce point, nous assistons à ce que Jean-François Lyotard nomme l’avènement de l’homme postmoderne[5].
La littérature science-fiction est un manifeste du combat de l’homme avec sa propre condition biologique, qu’il s’agisse de la confrontation entre l’intelligence humaine et les intelligences d’autres planètes (la résistance du corps biologique loin de son milieu naturel), ou de la multitude de transformations que le corps doit subir pour améliorer son rendement. Les auteurs de ce genre de littérature mettent en scène des cyborgs, des robots, des enfants conçus de façon transgénique, des ordinateurs et logiciels qui agissent par eux-mêmes etc. L’homme semble être, dans les romans de certains auteurs comme William Gibson, Orson Scott Card ou Ursula Le Guin, une créature physiquement imparfaite, qui doit dépasser ses imperfections pour les impératifs de performance, de vitesse de communication et d’efficacité demandés par l’avenir.
Gunther Anders, dans L’obsolescence de l’homme, explique la tendance d’objectivation du corps identifiée par Le Breton en comparant l’homme avec les produits fabriqués par lui-même. Anders remarque le fait que la révolte de l’homme contre son propre corps commence avec sa capacité à fabriquer des objets. Autrement dit, l’homme, qui n’est pas fabriqué, serait inférieur à ses produits[6]. Or, être inférieur à ses produits, dit Anders, implique le risque de perdre le contrôle des produits respectifs, parce qu’ils sont supérieurs à leur créateur.
Mais jusqu’où peut aller la séparation entre homme et son corps ?
Le Breton et Anders semblent être sûrs que l’homme pourra se séparer totalement de son corps, et cela, non par l’invention des extropians, mais grâce à l’intelligence humaine, capable de s’élever au-dessus de sa carcasse biologique, capable d’en remplacer les composants. La différence entre les idées de ces deux chercheurs est dans la position subjective qu’ils adoptent à ce sujet. Le Breton semble être inquiet du cours accéléré des transformations subies par les sociétés modernes, et attire l’attention que le cyborg n’est plus le grand mythe proposé par Gibson avec le roman Neuromancer et développé par d’autres auteurs de littérature science-fiction, mais que le cyborg existe déjà en médicine (par les prothèses qui remplacent des membres amputés, par exemple) et, d’une certaine manière, par la connexion de chaque individu à un réseau de communication virtuelle (ou à une plateforme virtuelle). Au contraire, Anders semble convaincu que l’homme progressera en dépassant totalement son humanité. Ce progrès implique la digitalisation et la robotisation de l’homme, qui ne supposent pas seulement de détruire le corps, mais aussi de détruire l’identité.
Concernant une hypothétique destruction de l’identité, les opinions de chercheurs sont divergentes. Par exemple, Donna Haraway, dans Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature, soutient que les seules identités détruites, suite à la transformation du corps, sont les identités de sexe, de genre, de classe, d’ethnie et d’âge. À ses yeux, ce n’est pas l’identité de l’homme qui est abolie, mais seulement le phantasme de cette identité, « pour faire de l’identité une décision de soi »[7]. Le Breton, au contraire, souligne le rapport étroit entre identité et corps biologique, et considère que détruire le corps en le transformant en cyborg signifie, en même temps, détruire l’identité humaine. Être cyborg, habiter dans les plateformes paradisiaques de l’Internet, suppose obligatoirement le renoncement au corps, l’absence d’une identité physique. Victoria Pitts[8], d’autre part, considère que l’identité de l’homme n’est pas détruite et que l’homme branché à Internet (l’homme cyborg) n’abolit pas son identité, mais il apprend comment jouer avec elle et connaître ses masques.
De mon point de vue, par la transformation en cyborg, l’homme ne perd pas l’identité construite à partir de son corps, mais il l’amplifie par la construction d’un corps virtuel, à l’aide duquel il peut agir dans l’espace cybernétique. Nous considérons exemplaires dans ce sens les situations imaginées par Cage dans Neuromancer, par Turner[9] dans Le Comte Zéro ou par Ender[10] dans Ender’s Game.
Pour Cage, comme pour les autres personnages connectés au cyberespace, le corps physique n’est qu’un « fourreau »[11]. Mais c’est un fourreau par l’intermédiaire duquel Cage perçoit le monde physique (temps et espace) et, en même temps, il est le moyen par lequel Cage peut se connecter à l’espace cybernétique. Si son corps était aboli en totalité, Cage serait condamné à vivre définitivement dans l’espace cybernétique, mais cela non plus n’abolirait l’identité acquise par le corps physique. Au contraire, qu’il soit cloître seulement un visiteur de l’espace cybernétique, Cage ne peut pas agir dans un espace étranger pour lui, seulement par la fabrication d’un autre corps, différent de celui physique, corps qui contient totalement l’identité de Cage.
En quoi consiste la différence entre les deux corps ?
La première différence concerne le milieu, l’espace où les corps peuvent agir. Dans le monde physique, Cage est une entité prisonnière dans un corps qui ne le représente peut-être pas, alors que dans l’espace cybernétique, l’entité Cage est l’équivalent du corps virtuel par le biais duquel il agit. Le corps humain est limité à sa nature, au sensoriel, tandis que le corps virtuel a une capacité fantastique de s’entraîner et de se développer, pouvant s’étendre à l’infini. Il serait utile ici de définir ce qu’est l’espace cybernétique.
Certains chercheurs considèrent l’espace cybernétique un non-espace ou une non-réalité (v. Scott Bukatman[12]), tandis que d’autres le définissent comme un espace parallèle au monde physique, un espace qui libère la conscience de la matérialité et, implicitement, de la mort. L’espace cybernétique n’est pas délimité, c’est une matrice, de consistance rhizomatique (dans le sens de Guattari et Vattimo), en continuelle expansion. Pratiquement, à mon avis, l’espace cybernétique est le moyen pour le corps de se libérer de la contrainte spatiale imposée par le monde physique.
Qu’est-ce qui se passe, dans ces conditions, avec les personnages de Cage et de Turner ? La dichotomie sujet-objet est abolie. Autrement dit, la disjonction corps (objet) – conscience (sujet) disparaît, et l’artificialisation devient certaine.
Les deux personnages, pour se connecter à l’espace cybernétique, ont besoin d’un corps physique et d’une prothèse. Dans les deux situations, il s’agit d’une prothèse mise à l’intérieur du corps, autrement dit d’une prothèse intérieure, nommée par Gibson deck : « des jouets qui te portaient dans les étendues infinies de l’espace qui n’était pas un espace, l’hallucination cosensitive complexe de l’humanité, la matrice, le cyberespace, le lieu où les noyaux chauds des grandes corporations brûlaient comme des navires de néon, informations si denses qu’on éprouverait des surcharges sensorielles si on essayait de comprendre plus que les contours les plus approximatifs »[13].
À preuve du fait qu’entre Turner/Cage et leurs corps physiques il n’y a pas de séparation définitive, les personnages, après leur découplage de l’espace cybernétique[14], évoquent des symptômes qu’ils avaient ressentis dans cet espace[15].
Finalement, Cage et Turner fonctionnent dans les deux espaces, dans l’espace réel, en sentant avec le corps physique ce que le corps virtuel vit dans l’espace cybernétique. Si Cage pouvait se distancer définitivement du corps physique (par un processus ex-somatique total), il cesserait de fonctionner comme cyborg, et deviendrait un logiciel (v. Jane, Ender’s Game).
Avec son casque implanté derrière l’oreille, Ender est lui aussi un cyborg, même si sa nature est différente de la nature des personnages de Gibson. Pourquoi ? Premièrement parce que le type de prothèse est différent. Turner et Cage ont des prothèses extérieures. Ils ne peuvent pénétrer dans l’espace cybernétique qu’au moyen du deck. Ainsi, les deux ne vivent pas en permanence dans le cyberespace. Ender, en échange, a une prothèse intérieure, l’implant posé pendant son enfance, et le logiciel qui surveille Ender en permanence est Jane, une entité complètement artificielle.
« Même si elle n’est pas autre chose qu’un système de logiciels qui se réécrivent et s’optimisent seuls. (…) Elle ne fait qu’interpréter l’algorithme qui lui avait été imposé dès le début. Elle n’a pas de libre arbitre. Elle est une marionnette, pas une personnalité »[16].
Le casque à l’aide duquel Ender se connecte à Jane est essentiel pour lui, puisqu’il optimise ses capacités et ses habiletés. Grâce à ce casque, Ender devient un grand conquérant du cosmos, aidant l’humanité à s’élargir. Autrement dit, si Turner et Cage, par la connexion au deck, s’infiltrent à l’intérieur de la matrice (de l’espace cybernétique), Ender, connecté par l’intermédiaire du casque à l’entité qu’il nomme Jane, ne fonctionne pas dans un autre espace, mais dans le monde physique. La disjonction corps-esprit (objet-sujet) se produit dans son cas à un autre niveau. En apprenant qu’il est une construction des autorités terrestres, Ender commence à se poser des questions concernant sa propre humanité.
À un moment donné, Ender arrive à se confondre avec Jane (le logiciel) : « Jane est réelle et vivante en permanence, son esprit n’est pas dans l’espace cosmique, mais en moi. Elle est connectée à moi »[17].
En fait, ce qui se passe dans cette situation prouve que par le processus ex-somatique on ne perd pas l’identité de soi, mais que, par contre, comme le suggère Donna Haraway dans « Le Manifeste cyborg », à l’aide de ces prothèses (intérieures, extérieures) l’identité s’étend. Jusqu’où ? Jusqu’au-delà de l’humanité[18].
Merleau-Ponty, dans sa Phénoménologie de la perception, explique la dépendance de l’homme de son corps physique par le fait que le corps est essentiel pour l’homme pour la perception de l’espace. S’habituer avec un chapeau, suggère Merleau-Ponty, avec une voiture ou avec un bâton signifie s’installer dans ces objets, ou, à l’inverse, les faire participer au volume du corps propre.
Avoir une puce implantée à l’intérieur du corps signifie pour Ender non seulement la cohabitation (la familiarisation) avec le logiciel de cette puce (Jane), mais aussi l’extension de son identité au moyen de ce logiciel, par la fusion de son identité dans la structure du logiciel. Être attachés au deck signifie pour Turner et Cage sortir du corps physique et transférer leur identité dans un autre corps (le corps virtuel), mais sans se séparer du point de vue sensoriel du corps physique.
Finalement, l’homme ajoute de nouveaux instruments pour son corps et, s’habituant à ces nouveaux instruments, il sort de son propre corps (le processus ex-somatique). Cette sortie du corps suppose l’extension de l’identité par le dépassement de la disjonction corps-esprit. Que reste-t-il du corps physique ? Il demeure la dernière frontière que l’homme doit conquérir et, en même temps, la matrice de base que le cyborg se rappellera toujours.
Que suppose le processus de transformation en cyborg ? La transformation du corps en image. L’homme n’a pas besoin d’informations seulement pour s’informer, mais il veut implanter l’information dans son propre corps pour aller au-delà de sa propre humanité.
Bibliographie
Le Breton, David – Anthropologie du corps et modernité, Paris, PUF, coll. « Quadrige Essais Débats », 2008 (version roumaine par Liana Rusu, Bucarest, Cartier, 2009).
Haraway, Donna – Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature,New York, Routledge, 1991.
Anders, Gunther – L’obsolescence de l’homme, Paris, Ivrea, 2001 (titre original : Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen: Über die Seele in Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution, C. H. Beck, München 1956, et Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen II: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution, C.H. Beck, München 1980).
Lyotard, Jean-François – La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1979 (version roumaine Bucarest, Babel, 1993).
Mattéi, Jean-François – La Barbarie intérieure, Paris, PUF, coll. « Quadrige Essais Débats », 2004 (version roumaine par Valentina Bumbaş-Vorovbiev, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2005).
Card, Orson Scott – La stratégie Ender (Ender’s Game), version française par D. Lemaine, Paris, Opta, 1985 (version roumaine Mihai Dan Pavelescu, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005).
Card, Orson Scott – Xénocide, version française par B. Sigaud, Paris, Laffont 1993 (version roumaine par Constantin Dumitru Pălcuş, Bucarest, Nemira, 2005).
Bukatman, Scott – Terminal Identity. The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press,Durham andLondon, 1993.
Borbély, Ştefan – Civilizaţii de sticlă. Utopie, distopie, urbanism,Cluj-Napoca, Limes, 2013.
Pitts, Victoria – In the Flesh. The Cultural Politics of Body Modifications,New York, Palgrawe Macmillian, 2003.
Gibson, William – Count Zero, version française par J. Bonnefoy, Paris, La Découverte 1986 (version roumaine Bucarest, Fahrenheit, 1999).
Gibson, William – Neuromancien (Neuromancer), version française par J. Bonnefoy, Paris, La Découverte 1985 (version roumaine par Mihai Dan Pavelescu, Bucarest, Univers, 2008).
Notes
[7] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinventation of Nature, New York, Routledge, 1991, p. 150.
[8] « The internet is a formidable institution of the mask, the one using the internet is no longer subjected to the constraints of an identity, which is settled in the person’s bearing » Victoria Pitts, In the Flesh. The Cultural Politics of Body Modifications, New York, Palgrawe Macmillian, 2003, p.157.
Les aspects neuroscientifiques du film AvatarNeuroscientific aspects of the film Avatar
Piroska Felkai
CEIL/IELT Nouvelle Université De Lisbonne, Portugal
pfelkai@gmail.com
Les aspects neuroscientifiques du film Avatar /
Neuroscientific aspects of the film Avatar
Abstract: Over the past three decades, science fiction has succeeded in articulating several cultural responses regarding narrative technologies. One of the most remarkable technological aspects commanding the attention of expert science fiction critics is the simultaneous treatment of scientific and technological issues in relation to the virtual space of the trans-media realm. The present article aims to analyse the modes of representation of recent neuroscience findings in the context of Avatar, a 2009 production directed by James Cameron.
Keywords: Neurosciences; James Cameron; Avatar; Science-Fiction.
Au cours des trois dernières décades, la fiction scientifique a réussi à crier certaines réponses culturelles relatives aux narrations technologiques. Un des aspects thématiques les plus remarquables pour les analystes qui se penchent sur la hard science-fiction, est le traitement simultané des questions scientifiques et technologiques en relation avec la représentation des espaces virtuels dans les univers transmédiatiques. Cet article a l’intention d´analyser les modes de représentation des récentes découvertes de la neuroscience, dans le contexte du film Avatar, réalisé par James Cameron en 2009.
Premièrement, nous nous proposons d’observer quelques aspects primordiaux sur le fonctionnement du cerveau humain, nous penchant sur la plasticité neuronale qui permet au cerveau de créer, de défaire ou de réorganiser les réseaux neuronaux et ses connexions. Ce sont les processus responsables pour les mécanismes de l’apprentissage et de la mémoire.
Les neurones sont constitués de trois parties : le corps cellulaire, les axones (les prolongements principaux de la cellule qui conduisent le signal électrique du corps) et les dendrites (les terminaisons qui servent à recevoir les signaux nerveux, provenant des autres cellules nerveuses). « Les neurones sont reliés les uns aux autres, formant des circuits dans lesquels on peut reconnaître l’équivalent de fils conducteurs (les fibres axoniques des neurones) et des zones de connexion (des synapses, c’est-à-dire des points où des axones font contact avec les dendrites d’autres neurones). »[1] Les connexions les plus utilisées vont donc se renforcer, tandis que les autres vont disparaître, constituant ainsi des réseaux de neurones, uniques à chaque individu. Selon Gerald Edelman, les circuits sélectionnés forment des cartes neuronales[2]. Ces cartes sont interconnectées et engendrent un processus qui pourrait être la base de nos capacités perceptives qui combineraient l’activité de différentes cartes du cortex. Chaque individu neuronal se construit par les interactions avec l’environnement, d’où viennent les stimulations extérieures. La mémoire repose sur un premier traitement de l’information qui se déroule dans le hippocampe (situé dans le lobe temporal) et puis est reporté sur le néocortex (couche externe des hémisphères cérébraux). L’apprentissage, le résultat d’une interaction entre l’individu et son environnement, repose aussi sur la plasticité cérébrale. Un des schèmes opératoires réalisés au cours de l’apprentissage est le mécanisme de l’assimilation, qui, utilisant les réseaux existants, est responsable de la création de l’intelligence cristallisée. De l’autre côté, il existe un processus distinct, appelé l’accommodation, qui permet la formation de nouveaux réseaux, dont le résultat est l’intelligence fluide. Au cours des processus d’intégration et de fixation de l’information, divers territoires corticaux peuvent être sollicités. Un seul message met en activité différents circuits, donc on peut dire que la mémoire occupe une seule zone cérébrale. Au-delà des deux zones d’activité déjà mentionnées, (l’hippocampe et le néocortex) il est néanmoins possible d’identifier une autre, qui est le système limbique. Il préfigure la dimension affective de notre cerveau et il est responsable des diverses émotions humaines, comme par exemple le plaisir ou la peur. Il joue un rôle significatif dans l’apprentissage et dans la mise en mémoire des expériences acquises.
Dans cette zone se situent cinq organes principaux : l’hippocampe, l’amygdale, la circonvolution cingulaire, le fornix et l’hypothalamus.
Après cette courte introduction, nous allons explorer quelques idées, sur les manières dont ces conceptions scientifiques influent les représentations artistiques de l’Avatar.
Le film de James Cameron se déroule sur Pandora, une planète située à 4, 37 années lumières de la Terre, couverte d’une forêt tropicale extrêmement riche en végétaux exotiques. Le livre de James Cameron’s Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide écrit par Maria Wilhelm et Dirk Mathison[3] nous explique divers phénomènes scientifiques mentionnés dans le film, par exemple les aspects spéciaux de la géologie de la planète, notamment la présence d´un minerai (Unobtanium) qui est considéré comme un supraconducteur apprécié, ou la composition de l´atmosphère qui ne peut pas être respirée par les humains à cause de la présence de divers composés chimiques nocives (p.ex. ammoniac, dioxyde de carbone, méthane).
Pour échapper à l’atmosphère nocive de la Pandora, les scientistes ont crié corps clonés (les avatars) des personnages, qui ainsi sont capables de survivre aux conditions ambiantes de la planète en question. Le protagoniste, Jake Sully, ancien marin paraplégique, est recruté pour se rendre au Programme Avatar, élaboré alors par les scientistes afin de lier les esprits des humains aux avatars. Cette idée, autrement dit, de projeter des individus, à travers des avatars digitaux, permet aux chercheurs d’étudier le cerveau humain et ses mécanismes[4]. Avec ces précisions conceptuelles et techniques, ils peuvent arriver plus tard à examiner comment le cerveau produit le discours ou même à décoder les pensées.
Dans le contexte du film, les nouvelles créatures hybrides sont les résultats du croisement de l’ADN humain avec celui des Na’vi, les autochtones de Pandora. L’ADN humain introduit assure une liaison mentale entre le pilote et l’avatar, qui se réalise grâce à un équipement technologique spécifique, appelé unité de liaison. Le corps de Jake est colloqué dans une capsule, d’où, à l’aide de l’interface neuronale, c’est á dire avec des petites électrodes posées autour de son crâne, sera scannée en 3D l’intégralité des cellules ou neurones de son cerveau. Ce processus permet de faire la cartographie des milliards de neurone au nanomètre[5]. La capsule de lien surveille également sans interruption les signes essentiels du pilote (Jake) et les paramètres opérationnels de son avatar. Une fois que la qualité de raccordement entre Jake et son avatar est établi au-dessus de 99%, le lien est placé en actif. Jake immédiatement « se réveille » à l’intérieur du corps de son hybride.
Le programme scientifique, représenté dans le film, travaille avec des interfaces des écrans tactiles des ordinateurs futuristes, où les graphiques sont faites en 3D. Les images captées visualisent en permanence les activités cérébrales de Jake et de son avatar, notamment, les interactions entre les différentes zones du cerveau. Les parties plus connectées entre elles sont le système limbique, l’hypothalamus et plusieurs zones du néocortex.
Comme il a été déjà mentionné, le système limbique, et plus particulièrement l’hippocampe situé dans la partie interne du lobe temporal, sont les structures responsables des phénomènes d’apprentissage et de récupération des informations stockées en mémoire. L’apprentissage et mémoire sont les deux fonctionnalités plus importantes pour Jake pour commencer une nouvelle vie à Pandora. Une fois que sa conscience a été téléportée, son hybride se réveille et commence son activité, à partir de laquelle la réalité sera étendue. Cette extension dans une seconde réalité, en même temps, peut être considérée comme une entrée dans un monde fictif ou imaginaire. Le virtuel et le réel sont interconnectés dans la même dimension. La représentation symbolique des phénomènes scientifiques réalisés au cours des processus mentaux, à mon avis, démontre bien la complexité de la conception du film.
La nouvelle vie du Jake commence par l’initiation à un autre univers, au Na’vi, à l’aide de Neytiri, la fille du chef du clan des Omaticayas. C’est elle qui découvre Jake quand il a été attaqué par des loups dans la forêt de Pandora. Jake, commence à connaître son nouvel habitat en parcourant la forêt sur les troncs des arbres qui forment un réseau ample, pareil à un réseau neuronal. Sur le plan symbolique, nous pourrions interpréter ces images comme la métaphore de l’apprentissage du protagoniste. Comme si nous voyions une visualisation symbolique de l’activité de son cerveau pendant le processus de cet apprentissage. Être inséré dans un réseau n’appartient qu’à l’état ontologique des humains. Docteur Grace Augustine, qui mène le programme Avatar, explicite cette reconnaissance. « C’est la transduction du signal de cette racine à celle de l’arbre voisin. ( …) C’est sûrement électrique à en juger par la vitesse de réaction. » Cette observation évoque l’hypothèse Gaïa, appelée également hypothèse biogéochimique initialement introduite par James Lovelock en 1970, proposant que l’ensemble des êtres vivants et leur environnement se comportent comme un organisme régulant ses propres conditions de survie[6]. Plus tard Grace, au cours d’une discussion avec Parker Selfridge, l’administrateur en chef de la RDA sur Pandora, déclare ce qui suit :
Nous pensons qu’il y a une sorte de communication électrochimique entres les arbres. Comme les synapses entre les neurones. Et chaque arbre a cent milles connexions avec les arbres voisins. Et il y a dix mille milliards d’arbres sur Pandora. (…) Ça fait plus de connexions que le cerveau humain. D’accord ? C’est un réseau. Un immense réseau auquel les Na’vis ont accès. Ils peuvent télécharger les données, des souvenirs sur des sites, comme celui que vous avez détruit.
Ce réseau anime et lie la Nature aux êtres de Pandora. Le film introduit divers sous réseaux de symbole à son réseau global. Un réseau de ceux-ci nous conduit au monde mythique de la Planète. Le centre de ces lieux mythiques se trouve l’Arbre des Âmes, autour duquel toute la vie des Na’vis s’organise. Neyriti tente d’expliquer son importance à Jake, en lui parlant de ce sanctuaire comme extension de leur âme et du savoir. Ce qui détient cette sagesse c’est Eywa, la personnification non-matérielle du bio-réseau Pandorien. C’est une espèce de déesse, comparée à Gaïa qui agit de façon subtile en voyant des « signes » qu’il faut apprendre à interpréter.
La connexion avec Eywa est établie en branchant une prise que les Na’vis possèdent au bout de leur crinière sur l’Arbre des Âmes. Cette même prise qui leur permet, à eux aussi, de domestiquer les Ikran et monter le Toruk Makto. Pour un Na’vi, établir un lien avec un Ikran fait partie d’un rite de passage du chasseur pour être reconnu parmi son clan. Le Toruk Makto, le « cavalier de la dernière ombre » est un grand prédateur aérien, semblable à l’Ikran, mais de dimension plus importante. Cet animal est légendaire, considéré pour les Na’vis comme une prouesse majeure. Celui qui est capable de s’y lier et de le monter pendant des périodes troublées serait alors appelé le « Choisi d’Eywa », le futur chef de la tribu. La file d’attente neurale externe qui serve à former le tsaheylu, un raccordement au niveau neural avec les autres êtres vivants nous invoque les connexions synaptiques entre les neurones. Elle est une réceptrice et, en même temps, émettrice “nanotechnique“. Au cours de l’initiation de Jake, Neytiri lui explique la importance du tsaheylu : « C’est le tsaheylu. Le lien. Sens-le! Sens son cœur qui bat! Sa respiration. Sens les forces de ses jambes! Tu peux le diriger en dedans. » Selon António Damásio, les sentiments et les pensées sont adaptés à la situation où se trouve l’organisme. La conscience se construit sur la base d’émotions transformées en sentiments. La conscience mobilise et regroupe un certain nombre d’informations nécessaires pour définir les stratégies de survie et prendre de décision. « La mémoire est indispensable à la conscience (…) Elle résulte de modifications dans l’efficacité synaptique de différents groupes neuronaux, modifications qui incitent de façon dégénérée certains circuits à recommencer. »[7] En ce qui concerne la question de la mémoire individuelle, il est important de souligner qu’au cours de l’initiation au monde écologique et mythique des Na’vis, Jake est constamment confronté à la perte de mémoire de sa vie antérieure. Il l’avoue lui-même : « Je me souviens à peine de mon ancienne vie. Je ne sais plus qui je suis. » Quant à la mémoire collective, les arbres ont un rôle important. Ils sont des « serveurs », qui stockent les informations et à partir desquels les Na’vis peuvent accéder ou télécharger des souvenirs en utilisant leurs crinières et ils peuvent même être utilisés pour les transferts d’esprit dans certains cas. L’Arbre des Âmes garantit un accès aux essences psychiques de leurs défunts, qui sont leur moyen de communication avec leurs ancêtres.
Ces observations nous permettent de refléchir, d’une perspective technologique, sur les conséquences de ce type de accès à la mémoire. L’impact des nouvelles pratiques de communication interfacées pose en clair la question de la perception de soi et de la représentation de l’entourage social. Il sera de plus en plus possible, en combinant des techniques des sciences cognitives et les technologies informationnelles avec ceux de la réalité virtuelle et l’imagerie du cerveau de partager rapidement les savoirs, les souvenirs entre les membres d’une société. Cette accessibilité pourra certainement influencer notre concept sur l’identité.
Bibliographie
António Damásio, L’erreur de Descartes, La raison des émotions, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2006.
Gerard Edelman & Gulio Tononi, Comment la matière devient conscience, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2000.
James Lovelock, La Terre est un être vivant, L’hypothèse Gaïa, Flammarion, coll. «Champs», 1999.
Jean-Paul Baquiart : Pour un principe matérialiste fort. Ed. Jean Paul Bayol, coll. «Décoherences», 2007.
Maria Wilhelm, Dirk Mathison, Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora (James Cameron’s Avatar),New York, Itbooks, 2009.
Pages Internet sur l’Avatar consultées :
http://www.maxisciences.com/cerveau/avatar-du-film-de-science-fiction-a-la-realite_art12649.html, consulté en 19/02/ 2014
http://avatar-universe.wifeo.com/ordinateur-neuronale.php, consulté en 10/01/2014
http://avatar-message-du-futur.blogspot.pt/p/4-la-construction-dramatique.html consulté en 10/01/2014
http://avatar-message-du-futur.blogspot.pt/p/4-la-construction-dramatique.html
Notes
[1] Antonio Damásio: L’erreur de Descartes. La raison des émotio,. Paris, Odile Jacob, 2006, p. 50
[2] Gerard Edelman et Giulio Tononi: Comment la matière devient conscience. Paris, Odile Jacob, 2000.
[3] Maria Wilhelm et Dirk Mathison : Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora (James Cameron’s Avatar),New York, Itbooks, 2009.
[4] http://www.maxisciences.com/cerveau/avatar-du-film-de-science-fiction-a-la-realite_art12649.html,
consulté le 19/02/ 2014
[5] http://avatar-universe.wifeo.com/ordinateur-neuronale.php, consulté le 10/01/2014
[6] James Lovelock: La Terre est un être vivant, l’hypothèse Gaïa. Flammarion, coll. «Champs», 1999.
[7] Jean-Paul Baquiart : Pour un principe materialiste fort. Ed. Jean Paul Bayol, coll. «Décoherences» http://www.editions-bayol.com/PMF/chapitre_3_annexes.pdf, consulté le 27/02/2014
Piroska Felkai
CEIL/IELT Nouvelle Université De Lisbonne, Portugal
pfelkai@gmail.com
Les aspects neuroscientifiques du film Avatar /
Neuroscientific aspects of the film Avatar
Abstract: Over the past three decades, science fiction has succeeded in articulating several cultural responses regarding narrative technologies. One of the most remarkable technological aspects commanding the attention of expert science fiction critics is the simultaneous treatment of scientific and technological issues in relation to the virtual space of the trans-media realm. The present article aims to analyse the modes of representation of recent neuroscience findings in the context of Avatar, a 2009 production directed by James Cameron.
Keywords: Neurosciences; James Cameron; Avatar; Science-Fiction.
Au cours des trois dernières décades, la fiction scientifique a réussi à crier certaines réponses culturelles relatives aux narrations technologiques. Un des aspects thématiques les plus remarquables pour les analystes qui se penchent sur la hard science-fiction, est le traitement simultané des questions scientifiques et technologiques en relation avec la représentation des espaces virtuels dans les univers transmédiatiques. Cet article a l’intention d´analyser les modes de représentation des récentes découvertes de la neuroscience, dans le contexte du film Avatar, réalisé par James Cameron en 2009.
Premièrement, nous nous proposons d’observer quelques aspects primordiaux sur le fonctionnement du cerveau humain, nous penchant sur la plasticité neuronale qui permet au cerveau de créer, de défaire ou de réorganiser les réseaux neuronaux et ses connexions. Ce sont les processus responsables pour les mécanismes de l’apprentissage et de la mémoire.
Les neurones sont constitués de trois parties : le corps cellulaire, les axones (les prolongements principaux de la cellule qui conduisent le signal électrique du corps) et les dendrites (les terminaisons qui servent à recevoir les signaux nerveux, provenant des autres cellules nerveuses). « Les neurones sont reliés les uns aux autres, formant des circuits dans lesquels on peut reconnaître l’équivalent de fils conducteurs (les fibres axoniques des neurones) et des zones de connexion (des synapses, c’est-à-dire des points où des axones font contact avec les dendrites d’autres neurones). »[1] Les connexions les plus utilisées vont donc se renforcer, tandis que les autres vont disparaître, constituant ainsi des réseaux de neurones, uniques à chaque individu. Selon Gerald Edelman, les circuits sélectionnés forment des cartes neuronales[2]. Ces cartes sont interconnectées et engendrent un processus qui pourrait être la base de nos capacités perceptives qui combineraient l’activité de différentes cartes du cortex. Chaque individu neuronal se construit par les interactions avec l’environnement, d’où viennent les stimulations extérieures. La mémoire repose sur un premier traitement de l’information qui se déroule dans le hippocampe (situé dans le lobe temporal) et puis est reporté sur le néocortex (couche externe des hémisphères cérébraux). L’apprentissage, le résultat d’une interaction entre l’individu et son environnement, repose aussi sur la plasticité cérébrale. Un des schèmes opératoires réalisés au cours de l’apprentissage est le mécanisme de l’assimilation, qui, utilisant les réseaux existants, est responsable de la création de l’intelligence cristallisée. De l’autre côté, il existe un processus distinct, appelé l’accommodation, qui permet la formation de nouveaux réseaux, dont le résultat est l’intelligence fluide. Au cours des processus d’intégration et de fixation de l’information, divers territoires corticaux peuvent être sollicités. Un seul message met en activité différents circuits, donc on peut dire que la mémoire occupe une seule zone cérébrale. Au-delà des deux zones d’activité déjà mentionnées, (l’hippocampe et le néocortex) il est néanmoins possible d’identifier une autre, qui est le système limbique. Il préfigure la dimension affective de notre cerveau et il est responsable des diverses émotions humaines, comme par exemple le plaisir ou la peur. Il joue un rôle significatif dans l’apprentissage et dans la mise en mémoire des expériences acquises.
Dans cette zone se situent cinq organes principaux : l’hippocampe, l’amygdale, la circonvolution cingulaire, le fornix et l’hypothalamus.
Après cette courte introduction, nous allons explorer quelques idées, sur les manières dont ces conceptions scientifiques influent les représentations artistiques de l’Avatar.
Le film de James Cameron se déroule sur Pandora, une planète située à 4, 37 années lumières de la Terre, couverte d’une forêt tropicale extrêmement riche en végétaux exotiques. Le livre de James Cameron’s Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide écrit par Maria Wilhelm et Dirk Mathison[3] nous explique divers phénomènes scientifiques mentionnés dans le film, par exemple les aspects spéciaux de la géologie de la planète, notamment la présence d´un minerai (Unobtanium) qui est considéré comme un supraconducteur apprécié, ou la composition de l´atmosphère qui ne peut pas être respirée par les humains à cause de la présence de divers composés chimiques nocives (p.ex. ammoniac, dioxyde de carbone, méthane).
Pour échapper à l’atmosphère nocive de la Pandora, les scientistes ont crié corps clonés (les avatars) des personnages, qui ainsi sont capables de survivre aux conditions ambiantes de la planète en question. Le protagoniste, Jake Sully, ancien marin paraplégique, est recruté pour se rendre au Programme Avatar, élaboré alors par les scientistes afin de lier les esprits des humains aux avatars. Cette idée, autrement dit, de projeter des individus, à travers des avatars digitaux, permet aux chercheurs d’étudier le cerveau humain et ses mécanismes[4]. Avec ces précisions conceptuelles et techniques, ils peuvent arriver plus tard à examiner comment le cerveau produit le discours ou même à décoder les pensées.
Dans le contexte du film, les nouvelles créatures hybrides sont les résultats du croisement de l’ADN humain avec celui des Na’vi, les autochtones de Pandora. L’ADN humain introduit assure une liaison mentale entre le pilote et l’avatar, qui se réalise grâce à un équipement technologique spécifique, appelé unité de liaison. Le corps de Jake est colloqué dans une capsule, d’où, à l’aide de l’interface neuronale, c’est á dire avec des petites électrodes posées autour de son crâne, sera scannée en 3D l’intégralité des cellules ou neurones de son cerveau. Ce processus permet de faire la cartographie des milliards de neurone au nanomètre[5]. La capsule de lien surveille également sans interruption les signes essentiels du pilote (Jake) et les paramètres opérationnels de son avatar. Une fois que la qualité de raccordement entre Jake et son avatar est établi au-dessus de 99%, le lien est placé en actif. Jake immédiatement « se réveille » à l’intérieur du corps de son hybride.
Le programme scientifique, représenté dans le film, travaille avec des interfaces des écrans tactiles des ordinateurs futuristes, où les graphiques sont faites en 3D. Les images captées visualisent en permanence les activités cérébrales de Jake et de son avatar, notamment, les interactions entre les différentes zones du cerveau. Les parties plus connectées entre elles sont le système limbique, l’hypothalamus et plusieurs zones du néocortex.
Comme il a été déjà mentionné, le système limbique, et plus particulièrement l’hippocampe situé dans la partie interne du lobe temporal, sont les structures responsables des phénomènes d’apprentissage et de récupération des informations stockées en mémoire. L’apprentissage et mémoire sont les deux fonctionnalités plus importantes pour Jake pour commencer une nouvelle vie à Pandora. Une fois que sa conscience a été téléportée, son hybride se réveille et commence son activité, à partir de laquelle la réalité sera étendue. Cette extension dans une seconde réalité, en même temps, peut être considérée comme une entrée dans un monde fictif ou imaginaire. Le virtuel et le réel sont interconnectés dans la même dimension. La représentation symbolique des phénomènes scientifiques réalisés au cours des processus mentaux, à mon avis, démontre bien la complexité de la conception du film.
La nouvelle vie du Jake commence par l’initiation à un autre univers, au Na’vi, à l’aide de Neytiri, la fille du chef du clan des Omaticayas. C’est elle qui découvre Jake quand il a été attaqué par des loups dans la forêt de Pandora. Jake, commence à connaître son nouvel habitat en parcourant la forêt sur les troncs des arbres qui forment un réseau ample, pareil à un réseau neuronal. Sur le plan symbolique, nous pourrions interpréter ces images comme la métaphore de l’apprentissage du protagoniste. Comme si nous voyions une visualisation symbolique de l’activité de son cerveau pendant le processus de cet apprentissage. Être inséré dans un réseau n’appartient qu’à l’état ontologique des humains. Docteur Grace Augustine, qui mène le programme Avatar, explicite cette reconnaissance. « C’est la transduction du signal de cette racine à celle de l’arbre voisin. ( …) C’est sûrement électrique à en juger par la vitesse de réaction. » Cette observation évoque l’hypothèse Gaïa, appelée également hypothèse biogéochimique initialement introduite par James Lovelock en 1970, proposant que l’ensemble des êtres vivants et leur environnement se comportent comme un organisme régulant ses propres conditions de survie[6]. Plus tard Grace, au cours d’une discussion avec Parker Selfridge, l’administrateur en chef de la RDA sur Pandora, déclare ce qui suit :
Nous pensons qu’il y a une sorte de communication électrochimique entres les arbres. Comme les synapses entre les neurones. Et chaque arbre a cent milles connexions avec les arbres voisins. Et il y a dix mille milliards d’arbres sur Pandora. (…) Ça fait plus de connexions que le cerveau humain. D’accord ? C’est un réseau. Un immense réseau auquel les Na’vis ont accès. Ils peuvent télécharger les données, des souvenirs sur des sites, comme celui que vous avez détruit.
Ce réseau anime et lie la Nature aux êtres de Pandora. Le film introduit divers sous réseaux de symbole à son réseau global. Un réseau de ceux-ci nous conduit au monde mythique de la Planète. Le centre de ces lieux mythiques se trouve l’Arbre des Âmes, autour duquel toute la vie des Na’vis s’organise. Neyriti tente d’expliquer son importance à Jake, en lui parlant de ce sanctuaire comme extension de leur âme et du savoir. Ce qui détient cette sagesse c’est Eywa, la personnification non-matérielle du bio-réseau Pandorien. C’est une espèce de déesse, comparée à Gaïa qui agit de façon subtile en voyant des « signes » qu’il faut apprendre à interpréter.
La connexion avec Eywa est établie en branchant une prise que les Na’vis possèdent au bout de leur crinière sur l’Arbre des Âmes. Cette même prise qui leur permet, à eux aussi, de domestiquer les Ikran et monter le Toruk Makto. Pour un Na’vi, établir un lien avec un Ikran fait partie d’un rite de passage du chasseur pour être reconnu parmi son clan. Le Toruk Makto, le « cavalier de la dernière ombre » est un grand prédateur aérien, semblable à l’Ikran, mais de dimension plus importante. Cet animal est légendaire, considéré pour les Na’vis comme une prouesse majeure. Celui qui est capable de s’y lier et de le monter pendant des périodes troublées serait alors appelé le « Choisi d’Eywa », le futur chef de la tribu. La file d’attente neurale externe qui serve à former le tsaheylu, un raccordement au niveau neural avec les autres êtres vivants nous invoque les connexions synaptiques entre les neurones. Elle est une réceptrice et, en même temps, émettrice “nanotechnique“. Au cours de l’initiation de Jake, Neytiri lui explique la importance du tsaheylu : « C’est le tsaheylu. Le lien. Sens-le! Sens son cœur qui bat! Sa respiration. Sens les forces de ses jambes! Tu peux le diriger en dedans. » Selon António Damásio, les sentiments et les pensées sont adaptés à la situation où se trouve l’organisme. La conscience se construit sur la base d’émotions transformées en sentiments. La conscience mobilise et regroupe un certain nombre d’informations nécessaires pour définir les stratégies de survie et prendre de décision. « La mémoire est indispensable à la conscience (…) Elle résulte de modifications dans l’efficacité synaptique de différents groupes neuronaux, modifications qui incitent de façon dégénérée certains circuits à recommencer. »[7] En ce qui concerne la question de la mémoire individuelle, il est important de souligner qu’au cours de l’initiation au monde écologique et mythique des Na’vis, Jake est constamment confronté à la perte de mémoire de sa vie antérieure. Il l’avoue lui-même : « Je me souviens à peine de mon ancienne vie. Je ne sais plus qui je suis. » Quant à la mémoire collective, les arbres ont un rôle important. Ils sont des « serveurs », qui stockent les informations et à partir desquels les Na’vis peuvent accéder ou télécharger des souvenirs en utilisant leurs crinières et ils peuvent même être utilisés pour les transferts d’esprit dans certains cas. L’Arbre des Âmes garantit un accès aux essences psychiques de leurs défunts, qui sont leur moyen de communication avec leurs ancêtres.
Ces observations nous permettent de refléchir, d’une perspective technologique, sur les conséquences de ce type de accès à la mémoire. L’impact des nouvelles pratiques de communication interfacées pose en clair la question de la perception de soi et de la représentation de l’entourage social. Il sera de plus en plus possible, en combinant des techniques des sciences cognitives et les technologies informationnelles avec ceux de la réalité virtuelle et l’imagerie du cerveau de partager rapidement les savoirs, les souvenirs entre les membres d’une société. Cette accessibilité pourra certainement influencer notre concept sur l’identité.
Bibliographie
António Damásio, L’erreur de Descartes, La raison des émotions, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2006.
Gerard Edelman & Gulio Tononi, Comment la matière devient conscience, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2000.
James Lovelock, La Terre est un être vivant, L’hypothèse Gaïa, Flammarion, coll. «Champs», 1999.
Jean-Paul Baquiart : Pour un principe matérialiste fort. Ed. Jean Paul Bayol, coll. «Décoherences», 2007.
Maria Wilhelm, Dirk Mathison, Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora (James Cameron’s Avatar),New York, Itbooks, 2009.
Pages Internet sur l’Avatar consultées :
http://www.maxisciences.com/cerveau/avatar-du-film-de-science-fiction-a-la-realite_art12649.html, consulté en 19/02/ 2014
http://avatar-universe.wifeo.com/ordinateur-neuronale.php, consulté en 10/01/2014
http://avatar-message-du-futur.blogspot.pt/p/4-la-construction-dramatique.html consulté en 10/01/2014
http://avatar-message-du-futur.blogspot.pt/p/4-la-construction-dramatique.html
Notes
[2] Gerard Edelman et Giulio Tononi: Comment la matière devient conscience. Paris, Odile Jacob, 2000.
[3] Maria Wilhelm et Dirk Mathison : Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora (James Cameron’s Avatar),New York, Itbooks, 2009.
[4] http://www.maxisciences.com/cerveau/avatar-du-film-de-science-fiction-a-la-realite_art12649.html,
consulté le 19/02/ 2014
Mind vs. Brain: The Cyberpunk DissociationMind vs. Brain: The Cyberpunk Dissociation
Elements of Science Fiction and the Fascination with the Post-human Gaze in Kurt Vonnegut’s GalápagosElements of Science Fiction and the Fascination with the Post-human Gaze in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos
Andrei Simuţ
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
andrei.simut@gmail.com
Elements of Science Fiction and the Fascination
with the Post-human Gaze in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos
Abstract: Our paper examines the functions and uses of science fiction strategies, the structure of the apocalyptic narrative and the post-human perspective in Kurt Vonnegut’s prose, especially in his comic bio-apocalypse Galápagos. We also analyze the functions of the “post-human gaze” for the representation of an impossible event, namely the end of human species and its replacement with an inferior humanoid species, also to be compared with other bio-apocalypses.
Keywords: Science fiction; Kurt Vonnegut; Bio-apocalypse; Post-human.
Kurt Vonnegut’s novels could serve as the best example of the intersection between dystopia, science fiction and apocalyptipticism, making use of satire and black humour very often in the direction of anti-utopianism. His humour received critical praise, but he was also placed in the tradition of satire, compared to Swift (Galápagos can be compared both with A Modest Proposal and with Gulliver’s Travels), mainly because he never abandoned his intense pessimistic view on humanity and its future. This scepticism is considered by Kathryn Hume a limitation to his emotional and intellectual parameters of his work, since it prevents him from finding premises different from his presuppositions (Hume, 12). Robert Tally prefers to call it “mysanthropic humanism”, a term that could also be a proper description for other bio-apocalypticists such as Michel Houellebecq. Tally also detects in Galápagos a new element of hope, in contrast with Vonnegut’s previous novels (Tally, 113). It has often been noted that Vonnegut’s novels tend to end without offering any solution to their central dilemmas, and that is also the case with Galápagos, a novel which envisages the extinction of homo sapiens, its replacement with a humanoid species, devoid of reason. The questions that could puzzle the reader are: do we really have a pastoral utopia based on the disappearance of the most dangerous species on Earth as the narrator urges us to believe? Can we seriously consider it a solution? What does the disappearance of the human race stand for? Before we get to answer these questions, which will lead us to the core of our reading of Galápagos as a comic bio-apocalypse, we shall discuss briefly the relation between Vonnegut’s novels and science fiction.
A science fiction author?
There are a lot of reasons why this label never left the critical discourse about Vonnegut, since he began as a typical science fiction author, writing for magazines, being a “paperback writer”, but mostly the fact that his inspiration sprang from his fascination with the “fantastic changes in the world” (Reilly, 1980, 13). These fantastic changes in the world have proved to be Vonnegut’s core of inspiration and fuelled his literary energy. This phrase suggests both the science fictional drive of his stories to concentrate upon the “fantastic dimension” of our environment and the historical turning points that the author has witnessed, often bearing apocalyptic energy and significance, from the financial breakdown of 1929 to the coming of the new Millennium, and the continuous expansion of technology.
This is the second great concern that the prose of Kurt Vonnegut shares with a large amount of science fiction, namely the technophobia vision that informs many of his writings since his first novel, Player Piano, an extended expression of his concern regarding the replacement of the humans by the machines, a concern also present in Galápagos, but in a less dystopian and more familiar representation. The best example is Mandarax, a device whose description could entail comparison with our contemporary devices (the smartphone, for instance), whose main functions were to translate from many languages and to offer the correct medical diagnostics. However, it is soon revealed that the device exceeded its precise scientific functions and offered random quotations for each situation when requested (thus becoming a favourite literary device for mocking intertextuality), and also capable to suggest options for ikebana decoration.
Vonnegut’s novels bear some thematic and structural resemblances with science fiction literature, including the author’s most cherished character and alter -ego, Kilgore Trout, author of science fiction novels, who almost received autonomous existence[1]. These shared affinities could include: his scepticism towards the un-ethical and unlimited uses of science, with the auxiliary presence of the „mad scientist” (Felix Hoenikker in Cat’s Cradle); the fact that the catastrophes featured in almost all of his novels are always caused by man and by his unlimited desire to play with the dangerous results of technological progress; the prevalence of the ideas over characters, who are quickly sketched for the benefit of the novel’s overarching theme (Vonnegut has been compared with Swift as a writer of “moral bleak fables”); author’s tendency to confront his characters with the novum, Darko Suvin’s term for the essence of a science fiction novel, the result of this encounter being a total reconsideration of their worldview, lives and beliefs (Simmons, 136). To put it differently, the characters exist only for and because of the apocalyptic changes they witness.
Vonnegut, the apocalypticist
However, all these features briefly named here could as well serve as arguments for considering Kurt Vonnegut as the quintessential apocalyptic writer. Even though the term “science fiction” was coined recently[2] as compared to the long tradition of apocalyptic writings, it has become just as vague and general as the latter, blurring the boundaries between high/canonical literature and popular culture, commercial and cult films/novels, often indistinguishable from fantasy, in spite of the theoretical effort spent in order to expand its tradition, define its specificity and delineate a list of canonical SF works (Darko Suvin, Fredric Jameson, Tom Moylan, Patrick Parrinder, Carl Freedman and so on). In some cases, science fiction becomes completely interspersed with contemporary utopias, as in the case of Ursula K. LeGuin.
The generic question here is if the apocalyptic novel is a subgenre of science fiction, or, the latter is only a strand of the apocalyptic literature, becoming dominant with the advent of technology and science in the post-1945 period? The apocalyptic novel written in the Cold War era exists in and outside the (fragile) boundaries of SF genre. The category of the non-SF apocalyptic novel is less clear delineated as compared with the apocalyptic strand of science fiction, but the apocalyptic quality of some novels written by Thomas Pynchon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Umberto Eco, Paul Auster, José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez is certainly striking. Although Kurt Vonnegut belongs to this list of critically acclaimed mainstream apocalyptic authors, his canonical status was not so self-evident as it appears today, and one of the reasons was his intense use of science fiction tropes, at a time when science fiction was generally considered paraliterature. Vonnegut himself pointed this peculiarity of his relation to mainstream literature in his blunt style: “I have been the sorehead occupant of a file drawer labelled “science fiction” ever since (my first novel), and I would like out, particularly since so many critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal”[3]
His novels display the fruitful combination of science fiction and apocalypticism, an original mélange in the American literature of the Cold War period. His apocalyptic narratives such as Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Timequake or Galápagos all rely on a structural feature of both the apocalyptic novel and the “critical” science fiction: “the dramatization of the historicity of the present in relation to the future” (Freedman, 50), and their indebtedness to the historical novel. Both the apocalyptic narrative and the science fiction stage a historical difference between the empirical present of the reader and the alternative time, a radically different history (Freedman, 54). Another functional approach to Vonnegut’s apocalyptic novels is to integrate them in the trans-genre category of “impossibility fictions” based on the strategy of extrapolation, a metonymical extension of the ends of reality, a satirical distortion of the real contemporary world (Littlewood, Stockwell, 5).
However, each of Vonnegut’s apocalyptic novels (Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Galápagos) stands for a different version of the apocalyptic scenario: the traumatic event represented as the “witnessed apocalypse”, namely the bombing of Dresden (Slaughterhouse Five), the postponed end (Sirens of Titan), pre-apocalypticism and annihilative hermeneutic, the final end with no survivors and no life on Earth (Cat’s Cradle), the viral and progressive extinction of humanity in its actual shape in Galápagos. We will seek to demonstrate that Vonnegut is not a science fictional writer in the general acceptance of the term, but he employs the tropes and strategies of this genre for different structural purposes.
De-dramatizing the end of human race
Galápagos, among other novels following Slaughterhouse Five, a turning point in his career, was another result of his attempt to reinvent himself and also one of the most concerned attempts of the author to speculate a scientific plausible hypothesis. His readings of Stephen Jay Gould’s books for preparing his novel and his correspondence with the Harvard biologist stand as a proof for his desire to be scientifically accurate (Tomedi, 97). One point in his scientific demonstration was to prove the randomness of the natural selection, and he was confirmed by Gould, who described Galápagos as a “roman a clef about evolutionary theory” (Tomedi, 98). Galápagos was also considered the moment when Vonnegut turned to “real science fiction” (Tally, 117).
The overall suggestion of the novel regarding the total end of human race in its actual biological condition is that it cannot be avoided, it is irreversible, ineluctable, but not catastrophical. The disappearance of the twentieth century humans is rather necessary for the purification of a dying Earth, a condition for regaining the lost equilibrium of nature. The human extinction is the equivalent of the paradise regained. This is of course the conclusion that other well-known bio-apocalypses reach at the end: The Last Man by Mary Shelley represents a total extinction of the human race caused by a global pandemic, also present in Galápagos in a more toned-down version, namely a virus that cause infertility to most of the planet’s female population, except the survivors of Santa Rosalia. If one compares the discursive presence of this ending with other Vonnegut versions of the end will be struck by the difference. The representation of the actual cause that terminates man’s existence on Earth could almost get unnoticed: the virus gets a quick mention and it spreads from the Frankfurt Book Fair, a small bacteria that infects the women’s ova, a „de-dramatization of the end” that is concordant with other bio-apocalypses as well, from The Last Man to Michel Houellebecq’s Possibility of an Island (2005). This total extinction of the human race sets the novel apart from those bio-apocalypses, where the possibility of the Adamic rebirth of humanity is left open, and becomes the purpose of the quest in the final part of the novel, the quest for other survivors, led by “the last man” as in Shelley’s novel or in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.
The virus, the main agent usually employed in a bio-apocalypse, is the perfect metaphor for a chain reaction and for randomness, illustrating once again a main theme of Vonnegut’s prose, the central role played by chance in human history and to its apocalypse. Galápagos very much resembles Cat’s Cradle in the fact that it is a narrative constituted by chance events, haphazard entanglements of causes and effects that eventually lead to the final end of the world as we know it, both isolating a small group of survivors on a remote island (Santa Rosalia in Galápagos, san Lorenzo in Cat’s Cradle) due to haphazard circumstances, both having a similar and discreet “doomsday device” (the virus in Galápagos, the crystal that freezes all water on Earth – Ice 9 in Cat’s Cradle).
Even though the end is clearly a global-scale disaster, like in The Last Man, Vonnegut maintains an ambiguity regarding the clear unfolding of the events, displaying limited information about the real cause of the disaster: a big financial crash, the scarcity of food, infertility, and a war spread to the entire planet. Like in Cat’s Cradle, the end is brought about by a storm of accidents in a progressive succession from a minor incident to the final catastrophe. Chance governs the radical mutation undergone by humanity, reduced to a handful of survivors, and then allowed to start a new chain of evolution.
Vonnegut, a declared atheist, is mocking the idea of predestination and eludes the religious dimension of the apocalypse, showing that man is the only god-like creature that failed, generating cosmic-scale disastrous practical jokes. No character in this novel seems to be able to foretell or interpret the signs of the impending disaster. This hermeneutic incapacity of the humans to understand the perils of their own situation is a permanent source for amusement both for the narrator and the reader, and also an attempt to render the pre-apocalyptic scenario completely unpredictable. There is one singular character who seems to have developed a sense of the forthcoming disaster, Captain von Kleist. The emphasis is however comic: in the midst of a bombardment, he interprets the falling bombs as a ”meteorite shower”, the apocalyptic scenario he had expected to happen all his life. The apocalyptic event cannot be grasped and escapes the rational understanding.
There are other discursive strategies in the text which are employed in order to elude the apocalyptic Event, which divides the book and the narrated time, it is suggested by the narrator, but it is only described in the chapters 34 to 38. In fact the information about the Event is dispersed throughout the entire novel, from the first page to the last, concordant with the author’s intent to prove that the real causes for the end cannot be grasped, but they reside in the humanity of the twentieth century, especially in their “oversized brains”. This repetitive phrase is also meant to certify the utterly problematic condition of the human being, and its self-destructive nature, visible through the most common or the most exceptional situations.
Strictly connected to the „oversized brains” is the scenario of a psycho-apocalypse that has triggered the downfall during the last days. All this chain reaction starts with Jesus Ortiz, a waiter and an ardent admirer of the rich, who is shocked by the inhumanity and greediness of the billionaire Andrew McIntosh, who feeds his dog with an exquisite meal, when the whole population of Galápagos (including his family) was starving. Jesus Ortiz suffers a breakdown, decides to leave the hotel and cut its electrical power. Siegfried von Kleist, the manager, who sees Jesus Ortiz leaving, suffers a seizure, an outburst of his latent Huntington’s disease, also the perfect illustration of a psycho-apocalypse, namely a mental breakdown which announces the imminent end of all. Mary Hepburn, a biologist and teacher, almost commits suicide during the same day, alone and desperate in her hotel room, a scene reflecting the same paradoxical self-destructive nature of the “oversized brains”.
Vonnegut represents the downfall of humanity as a double, simultaneous and concordant process, an inner, psychological breakdown caused by inequalities, solitude, accidents of misfortune and its externalized version, with its messengers of doom: financial crisis, ecological catastrophes, viral diseases and global wars. Adolf von Kleist is the character who illustrates this externalization of the apocalypse, interpreting the bombs fallen upon Galápagos as meteorites (a natural disaster), projecting the apocalypse upon the events he witnesses according to his traumas, mirroring the very same process of externalization of a traumatic event experienced by Vonnegut himself (his mother committing suicide, the bombing of Dresden etc). Vonnegut’s style almost dismisses the ambiguities regarding the interpretation of its symbols and metaphorical concordances: the ship Bahía de Darwin and its irresponsible, drunk and inexperienced captain Adolf von Kleist are the image of the world on the brink of disaster, with its mindless leaders.
The setting of this psycho-drama is the Galápagos islands, more precisely the capital Guayaquil and the island Santa Rosalia, and this space is transfigured and becomes the centre of the world, the metonymical image of it as in other apocalyptic novels (Canudos for Llosa’s The War of the End of the World, Macondo – One Hundred Years of solitude, New York for Pynchon’s V and for countless other apocalyptic novels and films). In the first part of the novel, Galápagos was a completely unattractive tourist destination, but in the second part, it becomes literally the centre of a new world, where man is no longer at the top of the evolutionary scale. His brilliant demonstration typical for the bio-apocalyptic pattern is that every unimportant human trait will become crucial after one million years, and every important human feature will become irrelevant after the end.
It has often been noted that the genius of Vonnegut’s art lies in his narrative technique: thus Galápagos switches permanently between flashbacks and flash-forwards anticipating the deaths of nearly all his characters, the end of civilization, technology, and human race. The narrator is Leon Trout, the son of the famous science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and already dead by the time the story begins. One of the main narrative strategies is to postpone the story of humanity’s last day, the disjunctive point when the „realistic”, plausible history meets the (im)-possible void of its end. Although Vonnegut has a few bombs falling upon his characters, the differences between the cataclysmic spectacle of destruction represented usually in a nuclear apocalypse and the de-dramatization of the bio-apocalypse are obvious: the apocalyptic Event cannot be isolated in its pure manifestation, but only through its consequences (the disappearance of humanity), and thus it can never be represented as a performative process (as the apocalyptic film so often does). The narrator adopts a neutral scientific style and enumerates the possible causes, often emphasizing them illustrating the satirical dimension of Vonnegut’s prose.
Some critics have insisted that the apocalypse is represented in Galápagos as a gradual regression of human species into animalism (Freese, 170). According to Douglas Robinson’s terminology, the novel is a mixture of the continuum hermeneutics (the survival of the human species, but in a different form: the possibility of a new beginning; the perfect conservation of the natural habitat) and the annihilative hermeneutics (the end of the world as we know it) (Robinson, 2000). A proper example for what Klaus Scherpe and Brent Peterson has termed as „de-dramatization of the end” (Scherpe, 122) is Galápagos, where one of Vonnegut’s intention was to contradict with its representation of the end the expectations of the contemporary reader imbued with Cold War fictions of disasters, dominated by the nuclear fears. The case of Captain von Kleist’s is again very relevant here: he mistakes the bombs of a World War III for a “meteorite shower” because he considers it to be a more poetic, aesthetic version of Armageddon. Compared with the other characters of the novel, von Kleist is a solitary figure with his apocalyptic projections, and Vonnegut’s implicit irony towards his character is clear enough. His attempt is to construct a different version of the end, devoid of its poetic potentiality, in order to underline the long path of man’s devolution.
Why has Vonnegut imagined a total end to humanity? One of the possible answers is that the attempt of his thought experiment was to block all possible cyclic reversals of humanity’s historical errors by imagining a complete regression of the human species to a non-cerebral, vegetative state, devoid of any possibility of re-taking the path towards an advanced state. In this respect, Walter Miller’s portrayal in Canticle for Leibowitz of a humanity endlessly repeating its historical errors receives a paradoxical and satirical solution in Galápagos, where its radical devolution blocks all the endless repetition of its past horrors.
Humanity goes extinct: equilibrium is restored
Vonnegut remains a pre-apocalypticist, even though his description of a post-human world is one of the most radical renditions, portraying as it does a humanity deprived of art, religion, reason, etc, comparable only with The Last Man, where humanity becomes literally extinct. The titles of the two parts of the novel (“The Thing Was” and “The Thing Became”) are an ironic résumé of any apocalyptic scenario, containing both the pre- and the post-apocalyptic dimension. The extension of the first part underlines the pre-apocalyptic dimension of Vonnegut’s writing. However, the five acts of a bio-apocalyptic pattern are all present, as in The Last Man (here the story of a new species replacing humans is missing), Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles, Possibility of an Island or Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: the tribulation, the big chain of haphazard events – the financial crisis, the virus, the Nature Cruise of the Century (1) leading to the apocalyptic event – the extinction of humanity on all the continents except the small island of Santa Rosalia (2), resulting in a small group of survivors, also chosen by chance –the passengers of Bahía de Darwin, resulted from the chaos of the last day (3), in a new world, described as a natural paradise restored –the island of Santa Rosalia, but indirectly, the entire Earth, devoid of its main predator, man (4), with the final survival of the humans, in a new form, as a new humanoid species, reduced to animalism, resembling the sea-like creatures, having the single purpose of survival (5). As in the previously mentioned bio-apocalypses, chance and science (namely genetic mutations) plays the central role of selection, replacing predestination, depriving man from his god-like status.
The differences are notable: the science involved is not genetic engineering as in the case of Houellebecq’s and Atwood’s novels, written after the discovery of the human genome in 1999, but an indirect result of the atomic bomb, which has generated the mutations. The main anti-utopian aspect of this novel refers to the programmatic reversal of each human contemporary feature regarding the consequences of his endowment with reason, from the products of science (technology, weapons, pollution, and ruthless exploitation of nature) to his intelligence which often results in his unexplained self-destructiveness. The excess of reason is eliminated, after having been reduced to absurd by its apocalyptic consequences. Houellebecq will operate the same reduction in his portrayal of the last men and the new humanoid species.
There are two main narrative devices employed by Vonnegut in order to render the utter decadence of contemporary human race: through his characters and through a distanced anthropological perspective. Each character illustrates one negative or degenerative human feature: Selena – blindness, Jesus Ortiz – fascination with the rich; Leon Trout –cynicism, James Wait –greediness, Hisako Hiroguki – depression. Again Vonnegut uses a metonymical portrayal of humanity itself. James Wait also summarizes all possible degenerative and decadent features; he is a criminal, child of incestuous parents, homosexual and former prostitute. Captain von Kleist is physically the forefather of the new humanity although he does not possess any quality of a new Adam (the allusions to the biblical figure are frequent). He is also a comic and degraded Noah, unable to sail his ship, but because of his inability he generates the new beginning, contributing with his errors to the birth of the new race.
Vonnegut’s irony is also directed against the new beginning of an evolutionary cycle, against what “the thing Became” with a new species devoid of the most important human physical features (hands, brains), and having as genetic parents the most peculiar human specimens. The ship Bahía de Darwin, the “Nature Cruise of the Century” is a reversed Noah’sArk, gathering not the fittest but of the weakest, the physical and psychical debilitated human specimens. The paradisiacal features of the island Santa Rosalia are dubitable from the reader’s perspective, and here Vonnegut fulfills his science fictional, apocalyptic experiment: the cognitive estrangement is brilliantly accomplished, since he describes a post-human world, in the absence of man as a creature endowed with reason, a post-historical world, where any transformations are blocked and no possibility of evolution exists, a world inhabited by human descendants which do not resemble man at all. The equilibrium is completely and forever restored.
The post-human gaze
Another instance of Vonnegut’s narrative genius is the narrator: Leon Trout narrates an impossible event, the extinction of humanity with no survivors, without using the motif of “the last man”. The first thing about Galápagos that strikes the reader is the narrated time span, also a matter of critical praise regarding the novel[4]: “The thing was: one million years ago, in 1986 A.D, Guayaquil was the chief seaport of the little South”. One essential function of this temporal void of one million years after the historical recognizable world of 1986 is to construct a distanced, post-human perspective over contemporary human situation and, most importantly, to gain the effect of estrangement, considered by Darko Suvin to be a structural feature of science fiction. These are the main coordinates of the post-human gaze located in the first person narrator of Galápagos who chooses to situate himself after the human race has become extinct, after the end has occurred. Douglas Robinson has noticed how rare the apocalyptic novel represents the total end of the world and how often makes use of the metonymical extension of a local and partial ending, and mainly because of its narrative difficulty (Robinson, 2000).
Vonnegut has ventured two times in this direction, one time in Cat’s Cradle and the other in Galápagos. In order to configure a credible narrator who could narrate an impossible event, he configures an ambiguous ontological status for Leon Trout, who reveals repeatedly that he had been killed during the construction of the ship Bahía de Darwin. He is the most unusual narrator: a spectrum, a posthumous entity, caught between two worlds and prolonging this uncertain, yet God-like privileged position for one million years. Here we come to the main questions of our article and of the novel itself: why the fascination with the disappearance of man, with the total end of the world? Is Galápagos a conventional apocalyptic narrative or does it imply a wider significance? Is this complex narrative solution only a matter of artistry or does it point to more complex contemporary condition, both of the cynical subject and of the spectator?
In the Seventh chapter we are offered a series of essential details that could serve as an answer to all these questions. Kilgore Trout demands his son to choose between the realms of the living and the other world, asking why he has chosen this uncertain and miserable condition and Leon Trout points to his pure fascination with voyeurism, with the condition of an omniscient observer of humanity’s last moments. He has also been the spectator of his own accidental death, attended his own funeral, and accepted the disintegration of his own physical body. This is precisely what Lacanian theory has termed as the “impossible gaze”, namely when the subject witnesses impossible events (Žizek, 2010; McGowan, 2007).
In the case of Galápagos, the narrator not only witnesses the disappearance of man, but also the end of human civilization, the demise of technology, the end of man as a force of nature and a cause of its disasters This is the point when the apocalyptic narrative meets the technophobic vision of science fiction. Leon Trout becomes the single entity in possession of all the human knowledge (and who cannot use it in destructive purposes) and the only one who possesses the perfect distanced anthropological perspective, being able to deliver a scientifically accurate (yet sarcastic) diagnosis on the “late” humanity, as Houellebecq’s post-human narrator will also do in Possibility of an Island. Leon Trout’s traumas relate to disintegration and dissolution (of the family, social relations, systems, environment and in the end, the world itself), also the main themes of Vonnegut’s life and fictions.
The act of viewing the spectacle of dissolution could restore the world’s unity for one privileged moment (that of the gaze) and free the subject of his traumas. It is also the desire to perceive what no one can witness, the world devoid of human presence, and this explains Leon Trout’s one million year linger among the remnants of a lost world. But the post-human gaze cannot be reduced to a fascinated look upon the post-human world, it also implies a horrified look at the impossibility of regaining human art and thought, to ever re-conquer man’s grandiosity. It is the appalling perspective of the void: Leon’s text, written on air, will never encounter any reader or reception, and the story about the end of man will remain unknown, as in The Last Man.
Conclusions
According to Darko Suvin, the fundamental axis of science fiction as genre is cognitive estrangement. As we have already noted, Vonnegut has an utmost concern with the preciseness of his scientific hypothesis in Galápagos, resulting in probably his most systematically scientific novel. However, the same novel serves as the best example if we are to prove that Vonnegut is not a science fiction writer, and this is mainly because of his comic drive, which functions as a counterpart to the estrangement effect. What should be the final outcome of a “serious” science fiction novel is here fragmented, punctuated and finally deconstructed by the web of anticipations (flash-forwards), acting as warning signs for the reader not to interpret seriously all the extrapolations and exaggerations constructed by the author. The science fictional tropes are present in almost any Vonnegut novel, but are always accompanied by an irony and distance that is never present in a classic science fiction novel. Galápagos can be interpreted fruitfully as an apocalyptic novel: the temporal distance offers not only an apocalyptic perspective towards the contemporary human subjects, but it also offers a sense of estrangement to our contemporary world.
Bibliography
Farell, Susan, A Critical Companion to Kurt Vonnegut. A Literary Reference to his Life and Work,New York, Facts on File, 2008.
Ferguson, Oliver W., “History and Story: Leon Trout’s Double Narrative in Galápagos”, in: Harold Bloom (ed), Kurt Vonnegut (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views), Bloom’s Literary Criticism,New York, Infobase Publishing, 2009.
Freedman, Carl, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Middletown,Connecticut,WesleyanUniversity Press, 2000.
Freese, Peter, “Surviving the End: Apocalypse, Evolution, and Entropy in Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon”, „Critique”, Vol. 36, (Spring 1995); No.3, Academic Research Library, 163-175.
Hume, Kathryn, “Vonnegut’s Melancholy”, in Harold Bloom (Ed.), Kurt Vonnegut (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views), Bloom’s Literary Criticism,New York, Infobase Publishing, 2009.
Jameson, Fredric, Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and other Science Fictions,London andNew York, Verso, 2005.
McGowan, Todd. The Real Gaze. Film Theory after Lacan, New York,StateUniversity ofNew York Press, 2007.
Parrinder, Patrick (Ed.), Learning from Other Worlds. Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science fiction and Utopia, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2000.
Robinson, Douglas, “Literature and Apocalyptic”, in: The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, John James Collins, Bernard Mc Ginn, Stephen J. Stein (Eds.), Continuum,Bloomsbury Academic, 2000.
Reilly, Charles; Vonnegut Kurt, Two Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, College Literature, Vol.7, No.1, (Winter 1980), 1-29
Suvin, Darko, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre,New Haven andLondon,YaleUniversity Press, 1979.
Tally, Robert T., “Apocalypse in the Optative Mood; Galápagos, or Starting Over”, in: David Simmons (Ed.), New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut,New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Tomedi, John, Kurt Vonnegut. Great Writers,Philadelphia, Chelsea House Publishers, 2004.
Žizek, Slavoj, Living in the End Times,London, Verso, 2010.
This work was supported by Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research within the Exploratory Research Project PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0061.
Notes
[1] Philip Jose Farmer had the idea of writing a “Kilgore Trout book”, which would become an upsetting and annoying problem for Vonnegut later on (Reilly, 1980).
[2] The term was coined in 1929 by Hugo Gernsback.
[3] Ironically enough, this quotation appears on the frontispiece of Darko Suvin’s Metamorphosis of Science Fiction, one of the critical works that legitimated science fiction as serious literature.
[4] The author and especially this novel has been praised for their narrative inventiveness.
Andrei Simuţ
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
andrei.simut@gmail.com
Elements of Science Fiction and the Fascination
with the Post-human Gaze in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos
Abstract: Our paper examines the functions and uses of science fiction strategies, the structure of the apocalyptic narrative and the post-human perspective in Kurt Vonnegut’s prose, especially in his comic bio-apocalypse Galápagos. We also analyze the functions of the “post-human gaze” for the representation of an impossible event, namely the end of human species and its replacement with an inferior humanoid species, also to be compared with other bio-apocalypses.
Keywords: Science fiction; Kurt Vonnegut; Bio-apocalypse; Post-human.
Kurt Vonnegut’s novels could serve as the best example of the intersection between dystopia, science fiction and apocalyptipticism, making use of satire and black humour very often in the direction of anti-utopianism. His humour received critical praise, but he was also placed in the tradition of satire, compared to Swift (Galápagos can be compared both with A Modest Proposal and with Gulliver’s Travels), mainly because he never abandoned his intense pessimistic view on humanity and its future. This scepticism is considered by Kathryn Hume a limitation to his emotional and intellectual parameters of his work, since it prevents him from finding premises different from his presuppositions (Hume, 12). Robert Tally prefers to call it “mysanthropic humanism”, a term that could also be a proper description for other bio-apocalypticists such as Michel Houellebecq. Tally also detects in Galápagos a new element of hope, in contrast with Vonnegut’s previous novels (Tally, 113). It has often been noted that Vonnegut’s novels tend to end without offering any solution to their central dilemmas, and that is also the case with Galápagos, a novel which envisages the extinction of homo sapiens, its replacement with a humanoid species, devoid of reason. The questions that could puzzle the reader are: do we really have a pastoral utopia based on the disappearance of the most dangerous species on Earth as the narrator urges us to believe? Can we seriously consider it a solution? What does the disappearance of the human race stand for? Before we get to answer these questions, which will lead us to the core of our reading of Galápagos as a comic bio-apocalypse, we shall discuss briefly the relation between Vonnegut’s novels and science fiction.
A science fiction author?
There are a lot of reasons why this label never left the critical discourse about Vonnegut, since he began as a typical science fiction author, writing for magazines, being a “paperback writer”, but mostly the fact that his inspiration sprang from his fascination with the “fantastic changes in the world” (Reilly, 1980, 13). These fantastic changes in the world have proved to be Vonnegut’s core of inspiration and fuelled his literary energy. This phrase suggests both the science fictional drive of his stories to concentrate upon the “fantastic dimension” of our environment and the historical turning points that the author has witnessed, often bearing apocalyptic energy and significance, from the financial breakdown of 1929 to the coming of the new Millennium, and the continuous expansion of technology.
This is the second great concern that the prose of Kurt Vonnegut shares with a large amount of science fiction, namely the technophobia vision that informs many of his writings since his first novel, Player Piano, an extended expression of his concern regarding the replacement of the humans by the machines, a concern also present in Galápagos, but in a less dystopian and more familiar representation. The best example is Mandarax, a device whose description could entail comparison with our contemporary devices (the smartphone, for instance), whose main functions were to translate from many languages and to offer the correct medical diagnostics. However, it is soon revealed that the device exceeded its precise scientific functions and offered random quotations for each situation when requested (thus becoming a favourite literary device for mocking intertextuality), and also capable to suggest options for ikebana decoration.
Vonnegut’s novels bear some thematic and structural resemblances with science fiction literature, including the author’s most cherished character and alter -ego, Kilgore Trout, author of science fiction novels, who almost received autonomous existence[1]. These shared affinities could include: his scepticism towards the un-ethical and unlimited uses of science, with the auxiliary presence of the „mad scientist” (Felix Hoenikker in Cat’s Cradle); the fact that the catastrophes featured in almost all of his novels are always caused by man and by his unlimited desire to play with the dangerous results of technological progress; the prevalence of the ideas over characters, who are quickly sketched for the benefit of the novel’s overarching theme (Vonnegut has been compared with Swift as a writer of “moral bleak fables”); author’s tendency to confront his characters with the novum, Darko Suvin’s term for the essence of a science fiction novel, the result of this encounter being a total reconsideration of their worldview, lives and beliefs (Simmons, 136). To put it differently, the characters exist only for and because of the apocalyptic changes they witness.
Vonnegut, the apocalypticist
However, all these features briefly named here could as well serve as arguments for considering Kurt Vonnegut as the quintessential apocalyptic writer. Even though the term “science fiction” was coined recently[2] as compared to the long tradition of apocalyptic writings, it has become just as vague and general as the latter, blurring the boundaries between high/canonical literature and popular culture, commercial and cult films/novels, often indistinguishable from fantasy, in spite of the theoretical effort spent in order to expand its tradition, define its specificity and delineate a list of canonical SF works (Darko Suvin, Fredric Jameson, Tom Moylan, Patrick Parrinder, Carl Freedman and so on). In some cases, science fiction becomes completely interspersed with contemporary utopias, as in the case of Ursula K. LeGuin.
The generic question here is if the apocalyptic novel is a subgenre of science fiction, or, the latter is only a strand of the apocalyptic literature, becoming dominant with the advent of technology and science in the post-1945 period? The apocalyptic novel written in the Cold War era exists in and outside the (fragile) boundaries of SF genre. The category of the non-SF apocalyptic novel is less clear delineated as compared with the apocalyptic strand of science fiction, but the apocalyptic quality of some novels written by Thomas Pynchon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Umberto Eco, Paul Auster, José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez is certainly striking. Although Kurt Vonnegut belongs to this list of critically acclaimed mainstream apocalyptic authors, his canonical status was not so self-evident as it appears today, and one of the reasons was his intense use of science fiction tropes, at a time when science fiction was generally considered paraliterature. Vonnegut himself pointed this peculiarity of his relation to mainstream literature in his blunt style: “I haveHOME must be set in the file wp-config.php and point at the WP Super Cache plugin directory. –>
Pursuing a Subtle Monster in Philip K. Dick’s UbikPursuing a Subtle Monster in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik
Cosmin Perţa
Hyperion University, Bucharest, Romania
zorovavel@yahoo.com
Pursuing a Subtle Monster in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik
Abstract: This study has as starting point the inventory of monsters made by Ambroise Paré in the XVIth century and a theory of the fantastic as interpretation, applied on Philip K. Dick’s novel, Ubik. We found out that Jory, the antagonist, has all the characteristics of a subtle monster. This specific kind of monster seems to be more common in post-modernity and in post-humanism, cultural territories that helped him evolve and hunt. He strikes deadly helped by his ability to fade into reality. He often creates virtual realities as traps for his victims whose energy he consumes. We will follow Jory and his kind in this PKD novel to bring him into light, identify his habits and establish a typology.
Keywords: Philip K. Dick; Ambroise Paré; Fantastic; Fantastic of Interpretation; Monster; Strangeness; Illusion; Energetic Vampire.
In the 16th century, Ambroise Paré, the famous surgeon of the French royalty, elaborated an inventory of a few dozen monsters (marine, volatile, terrestrial, and celestial) in the volume Animaux, monstres et prodiges[1]; he also presented a list of the reasons for which monsters are born. The following causes are presented here: God’s glory, God’s wrath, too high a quantity of man seed, too low a quantity of man seed, imagination, too small a uterus, indecent actions of the mother during the pregnancy, blows to the mother’s belly during pregnancy, genetic or accidental diseases, degenerate man seed, mixture of man seeds, demons and devils.
According to Ambroise Paré, the most dangerous monsters are the volatile monsters, the incubi and succubi, as well as the invisible monsters, the monsters with human appearance, which are corrupted on the inside. This type of invisible monsters was present in literature, in various forms, the most important feature being the realist and social component of the human monster, which is immoral, cruel, remorseless, able to do anything, using a deceiving appearance. There are sufficient examples among Dickens’ negative characters. Then, there is another model, in Dorian Gray, the aesthete monster. There are also the variations of the Faustian myth, with exemplary monster-characters in Goethe, Marlow, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Mikhail Bulgakov, and other authors. Finally, there is a special sub-category belonging to the category of invisible monsters: the subtle monsters always placed at the border. The effect of this type of monster is obvious, they completely change the reality with which they come into contact, their presence cannot remain unnoticed; however, their existence cannot be proven.
The theme of the Subtle Monster is most frequent within manifestations of the fantastic of interpretation. The fantastic of interpretation, a term coined by Matei Călinescu in 2002, refers to a form of fantastic different from the modernist one as defined by Caillois and Todorov, a form M. Călinescu approached in Mircea Eliade’s works. This term and theme I later developed in my study Introducere in fantasticul de interpretare, Tracus Arte Publishing House,Bucharest, 2012.
Briefly, if, in the case of the modernist fantastic, one deals with ambiguous, unsettling events breeding bizarre, enigmatic or grotesque forces in the mist of a banal, recognizable world only to culminate in an often unhappy end, the fantastic of interpretation attempts to stimulate and free the reader’s imagination by fascinating rather than disconcerting him, and leads him to discover the credible within the incredible or vice-versa. The fantastic of interpretation is, as Matei Călinescu put it, a hermeneutical adventure[2] in which images, symbols, metaphors, stories or dreams are possible bearers of epiphanies or codified memories. Thus, the reader’s imagination is required to decipher the significance of hidden or lost world.
Basically, the fantastic of interpretation, according to my definition, is similar to what R. Caillois called explained fantastic, the only difference being that in this case there is no explanation in the end, but we have clues that sustain both the intervention of the fantastic and the rational explanation. So, at the end, the reader has to decide if the fantastic has occurred or not, if the rational, visible world has collided with an irrational and invisible one. His or her decision is extremely important because it changes both the meaning and the purpose of the text.
This kind of fantastic literature uses peculiar characters. Well hidden, masters of disguise, often inhabitants of two territories at one time, the subtle monsters are among them. The scariest thing is precisely this: subtle monsters are among us and many literary works come to reveal this fact. The subtle monster is extremely important in contemporary society because it is the only active monster. In modern society, man quickly learned how to fight the obvious monsters, so, in the post-modern society obvious monsters evolved into subtle monsters. But are they visible? Well, we can surely see the effects.
The strangeness, the fertile ground of the fantastic, is the result of subjective observation on a realist ground, which simultaneously conjures the presence of a fantastic realm within the same reality, without providing firm solutions. Suspicion is therefore the rule of the fantastic and the one that veils and unveils the subtle monster, successively. The subtle monster could be relevant not only for the literary field, but also for cinematography and contemporary art, with extensions into psychology and sociology, because the subtle monster can be paradigmatic for post-humanist society.
One of the novels where the subtle monster powers are taken to the edge, almost permitting him to disintegrate the surrounding, known world is Ubik, signed by Philipp K. Dick. This PKD’s novel is one of the most surprising pieces of literature in the last decades. Negligently written at the beginning, it evolves into something spectacular.
Written in 1969, this science-fiction novel is set in 1992, in the “North American Confederation”. In the novel, many characters have parapsychological abilities, human life cycle has been extended, since people have the ability to sink into the state of “half-life”, a phase following death, which allows fully living humans to communicate with their deceased loved ones. A man called Glen Runciter runs an organization that employs telepaths, precogs (as in precognitive), inertials and other people with psionic powers. Runciter’s organization is engaged in a struggle against a rival organization for control of the psionics market. Runciter’s young wife Ella is in “half-life” (a form of cryogenics) in a facility in Switzerland, but among others there’s a boy in half life called Jory who is starting to invade the half-life world of Ella Runciter. Thing that, as theSwitzerland facility’s Director says, never happened before. But the main focus is on Joe Chip, one of the key members of Runciter’s team.
We should notice the typical humor, the fact that Chip seems to be a self parody of PKD, but I’ll stick to the facts that interest us the most. So, in the first pages we find out that Chip has interviewed and hired a new talent, called Patricia Conley. Her unique gift is that she can alter and reshape the past. She proves it by going back in the past and marrying Joe Chip.
In a last attempt to surpass his rival, Runciter starts a mission on the Moon, but there is a trap set by his rival and a bomb explodes killing Runciter, or at least it seems like that. The rest of the crew hurry back on Earth, toSwitzerland, to connect Runciter to the half-life, so that he could give them further orders. But from here things take a new course. They cannot contact Runciter and all the surrounding reality seems to depreciate and vanish. At a certain point all things start to deteriorate. Chip starts to think Patricia Conley, his wife, is a double agent sent to destroy them by continuously changing the past and, consequently, the future. Some of the crew dies mysteriously and their remaining turns into dust. Finally Runciter contacts them through all kind of media messages and suggests that they are those who died in the explosion and are now in half-life and he is the only one alive. In the end, when everybody is dead, Chip finds out from Ella Runciter that their killer is Jory, a creature that evolved in the half-life into some kind of energetic vampire, who feeds himself with the remaining energy of the corpses in half-life, prolonging this way his own half-life. In order to “capture” his victims Jory creates and animates mental worlds, similar to the worlds his victims lived in before and allows them to live there while sucking every drop of psychic energy out of them. But Jory is not omnipotent, he can create very limited worlds, and when he is tired he can not longer control entirely the world he created and things start a historical regression process. The only thing effective against Jory is the antidote Ubik, created by Ella Runciter’s mind. She was the first and only half-life person that survived Jory’s subtle attacks.
Jory in this case is a subtle monster, there is nothing obvious in his actions, as simple as it may appear, everything is uncertain, and even the most probable actions are denied by this shady character. Jory plays with the heads of his victims as PKD plays with the heads of his readers. Everything is uncertain in Joe Chips half-life’s world, as everything is uncertain in the novel, by the very end when the reader is suggested that Runciter could be the one who is really in the half-life after all and that Joe Chip and Jory’s world could be the “real” one.
“Dick’s better books are less novels than they are explorations of the relationship between reader, writer and story. His explorations become even more pointed after he suffers a mental breakdown in 1981. Whether his breakdown had anything to do with his experiments with drugs remains unclear, but subsequently it became harder to separate Dick from his work. It seems pretty clear that’s what he had in mind, or, at least, it’s a side effect that he would have found perfectly appropriate. As a result, reading his stuff is at once a venture into the mind of a highly creative man, and a fictional roller coaster ride – because Dick’s work took on a slightly hysterical apocalyptic tinge as it grew darker. It may be that reading Phil Dick is as close as one can get to the world of the paranoid schizophrenic, without going too far”[3], states A.L. Sirois on www.sfsite.com, pointing that there is not a clear separation between fiction and reality, fantastic and reality, subtle monsters and reality in PKD’s work and world.
There is a double game of cat and mouse here, one between Jory and Runciter’s crew and the second one, maybe more important, between PKD and his readers. There is a fine line between what is real and what illusion is and this is the main weapon of the subtle monster because he is, like Jory, and like the devil himself, a master of illusions.
The similarity between the author and his evil master mind character goes further. Both PKD and Jory de-construct and re-construct the surrounding reality, taking everything to the limit, or, to be more specific, to that limit where you know for sure you cannot trust anything, and that things are never, or rarely, what they seem to be. The texture of reality is in a permanent change only to undermine and destroy the beings that landed on this virtual reality net.
Death is just one frontier, but not the last, the last one seems to be the oblivion, and the subtle monster is desperate to alter reality, to transform it into a quicksand reality that disorientates, chokes and drags his victims into oblivion, there where he can consume them.
Real and illusory, life and half-life, victim and subtle monster, all elements of solipsism, but who generates this solipsism? Is it Glen Runciter, Ella, Chip, Pat, Jory, PKD himself, or the reader? The correct answer seems to be: all of them and this makes it no longer solipsism, but an emanation of possible worlds.
This certain world of half-life we’re referring to is awkward, it is a dual one, it has a creator and it has a destroyer, but they are the same person, Jory. The good and the evil coexist in this case in one person. He creates in order to feed himself. He creates only for basic, egocentric needs, but does this in such a stylish way, in such a delicate way you always need an extraordinary, fantastic intervention to point out that you are being haunted by a subtle monster as Jory is.
Coming back to Ambroise Pare and his definition of the subtle monster, Jory fits it perfectly: he completely changes the reality with which it interferes, he is invisible (he never shows his real face, when he interacts with Chip, when Chip figures him out, he takes over the body of one of the last men in the crew), but his actions cannot remain out of sight, and even at the end his existence cannot be fully proven, only felt through his actions’ effects.
There are different categories of subtle monsters, and Jory belongs to the one we call Destroyers, monsters that take over your life, without even sensing it, live through you and finally kill you only to get to the next victim.
In the end PKD does not offer any clue about who is going to win, Jory or Chip, the monster or the human because this is an everlasting battle, an ancient and future clash between human weakness and hidden evil.
Bibliography
Dick, Philip K., Ubik, Kindle Edition,December 14, 2004
Paré, Ambroise, Animaux, monstres et prodiges, Le club français du livre, Paris, 1954
Călinescu, Matei, Despre Ioan P. Culianu şi Mircea Eliade. Amintiri, lecturi, reflecţii, Polirom, Bucharest, 2002
Sirois, A.L., Ubik, http://www.sfsite.com/10a/ubik90.htm
Perţa, Cosmin, Introducere în fantasticul de interpretare, Tracus Arte Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012
Notes
[1] Animaux, monstres et prodiges, Le club français du livre, 1954, p. 99.
[2] Despre Ioan P. Culianu şi Mircea Eliade. Amintiri, lecturi, reflecţii, Polirom, 2002, p. 171.
[3] http://www.sfsite.com/10a/ubik90.htm.
Cosmin Perţa
Hyperion University, Bucharest, Romania
zorovavel@yahoo.com
Pursuing a Subtle Monster in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik
Abstract: This study has as starting point the inventory of monsters made by Ambroise Paré in the XVIth century and a theory of the fantastic as interpretation, applied on Philip K. Dick’s novel, Ubik. We found out that Jory, the antagonist, has all the characteristics of a subtle monster. This specific kind of monster seems to be more common in post-modernity and in post-humanism, cultural territories that helped him evolve and hunt. He strikes deadly helped by his ability to fade into reality. He often creates virtual realities as traps for his victims whose energy he consumes. We will follow Jory and his kind in this PKD novel to bring him into light, identify his habits and establish a typology.
Keywords: Philip K. Dick; Ambroise Paré; Fantastic; Fantastic of Interpretation; Monster; Strangeness; Illusion; Energetic Vampire.
In the 16th century, Ambroise Paré, the famous surgeon of the French royalty, elaborated an inventory of a few dozen monsters (marine, volatile, terrestrial, and celestial) in the volume Animaux, monstres et prodiges[1]; he also presented a list of the reasons for which monsters are born. The following causes are presented here: God’s glory, God’s wrath, too high a quantity of man seed, too low a quantity of man seed, imagination, too small a uterus, indecent actions of the mother during the pregnancy, blows to the mother’s belly during pregnancy, genetic or accidental diseases, degenerate man seed, mixture of man seeds, demons and devils.
According to Ambroise Paré, the most dangerous monsters are the volatile monsters, the incubi and succubi, as well as the invisible monsters, the monsters with human appearance, which are corrupted on the inside. This type of invisible monsters was present in literature, in various forms, the most important feature being the realist and social component of the human monster, which is immoral, cruel, remorseless, able to do anything, using a deceiving appearance. There are sufficient examples among Dickens’ negative characters. Then, there is another model, in Dorian Gray, the aesthete monster. There are also the variations of the Faustian myth, with exemplary monster-characters in Goethe, Marlow, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Mikhail Bulgakov, and other authors. Finally, there is a special sub-category belonging to the category of invisible monsters: the subtle monsters always placed at the border. The effect of this type of monster is obvious, they completely change the reality with which they come into contact, their presence cannot remain unnoticed; however, their existence cannot be proven.
The theme of the Subtle Monster is most frequent within manifestations of the fantastic of interpretation. The fantastic of interpretation, a term coined by Matei Călinescu in 2002, refers to a form of fantastic different from the modernist one as defined by Caillois and Todorov, a form M. Călinescu approached in Mircea Eliade’s works. This term and theme I later developed in my study Introducere in fantasticul de interpretare, Tracus Arte Publishing House,Bucharest, 2012.
Briefly, if, in the case of the modernist fantastic, one deals with ambiguous, unsettling events breeding bizarre, enigmatic or grotesque forces in the mist of a banal, recognizable world only to culminate in an often unhappy end, the fantastic of interpretation attempts to stimulate and free the reader’s imagination by fascinating rather than disconcerting him, and leads him to discover the credible within the incredible or vice-versa. The fantastic of interpretation is, as Matei Călinescu put it, a hermeneutical adventure[2] in which images, symbols, metaphors, stories or dreams are possible bearers of epiphanies or codified memories. Thus, the reader’s imagination is required to decipher the significance of hidden or lost world.
Basically, the fantastic of interpretation, according to my definition, is similar to what R. Caillois called explained fantastic, the only difference being that in this case there is no explanation in the end, but we have clues that sustain both the intervention of the fantastic and the rational explanation. So, at the end, the reader has to decide if the fantastic has occurred or not, if the rational, visible world has collided with an irrational and invisible one. His or her decision is extremely important because it changes both the meaning and the purpose of the text.
This kind of fantastic literature uses peculiar characters. Well hidden, masters of disguise, often inhabitants of two territories at one time, the subtle monsters are among them. The scariest thing is precisely this: subtle monsters are among us and many literary works come to reveal this fact. The subtle monster is extremely important in contemporary society because it is the only active monster. In modern society, man quickly learned how to fight the obvious monsters, so, in the post-modern society obvious monsters evolved into subtle monsters. But are they visible? Well, we can surely see the effects.
The strangeness, the fertile ground of the fantastic, is the result of subjective observation on a realist ground, which simultaneously conjures the presence of a fantastic realm within the same reality, without providing firm solutions. Suspicion is therefore the rule of the fantastic and the one that veils and unveils the subtle monster, successively. The subtle monster could be relevant not only for the literary field, but also for cinematography and contemporary art, with extensions into psychology and sociology, because the subtle monster can be paradigmatic for post-humanist society.
One of the novels where the subtle monster powers are taken to the edge, almost permitting him to disintegrate the surrounding, known world is Ubik, signed by Philipp K. Dick. This PKD’s novel is one of the most surprising pieces of literature in the last decades. Negligently written at the beginning, it evolves into something spectacular.
Written in 1969, this science-fiction novel is set in 1992, in the “North American Confederation”. In the novel, many characters have parapsychological abilities, human life cycle has been extended, since people have the ability to sink into the state of “half-life”, a phase following death, which allows fully living humans to communicate with their deceased loved ones. A man called Glen Runciter runs an organization that employs telepaths, precogs (as in precognitive), inertials and other people with psionic powers. Runciter’s organization is engaged in a struggle against a rival organization for control of the psionics market. Runciter’s young wife Ella is in “half-life” (a form of cryogenics) in a facility in Switzerland, but among others there’s a boy in half life called Jory who is starting to invade the half-life world of Ella Runciter. Thing that, as theSwitzerland facility’s Director says, never happened before. But the main focus is on Joe Chip, one of the key members of Runciter’s team.
We should notice the typical humor, the fact that Chip seems to be a self parody of PKD, but I’ll stick to the facts that interest us the most. So, in the first pages we find out that Chip has interviewed and hired a new talent, called Patricia Conley. Her unique gift is that she can alter and reshape the past. She proves it by going back in the past and marrying Joe Chip.
In a last attempt to surpass his rival, Runciter starts a mission on the Moon, but there is a trap set by his rival and a bomb explodes killing Runciter, or at least it seems like that. The rest of the crew hurry back on Earth, toSwitzerland, to connect Runciter to the half-life, so that he could give them further orders. But from here things take a new course. They cannot contact Runciter and all the surrounding reality seems to depreciate and vanish. At a certain point all things start to deteriorate. Chip starts to think Patricia Conley, his wife, is a double agent sent to destroy them by continuously changing the past and, consequently, the future. Some of the crew dies mysteriously and their remaining turns into dust. Finally Runciter contacts them through all kind of media messages and suggests that they are those who died in the explosion and are now in half-life and he is the only one alive. In the end, when everybody is dead, Chip finds out from Ella Runciter that their killer is Jory, a creature that evolved in the half-life into some kind of energetic vampire, who feeds himself with the remaining energy of the corpses in half-life, prolonging this way his own half-life. In order to “capture” his victims Jory creates and animates mental worlds, similar to the worlds his victims lived in before and allows them to live there while sucking every drop of psychic energy out of them. But Jory is not omnipotent, he can create very limited worlds, and when he is tired he can not longer control entirely the world he created and things start a historical regression process. The only thing effective against Jory is the antidote Ubik, created by Ella Runciter’s mind. She was the first and only half-life person that survived Jory’s subtle attacks.
Jory in this case is a subtle monster, there is nothing obvious in his actions, as simple as it may appear, everything is uncertain, and even the most probable actions are denied by this shady character. Jory plays with the heads of his victims as PKD plays with the heads of his readers. Everything is uncertain in Joe Chips half-life’s world, as everything is uncertain in the novel, by the very end when the reader is suggested that Runciter could be the one who is really in the half-life after all and that Joe Chip and Jory’s world could be the “real” one.
“Dick’s better books are less novels than they are explorations of the relationship between reader, writer and story. His explorations become even more pointed after he suffers a mental breakdown in 1981. Whether his breakdown had anything to do with his experiments with drugs remains unclear, but subsequently it became harder to separate Dick from his work. It seems pretty clear that’s what he had in mind, or, at least, it’s a side effect that he would have found perfectly appropriate. As a result, reading his stuff is at once a venture into the mind of a highly creative man, and a fictional roller coaster ride – because Dick’s work took on a slightly hysterical apocalyptic tinge as it grew darker. It may be that reading Phil Dick is as close as one can get to the world of the paranoid schizophrenic, without going too far”[3], states A.L. Sirois on www.sfsite.com, pointing that there is not a clear separation between fiction and reality, fantastic and reality, subtle monsters and reality in PKD’s work and world.
There is a double game of cat and mouse here, one between Jory and Runciter’s crew and the second one, maybe more important, between PKD and his readers. There is a fine line between what is real and what illusion is and this is the main weapon of the subtle monster because he is, like Jory, and like the devil himself, a master of illusions.
The similarity between the author and his evil master mind character goes further. Both PKD and Jory de-construct and re-construct the surrounding reality, taking everything to the limit, or, to be more specific, to that limit where you know for sure you cannot trust anything, and that things are never, or rarely, what they seem to be. The texture of reality is in a permanent change only to undermine and destroy the beings that landed on this virtual reality net.
Death is just one frontier, but not the last, the last one seems to be the oblivion, and the subtle monster is desperate to alter reality, to transform it into a quicksand reality that disorientates, chokes and drags his victims into oblivion, there where he can consume them.
Real and illusory, life and half-life, victim and subtle monster, all elements of solipsism, but who generates this solipsism? Is it Glen Runciter, Ella, Chip, Pat, Jory, PKD himself, or the reader? The correct answer seems to be: all of them and this makes it no longer solipsism, but an emanation of possible worlds.
This certain world of half-life we’re referring to is awkward, it is a dual one, it has a creator and it has a destroyer, but they are the same person, Jory. The good and the evil coexist in this case in one person. He creates in order to feed himself. He creates only for basic, egocentric needs, but does this in such a stylish way, in such a delicate way you always need an extraordinary, fantastic intervention to point out that you are being haunted by a subtle monster as Jory is.
Coming back to Ambroise Pare and his definition of the subtle monster, Jory fits it perfectly: he completely changes the reality with which it interferes, he is invisible (he never shows his real face, when he interacts with Chip, when Chip figures him out, he takes over the body of one of the last men in the crew), but his actions cannot remain out of sight, and even at the end his existence cannot be fully proven, only felt through his actions’ effects.
There are different categories of subtle monsters, and Jory belongs to the one we call Destroyers, monsters that take over your life, without even sensing it, live through you and finally kill you only to get to the next victim.
In the end PKD does not offer any clue about who is going to win, Jory or Chip, the monster or the human because this is an everlasting battle, an ancient and future clash between human weakness and hidden evil.
Bibliography
Dick, Philip K., Ubik, Kindle Edition,December 14, 2004
Paré, Ambroise, Animaux, monstres et prodiges, Le club français du livre, Paris, 1954
Călinescu, Matei, Despre Ioan P. Culianu şi Mircea Eliade. Amintiri, lecturi, reflecţii, Polirom, Bucharest, 2002
Sirois, A.L., Ubik, http://www.sfsite.com/10a/ubik90.htm
Perţa, Cosmin, Introducere în fantasticul de interpretare, Tracus Arte Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012
Notes
Universes Colliding. The Nature of Reality in Philip K. Dick’s WritingsUniverses Colliding. The Nature of Reality in Philip K. Dick’s Writings
Relating Romantic Monsters to Dystopian Robots. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Carel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal RobotsRelating Romantic Monsters to Dystopian Robots. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Carel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots
Niculae Gheran
Babeş-BolyaiUniversity,Cluj Napoca,Romania,
gheran.niculae@yahoo.co.uk
Relating Romantic Monsters to Dystopian Robots. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Carel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots
Abstract: The following paper is a study case showing the way in which the debate and attitudes on creating artificial life were shaped by Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and how this debate was inherited by dystopian author Carel Capek in ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’. Paralels are made at the level of simbolic topography, classic scientific discourse, its relationship with gender constructs and the growing field of disability studies. Capek’s thesis seems to be more complex than many have assumed. Rather than simply offering a radical critique of man’s endeavour to create artificial life, the author seems to favour mimesis rather than the scientific attempt at improving nature itself.
Keywords: Mary Shelley; Carel Čapek; Dystopia; Monster; Robot; Gender.
Dr. Frankenstein’s creature is probably the most well-known “monster” in all of British literature and Mary Shelley, as Joan Kane Nichols argues in her book, Mary Shelley – Frankenstein’s Creator, the first science-fiction writer. Her influence in literature is unparalleled and her work the staple piece of hundreds of university courses around the world. Courses on the Gothic Novel, feminism, disability studies are nowadays unthinkable without taking Frankenstein into consideration either as main text or important influence. As Diane Long Hoeveler notes, Shelley’s novel has become the most frequently taught canonical novel written by a woman in the nineteenth century (Hoevler 2003, 60) while Jay Clayton argues that, as a cautionary tale, “virtually every catastrophe of the last two centuries – revolution, rampant industrialism, epidemics, famines, World War I, Nazism, Nuclear holocaust, clones, replicants and robots has been symbolized by Shelley’s monster.”(Clayton 2003, 84)
In a very extensive essay entitled “Frankenstein’s Futurity: Replicants and Robots” published in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, Clayton tracks tales of robots and replicants as being direct descendants of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. Whether these creations are portrayed in a good or bad light, as a bright step forward in human evolution or as a monstrous, potential cause for the downfall of man, Clayton believes that these texts are all related to Shelley’s novel. To this purpose, within the corpus of his essay, he discusses views from famous directors such as Ridley Scott, George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, science fiction writers such as Nancy Kress and Octavia A. Butler; pioneers of robotics like Hans Moravec and Rodney A. Brooks; the inventor Ray Kurzweil or the feminist theorist of science studies Donna Haraway. (Clayton 2003, 85) What Clayton does is basically splitting these robotical descendants of Frankenstein in two categories on the basis of the author’s and work’s position (favourable or unfavourable) to the creation of artificial life. He discusses afterwards the minority of works, in written or cinematic form that have begun to appear and which seem to portray these creations not as monsters or, in his own words, “demons stalking popular culture” (Clayton 2003, 85) but in a positive light. The essay is very astutely written and certainly does a good job of showing the different artistic and scientific perspectives on the matter of creating artificial life while also pointing out the connections with Mary Shelley’s novel. However, I would try to point out throughout this essay that although it is true that in the last few years we have been witnessing an upsurge in productions, cinematic or otherwise, that do not portray robots or replicants as “monsters” or aberrations of science, this is not actually a new way of approaching the theme. In fact, with regards to sci-fi and the dystopian sub-genre, the origins of the idea can be traced as far back as the 1920s to the author that introduced the word “robot” into the English language, the Czech author, Karel Čapek.
The purpose of this essay is thus to build yet another bridge, this time between Mary Shelley and a twentieth century author whose fictional spaces and characters have often been regarded as dystopian. His work, R.U.R – Rossum’s Universal Robots attempts to portray a future in which science has managed to create artificial life forms which are used to replace human labour and thus create an apparent leisure utopia where man no longer needs to work. Things do not go exactly as planned and the play develops its dystopian twist. However, it is my aim to prove that, despite the play’s portrayal of universal doom at the hand of nature and robots, the issue is more complicated. The author should not simply be regarded, as many surely did, as one who is fully against the creation of artificial life because of his portrayal of the disastrous consequences that may arise. The issue at stake is far more complex, the author’s position being liminal, that is, constructing within the same work both images that would suggest an unfavourable attitude towards creating life and “monsters” as well as images that portray the potentiality of this endeavour, provided it is done right. The “right way” Čapek seems to suggest is also within the scope of this essay. What the author does in my opinion is a criticism of means and motives, rather than the end itself of creating artificial life. He portrays the things that may go wrong but also leaves images that seem to hint at how things ought to have been done, provided only if done better. We should bear in mind that Čapek’s creations are not like we would tend to imagine “robots”, that is, machines vaguely mimicking humans made of iron and bolts. On the contrary, we are talking about very close replicas of humans, closer to what sci-fi later called androids.
Because of the author’s narrative structure with regards to the creation of artificial life, this essay will be split into two parts. The first will be dealing with Čapek’s critique of sciences’ obsession with controlling nature and the environment. Issues of space and gender, Čapek’s usage of dystopian topology as well as pointing out the connections between his play and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will be discussed in this first part.
The second section will be dealing with images in the play which are not critical of the prospect of creating artificial life. During this section I will draw on theories coming from the field of disability studies as well as Jungian psychoanalysis. Same as before, we shall be having in mind parallels with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The Monstrous Gendered Dystopian Space and the Critique of Science’s Attempt to Subdue Nature to Reason
The first of the parallels between Čapek and Shelley that we should take into account surrounds the issue of gender. As most feminist scholars have pointed out, one of the most important images at the core of Frankenstein is the image of a male scientist attempting to create life in the absence of the female, an image also present in Čapek’s R.U.R. In our exploration of this issue we should also be aware of one of western culture’s most enduring narratives, astutely discussed by Susan Griffin in her work Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. This narrative implies a symbolic association between masculinity and rationality/ science on one hand, while on the other, an association between femininity, nature and irrationality. According to Griffin, a hierarchy between the two terms is also part of the narrative, placing reason and masculinity above femininity and nature, the purpose of the first being achieving control over the latter. This type of gender politics was inherent to scientific thought in the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment against which Shelley partly reacted and in which Francis Bacon announced: “I come in very truth leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave. […] Nature should be taken by the forelock. It is necessary to subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.” (Farrington 1997) These types of gender constructions in relation to science and nature are very important when discussing works like Mary Shelley’s novel or Carek Čapek’s play at the level of characters, themes but most importantly at the level of constructing symbolic geographical environments. In the case of Shelley’s novel, the repression of the feminine singles Dr. Frankenstein as a man working against nature, his “monster” being the result of an unnatural scientific experiment while the laboratory where this is achieved is constructed as a masculine space. His quest, as Anne K. Mellor notes in the essay “Making a ‘Monster’: An Introduction to Frankenstein” from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley is precisely to usurp from nature the female power of biological reproduction, (Mellor 2003, 19) or, as Francis Bacon put it “to penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places.” (Farrington 1997) She observes how such an interpretation leads to discussions of the novel as a critique of science that overreaches past the boundary of Nature. Mary Shelley worked upon several ideas and concepts related to the scientific world in her time, including Sir. Humphry Davy, the first President of the Royal Society of Science who believed that the master chemist is one who attempts “to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations but rather as a master, active with his own instruments”. (Johnson 1802, 16) This fixation about controlling nature is portrayed by both authors as leading to terrible results. In R.U.R the same critique is underlined in a different manner. Here, the construction of a large number of robots affects the birth rate of humans:
Dr. Gall: […] maybe you would throw stones into these machines, here, that give birth to robots and destroy women’s ability to be women.
Helena: Why are there no more children being born?
Dr. Gall: Because there are robots being made. Because there’s an excess in manpower. Because mankind is actually no longer needed. It’s almost as if…er…
Helena: Say it.
Dr. Gall: It’s as if making robots were an offence against Nature.
Helena: Gall, what’s going to become of the human race?
Dr. Gall: Nothing. There’s nothing that can be done against the force of nature.
Helena: Why didn’t Domin put a limit on…
Dr. Gall: Ah, forgive me, but Domin has his own ideas. People who have ideas should never be allowed to have any influence on the events of this world.
This is an example of a way in which “Mother Earth” itself and nature fights back. This theme of nature fighting back can also be observed in Frankenstein, though here, nature’s revenge is not against humanity as a whole but seems to be focused on Dr. Frankenstein alone, who dies of “natural” causes at a very young age. (Mellor 2003, 19)
Similarly, the issue of gender resurfaces in the creation of Rossum’s robots but this construction of gender emerges not only at the level of characters (the robots being similarly to Frankenstein’s creation, motherless creations of a male scientist) but also at the level concerning the gendered spatiality of the island itself. The island on which the robots are being created is a strictly masculine space, in a sense, a twentieth century version of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. To further emphasize the connections between gender and space in R.U.R and also the issue of why this space may be considered monstrous as well as masculine, we must turn to some of the basic features of utopian/ dystopian space. Writers of utopias geographically constructed space as an island on which a supposed better, rational social order could be created. The island also provided the isolation from the world beyond it. In many utopias, travellers coming from other geographical environments are regarded in a negative light. This is because, from the utopian perspective, any exterior element could prove potentially destabilizing and subversive to the “perfect” utopian social order. Individual and geographical otherness is thus automatically constructed as uncanny dark continents (in the Freudian sense). Or, much more simply put, the geographical environment of the island was constructed symbolically as a positive, desirable space whilst the world beyond and its inhabitants carried a negative, undesirable symbolic value. Twentieth century dystopian authors maintained the island model at the core of their textual geography; however, they reversed the symbolic connotations of space. While much has been said about the negative space of the dystopian city, few considered discussions of the space beyond it. Its meaning too has been reversed, shifted from the former utopian construction as “dark continent” to a space endowed with positive meaning. The same can be said about the role of visitors to the “island” who bring with them a different world view challenging the main discourse central to the dystopian topos. The female gender and feminine space is of significant importance to R.U.R. The character of Helena is in this case a potentially subversive visitor who remains throughout the play the only female human character on an island populated solely by male scientists and robots. As she herself declares “I’ve come here with plans to start a revolution among your robots”[1]. Her discourse is one that posits ethical considerations against the business oriented factory management that creates robots in order to sell them as inexpensive labor force or army personnel. Gender is also an important element in the marketing of robots themselves as Domin, the chief scientist tellsHelena:
Helena: Why do you make female robots when…
Domin: …when they don’t have, er, when gender has no meaning to them?
Helena: That’s right.
Domin: It’s a matter of supply and demand. You see, housemaids, shop staff, typists: people are used to them being female.[2]
Domin himself has a female robot secretary. This particular type of marketing also underlines issues of space and gender, though this time the focus is the workplace as gendered space. Čapek goes to considerable lengths to underline the repression and confinement of the feminine to certain areas of life while being supressed from others. While on the island, Helenais not given permission to visit all areas of the factory, in fact she is mostly portrayed as staying in a room specially designed for her, a room “of purely feminine character.”[3] This is the room in which the original blueprints for robot creation will be burned byHelena making all further robot construction impossible. However, this happens too late to have a chance at stopping the robots who turn against their creators and the extinction of the human race.
To return to Griffin’s theory examining the narrative equating masculinity with reason and femininity with nature and irrationality, the repression of the feminine can also be observed at the level of robot construction. The original aim of Rossum was creating an artificial life-form that is completely rational and efficient, constructing any other human feature as other and repressing it from the final product. Human qualities like “feeling happiness”, “playing the violin”, “going for walk” and other like these had to be eliminated because they were not needed as they interfered with the robot’s productivity. Domin considers that “a good worker” is not one that is honest and dedicated, asHelena thinks, but rather one that is cheap and has the least needs possible. Rossum therefore did not originally attempt to mimic nature in his endeavour to create artificial life but rather attempted to simplify the concept eliminating any humanlike feature that would stay in the way of the robot’s main three functions: rationality, efficiency and cost effectiveness. Because of these things, Domin believes that Rossum created something much more sophisticated than nature ever did.
This particular construction priciple contains within itself the doom of mankind for a very simple reason. If artificial life is created only to perform tasks, be rational, eliminate inefficient behaviour from the environment and importance is not being put on any other developmental areas, it should not come as a surprise the moment when these beings turn against their creators. Both Rossum and Domin understood that humans are prone to irrational behaviour, engaged in all sorts of activities that are not productive or contributing to work efficiency and they tried building creatures that are free of such issues. One should not wonder then when the robots start to do precisely what they have been created for: rationalize and eliminate ineficiency ergo eliminate the irrational humans or as Rossum put it‚ throw the man out and put the robot in’. As Radius, the robot leader argues:
Helena: I’m so sorry about it, they’re going to exterminate you. Why weren’t you more careful with yourself?
Radius: I will not work for you.
Helena: Why do you hate us so much?
Radius: You are not like robots. Robots are able to do anything. You give mearly orders. You say words which are not needed.[4]
The irrational side of man is being rejected in favour of creating a purely rational being. Again, this turns us to the question of gender, for if masculinity is constructed asGriffinargues in relation to reason and femininity in relation to irrationality and nature, repressing the irrational equates symbolically with the repression of the female at a geographic as well as psychological level.
The otherness and alternative natural feminine space symbolized byHelenais posed as counterpoint to the masculine space of the island. She is the outsider visitor, the symbolism associated to her gender being potentially subversive to the carefully rationalized order on the island. Domin’s initial refusal to listen to Helena’s arguments ultimately leads to the extinction of the human race, first by a massive drop in human natality symbolizing nature’s reaction to his enterprise and secondly by physical elimination at the hands of the robots who basically achieve what they have been programmed for: be rational, maximize efficiency and eliminate irrational behaviour from the environment. Čapek’s point seems to be that interfering with nature and repressing the feminine is not only unnatural or unjust but extremely dangerous having the potential of causing unforeseen consequences. For this reason, through its symbolic associations, the island is constructed in my opinion as a masculine space of monstrosity.
Hope for the New Adam and Eve after the Robot Apocalypse – A Robot Love Story and Čapek’s Right Kind of Artificial Life
All being said in the previous chapter about the island as being monstrous through the repression of nature and the feminine, Čapek’s text does seem to posit an alternative to universal doom at the hand of robots and the revenge of nature. And this is precisely the part that is so often overlooked by critics who simply label him as being ultimately unfavourable to the prospect of creating artificial life when discussing his play. This alternative comes in the form of symbolic hybridization and the acceptance of the natural, irrational and feminine dimension in man’s endeavour of creating a life form in his own image.
Within this chapter I will attempt to show that rather than eliminating the natural irrational “other” from robot construction with the purpose of creating a more efficient artificial being, Čapek’s point seems to be that man must rather attempt mimesis, that is not attempt to correct nature but imitate it. The issue revolves around the seeming development of individual consciousness in the case of some robots present in the play as well as Dr. Gall’s idea of shaping a new breed of robots, a breed that starts with the creation of a very close replica of Helena. However, throughout the play, we manage to meet only two of his creations, a male named Primus and robot Helenabefore the robot apocalypse. But to understand exactly how these two function symbolically in the economy of the text we must make a further parallel with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Having in mind the above discussion of the role of gender and gendered space we should detach a little from feminist criticism and go into the area of disability studies as well as Jungian psychoanalysis. Simi Linton argues that the purpose of disability studies is to criticize the notion that disability is primarily a medical category. Linton explains that:
The medicalization of disability casts human variation as deviance from the norm, as pathological condition, as deficit, and significantly, as an individual burden and personal tragedy. Society, in agreeing to assign medical meaning to disability, colludes to keep the issue within the purview of the medical establishment, to keep it a personal matter and “treat” the condition and the person with the condition rather than “treating” the social processes and policies that construct disabled people’s lives. […] Our goal is the reinterpretation of disability as a political category and to the social changes that could follow such a shift. (Linton 1998, 2)
Now obviously, as Diane Hoeveler notices, it is rather easy to use this definition in relation to a novel likes Frankenstein. The creature’s appearance could be interpreted as “disabled” in a society that values external beauty (as defined by the aesthetic theories of Edmund Burke), conformity and class determinacy. Frankenstein thus becomes an expression of the “otherness” of living as differently abled in a world of able, hostile or indifferent people. (Hoevler 2003, 59) Hoeveler also mentions the theory of the biologist Stephen Jay Gould who believes that “the creature becomes a monster because he is cruelly ensnared by one of the deepest predispositions of our biological inheritance – our aversion towards seriously malformed individuals”. Gould believes this is a “mammalian pattern” which needs to be tempered by “learning and understanding.” (Gould 1994, 21) Shelley’s point in constructing Frankenstein would then be that “Nature can only supply a predisposition, while culture shapes specific results … [we must all] …judge people by their qualities of soul, not by their external appearances”. Also the rejection, fear, hatred and punishment the creature faces contributes to his turning violent. This seems to point out the now common psychological insight concerning the probability and the frequency to which an abused child turns himself into an abuser.
This particular issue is reversed with respect to Čapek’s play. By this I mean that the robots are not portrayed as being ugly or physically disabled. In aspect they are near perfect copies of humans. Thus, their monstrosity does not stem from an unappealing appearance but rather the robots are perceived as monstrous or inferior by the scientists because “they don’t have a soul,”[5] a rather hypocritical remark as we shall see. The robots are objectified as machines fulfilling the tasks for which they are created and sold on the market. The possibility that these forms of artificial life may also develop their own psychology, or, even more, that there may be ways of attempting to improve the resemblance of their psyche to that of humans is completely beyond the scope of scientists like Domin. Among those like him, not only it is commonly considered that the robots have no souls, but also that they don’t need one for the tasks they have been built for.
Domin: (laughing) Sulla isn’t a person, Miss Glory, she’s a robot.
Helena: Oh, please forgive me …
Domin: (puts his hand on Sulla’s shoulder) Sulla doesn’t have feelings. You can examine her. Feel her face and see how we make the skin.
Helena: Oh, no, no!
Domin: It feels just the same as human skin. Sulla even has the sort of down on her face that you’d expect on a blonde. Perhaps her eyes are a bit small, but look at that hair. Turn around, Sulla.[6]
This underestimation is a key factor causing the robot rebellion which ultimately leads to the destruction of the human race. Similarly to Dr. Frankenstein, Domin fails as a parent at understanding and taking responsibility for his “children”. The fact of the matter is that the robots’ violent reaction against their creators, against being used as slave labour force, their craving for independence and even their rage and bloody revenge seems to indicate a development in their individual consciousness progressing from the point where they would blindly follow orders to another, more advanced, level. However, Domin is a scientist, a biological engineer, not a psychologist. Helena comes again into focus, posing some very interesting, intuitive ideas but these are treated as preposterous by Domin or the other scientists.
Hallemeier: They’ve got no will of their own. No passions. No hopes. No soul.
Helena: And no love and no courage?
Hallemeier: Well of course they don’t feel love. Robots don’t love anything, not even themselves. And courage? I’m not so sure about that; a couple of times, not very often, mind, they have shown some resistance …
Helena: What?
Hallemeier: Well, nothing in particular, just that sometimes they seem to, sort of, go silent. It’s almost like some kind of epileptic fit. “Robot cramp”, we call it. Or sometimes one of them might suddenly smash whatever’s in its hand, or stand still, or grind their teeth– and then they just have to go on the scrap heap. It’s clearly just some technical disorder.
Domin: Some kind of fault in the production.
Helena: No, no, that’s their soul![7]
When the robots indeed do seem to act outside the proper pattern inscribed to them, the scientists merely conclude that it is due to a factory disorder or technical failure and send those that cannot be “repaired” to the scrap heap. What interests us here from the point of view of disability studies is precisely how the robots’ difference is constructed as other, as a kind of disease: “robot cramp”. Rather than admitting the possibility that the respective robots might be evolving and developing differently from the point of view of individual consciousness or developing even a “soul”, this different behaviour is constructed as a disease. Thus similarly to how Dr. Frankenstein rejects his creature, regarding it as a disabled monstrosity so do the scientists in Čapek play reject the robots that do not fit their image of the proper functioning robot, sending those that manifest the above quoted symptoms to the scrap heap. These are the robots that will eventually suceed in eliminating man.
But we might ask, how exactly are we to interpret or define the concept of “soul” within this text? The question is fundamental in order for us to understand the reason for which these artificial beings are constructed as monstrous by the scientists. What exactly does Helena mean when she argues that the robots have the capability of developing souls? To answer this question I think that Čapek has in mind a psychological definition. That is to say, he employs the word “soul” as a word related to the concepts of “anima” or “psyche” used by ancient philosophers such as Plato or Aristotle and later psychologists like C.G. Jung.
Although Čapek could not have had any contact with the works of C.G Jung, their definitions of the “soul” or “anima” seem remarkably compatible. For Jung, the anima was an antropomorphic archetype of the unconscious psyche which presented itself as the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a male possesses. Jung considered this archetype as being responsible for creativity, sensitivity as well as other typically human features. If we understand Čapek’s definition of soul as anima following the Jungian perspective we can make several interesting observations.
First of all, we become aware of the hypocritical position of the scientists. This is because, on one hand, they construct robot identity as an ontological other, as “soulless”, “not-human” and therefore inferior and monstrous. On the other hand, when a robot does manifest actions that contradict the “soulless” paradigm, their condition, far from being considered as a sign of developing consciousness, is treated as a disease: robot cramp. We have seen through disability studies how difference can be constructed as sickness. Therefore, the only two types of identity a robot is attributed by the scientists are either “soulless and monstrous” or “defective and monstrous”. But why would the emergence of consciousness, soul or the anima would automatically construct them as “defective”? The answer to this question is simple: because the soul or “anima”, the feminine archetype that Jung believed is the source of human creativity is precisely what is eliminated in the attempt to create the perfectly rational, efficient artificial being. As Domin himself puts it, robots are supposed to be efficient not be creative or “play the violin”[8] like humans do. As we have seen in the above quotation from the play, the signs of “robot cramp” are described to us as bursts of irrational behaviour unnacceptable from perfectly rational and efficient forms of artificial life. This brings us back to the issue of gender. Susan Griffin points out the narrative that has constructed masculine identity in relation to reason and culture while female identity was constructed in relation to irrationality and nature. The existance of an anima, of this feminine principle would undermine the prime purpouse of the robots’ existance. The issue of rejecting the probability that the robots may be developing a soul or anima is another instance of repressing the feminine on Čapek’s robot island.
In the end, the robots do manage to rebel against their creators and in the process exterminate the whole human race. In turn, Helena destroys Rossum’s original blueprints making all further robot construction impossible. Thus, apparently both races are doomed. Only one scientist, Alquist, the head of the construction department is left alive by the robots with the hope that he can rediscover the now lost “secret of life”. His great surprise is to see in the final scene of the play two of Dr. Gall’s robots, Primus and robotHelenashowing empathy and being in love with each other acting exactly like a pair of humans would, given the circumstance. At first he cannot believe his eyes, thinking that maybe they are humans that have somehow managed to escape the robot apocalypse. This confusion destabilizes completely the symbolic line that was cast between the race of men and robots. The signs that made differences visible do not function anymore. Alquist’s first instinct is that of the scientist. He wishes to disect robotHelenaand see exactly what is the rational cause for her natural, humanlike behaviour, what makes her work different from the other robots. After encountering heavy protests from Primus who dramatically offers his life to spare the other, Alquist accepts only to encounter the same protests, this time fromHelena. However he changes his attitude abbruptly:
Primus: (holding on to her) I won’t let go of you. You’re not going to kill anyone, old man!
Alquist: Why not?
Primus: Because … because … we belong to each other.
Alquist: You’re quite right. It’s alright. Go, now. Go on your way, Adam. Go on your way, Eve. [9]
In my opinion this last scene from the play changes radically the message of Čapek’s text. We are not dealing, as many have assumed when interpreting, with a text that simply criticizes man’s overreaching ambition at creating artificial life. The text does not resemble Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the level of this particular theme. Surely, as Jay Clayton argued, texts that portray favourable views towards the creation of artificial life are just as much indebted to Frankenstein as texts that do not. However, the criticism in Čapek’s play is not meant to be a clear dismssal of the attempt. One can say that the author criticizes the utilitarian logic that lead to the construction of the robots in the first place or the repression of nature, the irrational and the feminine principle both at the level of individual characters as well as geographical environment. One can say that the author criticises of the scientist’s approach to correct nature rather than work along it an mimic it, but not the prospect of creating life itself.
These two robots with humanlike feelings for eachother are neither represented as monstrous nor are they evil or failed experiments but rather they act more human than the humans themselves did throughout the play. The play goes a long way telling us that irrationality, creativity, feelings and emotions are just as much part of human nature as rationality is and those that will or would venture unto the task of creating life-forms in our own image should definitely take this into account. The two at the end, presented as a new originary pair, a new Adam and a new Eve are a step forward in evolution. They are hibridized creatures containing the best from both worlds. In this respect Čapek’s text is among the first that portray not only what may go wrong in the creation of artificial life but also alternative possibilities. Alquist’s final optimistic remark seems to underline this.
Alquist: […] life will not perish! Life begins anew, it begins naked and small and comes from love; it takes root in the desert and all that we have done and built, all our cities and factories, all our great art, all our thoughts and all our philosophies, all this will not pass away. It’s only we that have passed away. Our buildings and machines will fall to ruin, the systems and the names of the great will fall like leaves, but you, love, you flourish in the ruins and sow the seeds of life in the wind.[10]
References
Bacon, Francis, Temporis Partus Masculus: An Untranslated Writing of Francis Bacon, trans. Benjamin Farrington, Centaurus I, (1951), 1997
Clayton, Jay, Frankenstein’s Futurity: Replicants and Robots in Schor, Esther, The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, Cambridge University Press, 2003
Davy, Humphry, A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry, Joseph Johnson,London, 1802
Gould Stephen, Jay, The Monster’s Human Nature in Natural History, 103 (July 1994)
Hoeveler, Diane, Long, Frankenstein, feminism and literary theory in Schor, Esther. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley,CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003
Jung, C.G, The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,London, 1996
Schor, Esther ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley,CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003
Linton, Simi, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity,New YorkUniversity Press,New York, 1998
Mellor, Anne, K, Making a ‘Monster’: An Introduction to Frankenstein from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley in Schor, Esther ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley,CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003
Notes
Niculae Gheran
Babeş-BolyaiUniversity,Cluj Napoca,Romania,
gheran.niculae@yahoo.co.uk
Relating Romantic Monsters to Dystopian Robots. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Carel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots
Abstract: The following paper is a study case showing the way in which the debate and attitudes on creating artificial life were shaped by Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and how this debate was inherited by dystopian author Carel Capek in ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’. Paralels are made at the level of simbolic topography, classic scientific discourse, its relationship with gender constructs and the growing field of disability studies. Capek’s thesis seems to be more complex than many have assumed. Rather than simply offering a radical critique of man’s endeavour to create artificial life, the author seems to favour mimesis rather than the scientific attempt at improving nature itself.
Keywords: Mary Shelley; Carel Čapek; Dystopia; Monster; Robot; Gender.
Dr. Frankenstein’s creature is probably the most well-known “monster” in all of British literature and Mary Shelley, as Joan Kane Nichols argues in her book, Mary Shelley – Frankenstein’s Creator, the first science-fiction writer. Her influence in literature is unparalleled and her work the staple piece of hundreds of university courses around the world. Courses on the Gothic Novel, feminism, disability studies are nowadays unthinkable without taking Frankenstein into consideration either as main text or important influence. As Diane Long Hoeveler notes, Shelley’s novel has become the most frequently taught canonical novel written by a woman in the nineteenth century (Hoevler 2003, 60) while Jay Clayton argues that, as a cautionary tale, “virtually every catastrophe of the last two centuries – revolution, rampant industrialism, epidemics, famines, World War I, Nazism, Nuclear holocaust, clones, replicants and robots has been symbolized by Shelley’s monster.”(Clayton 2003, 84)
In a very extensive essay entitled “Frankenstein’s Futurity: Replicants and Robots” published in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, Clayton tracks tales of robots and replicants as being direct descendants of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. Whether these creations are portrayed in a good or bad light, as a bright step forward in human evolution or as a monstrous, potential cause for the downfall of man, Clayton believes that these texts are all related to Shelley’s novel. To this purpose, within the corpus of his essay, he discusses views from famous directors such as Ridley Scott, George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, science fiction writers such as Nancy Kress and Octavia A. Butler; pioneers of robotics like Hans Moravec and Rodney A. Brooks; the inventor Ray Kurzweil or the feminist theorist of science studies Donna Haraway. (Clayton 2003, 85) What Clayton does is basically splitting these robotical descendants of Frankenstein in two categories on the basis of the author’s and work’s position (favourable or unfavourable) to the creation of artificial life. He discusses afterwards the minority of works, in written or cinematic form that have begun to appear and which seem to portray these creations not as monsters or, in his own words, “demons stalking popular culture” (Clayton 2003, 85) but in a positive light. The essay is very astutely written and certainly does a good job of showing the different artistic and scientific perspectives on the matter of creating artificial life while also pointing out the connections with Mary Shelley’s novel. However, I would try to point out throughout this essay that although it is true that in the last few years we have been witnessing an upsurge in productions, cinematic or otherwise, that do not portray robots or replicants as “monsters” or aberrations of science, this is not actually a new way of approaching the theme. In fact, with regards to sci-fi and the dystopian sub-genre, the origins of the idea can be traced as far back as the 1920s to the author that introduced the word “robot” into the English language, the Czech author, Karel Čapek.
The purpose of this essay is thus to build yet another bridge, this time between Mary Shelley and a twentieth century author whose fictional spaces and characters have often been regarded as dystopian. His work, R.U.R – Rossum’s Universal Robots attempts to portray a future in which science has managed to create artificial life forms which are used to replace human labour and thus create an apparent leisure utopia where man no longer needs to work. Things do not go exactly as planned and the play develops its dystopian twist. However, it is my aim to prove that, despite the play’s portrayal of universal doom at the hand of nature and robots, the issue is more complicated. The author should not simply be regarded, as many surely did, as one who is fully against the creation of artificial life because of his portrayal of the disastrous consequences that may arise. The issue at stake is far more complex, the author’s position being liminal, that is, constructing within the same work both images that would suggest an unfavourable attitude towards creating life and “monsters” as well as images that portray the potentiality of this endeavour, provided it is done right. The “right way” Čapek seems to suggest is also within the scope of this essay. What the author does in my opinion is a criticism of means and motives, rather than the end itself of creating artificial life. He portrays the things that may go wrongtruct>