Author Archives: Dan Chira

Fazacaş Iudita
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, România
iuditafazacas@yahoo.com

Diabolic Geometry

Cube-Rubik- Hypercube

Abstract: The cube, known as a representation of spatial stability and human perfection, can sometimes have negative sides, thus even leading to a self-destroying system. It can be also seen as the crisis point of modern human being (modern human is homo sapiens) confronted with high speed development and the birth of a new world that he cannot yet manage. According to theoreticians like Hannah Arendt or Françoise Choay this crisis is just beginning. This paper will focus on the possible manifestations of a chaotic world and man’s place in it.

Keywords: Cube movie series; Hyperspace; Cube; Labyrinth; Captivity; Anthropocentrism.

We are all used with spatial patterns, certain spaces designed for certain kinds of activities, in real and/or fantastic worlds. Some of them are already established, or emblematic, being considered (we evoke them when we are talking about) a certain type of world. Neverland, for example, is a nice, cosy place, full of light and coloured flowers, where a rainbow becomes a ‘must’.

Thinking of imaginary places, the first thing that comes to mind is usually a better, even perfect world. However, this is not the case, as there can be a lot of negative influences around the characters, including the surroundings and a dream can turn into a nightmare.

In the following we deal with a different type of spaces: cubes. Four movies will be discussed: The Cube, a 1969 American teleplay, and the Canadian Cube series: Cube (1997), Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and Cube 3: Cube Zero (2004). These are mostly Science Fiction movies with a strong psychological dimension.

The Cube (1969) is the most spectacular of them. The chamber in which the character wakes up is similar to the well-known Holodeck^[1] of the Star Trek – series. The idea of a special room that can place people in different realities started with Enterprise (2001-2005), where the Holodeck is presented as a brilliant invention borrowed from an advanced civilization from the 22^nd century.

This kind of holographic room is somehow opposite to the one presented in The Cube. The first striking difference is colour-related: while the Holodeck can be grey (Voyager) or black (The Next Generation), the environment from The Cube is all white. Squares, on the other hand, are a resemblance for these places. Only on the Xyrillian ship, it looks totally different, and quite psychedelic. There is a lot of colour and the entrance is the starting point of a spider-web.

Another difference that needs to be considered is the presence/absence of the door. While the Holodeck clearly has a functional door and people can get in and out, the cube seems to be a one-way place: it is hermetically closed and has no visible door. This lack of control is an important aspect of The Cube, along with the fact that we do not know much about the white room. Compared to this, the Holodeck has a history of its own and can be seen as a character.

Xyrillians used the room to recreate different places where they have been. It is a place that enlarges the universe and that can be used to develop the perspective on the world, to add more colour to it. It could be named a living travel diary. Humans used the Holodeck for recreation or trainings.

The recreational side of the Holodeck is used to keep the mental health of the crew, and prepare them for different scenarios. The personal life of the crew mostly takes place here more than in any other part of the ship, all of their dreams and expectations can be met here. Once you step outside of the room, none of these constructs survives. After a program is finished, it can be erased or saved on record for future use. It is, after all, a computer system.

In Star Trek (Next Generation, episode: Encounter at Far point) we also find out about the existence of an energy-based life form capable of recreating environments exactly like the Holodeck. This being was captured on a planet and it has the power to bring to life any wish. It forms a weird, unseen structure, similar to a spaceship. This special place has many galleries, resembling a labyrinth (quite a common structure when talking about cubes), as it will be shown in the following pages.

The character from The Cube – whose name is never mentioned – isn’t able to find a way out. The Holodeck can perform similar pranks to the people who are using it. Worth mentioning would be TNG: “Elementary, Dear Data”: a holographic advanced version of the Sherlock Holmes story is brought to life, but it becomes too strong. Professor James Moriarty, nothing more than a character, starts to gain self-consciousness and claims his right to become real. For this, he starts by taking hostage the people from the real world, including Data, the android for whom he was actually created in order to have an equal enemy.

Reality versus illusion is one of the things questioned in The Cube. At the very end, the character faces a huge disappointment when he comes to realise that he didn’t actually get out of the cube, that the escape was just another illusion.  By cutting himself accidentally while talking to the director of the show, he realises that his blood is in fact strawberry jam. In this crucial moment everything disappears and we see him back in the white empty cube. It can be inferred here that the character could be a holographic projection, just like Professor Moriarty, but he is not aware of this. While on the Holodeck the illusion is always kept and the environment doesn’t change, in the cube you can see its actual structure.

Another difference between the two is the fact that while on the Holodeck the problems tend to get solved in a positive manner, the cube enjoys torturing the hostage. It resembles a room in a mental institution, which leads to a more psychological interpretation.  Actually, the place is a mixture between the Holodeck and a room from a sanatorium, as it allows both the characters and the bystanders to speculate about reality and psychological issues.

In these conditions, the door remains a central problem of the whole construction.  Where two worlds are the case, the passageway is one of the most important elements. It should be the link between them, a source of communication. It has to be present in Science Fiction productions as well, as the connection must be made. The Cube, however, doesn’t seem to have a door, at least not for the character. He just wakes up already there, just like in the latest Cube series. The difference is that in these series the characters are given the opportunity to find a way out. This is not an easy task, maybe it is just luck, but we know that there is a border. In the teleplay we simply don’t know if there is a reality.

What is strange in The Cube and only here is that a bunch of people are passing by, saying “hello” or having a word or two with the character. After this, they get out as easily as they got in, nothing is stopping them. They make small talk, but no one says anything about the way out, not even when asked. There are some characters, like the manager and Arnie, the maintenance man, that get in the main character’s room and refuse to let him use their door, as they claim he should find his own.

All these characters can be considered a simple projection of the main character’s sick mind, if we would rather prefer a psychologically oriented interpretation. As mentioned above, the room seems quite similar to a sanatorium cell. However, the possibility of it being a sort of Holodeck cannot be ruled out, as we are told, at a certain point, the cube might be the product of a machine. One cannot possibly know if there’s someone watching (the Big Brother) or if there’s no one out there. All the characters and the events that are going on seem to be just a diversion meant to stop him from reaching his goal (getting out). This method is very stressful, and he is not allowed to pull himself together and find a solution. Even if the main character can obtain whatever he wants, he cannot have one moment of silence.

 He is constantly being put in shocking situations by the characters that are passing by and by the objects found there (the bed, a non-functional call button, or a bar). He is stressed by the new telephone (every time he tries to call, the person that answers is Arnie), the manager’s visit and his tips, the designer, a pretended wife and in-laws, and many others. The most amazing “appearance” is another prisoner – that seems to be trapped in the cube for a long time – who gets in his cell by removing a block, near the floor. He quickly becomes anxious and tries to start an argument, as he doesn’t like the main character’s room. He claims that his own room is formed by perfect squares, unlike this one, that is based on rectangles, according to him. The visitor wants to return to the safety of his own cell. Later we find out that he was just an actor.

To sum up, it’s all about illusion, acting, projection, things that only a really upset Holodeck could do to its hostages. It could be all explained also as a reflexion on an overwhelming society and consumerism, a well-known problem of the 70’s. This kind of society seems to resemble a broken Holodeck.

The other three movies treat the same issues; the background is a little changed. A small spatial transformation can be noticed in the Cube series. From a single cube with no door we face a multiplication process: many cubes (a huge Rubik-cube) and too many doors (a manhole on each side of the cube – including on the floor and ceiling of each cube). From a static, closed environment, we move to a dynamic one, still closed. If we want to name this place, we can simply call it a labyrinth. This evolution is actually a change for the worse, a decline that reflects the modern man’s crisis.  From a simple confinement he develops a way of life. Getting out is just a reflex, or a lack of comfort, not the character’s will. He doesn’t really seem to have a purpose in the outside world and he’s in a conflict with his own environment (except for a few characters in Cube Zero).

According to Hannah Arendt, Françoise Choay, and Erick Fromm, it could all be related to modern man not being able to adapt to a world that he created and that he can no longer control, hence the crisis. He refuses the old values, even the Earth as his home, preferring something new, which he can’t handle it yet. He cannot find his own place and this is the starting point of a strange, hostile environment (mechanical or holographic world).

In the first Cube movie (1997) there’s a very strange place, a macro Rubik-cube where people are trapped. This is actually the spatial pattern for all three movies. Unlike the two already mentioned spaces (the Holodeck and The Cube), this one is a mixture between a cube and a labyrinth. Some of the cubes that are forming this system are safe and some are death-traps out of which the characters try to escape.

A sort of evolution can be noticed from the first version to the third movie from the Cube series. Cube (1997) and Cube Zero (2004) are quite similar, at a first glance there seems to be just a difference in design: while the first one is made of coloured cubes and geometrical shapes on the walls, the second one, smaller (25 rooms), resembles a sewer. The crucial difference is actually the exit. The first one had a single entrance-exit door, which had to be found by going through the maze. The other one has two exits and one entrance. To get in, one has to use an elevator that can go either up or down. There are two ways out of the cube: one that can actually get you to the outside world passing through a lake, and another one, a dead-end.

Cube Zero, although it is the movie with the most mythological elements, it is also the easiest one, all the explanations are given to the viewer. The cube is actually an exterminating machinery, situated deep underground, being guarded by two men. They are in charge of making sure things go smoothly. They sometimes play chess, the connection of the game with the whole idea of the movie being obvious: two teams (the humans and the system) are constantly fighting.

Unlike humans, the system has high performance weapons to fight and he is cheathing to. One of the prisoners, a young woman doesn’t have the pink contract (the agreement of being subject in the experiment) which used to be in each file.[2] The senior employees of the system are diabolical. The boss is a cyborg, half machine (the right part) and half human, thus becoming the embedded image of the devil. One of his eyes is mechanical, he’s limping and uses a crutch for thid. He seems to be a real gentleman, but he is worse than a serial killer. His servants have gadgets and they are computer experts, their arrival transforms the old dusty office into a high tech center. Under the same category of hybrids falls one of the prisoners, a soldier with a microchip that ends up being used as a weapon by the system.

The idea of hell is also supported by the exit- mechanism  of the cube. There’s a device with two huge No and Yes buttons, which the guards push according to the prisoner’s answer to a quite strange question: Do you believe in God? If the answer is no, the victim is burned alive. No one knows what’s happening if someone gives an affirmative reply, as no one did so. That means, according to H. Arendt, that the contemporary man has simply broke any connection to divinity, there is no certainty, just doubt. „(God) created a being who bears within a clue about Truth, only to grant it afterwards such abilities to never be able to reach any truth, never be able to have any certainty”^[3]. He is the prisoner of the hell made by himself.

In Hypercube and in Cube Zero, besides the whole construction, is showed the background where the cube is placed. In both can be found elements of an oppressive system, but we can never figure out who’s in charge. The ruler’s presence is shown through a black phone. His employees give him simple answers, for example.: Yes, Sir! Right away, Sir!

In Cube Zero we can see the administrative office and also the file department. Hypercube has a big hall where the bad guys meet for transactions, resembling an old mafia movie. The only strange element is the floor, which seems to be a lake, the remainders after the implosion of the hypercube.

This is also the only cube where almost everything is possible. If the other two cubes are just labyrinthine, this is the most spectacular one. First of all, it seems to be all holographic, an energy field capable to create the illusion of real space, revealed at the end of the story. Before the final moment, all we can see is a multi-dimensional quantum environment (parallel timelines, multiple realities that can communicate with each other). Characters are terrified by seeing themselves dying or already dead. Simon, for example, gets out of control and becomes a serial killer. One of his victims is a character named Jerry, killed a few times in different realities. The killer, Simon, take his watch each time, without knowing the reason of this collecting process. There are also other strange things: gravity-shifting rooms, variable timelines, moving walls, rooms moving at hyper speed, a chopping motion-sensitive hypercube that appears from nowhere and vanishes after killing Jerry (his first death).

In Hypercube, everything is black and white (quite similar to The Cube) and the walls have a discreet drawing of a tesseract on them (cubic prism, four-dimensional cube, or just simply hypercube), but the characters notice this quite late. The whole place is actually a fourth spatial dimension, something considered to be impossible. Although it’s mentioned several times that finding the exit is a matter of time, no one except Keith can figure out the code. The whole construction collapses at 6:06:59, the number (almost diabolical one) which is following them all the way. In this case, solving a spatial problem (finding an exit) is actually a time question.

In the other two cubes, the key was directly related to the space. It’s something expected when talking about coordinates of mechanic constructions. In Cube, the doors were marked with numbers, which had two meanings: they could either show if the room is safe or unsafe and could also indicate its position in the big cube. Cube Zero has a letter code which hides a numerical code. Using the alphabet, they figure out how many rooms the system has; calculate their position using the coordinates.

In these two movies, the characters are walking up and down searching for an exit, just like in a classic labyrinth. According to Eco’s classification of labyrinths there are three types: the classical linear one, with one entrance and one exit, the mannerist one, with multiple ways out, but just one functional, and the rhizomatic labyrinth, where every point which forms the whole construction can be an exit. Each of the movies can be linked with one of the types mentioned above.

Cube (1997), for example, finds its pattern in the mannerist labyrinth, although this assumption could be contested at a first look. The misleading elements are the cubes themselves, which form the entire construction. So many cubes with so many doors can easily lead to a rhizomatic construction, but this fails, as there’s only one bridge that gets activated for a short time (when the cube is in its initial position, which happens periodically). This cube is the only one with the same element as entrance and exit. The entire labyrinth is constructed through the characters movement; they are the ones making its existence real by trying to find the way out. Although it is a mechanical system about which no one could tell how and why it was built, this cube is an anthropocentric place. People are creating paths by moving around and thus making the labyrinth come true. It couldn’t exist without elements like: paths, traps, key-codes for finding the way out. If they stood there, just like Leaven said, the labyrinth couldn’t exist. The characters wouldn’t have had any clue about what’s really going on. Similarly to the character from Cube, they wouldn’t know which door is leading out.

According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant’s Dictionary of Mythology, a trip in a labyrinth is a ritual of initiation. Also, according to the labyrinth types mentioned earlier, Cube has no centre and no monster, besides each character’s dark side. Throughout the movie, the prisoners are fighting their own weaknesses and show hidden parts of themselves. The meaning of the whole trip is that the real world is just like the labyrinth they have just passed:” What is out there? Boundless human stupidity”.^[4] It could also be there is no outside, since there is no difference between in and out (another reason to compare it with The Cube).

Cube Zero is constructed on the same labyrinth pattern like its older version. If Cube had numerous dead ends (some doors could lead to dark gaps), Cube Zero has two exits, out of which only one gets you out in the real world, the other one sends you inside the prison (the equivalent of the dark gap). This is the cube where prisoners are questioned about believing in God and executed. There is no reward for getting so far (just one step to the exit) but death.

The other door is a bit secret, no one really knows about it, but it’s the only way out. Wynn, knowing the place and being helped out from the outside by Dodd (saboteur of the system), succeeds in finding the door and getting out. He is caught and sent back to the cube. However, the balance is restored by the escape of the woman or at least this is what we are led to believe – the classical battle between nature and the system. Cube Zero, unlike Cube, keeps the idea of an outside world, opposite to a diabolical system. From all the movies we discussed, this one is the most optimistic.

Cube Zero is also based on anthropocentricism: we have the pattern of the superhero and values shared by human beings (empathy, commitment, justice, etc). Wynn, named Brain Mann in his own comics, is smart enough to find out what is truly going on and to escape from the cube, even without markers (deleted by Jax). The machines aren’t yet capable of self-support; they need the humans in order to have power. Even Jax, the cyborg devil sent from upstairs, says at a certain point: “Mr Finn, I don’t trust machines. I have a machine to thank for this and this (eye and leg). I need to see them, with my own God-given eye.”^[5] Jax is able to have full view on all the prisoners by activating Haskell’s biochip. By connecting the chip to the computers, the former squad soldier is killed.

These machines and surgeries are nothing more than extensions of the human brain and will, as men leave space for the artificial. At the end we can see Wynn in surgery, tied to a bed. He takes part as subject, by his own will (Jax shows him the signed pink contract), to a scientific experiment. This is most likely a lobotomy, because in the final scene he is mentally handicapped. If we pay attention to the background of the operating room we’ll see a string of hanged corpses behind a veil.  We talk about an exterminating system created by the human brain. Men seem to refuse their own bodies and try to create an artificial, obedient body – the cyborg. All that doesn’t fit or disobeys is sent to vanish in the cube, the perfect killing machine. There is no need to clean after these murders. Once reset, the cube burns everything. “It’s gone into reset mode. The system will restart itself in 10 minutes, the first routine that runs on restart, is a clean sweep. […] flash-incinerates anything still living in all the rooms.”^[6]

If space is the dominant part so far, time becomes the essence in Hypercube. A certain time pressure was also noticed in the other two films: the reset mode from Cube Zero mentioned earlier and how much the human body can last in Cube.

Hypercube seems to be more complicated than the two mechanical-cubes.  Here the prisoners are just moving around without figuring out their position. Jerry, one of them, marks the rooms they’ve been passing by, but this is useless due to the on-going collapse. In the other cubes, even if all the sides of the cube were the same, characters had gravity to establish the first landmark, verticality. The same does the character from The Cube too, even those from the Holodeck in their artificial worlds. In Hypercube everything is relative; to be more specific, they have nothing to grab on to, except their knowledge. With these, they can recognise: parallel time-lines, multiple realities, gravity-shifting rooms, variable time-speed rooms, moving walls, rooms moving with hyper-speed. Also, they recognise the tesseract, a theoretical, impossible object:

A hypercube – a four-dimensional cube./ Four dimensions? /All the elements are there. Rooms repeating. Rooms folding in on themselves. Teleportation. It could all very well add up. […] /I thought time was considered to be the fourth dimension./ Sure. That’s one idea. But what if you have a fourth spatial dimension?^[7]

Like in the Greek tragedies, everything is in front of them, but they just can’t see it. They are not able to see the clues and understand the solutions.

The fourth special dimension is linked to one of the characters, the greatest hacker of the outside world, Alex Trusk. She is considered to be a myth by some people the group, but proves to be real: she is the innocent blind girl named Sasha. She got in the cube while running from the people from IZON (weapons factory). This leads us back to Cube Zero and their experimenting and exterminating system. Sasha seems to actually be part of the system:  “You forgot the one about Alex Trusk being the first genetically engineered superhuman, bred in a test tube, who now lives and walks amongst us.”^[8] Other characters seems to have connections to the system as well: colonel Maguire (who kills himself), Nobel prize candidate Dr. Rosenzweig (found dead) with his Quantum chaos theory, Ms. Pealy, an insane great theoretical mathematician at IZON (refused the creation of the hypercube: “General, I will not be party to this insanity! […]I don’t care what Alex Trusk says. It’s impossible. And what’s more, it’s inhuman.”^[9], Julia, the lawyer of IZON. Even Kate is part of the system, a kind of agent, she is the only one who gets out and delivers Alex’s device.

Although it is considered perfect, the hypercube is steel uncontrollable:„This place is out of control. It’s not stable.”  Sasha says. Only Sasha’s super-human brain was able to think and design such a place: “I gave them the key to build it – better than they wanted. I gave them a real hypercube.” As mentioned earlier, machines are included in human beings lives and cyborgs were created through experiments. It’s also the case of Sasha, created in vitro and programmed to be a brilliant mind in a disabled body, as she is blind. This transformation is more subtle and interesting than in the case of the cyborgs or of the mechanical killing machines, because both Sasha and the hypercube are more than ordinary machines. It’s even more interesting if we consider the fact that the super-brain is more human than those who created it, even if she can’t see the world which she should destroy by creating weapons against it. That super-brain is actually defeated by this super construction, the hypercube. Sasha is the only one who entered there by her own will, the only place where her enemies (IZON) wouldn’t dare to follow her. That hyperreality slips from the human hands and it starts to self-manage. Even Sasha, the superhuman, isn’t able to control it.

It’s been mentioned earlier that Cube Zero and Cube are anthropocentrical mannerist labyrinths. Hypercube seems to be the newest labyrinth type, the ryzomathic one, where the human being loses its control; man is no longer the centre of the universe, although a brilliant mind started all of this. The point situated in the fourth dimension is really able to displace the Earth, like Archimedes said. The same thing happens with the human beings too. Kafka, one of the well-known novelists who created similar spaces, said in his Journal: “He found the Archimedean point, but used it against himself; it is clear that he was allowed to discover it only under this condition.”^[10] The multiplying point actually evades the human understanding, which can be considered the same with his control. The tesseract is the perfect labyrinth which is not centered on the human being, but on itself. A strange perspective, since we know that labyrinths’ meaning is to initiate the novice. The only thing that they’ve found is “No time to spare.” as Kate said, but it’s not enough to understand that new-born world, which rejects humans. By collapsing and imploding, it refuses everything, it is destroying everything which refuses to leave, or is unable to do so. To be a bit clearer, the hypercube is forcing the prisoners to go to its beginning point, it just wants to throw them out. Opposite to the other cubes already mentioned, this labyrinth is based on a point, and not on a geometrical figure: the square, or the cube, it seems to be pure geometry just by its shape. As fourth dimension is more than that. Pure thinking is surpassing geometry, our three-dimensional well known world, just like Hannah Arendt said in Human Condition: “Modern Mathematics freed man from terrestrial chains, freed his knowledge from the bondage of its limits. (…) Geometry is replaced with algebra, a symbolic, non-spatial language”^[11] Once started, it’s moving along, without any reason or purpose.

The man trapped in The Cube can experience the same thing like those from Hypercube. It may sound weird, but it would fit in the hyperreality. Even if we can’t talk about labyrinths, complicated shapes and all those strange things happening in Hypercube, there still are some elements which can lead to this conclusion. First of all, there is no door and a lot of things appear from the middle of nowhere, just like in the hypercube. Also, The Cube can be a stabilized hyper-space, which is just playing with his hostage. All of this is possible because the human mind is trying to force its boundaries and ends up turning against its own self. The result is a loss of control, consciousness and centrality. The artificial wins. „He was pushed back to life, closed in inner introspection, where the highlight of the experience is the calculation processes of the mind emptied of any content, the mind’s game with itself”^[12]

Holodeck (Star Trek), the holographic room, doesn’t simply create schematic or empty spaces, but surrogate realities. A person could live in one of these realities, without knowing it is not real, just like Professor James Moriarty, who claimed his right to become real when he figured out that he is a simple computer projection. After this long discussion regarding mechanical traps, killing machines and hyperspace, the Holodeck seems to be a happy ending to all those stories about human versus machines. Here, everything is settled, control is established again: humans control the computer, which controls the hyperreality. It is a micro-space, if we consider the whole Universe. The moment of crisis represented by the tear between the human being and its environment discussed by Arendt and others, clearly represented in The Cube and Cube series, is overcome in Star Trek. In these series, humans seem to have found their place in Space, and they also managed to accept that they aren’t the most important part of the system, they moved on from the idea of anthropocentrism. However, we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle here. We can talk about the beginning of the crisis and we can see the world after it gained its balance, but we cannot know how the human beings managed to restore it. We are still at the beginning of fighting these cubes and the labyrinths within.

Bibliography

Henson, Jim, The cube (1969), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 05.05.2013

Natali, Vincenzo, Cube (1997), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 25.05.2013

Hood, Sean, Cube 2: Hypercube (2002), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 26.05.2013

Barbarash, Ernie Cube Zero (2004), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 27.05.2013

Cube Script – Dialogue Transcriptscript-o-rama.com , nd. Web 30.01.2014

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) Movie Script, Springfield! Springfield! database, UK, nd. Web 30.01.2014

Cube Zero (2004) Movie Script,Springfield! Springfield! database, UK, nd. Web 30.01.2014

Kafka, Franz, Jurnal, trad. Radu Gabriel Pârvu, Bucureşti, Ed. RAO, 2006

Arendt, Hannah Condiţia umană, trad. Claudiu Vereş şi Gabriela Chindea, Cluj, Ed. Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă (Ideea Design & Print), 2007

Chevalier, Jean, Gheerbrant, Alain, Dicţionar de simboluri: mituri, vise, obiceiuri, gesturi, forme, figuri, culori, numere, trad Micaela Slăvescu, Laurenţiu Zoicaş et alii, Iaşi, Polirom, 2009 (1969)

Eco, Umberto, De la arbore sprelabirint. Studiiistoricedespresemnşi interpretare, trad. Ştefania Mincu, Iaşi, Ed. Polirom, 2009

Choay, Françoise, Pentru o antropologie a spaţiului, trad. Kázmér Kovács, Bucureşti, Ed. Revista Urbanismului, 2011

Notes

Fazacaş Iudita
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, România
iuditafazacas@yahoo.com

Diabolic Geometry

Cube-Rubik- Hypercube

Abstract: The cube, known as a representation of spatial stability and human perfection, can sometimes have negative sides, thus even leading to a self-destroying system. It can be also seen as the crisis point of modern human being (modern human is homo sapiens) confronted with high speed development and the birth of a new world that he cannot yet manage. According to theoreticians like Hannah Arendt or Françoise Choay this crisis is just beginning. This paper will focus on the possible manifestations of a chaotic world and man’s place in it.

Keywords: Cube movie series; Hyperspace; Cube; Labyrinth; Captivity; Anthropocentrism.

We are all used with spatial patterns, certain spaces designed for certain kinds of activities, in real and/or fantastic worlds. Some of them are already established, or emblematic, being considered (we evoke them when we are talking about) a certain type of world. Neverland, for example, is a nice, cosy place, full of light and coloured flowers, where a rainbow becomes a ‘must’.

Thinking of imaginary places, the first thing that comes to mind is usually a better, even perfect world. However, this is not the case, as there can be a lot of negative influences around the characters, including the surroundings and a dream can turn into a nightmare.

In the following we deal with a different type of spaces: cubes. Four movies will be discussed: The Cube, a 1969 American teleplay, and the Canadian Cube series: Cube (1997), Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and Cube 3: Cube Zero (2004). These are mostly Science Fiction movies with a strong psychological dimension.

The Cube (1969) is the most spectacular of them. The chamber in which the character wakes up is similar to the well-known Holodeck^[1] of the Star Trek – series. The idea of a special room that can place people in different realities started with Enterprise (2001-2005), where the Holodeck is presented as a brilliant invention borrowed from an advanced civilization from the 22^nd century.

This kind of holographic room is somehow opposite to the one presented in The Cube. The first striking difference is colour-related: while the Holodeck can be grey (Voyager) or black (The Next Generation), the environment from The Cube is all white. Squares, on the other hand, are a resemblance for these places. Only on the Xyrillian ship, it looks totally different, and quite psychedelic. There is a lot of colour and the entrance is the starting point of a spider-web.

Another difference that needs to be considered is the presence/absence of the door. While the Holodeck clearly has a functional door and people can get in and out, the cube seems to be a one-way place: it is hermetically closed and has no visible door. This lack of control is an important aspect of The Cube, along with the fact that we do not know much about the white room. Compared to this, the Holodeck has a history of its own and can be seen as a character.

Xyrillians used the room to recreate different places where they have been. It is a place that enlarges the universe and that can be used to develop the perspective on the world, to add more colour to it. It could be named a living travel diary. Humans used the Holodeck for recreation or trainings.

The recreational side of the Holodeck is used to keep the mental health of the crew, and prepare them for different scenarios. The personal life of the crew mostly takes place here more than in any other part of the ship, all of their dreams and expectations can be met here. Once you step outside of the room, none of these constructs survives. After a program is finished, it can be erased or saved on record for future use. It is, after all, a computer system.

In Star Trek (Next Generation, episode: Encounter at Far point) we also find out about the existence of an energy-based life form capable of recreating environments exactly like the Holodeck. This being was captured on a planet and it has the power to bring to life any wish. It forms a weird, unseen structure, similar to a spaceship. This special place has many galleries, resembling a labyrinth (quite a common structure when talking about cubes), as it will be shown in the following pages.

The character from The Cube – whose name is never mentioned – isn’t able to find a way out. The Holodeck can perform similar pranks to the people who are using it. Worth mentioning would be TNG: “Elementary, Dear Data”: a holographic advanced version of the Sherlock Holmes story is brought to life, but it becomes too strong. Professor James Moriarty, nothing more than a character, starts to gain self-consciousness and claims his right to become real. For this, he starts by taking hostage the people from the real world, including Data, the android for whom he was actually created in order to have an equal enemy.

Reality versus illusion is one of the things questioned in The Cube. At the very end, the character faces a huge disappointment when he comes to realise that he didn’t actually get out of the cube, that the escape was just another illusion.  By cutting himself accidentally while talking to the director of the show, he realises that his blood is in fact strawberry jam. In this crucial moment everything disappears and we see him back in the white empty cube. It can be inferred here that the character could be a holographic projection, just like Professor Moriarty, but he is not aware of this. While on the Holodeck the illusion is always kept and the environment doesn’t change, in the cube you can see its actual structure.

Another difference between the two is the fact that while on the Holodeck the problems tend to get solved in a positive manner, the cube enjoys torturing the hostage. It resembles a room in a mental institution, which leads to a more psychological interpretation.  Actually, the place is a mixture between the Holodeck and a room from a sanatorium, as it allows both the characters and the bystanders to speculate about reality and psychological issues.

In these conditions, the door remains a central problem of the whole construction.  Where two worlds are the case, the passageway is one of the most important elements. It should be the link between them, a source of communication. It has to be present in Science Fiction productions as well, as the connection must be made. The Cube, however, doesn’t seem to have a door, at least not for the character. He just wakes up already there, just like in the latest Cube series. The difference is that in these series the characters are given the opportunity to find a way out. This is not an easy task, maybe it is just luck, but we know that there is a border. In the teleplay we simply don’t know if there is a reality.

What is strange in The Cube and only here is that a bunch of people are passing by, saying “hello” or having a word or two with the character. After this, they get out as easily as they got in, nothing is stopping them. They make small talk, but no one says anything about the way out, not even when asked. There are some characters, like the manager and Arnie, the maintenance man, that get in the main character’s room and refuse to let him use their door, as they claim he should find his own.

All these characters can be considered a simple projection of the main character’s sick mind, if we would rather prefer a psychologically oriented interpretation. As mentioned above, the room seems quite similar to a sanatorium cell. However, the possibility of it being a sort of Holodeck cannot be ruled out, as we are told, at a certain point, the cube might be the product of a machine. One cannot possibly know if there’s someone watching (the Big Brother) or if there’s no one out there. All the characters and the events that are going on seem to be just a diversion meant to stop him from reaching his goal (getting out). This method is very stressful, and he is not allowed to pull himself together and find a solution. Even if the main character can obtain whatever he wants, he cannot have one moment of silence.

 He is constantly being put in shocking situations by the characters that are passing by and by the objects found there (the bed, a non-functional call button, or a bar). He is stressed by the new telephone (every time he tries to call, the person that answers is Arnie), the manager’s visit and his tips, the designer, a pretended wife and in-laws, and many others. The most amazing “appearance” is another prisoner – that seems to be trapped in the cube for a long time – who gets in his cell by removing a block, near the floor. He quickly becomes anxious and tries to start an argument, as he doesn’t like the main character’s room. He claims that his own room is formed by perfect squares, unlike this one, that is based on rectangles, according to him. The visitor wants to return to the safety of his own cell. Later we find out that he was just an actor.

To sum up, it’s all about illusion, acting, projection, things that only a really upset Holodeck could do to its hostages. It could be all explained also as a reflexion on an overwhelming society and consumerism, a well-known problem of the 70’s. This kind of society seems to resemble a broken Holodeck.

The other three movies treat the same issues; the background is a little changed. A small spatial transformation can be noticed in the Cube series. From a single cube with no door we face a multiplication process: many cubes (a huge Rubik-cube) and too many doors (a manhole on each side of the cube – including on the floor and ceiling of each cube). From a static, closed environment, we move to a dynamic one, still closed. If we want to name this place, we can simply call it a labyrinth. This evolution is actually a change for the worse, a decline that reflects the modern man’s crisis.  From a simple confinement he develops a way of life. Getting out is just a reflex, or a lack of comfort, not the character’s will. He doesn’t really seem to have a purpose in the outside world and he’s in a conflict with his own environment (except for a few characters in Cube Zero).

According to Hannah Arendt, Françoise Choay, and Erick Fromm, it could all be related to modern man not being able to adapt to a world that he created and that he can no longer control, hence the crisis. He refuses the old values, even the Earth as his home, preferring something new, which he can’t handle it yet. He cannot find his own place and this is the starting point of a strange, hostile environment (mechanical or holographic world).

In the first Cube movie (1997) there’s a very strange place, a macro Rubik-cube where people are trapped. This is actually the spatial pattern for all three movies. Unlike the two already mentioned spaces (the Holodeck and The Cube), this one is a mixture between a cube and a labyrinth. Some of the cubes that are forming this system are safe and some are death-traps out of which the characters try to escape.

A sort of evolution can be noticed from the first version to the third movie from the Cube series. Cube (1997) and Cube Zero (2004) are quite similar, at a first glance there seems to be just a difference in design: while the first one is made of coloured cubes and geometrical shapes on the walls, the second one, smaller (25 rooms), resembles a sewer. The crucial difference is actually the exit. The first one had a single entrance-exit door, which had to be found by going through the maze. The other one has two exits and one entrance. To get in, one has to use an elevator that can go either up or down. There are two ways out of the cube: one that can actually get you to the outside world passing through a lake, and another one, a dead-end.

Cube Zero, although it is the movie with the most mythological elements, it is also the easiest one, all the explanations are given to the viewer. The cube is actually an exterminating machinery, situated deep underground, being guarded by two men. They are in charge of making sure things go smoothly. They sometimes play chess, the connection of the game with the whole idea of the movie being obvious: two teams (the humans and the system) are constantly fighting.

Unlike humans, the system has high performance weapons to fight and he is cheathing to. One of the prisoners, a young woman doesn’t have the pink contract (the agreement of being subject in the experiment) which used to be in each file.[2] The senior employees of the system are diabolical. The boss is a cyborg, half machine (the right part) and half human, thus becoming the embedded image of the devil. One of his eyes is mechanical, he’s limping and uses a crutch for thid. He seems to be a real gentleman, but he is worse than a serial killer. His servants have gadgets and they are computer experts, their arrival transforms the old dusty office into a high tech center. Under the same category of hybrids falls one of the prisoners, a soldier with a microchip that ends up being used as a weapon by the system.

The idea of hell is also supported by the exit- mechanism  of the cube. There’s a device with two huge No and Yes buttons, which the guards push according to the prisoner’s answer to a quite strange question: Do you believe in God? If the answer is no, the victim is burned alive. No one knows what’s happening if someone gives an affirmative reply, as no one did so. That means, according to H. Arendt, that the contemporary man has simply broke any connection to divinity, there is no certainty, just doubt. „(God) created a being who bears within a clue about Truth, only to grant it afterwards such abilities to never be able to reach any truth, never be able to have any certainty”^[3]. He is the prisoner of the hell made by himself.

In Hypercube and in Cube Zero, besides the whole construction, is showed the background where the cube is placed. In both can be found elements of an oppressive system, but we can never figure out who’s in charge. The ruler’s presence is shown through a black phone. His employees give him simple answers, for example.: Yes, Sir! Right away, Sir!

In Cube Zero we can see the administrative office and also the file department. Hypercube has a big hall where the bad guys meet for transactions, resembling an old mafia movie. The only strange element is the floor, which seems to be a lake, the remainders after the implosion of the hypercube.

This is also the only cube where almost everything is possible. If the other two cubes are just labyrinthine, this is the most spectacular one. First of all, it seems to be all holographic, an energy field capable to create the illusion of real space, revealed at the end of the story. Before the final moment, all we can see is a multi-dimensional quantum environment (parallel timelines, multiple realities that can communicate with each other). Characters are terrified by seeing themselves dying or already dead. Simon, for example, gets out of control and becomes a serial killer. One of his victims is a character named Jerry, killed a few times in different realities. The killer, Simon, take his watch each time, without knowing the reason of this collecting process. There are also other strange things: gravity-shifting rooms, variable timelines, moving walls, rooms moving at hyper speed, a chopping motion-sensitive hypercube that appears from nowhere and vanishes after killing Jerry (his first death).

In Hypercube, everything is black and white (quite similar to The Cube) and the walls have a discreet drawing of a tesseract on them (cubic prism, four-dimensional cube, or just simply hypercube), but the characters notice this quite late. The whole place is actually a fourth spatial dimension, something considered to be impossible. Although it’s mentioned several times that finding the exit is a matter of time, no one except Keith can figure out the code. The whole construction collapses at 6:06:59, the number (almost diabolical one) which is following them all the way. In this case, solving a spatial problem (finding an exit) is actually a time question.

In the other two cubes, the key was directly related to the space. It’s something expected when talking about coordinates of mechanic constructions. In Cube, the doors were marked with numbers, which had two meanings: they could either show if the room is safe or unsafe and could also indicate its position in the big cube. Cube Zero has a letter code which hides a numerical code. Using the alphabet, they figure out how many rooms the system has; calculate their position using the coordinates.

In these two movies, the characters are walking up and down searching for an exit, just like in a classic labyrinth. According to Eco’s classification of labyrinths there are three types: the classical linear one, with one entrance and one exit, the mannerist one, with multiple ways out, but just one functional, and the rhizomatic labyrinth, where every point which forms the whole construction can be an exit. Each of the movies can be linked with one of the types mentioned above.

Cube (1997), for example, finds its pattern in the mannerist labyrinth, although this assumption could be contested at a first look. The misleading elements are the cubes themselves, which form the entire construction. So many cubes with so many doors can easily lead to a rhizomatic construction, but this fails, as there’s only one bridge that gets activated for a short time (when the cube is in its initial position, which happens periodically). This cube is the only one with the same element as entrance and exit. The entire labyrinth is constructed through the characters movement; they are the ones making its existence real by trying to find the way out. Although it is a mechanical system about which no one could tell how and why it was built, this cube is an anthropocentric place. People are creating paths by moving around and thus making the labyrinth come true. It couldn’t exist without elements like: paths, traps, key-codes for finding the way out. If they stood there, just like Leaven said, the labyrinth couldn’t exist. The characters wouldn’t have had any clue about what’s really going on. Similarly to the character from Cube, they wouldn’t know which door is leading out.

According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant’s Dictionary of Mythology, a trip in a labyrinth is a ritual of initiation. Also, according to the labyrinth types mentioned earlier, Cube has no centre and no monster, besides each character’s dark side. Throughout the movie, the prisoners are fighting their own weaknesses and show hidden parts of themselves. The meaning of the whole trip is that the real world is just like the labyrinth they have just passed:” What is out there? Boundless human stupidity”.^[4] It could also be there is no outside, since there is no difference between in and out (another reason to compare it with The Cube).

Cube Zero is constructed on the same labyrinth pattern like its older version. If Cube had numerous dead ends (some doors could lead to dark gaps), Cube Zero has two exits, out of which only one gets you out in the real world, the other one sends you inside the prison (the equivalent of the dark gap). This is the cube where prisoners are questioned about believing in God and executed. There is no reward for getting so far (just one step to the exit) but death.

The other door is a bit secret, no one really knows about it, but it’s the only way out. Wynn, knowing the place and being helped out from the outside by Dodd (saboteur of the system), succeeds in finding the door and getting out. He is caught and sent back to the cube. However, the balance is restored by the escape of the woman or at least this is what we are led to believe – the classical battle between nature and the system. Cube Zero, unlike Cube, keeps the idea of an outside world, opposite to a diabolical system. From all the movies we discussed, this one is the most optimistic.

Cube Zero is also based on anthropocentricism: we have the pattern of the superhero and values shared by human beings (empathy, commitment, justice, etc). Wynn, named Brain Mann in his own comics, is smart enough to find out what is truly going on and to escape from the cube, even without markers (deleted by Jax). The machines aren’t yet capable of self-support; they need the humans in order to have power. Even Jax, the cyborg devil sent from upstairs, says at a certain point: “Mr Finn, I don’t trust machines. I have a machine to thank for this and this (eye and leg). I need to see them, with my own God-given eye.”^[5] Jax is able to have full view on all the prisoners by activating Haskell’s biochip. By connecting the chip to the computers, the former squad soldier is killed.

These machines and surgeries are nothing more than extensions of the human brain and will, as men leave space for the artificial. At the end we can see Wynn in surgery, tied to a bed. He takes part as subject, by his own will (Jax shows him the signed pink contract), to a scientific experiment. This is most likely a lobotomy, because in the final scene he is mentally handicapped. If we pay attention to the background of the operating room we’ll see a string of hanged corpses behind a veil.  We talk about an exterminating system created by the human brain. Men seem to refuse their own bodies and try to create an artificial, obedient body – the cyborg. All that doesn’t fit or disobeys is sent to vanish in the cube, the perfect killing machine. There is no need to clean after these murders. Once reset, the cube burns everything. “It’s gone into reset mode. The system will restart itself in 10 minutes, the first routine that runs on restart, is a clean sweep. […] flash-incinerates anything still living in all the rooms.”^[6]

If space is the dominant part so far, time becomes the essence in Hypercube. A certain time pressure was also noticed in the other two films: the reset mode from Cube Zero mentioned earlier and how much the human body can last in Cube.

Hypercube seems to be more complicated than the two mechanical-cubes.  Here the prisoners are just moving around without figuring out their position. Jerry, one of them, marks the rooms they’ve been passing by, but this is useless due to the on-going collapse. In the other cubes, even if all the sides of the cube were the same, characters had gravity to establish the first landmark, verticality. The same does the character from The Cube too, even those from the Holodeck in their artificial worlds. In Hypercube everything is relative; to be more specific, they have nothing to grab on to, except their knowledge. With these, they can recognise: parallel time-lines, multiple realities, gravity-shifting rooms, variable time-speed rooms, moving walls, rooms moving with hyper-speed. Also, they recognise the tesseract, a theoretical, impossible object:

A hypercube – a four-dimensional cube./ Four dimensions? /All the elements are there. Rooms repeating. Rooms folding in on themselves. Teleportation. It could all very well add up. […] /I thought time was considered to be the fourth dimension./ Sure. That’s one idea. But what if you have a fourth spatial dimension?^[7]

Like in the Greek tragedies, everything is in front of them, but they just can’t see it. They are not able to see the clues and understand the solutions.

The fourth special dimension is linked to one of the characters, the greatest hacker of the outside world, Alex Trusk. She is considered to be a myth by some people the group, but proves to be real: she is the innocent blind girl named Sasha. She got in the cube while running from the people from IZON (weapons factory). This leads us back to Cube Zero and their experimenting and exterminating system. Sasha seems to actually be part of the system:  “You forgot the one about Alex Trusk being the first genetically engineered superhuman, bred in a test tube, who now lives and walks amongst us.”^[8] Other characters seems to have connections to the system as well: colonel Maguire (who kills himself), Nobel prize candidate Dr. Rosenzweig (found dead) with his Quantum chaos theory, Ms. Pealy, an insane great theoretical mathematician at IZON (refused the creation of the hypercube: “General, I will not be party to this insanity! […]I don’t care what Alex Trusk says. It’s impossible. And what’s more, it’s inhuman.”^[9], Julia, the lawyer of IZON. Even Kate is part of the system, a kind of agent, she is the only one who gets out and delivers Alex’s device.

Although it is considered perfect, the hypercube is steel uncontrollable:„This place is out of control. It’s not stable.”  Sasha says. Only Sasha’s super-human brain was able to think and design such a place: “I gave them the key to build it – better than they wanted. I gave them a real hypercube.” As mentioned earlier, machines are included in human beings lives and cyborgs were created through experiments. It’s also the case of Sasha, created in vitro and programmed to be a brilliant mind in a disabled body, as she is blind. This transformation is more subtle and interesting than in the case of the cyborgs or of the mechanical killing machines, because both Sasha and the hypercube are more than ordinary machines. It’s even more interesting if we consider the fact that the super-brain is more human than those who created it, even if she can’t see the world which she should destroy by creating weapons against it. That super-brain is actually defeated by this super construction, the hypercube. Sasha is the only one who entered there by her own will, the only place where her enemies (IZON) wouldn’t dare to follow her. That hyperreality slips from the human hands and it starts to self-manage. Even Sasha, the superhuman, isn’t able to control it.

It’s been mentioned earlier that Cube Zero and Cube are anthropocentrical mannerist labyrinths. Hypercube seems to be the newest labyrinth type, the ryzomathic one, where the human being loses its control; man is no longer the centre of the universe, although a brilliant mind started all of this. The point situated in the fourth dimension is really able to displace the Earth, like Archimedes said. The same thing happens with the human beings too. Kafka, one of the well-known novelists who created similar spaces, said in his Journal: “He found the Archimedean point, but used it against himself; it is clear that he was allowed to discover it only under this condition.”^[10] The multiplying point actually evades the human understanding, which can be considered the same with his control. The tesseract is the perfect labyrinth which is not centered on the human being, but on itself. A strange perspective, since we know that labyrinths’ meaning is to initiate the novice. The only thing that they’ve found is “No time to spare.” as Kate said, but it’s not enough to understand that new-born world, which rejects humans. By collapsing and imploding, it refuses everything, it is destroying everything which refuses to leave, or is unable to do so. To be a bit clearer, the hypercube is forcing the prisoners to go to its beginning point, it just wants to throw them out. Opposite to the other cubes already mentioned, this labyrinth is based on a point, and not on a geometrical figure: the square, or the cube, it seems to be pure geometry just by its shape. As fourth dimension is more than that. Pure thinking is surpassing geometry, our three-dimensional well known world, just like Hannah Arendt said in Human Condition: “Modern Mathematics freed man from terrestrial chains, freed his knowledge from the bondage of its limits. (…) Geometry is replaced with algebra, a symbolic, non-spatial language”^[11] Once started, it’s moving along, without any reason or purpose.

The man trapped in The Cube can experience the same thing like those from Hypercube. It may sound weird, but it would fit in the hyperreality. Even if we can’t talk about labyrinths, complicated shapes and all those strange things happening in Hypercube, there still are some elements which can lead to this conclusion. First of all, there is no door and a lot of things appear from the middle of nowhere, just like in the hypercube. Also, The Cube can be a stabilized hyper-space, which is just playing with his hostage. All of this is possible because the human mind is trying to force its boundaries and ends up turning against its own self. The result is a loss of control, consciousness and centrality. The artificial wins. „He was pushed back to life, closed in inner introspection, where the highlight of the experience is the calculation processes of the mind emptied of any content, the mind’s game with itself”^[12]

Holodeck (Star Trek), the holographic room, doesn’t simply create schematic or empty spaces, but surrogate realities. A person could live in one of these realities, without knowing it is not real, just like Professor James Moriarty, who claimed his right to become real when he figured out that he is a simple computer projection. After this long discussion regarding mechanical traps, killing machines and hyperspace, the Holodeck seems to be a happy ending to all those stories about human versus machines. Here, everything is settled, control is established again: humans control the computer, which controls the hyperreality. It is a micro-space, if we consider the whole Universe. The moment of crisis represented by the tear between the human being and its environment discussed by Arendt and others, clearly represented in The Cube and Cube series, is overcome in Star Trek. In these series, humans seem to have found their place in Space, and they also managed to accept that they aren’t the most important part of the system, they moved on from the idea of anthropocentrism. However, we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle here. We can talk about the beginning of the crisis and we can see the world after it gained its balance, but we cannot know how the human beings managed to restore it. We are still at the beginning of fighting these cubes and the labyrinths within.

Bibliography

Henson, Jim, The cube (1969), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 05.05.2013

Natali, Vincenzo, Cube (1997), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 25.05.2013

Hood, Sean, Cube 2: Hypercube (2002), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 26.05.2013

Barbarash, Ernie Cube Zero (2004), pinchyawhoasnarm, Web, 27.05.2013

Cube Script – Dialogue Transcriptscript-o-rama.com , nd. Web 30.01.2014

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) Movie Script, Springfield! Springfield! database, UK, nd. Web 30.01.2014

Cube Zero (2004) Movie Script,Springfield! Springfield! database, UK, nd. Web 30.01.2014

Kafka, Franz, Jurnal, trad. Radu Gabriel Pârvu, Bucureşti, Ed. RAO, 2006

Arendt, Hannah Condiţia umană, trad. Claudiu Vereş şi Gabriela Chindea, Cluj, Ed. Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă (Ideea Design & Print), 2007

Chevalier, Jean, Gheerbrant, Alain, Dicţionar de simboluri: mituri, vise, obiceiuri, gesturi, forme, figuri, culori, numere, trad Micaela Slăvescu, Laurenţiu Zoicaş et alii, Iaşi, Polirom, 2009 (1969)

Eco, Umberto, De la arbore sprelabirint. Studiiistoricedespresemnşi interpretare, trad. Ştefania Mincu, Iaşi, Ed. Polirom, 2009

Choay, Françoise, Pentru o antropologie a spaţiului, trad. Kázmér Kovács, Bucureşti, Ed. Revista Urbanismului, 2011

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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. –>

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 16^th 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

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 16^th 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