Navigating Cybercultures [1 ed.] 9781848881631, 9789004373884

Citation preview

Navigating Cybercultures

Critical Issues Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Ken Monteith

Lisa Howard Dr Daniel Riha

Advisory Board James Arvanitakis Simon Bacon Kasia Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Phil Fitzsimmons Peter Mario Kreuter

Mira Crouch Stephen Morris John Parry Karl Spracklen Peter Twohig S Ram Vemuri Kenneth Wilson

A Critical Issues research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ The Cyber Hub ‘Visions of Humanity in Cyberspace’

2013

Navigating Cybercultures

Edited by

Nicholas van Orden

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-163-1 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Navigating Cybercultures: Echoes of Visions7 Nicholas van Orden Part 1

Virtual Spaces Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová

Part 2

Part 3

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3

The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces Nicholas van Orden

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Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An Approach of Semiotic Niches on Virtual Identities Patrícia Rossini and João Queiroz

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Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The World According to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats Petra Rehling

31

Posthuman Aesthetics Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The Case of The Netherlands Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea

43

‘Redefining Perfect’: Post-Humanist Views of Gender and Beauty Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira

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What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy Robert Gadowski

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Cyberpunk Subjectivities Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the Afterlife Christian Johannes Kovacs

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‘The theatre in me’: VR and New Models of Gendered IntraSubjectivity in the Futuristic Cyberpunk Fiction of Pat Cadigan Ana Makuc

Part 4

Part 5

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Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in Cyberpunk Carla Tirado Morttiz

103

Artificial Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William Gibson’s Idoru Imola Bulgozdi

113

On-Screen Hybrids Are We Not Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks Back Evelyn Tsitas and Lisa Dethridge

125

Brothers of the Future: Minority Male Cyborgs and the White Imaginary in Modern Science Fiction Films David E. Isaacs

135

Pressures and Possibilities of Being Bionic: Intersections of Gender and Humanity in the Bionic Woman Series Aino-Kaisa Koistinen

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Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces Natacha Guyot

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Beyond ‘Human’ Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of the Robot Other in Literature Eric Forcier

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The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the Cases of Vidal's Myra Breckinridge and Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak)

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Part 6

‘Repulsive Other’: Defining Scandal in Interspecies Relations, Technological and Information Posthumanism Jan Stasieńko

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Technology and the Self: Toward the Post (Post) Human Shilpa Venkatachalam

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Cautionary Tales Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity Vishwam Jindal

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Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super Hero in Cyberspace Pratyush Vatsala and Neelu Raut

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Introduction Navigating Cybercultures: Echoes of Visions7 Nicholas van Orden This ebook provides an overview of the work presented at the seventh annual Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace, and Science Fiction conference, hosted by Inter-Disciplinary.Net at Mansfield College, Oxford, in July 2012. The conference was overwhelmingly interdisciplinary and international—nineteen countries were represented by the researchers in attendance, and participants’ areas of specialization ranged from English, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies to Digital Media, Law, and Library Sciences. From tenured professors to graduate students, the conference also brought together scholars in various stages of their academic careers. Although the conference was conducted entirely in English, speakers of a dozen native languages were present—from German and Greek to Czech and Chinese. Everyone who attended the conference also presented; in order to foster collegiality and intellectual exchange, participation is mandatory at InterDisciplinary.Net conferences. In editing the chapters presented here, selected by the Visions of Humanity steering group, I have worked to establish a common style and tone for the collection while simultaneously maintaining the unique voices of the various authors. Where tensions arose, I opted for a balance between originality and clarity, focusing less on what might be considered ‘standard’ or idiomatic English. Despite the wide range of interests and institutions represented at the conference, several common themes emerged in the presentations and discussions. These themes make up the underlying structure of this volume. That scholars from across the disciplines and around the world discovered a similar set of concerns is further evidence, if any was needed, that our lives are intricately networked and connected—across digital, fictional, intellectual, and posthuman spaces. In one way or another, the chapters collected here all attempt to navigate these spaces. Part I, Virtual Spaces, begins with ‘Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education,’ by Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová. In this chapter, the authors explore the possibilities for virtual learning afforded by MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments) such as Second Life. They explain that MUVEs contain the potential for communicating and interacting in ways that are not possible in other e-learning environments. The authors support their claims by discussing their experiences using Second Life as an educational platform, including a description of the training and logistical challenges that MUVEs often bring. In the second chapter, ‘The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces,’ Nicholas van Orden argues for the importance of his theory of ‘telaffective transmission,’ which describes the distribution of affective labour through virtual worlds. Exploring the relationships that people form in virtual spaces, he notes that the popularity of many online worlds (from Second Life to

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__________________________________________________________________ Facebook) depends upon their effective transmission of affective content—through systems such as ‘liking,’ ‘favouriting,’ ‘friending’ and virtual marriage. In the third chapter, ‘Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An Approach of Semiotic Niches on Virtual Identities,’ Patrícia Rossini and João Queiroz examine the impact of social network sites’ profile features on users’ interactions. A user’s profile settings (such as age, gender, date of birth and relationship status) project personal information that might be transmitted in face-to-face interaction through tone of voice, gestures or facial expressions. Rossini and Queiroz argue that profile settings serve as semiotic shortcuts that allow users to anticipate and constrain their interactions with other users. In the final chapter of Part I, Petra Rehling focuses on the formation of user communities around Internet sensations such as LOLrus, Matt Harding and LOLcats. Her chapter, titled ‘Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The World According to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats,’ argues that these popular Internet characters simultaneously attach meaning to profane items (in what Rehling calls the ‘thingification of culture’) and create alternate inventories of our physical and aesthetic spaces. Rehling argues that critical scholarly attention should be paid to the types of communities and realities created by these sites and characters, especially given their immense popularity. Rehling’s turn to the aesthetic importance of virtual spaces is taken up explicitly by the chapters in Part II, Posthuman Aesthetics. In the first chapter, ‘Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The Case of The Netherlands,’ Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea argues that the interplay between the virtual spaces of computer games and the real-world spaces of architectural design has contributed to the development of a new architectural aesthetic. Focusing on Dutch firms such as MVRDV, ONL, and the UN Studio, Indaverea argues that video games can be used as conceptual generators and tools for architects who are generating new experiences of physical space. Video games, Indaverea argues, encourage architects and building users to utilize and explore space in innovative ways. In the second chapter, ‘“Redefining Perfect:” Post-Humanist Views of Gender and Beauty,’ Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira presents a brief history of Western aesthetics and describes the recent increase in gender reassignment surgeries—and the corresponding development of support communities and media coverage for transgender topics. Ferreira goes on to argue that current definitions of beauty, which idealize youth and infancy, have produced a complex diffusion of sexualities. This diffusion, along with our ‘make-over culture’ and its demand for perpetual aesthetic enhancement, is further evidence of our current posthumanity. Robert Gadowski takes up the question of humanity and posthumanity in the next chapter, ‘What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy.’ Gadowski focuses on the surgical procedure that transforms characters in Westerfeld’s novels from ‘uglies’ into ‘pretties.’ The surgeries in these dystopian young adult science fiction texts not only create a society of bodies altered to conform to prescribed standards of beauty, but the

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__________________________________________________________________ operations also significantly alter patients’ personalities. Gadowski argues that Westerfeld’s books highlight the central role of technology in discourses about posthumanism and emphasize the importance of human agency and freedom in the development and adoption of new technologies. Human agency and new technologies are common themes in the novels explored by the chapters that make up Part III, Cyberpunk Subjectivities. In ‘Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the Afterlife,’ Christian Johannes Kovacs identifies echoes of traditional religious texts in posthuman and transhumanist goals of immortality. Kovacs traces these themes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan and William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy. He goes on to argue that transhumanism remains distinctly anthropocentric; although transhumanists embrace the possibilities of enhancement and immortality offered by developing technologies, they generally seek to retain crucial vestiges of the coherent human self (or even the bounded human body). The possibility of a coherent human self is exploded by the text Ana Makuc examines in her chapter, ‘“The theatre in me”: VR and New Models of Gendered IntraSubjectivity in the Futuristic Cyberpunk Fiction of Pat Cadigan.’ Makuc undertakes a psychoanalytic reading of Cadigan’s Fools, focusing on the three personalities—Marceline, Mersine, and Marva—that are successfully contained within one body in the novel. These three characters are mapped directly onto Sigmund Freud’s id, ego, super-ego model of the self; however, Makuc also argues that Cadigan’s three personalities productively co-exist in an arrangement that closely resembles the theory of postoedipal complimentarity described by Jessica Benjamin. For Carla Tirado Morttiz, the schizophrenia of Cadigan’s Fools is symptomatic of our fractured postmodern identities. In her chapter, ‘Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in Cyberpunk,’ Morttiz undertakes a close reading of Neal Stephenson’s novel, focusing on the construction of characters’ identities in the text. She argues that Snow Crash represents a second wave of cyberpunk science fiction because it embodies many traditional cyberpunk themes while parodying first wave cyberpunk by commenting critically on the forces of rapid technological change and global capital. Imola Bulgozdi also takes up what might be called the second wave of cyberpunk in her chapter, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William Gibson’s Idoru.’ Bulgozdi applies Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity to the performance of human identity enacted by Rei Toi, who is a virtual media star in Gibson’s novel. When Rei Toi and rock mega-star Rez are married, their union signals a coming together of two powerful data streams, not two traditionally physical bodies. Bulgozdi argues that Idoru raises important questions about the flexibility and performativity of gendered and human identities in online spaces. This concern for post/human identity echoes through many of the chapters collected in this ebook. The chapters in Part IV, On-Screen Hybrids, contain analyses of hybrid figures in films and television series. Evelyn Tsitas and Lisa Dethridge examine the

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__________________________________________________________________ importance of language to definitions of humanity in their paper, ‘Are We Not Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks Back.’ Focusing on Vincenzo Natali’s 2009 film Splice, Tsitas and Dethridge chart the development of Dren, the human/animal hybrid at the film’s centre. Dren’s humanity and sense of self develop as Dren gradually acquires human language throughout the film. Tsitas and Dethridge argue that Splice forces viewers to consider the questions of hybridity, language, and humanity famously raised by Donna Haraway. David E. Isaacs also turns to Haraway in his chapter, ‘Brothers of the Future: Minority Male Cyborgs and the White Imaginary in Modern Science Fiction Films.’ Focusing on cyborg characters portrayed by Will Smith, Vin Diesel and Luis Fernando Peña, Isaacs argues that Hollywood science fiction cyborgs portrayed by minority actors rarely fill the roles of traditional heroes and instead serve to reinforce hegemonic racial views. While independent films can perhaps work to escape mainstream norms, most cyborgs in Hollywood science fiction fail to embody the subversive potential that Haraway hopes cyborg narratives will achieve. Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is slightly more hopeful about the disruptive force of the cyborg in her analysis of the Bionic Woman series in her chapter ‘Pressures and Possibilities of Being Bionic: Intersections of Gender and Humanity in the Bionic Woman Series.’ Comparing and contrasting the original 1970s Bionic Woman with the 2007 remake, Koistinen argues that Jaime Sommers, the female cyborg main character, highlights social binaries such as nature/culture, human/animal, and human/machine. Sommers is referred to throughout the two series as animal, weapon, and machine, forcing viewers to consider the tensions that exist between many of our most basic values, such as nature, culture, femininity, gender, humanity, agency, and control. Like Jaime Sommers, the two characters examined by Natacha Guyot in her chapter ‘Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces’ have become cyborgs through extensive surgical procedures. These characters, portrayed by actor Sam Worthington in Terminator: Salvation and Avatar, are hybrid figures with augmented bodies. For Guyot, such augmented bodies raise questions about the ethics of technological upgrades to humans and the problematic relationship between an original body and its engineered version. Both characters struggle with these questions as they work to rediscover who they are in their new cyborg forms. The unsettling force of the hybrid is further explored in Part V, Beyond ‘Human.’ In ‘Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of the Robot Other in Literature,’ Eric Forcier locates evidence of what he calls the ‘robot other’ in literary texts that long predate Karel Čapek’s use of the word ‘robot’ in his 1921 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). From Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and onto the Battlestar Galactica television series, Forcier identifies characters that are paradoxical combinations artificially and authentically human. These robot others are simultaneously unsettling and irresistible, alien and familiar. Only by identifying and embracing our archetypes, Forcier concludes, can we apply their

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__________________________________________________________________ reflective force to our posthuman self-analysis. While Forcier focuses on the history of transhuman bodies in literature and film, Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak) highlights the interplay of plasticity, posthumanism, and the transgendered body in twenty- and twenty-first century texts by Gore Vidal and Stieg Larsson. Kuo’s chapter, ‘The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the Cases of Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge and Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’ variously invokes Laura Mulvey, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Linda Hutcheon, and Julia Kristeva to raise questions about gender, sexuality, authenticity, and the development of transgender subjectivities as consumer goods. The spectacular plasticity of Barbie and Martin Heidegger’s theory of the Gestell—the necessity of technology to human existence—loom large over Kuo’s analysis of Vidal and Larsson’s texts. Jan Stasieńko’s chapter, ‘“Repulsive Other”: Defining Scandal in Interspecies Relations, Technological and Information Posthumanism,’ focuses on the relationship between the definition of scandal and posthumanism. Stasieńko argues that scandal is the critique of traditional humanist ideals, and he outlines two diametrically opposed types of scandal: scandal that disrupts exclusive and traditional humanist definitions of humanity, and, the opposite, scandal that disrupts the inclusive definition of humanity proposed by Giorgio Agamben (a definition that stresses openness and responsibility and grants subjectivity to non-human beings). Stasieńko examines both sides of this notion of posthuman scandal by focusing on three case studies: the dispute between PETA and Hunters Against PETA (HAPETA); the lack of outrage at the various attempts to disallow Oskar Pistorious from participating in international sporting events; and the scandal caused by Japanese gamer Sal9000’s marriage to Nintendo DS character Nene Anegasaki. In the next chapter, ‘Technology and the Self: Toward the Post (Post) Human,’ Shilpa Venkatachalam argues that posthumanism has devolved into new versions of the Cartesian mind/body binary—digitized/nondigitized and embodied/disembodied now restrict the freedom of the posthuman self. She goes on to formulate a theory of the (post)posthuman, a subject position capable of simultaneously breaking down and retaining binary distinctions. Venkatachalam explains that in the (post)posthuman embodiment must be maintained alongside the disembodiment that is often implied by emerging technologies. She concludes by arguing that notions of the self that have been prompted by digital media also demand an urgent rethinking of traditional notions of time and space. The nervous tension that underlies Venkatachalam’s chapter, and many of the other chapters collected here, becomes explicit in Part VI, Cautionary Tales. In ‘Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity,’ Vishwam Jindal provides a brief history of the World Wide Web, first charting the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. He then describes some of the changes that will likely take place with the development of Web 3.0—from increased personalization in online marketing and the development of targeted

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘advertainment,’ to the expansion of three-dimensional user interfaces and ubiquitous mobile access to cloud computing. Jindal also offers a stern warning against the uncritical adoption of Web 3.0 technologies and he emphasizes the importance of legislation that will protect users’ data and privacy. In the final chapter, ‘Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super Hero in Cyberspace,’ Pratyush Vatsala and Neelu Raut argue in favour of developing social codes to govern users’ online interactions. Citing the violent and immoral behaviour promoted by various popular video games, Vatsala and Raut claim that traditional texts, such as The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, are the most effective ways of teaching the key human values that are crucial to promoting safe online communities. The authors focus on RA.ONE, a Hindi science fiction film in which the classic battle between good and evil is contested by two of the main characters—RA.One and G.One. The chapters collected here, produced by a diverse group of students and scholars, represent the stimulating presentations and discussions prompted by the 2012 Visions of Humanity conference. But the topics raised here echo beyond the pages of this ebook and beyond the halls of Mansfield College. Questions of language, emotion, humanity, and posthumanity; definitions of time, space, technology, and agency; and concerns about safety, legality, and behaviour all echo through all of our daily attempts to navigate our rapidly shifting cybercultures.

Part 1 Virtual Spaces

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Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová Abstract This chapter is focused on virtual worlds and their use in the education of future mother tongue teachers. Our experiences working in the 3D multiuser virtual environment Second Life are described and examples of ‘digital training,’ which has been used in the subject New Media and Cyberculture at the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Journalism at the Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, are analysed. During the seminars, students also work on literary topics such as a collaborative writing in virtual space or playing a role in a virtual theatre in Second Life. Also discussed does the impact of this way of teaching in virtual worlds on changes in students’ understand of literature and on the development of their key competences, like ICT (Information and Communication Technology) skills and reading literacy. Key Words: Virtual worlds, interactive storytelling, digital artistic practices, new media, cyberculture, key competences. ***** 1. Introduction Virtual learning is teaching in an educational environment where teacher and student are separated in time or space (or both) and the teacher provides course content through control applications, multimedia resources, the Internet, video conferencing, etc. This method of communication in 3D virtual worlds is still an innovation in teaching and learning, however, and it still offers many opportunities which haven’t been fully explored until now. If students spend their free time in a virtual environment, the use of traditional teaching methods usually becomes less motivating for them. Using Virtual Worlds can give teachers the opportunity to gain a greater involvement in students as learners who are not put into the role of only passive recipients of information transmission—virtual worlds offer many options for creative collaborative work that could be limited in real world classes, such as borders or the number of participants who can work at one moment. The advantages of virtual learning include temporal and spatial flexibility, the ability to dynamically grow and adapt to the needs of users, the possibility of feedback, and the ability to work on tasks that are not often possible in the real world due to constraints of time or space. Virtual worlds allow cooperation which is not limited by boundaries of physical space; significant strengths include, in the vast majority of cases, low costs and easily upgradeable teaching materials. The disadvantages can be categorized mainly into health reasons, as the current generation of students spends too much time on ICT, which has a negative impact on both the eyes and on

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__________________________________________________________________ the human musculoskeletal system. Frequently repeated arguments are also the sense of alienation, because human beings do not communicate directly (face to face) but by machines, which can have an impact on social skills. Virtual communication is also lacking body language and other personal aspects. Multiuser virtual environment (Multi-User Virtual Environment, MUVE) is defined by Brdička 1 as a 2D or 3D virtual environment representing a simulation of real space. It represents the integration of the previously used forms of online communication and becomes the medium through which it is possible to create social interaction and very close communication in real space. According to D. Říha, 2 efficiency of communication increases when the characteristics of the media are in accordance with the communication process—that is, immediacy of feedback, variability of symbols (number of possible ways of communicating), testability (making adjustments before sending), replicability, and others. MUVEs as collaborative hypermedia environments meet most of the above aspects—these are objectoriented systems, where communication takes place in real time, such as through an audio or video conference or in direct interaction via its 3D graphical representations (avatars). Unlike previous types of communication (e-mail, text or video), which are mostly used for isolated communication, communication in all these types of MUVEs integrates and enhances the effect of online communication. Users moving in a MUVE can monitor the communications of individual participants and can move their avatars in relation to other participants’ avatars. MUVEs facilitate mutual cooperation; they help physically remote users, whose cooperation would be difficult and expensive in the real world, to work on joint projects. Unlike online education support, which represents learning management systems, websites, or blogs, MUVEs allow students to simulate real situations in which they can learn, for example, to work with objects and they can participate in activities and processes that would not be available for them in real space (e.g., the formation of the molecular structures of an airplane, etc.). Virtual worlds can represent an easier way of learning as well as the possibility of interpersonal communication for people with special needs. 2. Second Life The largest and currently the most famous project is the 3D virtual world Second Life (SL) (http://www.secondlife.com). Currently, there are more than 17 million users registered and users can make money exchangeable for real currency. 3 Users can also communicate in real time via avatars, they can build their own environments, they can be educated, entertained, shop (open daily, users will spend more than 30 million CZK), etc. SL is a ‘new dimension’ of social interaction. Users create the SL community based on common interests or language basis. The Czech community in SL has created several Czech locations; the largest and the most organized is the Czechoslovakian town named Bohemia, which has a city council, and holds regular events in SL. Czech users are regularly informed

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__________________________________________________________________ about events on the portal http://www.secondlife.cz. Also, some institutions in the Czech Republic have purchased virtual land in SL, allowing them to present their activities, make contacts, and start to try innovative ways of doing business. Education is a very progressive area in SL. Meeting people from all over the world, of different nationalities and social statuses, allows the creation of an entirely new type of community in which sharing knowledge and experience is easier than in real space. Many universities have discovered the ways in which SL is helpful to them and have created virtual campuses and presentation rooms and have started to organize some training courses. In SL there are virtual versions of more than sixty American universities (such as Oakland University, Ohio University, the University of Plymouth, Coventry University, Montana State University, the University of Tennessee, Ball State University, Missouri State University, Bradley University, and Harvard University Law School, 4 etc.). Some faculties of Czech universities have already presented themselves in the Czech virtual environment in SL (in the town Bohemia)—the Faculty of Economics and Public University of Economics in Prague, the Faculty of Education at the University of West Bohemia, the Faculty of Social Studies at the Masaryk University in Brno, and the Philosophical Faculty and Faculty of Education at the Palacky University in Olomouc. Teaching in MUVEs is practiced in virtual schools which are equipped as classrooms (some of them are in buildings, some in open spaces or under sea level). Students in schools can move like in the real world—they can come into school, browse the classes, go to the library, sit at a table, etc. Teachers can build special class facilities according to the needs of their subjects. Teachers in the classes may occur in the form of an avatar and communicate that way with their students. Communication may take the form of text or audio or video. Students in these classes can be directly given the educational materials and related links. Students can practice the material on particular objects and they can cooperate with each other to create objects according to the instructions of teachers. In the classroom, there may be available a board, which can work just like a real board (it is possible to write notes on it and to delete; information can be read by any user, etc.). During such courses in MUVEs, it is possible to record video of the teaching —this feature is useful for the preparation of lectures and training. Teacher may return to these videos later. Students can also create objects (devices, objects of their own imagination, teaching aids, animals, etc.) and think about their description. It is possible to pass through virtual environments that simulate different periods of time, to participate in discussions with authors, and to attend the concerts of real bands etc. Students can place their own literary works into a MUVE and respond to the works of others. They have the opportunity to visit electronic libraries, attend lectures, meet experts (without having to travel anywhere), and they have the ability to find the desired person, lecture, building, or area, and it is possible for them to teleport themselves instantly (which makes the

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__________________________________________________________________ work of finding information easier in comparison with searching for it in the environment of traditional portals and search engines). Students can solve their tasks together with their classmates or work on a project with classmates from a school which is randomly distant. The possibilities of virtual connection independent of physical space open up new opportunities, particularly for language teaching, either in the form of teaching in the virtual environment of individual schools or in individual commercial and private courses. Courses can be organized by different institutions in SL and it is possible to find them by using the Search button with selection of Events. User can then use the teleporter to join the required course. A number of language courses in SL are free, but there can be found also projects focused on professional language teaching, such as the LanguageLab (LL). Teachers of LL are native speakers from Great Britain and the U.S., certified instructors, who also teach English in real life. Classes take place in the language lab, where it is necessary to have a fast Internet connection and high-quality headset for voice communication. Teaching in Second Life brings the user a positive effect because—unlike a text environment (enriched with multimedia) of the conventional e-learning environment—it takes place in areas that are familiar to users from the real world; teaching can take place in traditional classrooms, with the use of a blackboard, but can also be enriched with methods of teaching that are not feasible in real life, whether for financial or time reasons. An example is the coactions of two schools from different countries (Italy and Netherlands) which cooperated in SL synchronously and asynchronously on the project Euroland. Virtual worlds can also be used with a virtual learning environment, as in the case of the Sloodle project, which aims at the interconnection of Second Life and the Moodle Learning Management System. 3. Our Experiences with Teaching in an MUVE We have been using the MUVE Second Life since 2008 in the seminar New Media and Cyberculture, which is realized at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Palacky University in Olomouc, as an optional subject field in the program Teaching of the Czech language a literature, and at the Department of Journalism, Philosophical Faculty, Palacky University in Olomouc. To create a technical support for teaching in SL, we have implemented several projects, which were necessary for preparation of this type of education. In 2007, a project aimed at the building of a computer lab at the Department of Czech Language and Literature PdF UP was realized. 5 For this lab, fifteen computer stations for students, one teacher station, and an interactive Smart Board were acquired. This project was followed by an extension of the existing software, allowing the computer stations to work in graphics-intensive 3D environment. 6 Subsequently, another project was implemented to ensure the upgrading of existing study subjects and the creation of new courses allowing the usage of MUVEs in the classroom. 7 A syllabus for New Media and Cyberculture was prepared as one of the results of these projects. In the

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__________________________________________________________________ last year, we have also tried to study the possibilities of new developments occurring in educational materials designed for distant learning and e-learning 8 (as a part of the project ‘The evaluation of educational materials designed for distance learning and e-learning’ 9). The use of multiuser virtual environment can be one of the possible focuses in our future research. Building on our experiences, we decided to create our own learning environment in SL by building the Faculty of Education and also extending our teaching in virtual environments in the area of Lifelong Learning courses at the Department of ICT Education, Centre of the Department of Lifelong Learning PdF UP. This objective was realized as a part of an ESF project aimed at developing the ICT skills of teachers, 10 which included also a newly created course in ICT for teaching media literacy.

Picture 1: Building of Faculty of Education (Department of ICT Education of Centre for Lifelong Learning). Source: Second Life, H. Marešová, (2012). Due to the fact that our students are future teachers (mostly of mother tongue), we usually teach them in SL to be able to know the possible ways it can be used in the teaching of grammar, communication education, and literary education. At the beginning of teaching, students are gathered in the initial SL environment, where they are usually first provided with basic information regarding movement and communication in a virtual environment. After that, a presentation in the virtual classroom is usually provided to inform the students about the other possibilities of teaching in this environment. Then students perform the tasks assigned to focus on communication in the environment (e.g. to hold each other’s hands together and create a circle on the field before the classroom, to move in the department, to try walking, running, flying, or teleporting in cyberspace, or to try text messaging).

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__________________________________________________________________ The next tasks are usually focused on the ability to find information in SL (there is a World Search Map tool for searching for specific virtual buildings and a tool for reaching specific information). After that we usually focus on a particular topic— e.g. literature education; during teaching about the literary work of William Shakespeare, we moved to the virtual building of the Globe theatre to experience better the contemporary environment. Students were asked to present an excerpt from his play on the theater stage. It was a deeper experience of the literary work— different from just reading excerpts from books in the real classroom.

Picture 2: One of the virtual classrooms in the building of Faculty of Education. Source: Second Life, H. Marešová, (2012). A similar observation was made by other authors who used SL in teaching literature—e.g. Spoto et al describes some students’ expressions after the teaching of Hemingway’s literary work in SL: As I stood in the café in Second Life, and pensively gazed at Hemingway sitting there at the table, I felt I was in the room with him and intruding, yet invited to intrude, in on his thoughts and life, to participate in the gathering of his emotion to pen his novel, The Sun Also Rises. Watching him there alone, helped me to appreciate, the period of the novel’s 1920s Paris in the book. Every time Jake hailed a taxi to go to the café in the first half of the book and when he hailed a taxi to go to the café in Book II, while in Spain, the café in Second Life helped me to envision the various café scenes throughout the novel.

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__________________________________________________________________ Experiencing Second Life version of the 1920s café while reading The Sun Also Rises, made the story more true to life. 11 4. Conclusion With further improvement of MUVEs, other options that enable successful use of these rapidly developing ‘worlds’ for education, or at least that from time to time enrich the teaching process, will certainly be added. The boundaries of what is possible for educational use are not in the technology but in the imaginations of the teachers who decide to take advantage of virtual worlds to train students to be adequately prepared for life in the information society.

Notes 1

Bořivoj Brdička, ‘Víceuživatelské virtuální prostředí a možnosti jeho využití ve vzdělávání’, Bobrův pomocník (1999), viewed 5 April 2012, http://it.pedf.cuni.cz/~bobr/MUVE/. 2 Daniel Říha, ‘Implementace prostředí neimerzivní virtuální reality v rámci “Kunst am Bau”’ (2006), viewed 5 April 2012, http://everest.natur.cuni.cz/konference/2006/prispevek/riha.pdf. 3 According to the results of Second Life, 2011, available from ‘Second Life. Featured News’ last modified 14 March 2012, viewed 5 April 2012, http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-inQ2-2011/ba-p/1035321. 4 Hana Marešová, ‘E-learning v multiuživatelském virtuálním prostředí’, Journal of Technology and Information Education 1 (2009): 39-44, ISSN 1803-537X. 5 Project: Hana Marešová, Jiří, Langer, Kateřina Vitásková, Eva Souralová, and Miloš Mlčoch, A 1175, Ministry of Education b: Establishment of Computer Lab at the Department of Czech Language and Literature and Multimedia Classrooms at Pedagogical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc, University Development Fund, 2007. 6 Project: David Nocar, Hana Marešová and Pavol Hanzel, Development and Innovation of Computer Classrooms, University Development Fund, 2011. 7 Project: Hana Marešová, Marie Zouharová and Jaroslav Sláma, Course of Innovation and New Media and Cyberculture, University Development Fund, 2011. 8 Milan Klement, ‘Možnosti hodnocení elektronických studijních opor’, in Smíšený design v pedagogickém výzkumu: Sborník příspěvků z 19. výroční konference České asociace pedagogického výzkumu, (2011): 91-97, viewed 17 April 2012, http://www.ped.muni.cz/capv2011/sbornikprispevku/klement.pdf.

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Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education

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This chapter is supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, Reg. No. P407/11/1306 (2011-2012), The Evaluation of Educational Materials Designed for Distance Learning and E-learning, Milan Klement, et al., (2011-2012). 10 Project: Hana Marešová, Courses of ICT in Education for Teachers, ESF project No. CZ.1.07/1.3.00/14.0011, 2010-2012. 11 Mary Spoto, Michael Dadez and Diane Johnson, ‘The Lost Generation Meets Second Life: Teaching Literature in a Virtual World’ (March 10, 2011), viewed 5 April 2012, http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/proceedings/2011/documen ts/Michael%20Dadez/ENG311--Second_Life_SoTL_presentation.3-7-11.pptx.

Bibliography Brdička, Bořivoj. ‘Víceuživatelské virtuální prostředí a možnosti jeho využití ve vzdělávání’. Bobrův pomocník, 1999. Viewed 5 April 2012. http://it.pedf.cuni.cz/~bobr/MUVE/. Klement, Milan. ‘Možnosti hodnocení elektronických studijních opor’. Smíšený design v pedagogickém výzkumu: Sborník příspěvků z 19. výroční konference České asociace pedagogického výzkumu, 91–97, 2011. Viewed 17 April 2012. http://www.ped.muni.cz/capv2011/sbornikprispevku/klement.pdf. Marešová, Hana. ‘E-learning v multiuživatelském virtuálním prostředí’. Journal of Technology and Information Education 1, 2009, 39-44. ISSN 1803-537X. Říha, Daniel. ‘Implementace prostředí neimerzivní virtuální reality v rámci “Kunst am Bau”’, 2006. Viewed 5 April 2012. http://everest.natur.cuni.cz/konference/2006/prispevek/riha.pdf. ‘Second Life. Featured News’. Last modified 14 March 2012, Viewed 5 April 2012. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-inQ2-2011/ba-p/1035321. Spoto, Mary, Michael Dadez, and Diane Johnson. ‘The Lost Generation Meets Second Life: Teaching Literature in a Virtual World’, March 10, 2011. Viewed 5 April 2012. http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/proceedings/2011/documen ts/Michael%20Dadez/ENG311--Second_Life_SoTL_presentation.3-7-11.pptx.

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__________________________________________________________________ Hana Marešová is a vice-dean for study affairs and Lifelong Learning at the Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). She is a head of the Department of ICT Education at the Centre for lifelong education at the Faculty of Education. She works as an assistant professor at the Department of Czech Language and Literature. Her current research and writing are devoted to the problematic of using ICT in education (especially in the mother tongue teaching) and the new possibilities of methods and strategies in e-learning education. Milan Klement is a vice-dean for information and communication technology at the Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). He works as an assistant professor at the Department of Technical Education and Information Technology. His current research and writing are devoted to the problematic of using ICT in education, especially e-learning systems (evaluation of educational materials designed for distance learning and e-learning). Zuzana Pustinová is a student of the postgraduate study programme (Ph.D.) in the Department of Czech Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). Her supervisor is Hana Marešová. She teaches the subject Internet and multimedia in the Czech language education. Her research and writing are devoted to the problematic of ICT competences of teachers (with special focus on mother tongue teachers).

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The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces Nicholas van Orden Abstract Building on the work of prominent affect theorists such as Jackie Orr, Elaine Scarry and Teresa Brennan, I illustrate a theory of ‘telaffect’—the transmission of affective signals across real and virtual spaces. The development of this theory of telaffective transmission identifies the complexity and importance of the affective labour that is routinely conducted via virtual channels. Affect theories often implicitly explore connections between affective experiences and technology. Imagining language as a basic technology, Scarry and Brennan focus on language’s ability to structure and express affect; similarly, Orr describes the influence of computational and mathematical models on the development of definitions of ‘normal’ cognitive and affective states. Despite the subtle and compelling arguments made by affect theorists, few have explored the influences that new forms of digital technology and communication have had on the expression and experience of affect. A host of new affective experiences are rapidly developing thanks to internet-based technologies. I draw on a diverse range of technologies to show that telaffective transmission is a crucial component of popular virtual spaces. Platforms such as e-mail, instant messaging, blogs and social-networking sites have created new opportunities for the transmission of affect. More complex virtual spaces, such as Second Life, have similarly effected new forms of affective experience. Most popular-media representations of Second Life implicitly identify the forces of telaffect that are operating within the virtual world: many reports focus on virtual sex and marriage. Other technologies, such as the brainwavedetecting headset produced by NeuroSky and the software VR-WEAR developed to graft users’ facial expressions onto their avatars in real time, further complicate traditional affect theories and call for analyses into the expression and experience of telaffect in virtual spaces. Key Words: Virtual space, affect, digital technologies, communication, cyberculture. ***** One of my central assumptions is that the technologies that surround us influence not only the way that we think, but also how we conceptualize our mental activity. This is best exemplified by one of our most basic technologies— language. In an attempt to answer the question of how we think about our thinking, most affect theorists make either implicit or explicit connections between language and the experience and expression of affect. Sara Ahmed explains that speech and language propel the circulation of feelings through what she calls ‘affective

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The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces

__________________________________________________________________ economies,’ 1 and Teresa Brennan suggests that sensory inputs are only understandable once they are transformed by language; Brennan says, ‘[f]eelings are sensations that have found a match in words.’ 2 In Panic Diaries, Jackie Orr focuses on computational and mathematical representations of brain functions. Orr argues that the cognitive functions usually associated with emotions and affects are rendered intelligible by constantly shifting mathematical and computational discourses. 3 Metaphors that compare the brain to a computer are common in popular culture, literature and neuroscience. Ahmed, Brennan and Orr all suggest that our vocabularies and technologies define our ability to experience and express affect. If this is the case, a host of new affective experiences are rapidly developing thanks to internet-based technologies. Some of the most powerful and popular of these technologies are virtual worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, but many of the effects visible in these complex spaces are also present in simpler social-networks, like Facebook and Pinterest and on basic web pages. Focusing on the importance of interpersonal relationships within virtual spaces, both between people and between people and their avatars and examining the potential for the development of new affective narratives within these domains, shows that virtual spaces create new opportunities for affective experience and expression. Affect transmitted across virtual spaces and physical distances are examples of what I call ‘telaffect.’ The development of a theory of telaffective transmission is necessary as virtual interactions become more common and as the affective labour conducted via virtual channels increases. In Speech Acts in Literature, Hillis Miller notes that the prefix ‘tele-’ is used to designate a conventional act that has been modified to take place across otherwise impossible distances. As Miller explains, speaking at a distance is referred to as ‘telephone,’ and ‘“television” means a perhaps even more magical “seeing at a distance.”’ 4 The transformation of speech and vision that permits this ‘magical’ transmission is effected by specific technologies—in Miller’s examples, the telephone and television. Miller repeatedly refers to the disembodied ‘telephone voice,’ 5 suggesting that both speech and the subject are altered when voice is transmitted via telephone technology. Speaking through the telephone, the speaker creates a new persona, a telephone subjectivity that might transmit affective content that is radically divorced from the subject’s everyday non-telephone subject position (this is especially evident in the case of telephone-sex operators, telemarketers, or product-support line operators; these jobs all rely on the effective transmissions of affect). Like the telephone, internet-based communication platforms, such as e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, mini-blogs (like Twitter) and social-networking sites, have also created new opportunities for the transmission of affect. Building on conventions initially established by early message-board users, the simple text of e-mails and instant messages were quickly modified to efficiently transmit affective content: ‘lol’ for the hilarity of ‘laughing out loud,’ ‘omg’ for the surprise of ‘oh my god,’ and the wide-range of ‘emoticons’ used to

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__________________________________________________________________ pictographically express happiness— : ) —sadness— : ( —and winking cheekiness— ; ) —among many others. Other technological innovations are establishing new channels for the transmission of telaffect and creating new ways of expressing and experiencing affect. Affective signals are often produced through physical gestures and facial expressions. Nintendo’s Wii entertainment and gaming system instantly translates physical movements into virtual actions that interact with the movements of other users and with the narrative of the game being played. Similarly, software developed by VR-WEAR uses a webcam to capture head movements and facial expressions which are translated into computer data and grafted, in real-time, onto the user’s Second Life avatar. These technologies provide a medium for transmitting bodily affective signals that might not simply be difficult to render in written or spoken language, but might actually escape linguistic signification altogether. Like the physical cues VR-WEAR interprets, the brainwave controlled interfaces being developed by NeuroSky translate mental activity into virtual or physical movements. Based on a set of ‘algorithms for emotions,’ the data obtained by NeuroSky’s brainwave-reading headset can be linked to almost any virtual or mechanical system. 6 NeuroSky’s technology suggests that mental, even precognitive, activity can be transmitted across virtual and physical spaces. Media blogger Wagner James Au describes a similar transmission of affect in Second Life. Au explains, figuratively, that in Second Life ‘emotional intimacy is directly injected, mind to mind.’ 7 Like telephone, television, Wii, VR-WEAR and NeuroSky, virtual spaces create new possibilities for telaffective expression and experience. People often claim that they enjoy virtual worlds because the worlds allow them to do things that are impossible, difficult, or restricted in real life. While activities such as teleportation are certainly possible in spaces like Second Life, the things that people do in Second Life do not seem to be as important as the emotional experiences that these activities provide for the real people who are manipulating the avatars. Most commentary about Second Life reveals or reflects upon the possibilities offered by transmitting affect and emotion across virtual spaces and through virtual relationships. Popular media representations of Second Life often implicitly identify the forces of telaffect that are operating within the virtual world. Most of these accounts focus on relationships formed within Second Life, especially virtual sex and marriage, or on relationships between people and their avatars. In a 2006 article for the Houston Chronicle, titled ‘In Second Life, the World is Yours,’ Eyder Peralta argues that residents of Second Life do not refer to the virtual world as a game because ‘the emotional connections you make are real.’ 8 Peralta goes on to note that ‘[p]eople spend millions of dollars building their lives [in Second Life] because emotionally, it’s more than a game.’ 9 A 2008 CNN iReport titled ‘Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life,’ makes a

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The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces

__________________________________________________________________ similar argument. The CNN story recounts the first real-life meeting of Nina Allam and Sean Barbary, a couple who had established a virtual relationship and were married in Second Life but had never met in real life. The end of this short iReport reveals the power of the telaffect transmitted through Second Life: ‘“I’ve never felt like this before, I love her so much,” Barbary said. “I never knew I could feel like this.”’ 10 In her 2006 story for The Boston Globe, titled ‘Leading a Double Life,’ reporter Irene Sege interviewed Second Life wedding planner Tuna Oddfellow (magician and fund-raiser Matthew Fishman’s Second Life avatar). Oddfellow operates a ‘virtual wedding business, complete with invitations, catered food, disc jockey and premarital counselling, for avatars he’s convinced are committed to each other.’ 11 But Sege explains that Oddfellow won’t marry just anyone—couples must convince him that they have successfully transmitted their emotions across Second Life’s virtual space: ‘“I can’t marry you in Second Life,” Fishman [Oddfellow] says in an interview, “unless you realize you have First Life emotions.”’ 12 For Oddfellow, telaffective expressions and experiences create powerful connections between people. Just as virtual relationships between avatars disrupt conventional notions of relationship, the attachment that many residents have to their avatars disrupts ideas about bounded, self-contained individuality. In order to participate in Second Life, each resident must create an avatar—a fully customizable virtual character that the resident will use to navigate through the world. For many residents, the distinction between real-world self and avatar ‘other-self’ is difficult to explain. Chris Ashby, a young gamer that Peralta interviewed, says, ‘When it comes to choosing between real life and Second Life, I don’t know which one I care about most.’ 13 Ares Demoulins makes a similar claim: ‘It starts out as Second Life is a break from real life, then you get to the point where real life becomes a break from Second Life.’ 14 Although most residents don’t experience such a radical fusion with their other-selves, many express strong affective connections to their avatars. Au, who participates in Second Life as the avatar Hamlet Au, describes the affective reaction he had when a friend transformed Hamlet Au into a hamster as part of an experiment. Appropriately echoing Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Au writes, ‘One morning, Hamlet Au woke from uneasy dreams to find himself changed into a giant hamster’. 15 Au experiences a sharp telaffective dislocation from his hamster avatar: ‘I stood there for awhile, trying to find the words to describe the experience of looking at this new avatar of mine. I didn’t feel like myself. Looking at my avatar provoked a sensation of awkward self-consciousness.’ 16 Au is unable to articulate exactly what feels wrong about being a hamster; he goes on to note, ‘I do feel like myself when I’m my default Hamlet Au avatar, who mostly resembles me physically.... But this, well—this felt like something else entirely.’ 17 Many residents feel liberated by the possibility of endlessly recreating their virtual other-selves. A 2007 poll by the Global Market Institute found that twenty-three percent of Second Life residents have an avatar with a different gender than their real-life body, twenty-two percent

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__________________________________________________________________ have an avatar with a different skin color and ‘mysteriously, eleven percent reported having an avatar with a different political orientation.’ 18 Au describes the plastic subjectivity offered by internet-based media as a process of ‘avatarization.’ 19 Of course, avatarization is not restricted to Second Life. Like the telephone persona that Hillis Miller describes, many virtual spaces are largely defined by their users’ on-line personae. Email systems and social networks require users to create avatars of varying complexity—you can’t have a Facebook account without creating a Facebook version of yourself. The correspondence between the real-world user and the virtual avatar is at best uncertain. As Au notes, social networks are ‘teeming with users who idealize themselves as sexier and more successful than they really are.’ 20 The potential for harm or liberation that this process of avatarization might encourage has been subject to lengthy debate, but the potential for new forms of avatar-mediated affective experience and expression is less contentious and largely unexplored. Most social networks are implicitly organized to facilitate the transmission of telaffective content. Facebook connects so-called ‘friends’ (a term laden with affective baggage) and the light blue thumbs-up ‘like’ symbol is quickly becoming a powerful cultural icon. Other social networks follow a similar model: Twitter, Findery and Pinterest all arrange users according to hierarchical follows/following structures. All three also echo Facebook’s ‘like’ button: Findery’s red heart signals a ‘favorite,’ as does Twitter’s golden star icon, while Pinterest uses a red heart to identify ‘like.’ Although these platforms offer simplified versions of the telaffective exchanges mediated by Second Life, they all nonetheless encourage their users to participate in the transmission of affective content. While Facebook’s ‘like’ button is a seemingly simple gesture, it telaffectively communicates potentially complex emotional material (often with even more complex real world consequences). Technological developments and virtual worlds also create space for the construction of new telaffective narratives—narratives otherwise marginalized by material constraints or social forces. Nash Baldwin, at UC Davis, constructed the ‘Virtual Hallucinations Lab’ in Second Life. Baldwin’s ‘Lab,’ located in a model of an insane asylum and based on testimony collected from several people with schizophrenia, attempts to recreate schizophrenic hallucinations for people without schizophrenia. The Lab utilizes telaffective forces to offer people who are not schizophrenic the chance to experience a mild (and sanitized) form of schizophrenia. As avatars walk through the various rooms of the Lab, voices repeat disturbing messages, such as, ‘Kill yourself! Do it! Do it now! Dead! Dead! You’re nothing—you don’t even exist.’ 21 In one room the floor suddenly falls away, leaving precarious stepping stones over an endless drop. In another room, the letters on a poster subtly rearrange themselves into profanities and then shift back into their original benign arrangement. The challenges faced by Baldwin’s patients are represented in the Lab and it encourages Second Life residents who do not have

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The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces

__________________________________________________________________ schizophrenia to engage with disruptive schizophrenic experiences. Baldwin’s Lab creates a medium for telaffective narratives that would otherwise remain unexplored. Much less dramatically, platforms such as Facebook establish new narratives that are largely focused on users’ telaffective exchanges. The Facebook ‘Timeline’ feature creates an alternate life story for its users, providing a catalogue of friendships, ‘likes,’ comments, relationship status updates and shifts in mood (represented by updated avatar and cover images). The user’s Timeline starts at ‘Born,’ after which nothing happened until the user joined Facebook. Presumably there are children for whom these events were concurrent (or who were born on Facebook first). The catalogue of the Facebook Timeline reveals the user’s explicit interventions into the Facebook community and implies the user’s popularity and social standing, often with complex echoes in the real world. These echoes highlight the importance of a coherent critical analysis of the telaffective forces that underlie and animate many virtual spaces. Focusing on the interpersonal relationships within virtual worlds such as Second Life and examining the development of telaffective narratives in these and other virtual spaces, reveals the significance of telaffective transmission. Critical theoretical analysis of these new telaffective experiences and expressions is important because the line between ‘real life’ and ‘the virtual,’ if it ever existed, continues to dissolve.

Notes 1

Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 146. 2 Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 19. 3 Jackie Orr, Panic Diaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 190. 4 Hillis Miller, Speech Acts in Literature (California: Stanford University, 2001), 191. 5 Ibid., 187-195. 6 Allan Wang, ‘Controlling Electronics Using Your Mind: Interview with Allan Wang’, ABC 7 News, viewed 17 January 2007, http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=4944111. 7 Wagner James Au, The Making of Second Life (New York: Collins, 2008), 96. 8 Eyder Peralta, ‘In Second Life, the World is Yours’, Houston Chronicle, viewed 1 August 2012. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2006_4125271. 9 Ibid. 10 ‘Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life’, CNN, iReport. viewed 26 May 2006,

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/12/second.life.relationship.irpt/index.html. 11 Irene Sege, ‘Leading a Double Life’, The Boston Globe, 25 October 2006. 12 Ibid. 13 Peralta, ‘In Second Life’. 14 Ibid. 15 Au, Making, 76. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 79-80. 19 Ibid., 83. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 209.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sarah. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. Au, Wagner James. The Making of Second Life. New York: Collins, 2008. Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Miller, Hillis. Speech Acts in Literature. California: Stanford University, 2001. Orr, Jackie. Panic Diaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Peralta, Eyder. ‘In Second Life, the World is Yours.’ Houston Chronicle, 28 May 2006. Accessed 1 August 2012. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2006_4125271. Sege, Irene. ‘Leading a Double Life.’ The Boston Globe, 25 October 2006. Viewed 1 August 2012. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/25/leading_a_double_li fe/. ‘Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life’. CNN iReport, 15 December 2008. Accessed 1 August 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/12/second.life.relationship.irpt/index.html.

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__________________________________________________________________ Wang, Allan. ‘Controlling Electronics Using Your Mind: Interview with Allan Wang’, ABC 7 News, 17 January 2007. Accessed 1 August 2012. http://www.abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=4944111. Nicholas van Orden is a PhD student in the English and Film Studies program at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the collision of virtual spaces and literary forms.

Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An Approach of Semiotic Niches on Virtual Identities Patricia Rossini and João Queiroz Abstract Social Network Site profiles can be described as semiotic niches, spaces of mediation built of processes and structures that enable users to control, constrain and predict future social interactions through the manipulation of a morphological variety of sign types. We argue that signs that agents perceive when accessing profiles can be apprehended as shortcuts for epistemic action, providing cues about one’s social context. This perspective is aligned with the idea that people manipulate problem-solving spaces to improve social cognition by relying on external artefacts to scaffold internal computation. It is also in consonance with recent SNS research that suggests one goal of profile building is to produce specific perceptions and orient social behaviour. Our aim is to explore the idea that social networks’ profiles work as semiotic niches. In order to properly develop our argument, we will begin with a brief introduction that includes a review of cognitive and semiotic niches, social networks, and virtual profiles research. Subsequently, we will propose a model for the understanding of Facebook’s profiles as semiotic niches, including a description of the signs and the epistemic shortcuts these signs represent for control and anticipation of future relationships and constraint on the SNS. Key Words: Social networks, virtual profiles, cognitive semiotics, semiotic niche, distributed cognition. ***** 1. Introduction Social Network Sites (SNS) are online spaces designed to enable users to create and manage social ties in proportions that would be unlikely or impossible to maintain offline. In these spaces, the users’ actions are mediated by profiles, virtual spaces designed to act as representations of users’ identities that can be personalized through the manipulation of a variety of signs. Since interpersonal communication mediated by computers lacks cues and signals that people can observe during face-to-face interaction, the personalization of profiles provides context and enables agents to access information about others with whom they wish to interact in order to orient future action. In this paper, we argue that SNS’ profiles are mediating structures 1 or epistemic mediators 2—spaces built to cognitively aid human activity, filled with artefacts that transform, enable, or simply modify internal processing; as such, they can be described as cognitive niches 3 or semiotic niches. 4 We intend to show that signs

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Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles

__________________________________________________________________ are mechanisms through which people control interactions; signs provide semiotic shortcuts that are fundamental for the mediating role of virtual profiles. In order to properly develop our argument, we will begin with a brief introduction that includes a review of semiotic niches, social networks, and virtual profiles research. Subsequently, we will propose a model for the understanding of Facebook profiles as semiotic niches, including a description of the signs and the epistemic shortcuts these signs represent for control and anticipation of future relationships and constraint on the SNS. 2. Semiotic and Cognitive Niches: Environments that Make Us Smart Many authors have been exploring the idea that human cognition is not constrained by the limits of the skull and skin but is distributed throughout the environment. According to this perspective, it is the interaction between the biological brain and nonbiological artefacts, technologies, and the environment that structure the cognitive system; without coping with artefacts and aids, humans would not be able to perform many activities, such as communicating with others using language, solving complex problems, 5 and so on. Recently, Andy Clark 6 proposed that we are immersed in cognitive niches, in the sense that we manipulate and structure our problem-solving space to improve internal computation. Cognitive niche construction leads to new feedback cycles that are related to lifetime learning for cognitive purposes. 7 Semiotic structures and processes can be considered powerful and remarkable niches because they reduce the descriptive complexity of the world and have openended expressive power. Language, for instance, is a semiotic niche that enables its users with novel abilities and competences related to the perception of the world, inferences, navigation, and communication, among many others. 8 The notion of semiotic niches is closely related to the cognitive niche and ecological niche theses but it focuses on the semiotic processes 9 between the agent and his or her environment. Jesper Hoffmeyer’s goal was to develop ‘a term that would embrace the totality of signs or cues in the surroundings of an organism— signs that it must be able to meaningfully interpret to ensure its survival and welfare. The semiotic niche includes all of the traditional ecological niche factors, but now the semiotic dimension of these factors is also strongly emphasized.’ 10 While the cognitive niche refers to a system structured by cognitive artefacts, the semiotic niche is a space of epistemic mediation filled by signs or semiotic artefacts of various kinds. It is a niche that requires the agent to interpret the signs that he or she is able to perceive, in which the signs represent cues for epistemic action, physical action to improve reasoning. 11 The effects of the use and manipulation of these structures on social network sites includes the construction of niches designed to enable agents to engage in many forms of social activities. If this approach is correct, socialization activities scaffolded by social network sites must rely on semiotic structures and processes available in this environment or

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__________________________________________________________________ niche. In this sense, the interpretation of signs in virtual profiles enables people to engage in activities in these spaces. 3. Social Networks’ Profiles as Semiotic Niches Within the environment of SNS, profiles are mediating structures for interpersonal relationships. Profiles are important mechanisms of interaction agency, structured to represent individuals and their connections on social network sites. The importance of profile personalization is the focus of many researchers in the social network field. 12 In the absence of bodily signs that provide cues and information in face-to-face interaction (i.e. facial expressions, voice tone, gestures), people rely on signs available on virtual profiles that can be interpreted as representations of others’ features and characteristics, providing context for future interaction. 13 According to our approach, profiles are semiotic spaces structured by signs and acting as cognitive shortcuts or epistemic mediators that reduce the complexity of the interactional environment in many ways. On SNS, profiles enable the community to see not only the information provided by the user, but also her or his connections (usually displayed as a ‘friends list’), her or his status updates and shared links and photographs, and content published by others (comments, public messages, links, and so on). All these features provide social context and situate the users in a public space by making the network visible. Thus, the connections between users are also signs that represent users’ relationships and function as signals that one’s profile is trustworthy. 14 As trustworthiness can’t be directly observed on virtual profiles, people need to rely on cues and signals to orient future action. 15 SNS are structures developed by humans to increase their capacity for online socialization; they provide a means for enhancing online social relations and make it possible for users to manage larger networks by lowering the costs of time, availability, and effort. As these networks include many weak ties—people with whom the agent does not have intimacy, reciprocity, or proximity 16—–the use of signs to control interaction is important to organize and manage broader social relationships, thus avoiding inappropriate interactions. Judith Donath explains that the reliability of an SNS is closely related to the design of profiles because they can increase or reduce costs for deception and undesirable behaviour, such as spamming and fake identities. When costs of personalization are higher (i.e. the profiles require personal information and display connections and photos), the reliability increases and people tend to believe that information provided by others on their profiles is trustworthy. 17 The process of personalizing profiles can be described as a process of designing semiotic niches in the sense that individuals manipulate their profiles to better organize their space for interaction in the network. Signs that agents perceive when accessing others’ profiles can be apprehended as shortcuts for epistemic action, providing cues about one’s social context that will orient future action. If this

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__________________________________________________________________ approach is correct, profiles enable users to constrain, anticipate, and control social interaction within the network. It is important to note that only signs whose meanings are defined by cultural and social practices shared between agents can function as controlling mechanisms. Inappropriate or undesirable behaviours are a consequence of deception, that is, the meaning understood by a receiver differs from the meaning intended by the sender. Table 1: Basic profile signs and interaction agency functions. Sign Gender Birthday

Sexual orientation

Function regarding control, constraint and anticipation of interactions Provides context and anticipate future interaction based on an agent’s gender. Users that provide the date of birth on their profiles and opt to make it visible for friends anticipate future interaction on their birthday because Facebook’s interface encourages users to congratulate friends on their birthday. Displays users’ interests regarding relationships and enables them to control or constrain inappropriate interactions in this sense.

Relationshi p status

Provides important clues, especially for future interactions between weak ties, because it indicates whether the agent is available for relationships or not. The sign provides control because it inhibits undesirable behaviour regarding romantic approach according to the social norms.

Language

Constrain interaction between speakers of different languages

Religion

Contextualizes the individual and his or her beliefs. It acts as a controlling mechanism by constraining inadequate situations (according to social conventions) and is also a shortcut that can induce epistemic action when inter-agents share beliefs. The interpretation of this sign can either encourage or discourage conversation regarding political matters. It is a controlling sign that acts both for constraint and anticipation.

Political preference

To support our argument, we describe the signs that are generally available on Facebook profiles according to their mediating functions, namely, control, constraint, and anticipation. We chose Facebook’s model of profiles to exemplify our argument because they enable users to display a variety of signs to represent an identity and should be reliable, according to Donath’s conditions for

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__________________________________________________________________ trustworthiness in SNS, described above. For methodological purposes, we will only focus on verbal signs (written language). Signs act as controlling mechanisms of social interactions online because they provide context for users and their networks, displaying information that needs to be known before further interaction takes place. Information that people can learn about others’ identities through signs aids a variety of cognitive processes regarding interaction, such as deciding how to approach someone with whom the agent does not have intimacy. Constraint signs are those whose meanings can inhibit future action and thus avoid undesirable situations, considering that their meaning is tied to habits or social norms. Signs of relationship status, sexual orientation, political preference, and religion can be described as constraining signs because they provide some control over future interactions by anticipating the users’ intentions and constraining inappropriate behaviour according to the social rules that are predominant in a society. Similarly, signs that allow users to anticipate future interaction are those whose effects provide their interpreters with accurate shortcuts for action. Those shortcuts are clues that suggest the kind of interaction one expects and contextualize the profile owner’s preferences. The birthday display is a good example as it can be interpreted as an intention of the profile’s owner to make sure her or his friends will be reminded of the user’s birthday because Facebook’s interface displays special dates and reminds its users to congratulate friends. Therefore, by making the birthday visible, the profile owner anticipates his or her friends’ attitudes on his anniversary. Signs that inform agents on specific matters regarding interests and lifestyle, such as political preference and religion, contextualize aspects of the individual and provide control for future interactions in both directions: they can encourage like-minded agents to act, using common preferences as a topic of conversation, and discourage others who have different beliefs from engaging in discussions in which controversial opinions on some topics can affect the relationship. Even though political preference and religion do not define whether or not people will interact when they do not share opinions, they are a controlling sign because they anticipate certain positions of the agents and can inhibit conversation about those matters between different-minded individuals (mostly to avoid conflict). These are important signs for context because they enable agents to infer other nonperceivable characteristics of the individuals that are related to their visible preferences. 18 Other signs that allow user personalization, such as those that represent membership or belonging, are also important tools for interaction agency. Work information, education, city, and pages ‘liked’ complement user-manipulated signs on Facebook profiles. While work and school information stand for a user’s connections to institutions, allowing others to find them as they become linked to these institutions, the ‘liked’ pages represent the interactions between the agent and

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__________________________________________________________________ other Facebook pages, divided into many categories. 19 Table 2: Complementary profile signs. Sign Work Information

Education

City (current and hometown) Pages I Like

Function regarding control, constraint and anticipation of interactions People tend to add as friends others with whom they share a workplace. This connection can constrain the behaviour of the agents because their connection is based on a formal acquaintance and thus can have consequences at the workplace. Represents belonging or membership to educational institutions and makes it easier for others to find the user through the represented connection. It is also possible to tag colleagues and classmates, creating associative social ties. Control interactions based on location and provide information about the person’s life outside the network. Represent the user’s interaction with Facebook pages, such as celebrities, musicians, sport-related content, books, movies, and so on. Acts as a display of user’s preferences, providing context

We believe that both basic and complementary profile signs can be described as semiotic shortcuts because they are integrated into the profiles and perform different, but complementary, roles as interaction agents. Signs enable users to make inferences and to extract meanings from the information displayed on virtual profiles, making it easier to process information and acting as epistemic shortcuts that orient decision-making regarding social interaction. 4. Conclusion Profiles, as spaces structured by signs, reduce the complexity of environments designed to scaffold relationships and therefore enable novel forms of computer mediated interaction. We argue in this paper that profiles on social network sites can be described as semiotic niches, in the sense that they are spaces structured by signs that perform many roles as interaction mediators and agents. Taking Facebook profiles as an example, we described signs whose significance allows agents to control interaction by anticipating future action or constraining inappropriate action (in terms of social norms and conventions). Signs that integrate virtual profiles behave as epistemic shortcuts that reduce the effort of

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__________________________________________________________________ virtual relationships by simplifying mental computation, making participants’ intentions clearer to the network and providing context for interaction. As such, they are tools for interaction agency. The mediating function of SNS’ profiles depends on the semiotic processes that agents perform—interpreting and signifying every sign they interact with in the environment. Our goal was to demonstrate the ways in which the production and manipulation of signs on virtual profiles create epistemic spaces structured by semiotic shortcuts that facilitate decision-making processes regarding the formation and maintenance of social ties. While our work focused only on verbal signs, we believe that the other categories of signs that compose virtual profiles also have an important role as mediators of users’ interaction. Charles Sanders Peirce’s classification of signs provides useful insights into the relation between signs and behaviour, and thus will be analysed in our future research.

Notes 1

Ed Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 290-291. Epistemic mediators, in this sense, are external representations that enable people to perform manipulative abduction. Lorenzo Magnani, ‘Creative Abduction as Active Shaping of Knowledge. Epistemic and Ethical Mediators’, Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci2004 (Chicago, 2004), 880. 3 Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10, No. 8 (2006): 370-374, doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.012.; Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 4 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Semiosis and Living Membranes’, in Advanced Issues on Cognitive Science and Semiotics, ed. João Queiroz and Priscila Farias (Shaker Verlag, 2006), 19-36; Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘The Semiotic Niche’, Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 9 (2008): 5-30. 5 See note 7 below; David Kirsh, ‘Thinking with External Representations’, AI and Society, 25 (2010): 441-454. 6 Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment’, 371. 7 Andy Clark, ‘Supersizing the Mind’, 62. 8 Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment.’ 9 Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic provides a three-fold classification of signs (icon, index, and symbols), which are defined by the relationship between the sign and its object, generating interpretants—the meaning of this relation as understood by the interpreting mind. As this chapter has a limited space and scope, the discussion of how each category of sign can provide control of the meaning and create constrains needs to be further developed by the authors in subsequent work. 10 Hoffmeyer, ‘The Semiotic Niche’, 13. 2

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__________________________________________________________________ 11

Kirsh and Maglio, ‘On Distinguishing Epistemic’. danah boyd and Judith Donath, ‘Public Displays of Connection’, BT Technology Journal 22, No. 4 (2004): 73-78; danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), (2007). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html; danah boyd, ‘Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications’, in A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, ed. by Zizi Papacharissi (New York: Routledge, 2010): 39-58. 13 boyd and Donath, ‘Public Displays’. 14 See note 17 below. 15 Judith Donath, ‘Signals in Social Supernets’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1) (2007), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html. 16 Mark Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78-6 (1973): 1360-1380. 17 Judith Donath, ‘Signals in Social Supernets’. 18 In the US, for example, where two parties stand for opposing positions in many important affairs, declaring preference for the Democrat or the Republican party has a lot of meaning, because there are many unobservable aspects of the person's personality that can be inferred when this knowledge is available before interaction 19 The Likes are the pages that the user chooses to interact with. They are divided into: music, television, activities, sports, athletes, sports teams, games, interests, and pages, and can be on behalf of artists, bands, teams, companies, brands, and so on. 12

Bibliography boyd, danah. ‘Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications’. In A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, edited by Zizi Papacharissi, 39-58. New York: Routledge, 2010. boyd, danah, and Nicolle Ellison. ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship’. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11, 2007. Viewed 3 May 2012. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html. boyd, danah, and Judith Donath. ‘Public Displays of Connection’. In BT Technology Journal 22, No 4, October, 2004.

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__________________________________________________________________ Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. –—–. ‘Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche’. In Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10, No. 8 (2006): 370–374. –—–. Natural Born-Cyborg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Donath, Judith. ‘Signals in Social Supernets’. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication No. 13 (2008): 231-251. Viewed 3 May 2012. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html. Granovetter, Mark. ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’. In American Journal of Sociology 78 (6) (1973): 1360–1380. Hoffmeyer, Joseph. ‘Semiosis and Living Membranes’. In Advanced Issues on Cognitive Science and Semiotics, edited by João Queiroz and Priscila Farias, 19– 36. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2006. –—–. ‘The Semiotic Niche.’ In Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 9 (2008): 5–30. Hutchins, Ed. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. –—–. ‘Distributed Cognition’. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2068-2072. 2001. Kirsh, David. ‘Thinking with External Representations’. In AI and Society 25 (2010): 441–454. –—–. ‘The Intelligent Use of Space.’ In Artificial Intelligence 73, Nos. 1-2 (1995): 31–68. Kirsh, David, and Paul Maglio. ‘On Distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic Actions.’ In Cognitive Science (1995). Magnani, Lorenzo. ‘Creative Abduction as Active Shaping of Knowledge. Epistemic and Ethical Mediators’. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2004), 879-884, Chicago, 2004. Menary, Robert. ‘Writing as Thinking.’ In Language Sciences 29 (2007): 621–632.

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__________________________________________________________________ Menary, Robert, ed. The Extended Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2010. Patricia Rossini is a Masters student in Communications at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. Her research interest is the effect of technology on many aspects of people's behaviour, including Political Communication, Social Media, Cognitive and Semiotic Niches, and technologies. Her current research and writing is focused on the influence or effect of social network sites in young voters’ political decision and access to information. João Queiroz is a Professor at the Institute of Arts and Design and at the Graduate Studies Program in Communication, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brasil. He is the Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems (IJSSS). His research interests include: the emergence and evolution of semiotic complexity, cognitive technologies, complexity studies, Peirce's semiotic, and pragmatism.

Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The World According to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats Petra Rehling Abstract Walrus, better known as LOLrus (icanhascheezburger.com), has uttered a very common mantra of our times: We are constantly searching for something and assign meaning to the simplest things, thus underlining the ‘thingification’ of everyday culture by trying to bestow sense on boring lives and profane identities. Walrus’s tormented question, the ‘Saga of LOLrus,’ is an epic search that resembles our own—a search that has become the focus of various sites and phenomena on the Internet. Consequently, our existence is often ridiculed by LOLcats, which habitually indulge in invisible objects and—in silent celebration— make fun of human skills, beliefs, desires, and occupations. They have given a linguistically-challenged voice to the endearing stupidities and idiosyncrasies of ‘hoomanz.’ At the same time, Matt Harding, a ‘nobody’ who became a global Internet celebrity by accident, has literally danced around the world for us, stressing the fact that in times of GPS and geotagging it is truly important to physically locate ourselves inside this digitized universe. Are Walrus, Matt and LOLcats just a source for daily laughter, much like cartoon pages in newspapers used to be, or have they become modern figureheads for our self-definition and life’s simplicity, much like the late Steve Jobs seems to have become? Are they leading our bucket quests? While LOLcats hold up a mirror to a flawed humanity, Matt Harding and Steve Jobs have managed to ‘summarize’ the world for us with however censored inventories. In an era of intense discomfort, with disasters and apocalyptic visions all around, ‘iThings,’ Internet memes, and viral videos are flowing through our lives like hyperlinks in our social networks and have taken on a central role in our daily pursuit of happiness. Key Words: LOLcats, Matt Harding, Pursuit of Happiness, Steve Jobs, meme, viral video. ***** 1. Introduction There is a reason for the ‘celebratory’ title of this chapter. The two phenomena discussed here are well-known entertainment sources in recent online culture that provide their audiences with versions of the world of digital natives in a kind of self-congratulatory and cheerful manner. The Internet has undeniably become a major supplier of pre-packaged emotions and destroyer of boredom. 1 From being a divine gift, ‘being happy’ has slowly evolved into a human obligation and culminated in today’s semi-tragic, self-indulgent Western culture. 2 This article

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__________________________________________________________________ focuses on two cyberculture phenomena and their versions of the human condition in the age of the Internet. Dancing Matt Harding’s videos and LOLcat images are creative endeavours with different histories and backgrounds that target the same audience. One phenomenon deals with the people living in this world, the other with the world itself. There is a certain playfulness implied in both ‘cats’ and ‘dance.’ It is significant that both phenomena are also closely related to advertising and the commercialization of user-generated content. It appears that the last thing people want in their lives today is more complexity. Simplification and easiness are major catchwords. As a result, some principles in the media are beginning to sound more and more like advertising slogans: Simple pleasures! Easy going! Easy access! Easy learning! In understanding this condition, it is important to look at what we consider to be frequent injections of happiness and pleasure into our lives from the Web. It is also imperative to observe how ubiquitous digital devices are shaping the manner, frequency, and motivation of this pleasure consumption. How do pleasure sites like the ones discussed here reflect humanity, and how have the gadgets we own changed our desires and our being in space? More and more we utilise ‘iThings’ to locate ourselves in the world. New gadgets enable us to carry around our identities like items and to organize and structure our lives with software. As part of a ritual, we participate willingly in narrowing down life experiences to what the technological devices enable (allow?) us to do. This article looks at how ‘the quirks of gadgets’ have become extensions of ourselves and begun to shift our identities. 3 Pramod Nayar rightfully demands that we need to know what ‘versions’ of the world appear on our screens, how the Internet orients the world to us and in return informs our orientation to the world. 4 Steve Jobs put the self-confirmatory ‘i’ before merchandise and showed a certain LOLcat-like disregard for grammar in his iconic Apple slogan ‘Think Different.’ With his simple, ‘beautiful’ devices, Steve—and in today’s world we are all on a first-name basis—has empowered people to carry around what feels like ‘the world in their pockets.’ When Walrus from the LOLcats site thus cries out ‘Wheres mah bukkit?’ it is apparent that we are not dealing with a real or virtual bucket, but with a very common mantra of our times. Walrus, the big, slow and lovable ‘guy,’ has something that defines him: his ‘iBucket.’ Like him, we are constantly searching for ‘something’ in life, and the ‘thingification’ of today’s culture has conveniently applied meaning to even the most profane items and situations. Steve has created the ultimate tools to navigate through cyberculture. We have become quite attached to our gadgets and constantly want to touch and ‘engage’ with our new toys. GPS phones are now like a beacon for our presence in the world. We are someone, somewhere, sometime and, often without our knowledge, a digital record of all our past whereabouts exists. Apple and Steve Jobs have summarized customer desires in their mobile devices and given us the ultimate ‘iBucket.’ Our everyday objects are turning into addictive artefacts that are changing our lives. Lash and Lury write:

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__________________________________________________________________ In the biographies of our objects of global culture industry, there is a flattening-out: an emptying-out of use-value… . Now culture is more like design: we experience it more like the inhabitants of designed spaces. We experience culture now first through use, second on its surfaces and third from the inside. 5 Are we buying our way into happiness? Certainly, but this is no longer about money, at least that’s what we are made to believe. And when Steve tells us to ‘Think Different,’ that is what we do. Therefore, even if we are not going anywhere today, we feel much more connected to the world and aware of where we are. So, this is not about ‘Where the hell is Matt?’ but ‘Where am I?’ It is not enough that we ‘are’ somewhere in the world, it is important to be there with ‘meaning.’ Generally speaking, these ‘awesome’ new mobile devices that we now own, are creating a desire to be away, so that we can use our tools to report back our ‘being away’ to others. We are seldom completely in the here and now anymore. Coyne speculates, ‘Perhaps tracking, mapping, speed, efficiency, precision, and knowing where replace being there.’ 6 Networked lives have become extended timelines, and if your timeline is empty, so is your life. The simple and boring has to become special to make us feel we are living meaningful lives; and with the help of pervasive digital media even familiar places and activities can be rendered strange and exciting. 7 We are not boring. Today, we have witty cats speak for us, sometimes to avoid responsibility for what is being said, Steve is our idol and cyber-philosopher, and Matt a modern geographer. In a time when indexing the world has become a prerogative, when books and pictures are archived for eternity, space needs to be archived too. Thus we are taking an inventory of statements, places, people, and belongings, as if we are about to go into a divorce any minute, but, most importantly, we are having fun doing so. 2. LOLworld LOLcats are image macros of cat pictures with grammatically incorrect captions, which made their first regular appearance on Saturdays, renamed ‘Caturdays,’ on the image posting board 4chan.org around 2006. Several types or ‘memes’ keep returning and have become staple images of the site, such as ‘Monorail cat,’ or the ‘invisible something,’ which show cats holding invisible objects like sandwiches or pushing invisible lawnmowers. The ‘I Can Has Cheezburger?’ website was founded in 2007 by two Hawaiian bloggers, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, and sold for $2 million to journalist Ben Huh in October 2008. 8 In the first nine months after its launch the site had 200,000 unique visitors and around 500 submissions a day. 9 In May 2010 traffic had gone up to a record 16 million unique visitors and around 18,000 daily submissions. 10 By now, the Cheezburger network has become a constantly growing enterprise.

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__________________________________________________________________ Photographers have long since noticed that cats can be humanized more easily than other animals, as their agility allows them to mimic human postures. LOLcat memes can be seen as a form of embodiment, following in the footsteps of avatars, smileys, and emoticons. As independent spirits in dependent positions who live instinctively in a controlled universe, they rebel against their bonds, follow their bellies, live out their dreams and desires, and remove any obstacles with force. LOLcats are personified flaws, and their biggest flaw is to believe that they have none. Their world seems so familiar, because it is our world, or, to be more precise, it is our world in the age of the Internet, part cyberworld, part material reality. It is a world of repetition and dialogue among images. These cats are leading (nine) lives full of statements and one-liners. Paying attention to appearances, surfaces, textures, shapes, and designs has become a major driving force of today’s commercial culture. LOLcats are articulating basic truths and lies about humanity with a micro focus on their immediate environment, on the flavours (I has a flavor) of household items, food, furniture, technology, humans, and other cats surrounding them. Any dynamic movement of LOLcats is frozen in stills. It is in this second, when a picture is taken, that the cat becomes something entirely different, is wrenched out of time and space and placed into another body and context. Like in a pantomime, the physical body is embodying both human and object, thus hinting at a symbiosis of the two while simultaneously making the body appear contorted and uncanny. Pictures and videos are now instrumental in modelling our daily mood, as we often do not have the time to invest much effort into long and complex narratives. Daily jokes that we used to find in newspapers are now consumed in feeds or streams that we carry around in our pockets. Our new virtual worlds are all about the next hilarious remark and everydayness. 11 ‘LOLz,’ short for funny image macros, need to be shared, because in the absence of ‘real’ conversations, it is important to share with others the statements in our life that currently make sense. There are a lot of flaws in LOLcat world, because imperfections make people laugh. However, the human condition we are observing is a highly censored version of ‘humanity.’ Although there are obvious attempts to keep the site controversy free, people have other intentions and fierce discussions occasionally reveal users’ discontent with images they perceive to be offensive. 3. Celebrate Earth Since 2005, Matt Harding, or ‘Dancing Matt,’ has been taking his ‘happy dance’ around the world. Matt is one of the most persistent internet celebrities on YouTube. This ordinary guy, who calls himself a ‘deadbeat from Connecticut’ on his website, which has the catchy title ‘Where the hell is Matt?,’ is slowly turning from viral video celebrity into a brand and a travel and peace ambassador. 12 Matt put his first travel video onto his webpage in January 2005. After this video had turned viral, Stride Gum sponsored his second video, in 2006. The year 2008 has

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__________________________________________________________________ been the high point in Matt’s ‘career’ so far. He made his third video, again sponsored by Stride. This time it shows Matt dancing around the world with groups of people dancing with him. His latest work, about two and a half years in the making, came out on June 20, 2012. Matt’s is a narrative worth exploring. He is returning to places he has been to before, he has added comments in his blog, created ‘Making of’ videos, and recycled his choice music. All his videos are entitled ‘Dancing’ and are logically connected, since each consecutive video builds on ideas of the previous one. The idea to dance with people, for instance, was first explored in a few scenes of the second video, before it became the theme of the third. His latest video shows the first traces of an acknowledgement of geopolitics and local dance by leaving his signature dance behind. It is logical that these ideas will become more pronounced in a fifth film. Another development is that, despite all the international locations, a much more pronounced ‘America and the World’ dichotomy has entered the last film. By now, Matt can make a living from his idea. His latest advertisement, from February 2012, for instance, is a glossy commercial for Hotels.com. In his first three videos Matt visits few historical sites or characteristic landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower or Machu Picchu. As travellers usually take places like these to be the high points of a journey, it deserves looking into this approach. With a few outstanding exceptions, many of Matt’s spaces appear random and ‘common,’ and often without any ethnic or cultural markers that could help to identify the location without the caption. Matt’s videos are oddly touching, especially the third one, despite their increasingly rehearsed manner. However, randomness and improvisation, the accidental aesthetics of the first movie, have become design in the second, third and fourth. Matt’s simple dance does not take away from the spectacle of the world he presents. The fact that these films are not a list of the Seven World Wonders is exactly the reason why so many people have come to see them as evidence for what an amazing planet this really is. Matt’s style of dancing, his ‘happy dance,’ is conceived as a sign of joy, but from the start the dance is a foreign movement in the space it occupies. It does not harmonize with the environment; it is rather a disruption of the usual dynamics of a place. In the group shots, even though each person brings her or his own dance to the scene, we can hardly identify individuals. The group’s body replaces the individual’s body of the first two films. They move as one. The value of each local aesthetic lies in keeping up the illusion of ‘authenticity,’ which is disrupted by the dance. The group does not invalidate this feeling of sameness to the world, it rather amplifies it. Time and place are out of sync. We have no camera movement other than the camera moving around the world. It remains in a fixed position for each scene. The definition of space is varied and flexible, even more so when the performer becomes more experimental with his interpretation. The music serves to ‘order’ the chaos, as does the dance. The dance is holding the whole thing together, the mundane and the extraordinary,

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__________________________________________________________________ placing famous locations like the Eiffel Tower alongside anonymous ones, thereby rendering them less insignificant. In Matt’s videos it is the ‘I’ that occupies space; Matt makes all places ‘his space.’ Matt gives us a summary of the world, conveniently cutting out the less disturbing locations of the world. Once people recognized such a sampler existed, they did not want to be excluded; they wanted to be on Matt’s map and felt disappointed, even angry, when they discovered that he hadn’t been to ‘their’ place. If there is an inventory of the world to be made, we definitely want to be on it. In the two Discovery Channel commercials from 2008 and 2009 known as ‘The world is just awesome,’ or ‘Boom de yada,’ people are singing ‘I love the whole world.’ The ads have taken Matt’s idea of making a summary of the world one step further. Like Matt’s videos, these commercials are giving us the world as a song in celebration of Earth. Today our culture and social identities are defined by random likes and dislikes. The Discovery ads are equally random collections of ideas, animals, theories, people and places. ‘We love the whole world’: consequently, it has become our daily chore to find more disconnected items to ‘like’ and add to the list. 4. The Bucket Quest Even though pleasure projects and sites like those of Matt and LOLcats are not meant to be critical or scary, because that would invalidate their intention to entertain, they still need to be understood for the sense of community and reality they project on their consumers. Truth is that we do not love the whole world and are denied the option of making a list of all the things we dislike on our profiles, as that might project negativity about ourselves. Matt’s films stand for many of the characteristics of cyberculture today— collaboration and participation, for enticing user-generated content, for networking and globalization—but they also stand for a number of ‘invisible’ concepts that, along with the cat’s sandwich, are still present somehow: race, gender, class, sexual orientation, belief, and politics. As much as we would like to apply importance to Matt and LOLcats, in general they serve the same purpose as ‘Snowball, the dancing cockatoo,’ to create smiles in viewers, who increasingly desire these moments of instant happiness from the Web. Social networks are feeding this desire perfectly, as we can continuously scroll down to the next best remark, image, or video on these sites and apps. We can comment on the wittiness of a link and our statement may even get a few ‘likes’ in return. No effort today is complete without us ‘sharing’ it with someone, though. Today we live in a world that implies that we have ideas like Matt’s to share and tools like Steve’s to share it with. With the ultimate digital gadgets in our pockets, we can go wherever we want to go, since the world we live in moves with us.

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__________________________________________________________________ Any narratives we crave now are short and comprehensive. A picture or a video speaks a thousand words, and we have begun to outsource the creation of our identities on top of much bigger themes like history and geopolitics. We let cats speak for us because their ironic voices feel more true to us than our own. And while it is fun to create these snippets of wisdom, the wisdom of LOLcats and the wishful videos of ‘world peace,’ it is Walrus that has caught the real tragedy of human existence, the eternal unquenched desire to define ourselves through things. Walrus, also known as LOLrus, is just another incarnation of us; he is a big, fatty, charming guy that lost his beloved blue bucket and has been looking for it ever since. Walrus is telling us that the material objects that come and go in our lives are like sad memories, a poor man’s bucket. The Internet’s makers decided that it was about time that things started to talk back to us. And that is what they are doing right now, along with animals and small children. There is a popular fad on the internet. People are sending in pictures of their iThings taken in front of a place in their hometown, from all over the world, to the iLounge Photo Gallery. 13 It seems Bucket, like Matt, is not only somewhere meaningful and going places, but people already feel inclined to follow. Like Walrus, we have become so obsessed with our new gadgets that they do not even have to disappear for us to start missing them. We need to hold them constantly and post their pictures on Facebook to share their existence: ‘See? I has a bukkit!’

Notes 1

Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: Now Not to Liberate the World (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 80. 2 Darrin McMahon, The Pursuit of Happiness (London: Penguin, 2006), 12. 3 Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget (London: Penguin, 2010), 4. 4 Pramod K. Nayar, An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21. 5 Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industries (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 195-196. 6 Richard Coyne, The Tuning of Place (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010), 173. 7 Ibid., xxvi. 8 I Can Has Cheezburger?, accessed April 24, 2012, http://icanhascheezburger.com/. 9 Aaron Rutkoff, ‘With “LOLcats” Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke’, The Wall Street Journal (August 25, 2007), accessed April 22, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html. 10 Jenna Wortham, ‘Once Just a Site With Funny Cat Pictures, and Now a Web Empire’, The New York Times, June 13, 2010, accessed April 22, 2012,

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/technology/internet/14burger.html?_r=2. 11 Coyne, Tuning of Place, 75. 12 Matt Harding, ‘Where The Hell Is Matt?’, accessed April 23, 2012, http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/. 13 iLounge, ‘iLounge Galleries’, accessed April 23, 2012, http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/gallery/.

Bibliography Coyne, Richard. The Tuning of Place. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010. Harding, Matt. ‘Where The Hell Is Matt?’. Accessed April 23, 2012. http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/. I Can Has Cheezburger?. Accessed April 24, 2012. http://icanhascheezburger.com/. iLounge, ‘iLounge Galleries’. Accessed April 23, 2012. http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/gallery/. Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget. London: Penguin, 2010. Lash, Scott, and Celia Lury. Global Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. McMahon, Darrin. The Pursuit of Happiness. London: Penguin, 2006. Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: Now Not to Liberate the World. London: Allen Lane, 2011. Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Rutkoff, Aaron. ‘With “LOLcats” Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke’. The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2007. Accessed April 22, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html. Wortham, Jenna. ‘Once Just a Site with Funny Cat Pictures, and Now a Web Empire’. The New York Times, June 13, 2010. Accessed April 22, 2012.

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/technology/internet/14burger.html?_r=2. Petra Rehling is Associate Professor in the English Department at Da-yeh University, Taiwan. Her research interests are media and cultural studies. She has published a book on Hong Kong cinema and articles on television, fantasy, science fiction and the Harry Potter phenomenon.

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Part 2 Posthuman Aesthetics

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Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The Case of The Netherlands Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea Abstract Computers and electronics have been crucial to the understanding of the last few decades. The emergence of new media has changed how we perceive and relate to our environment. If we take into account that videogames have become, by income, the main cultural and leisure industry, it becomes necessary to analyse their influence in our lives. Their impact has not been limited to everyday life but it has also reached other seemingly unrelated fields. This can be verified by looking at new frontiers and research in Architecture. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the origins and main characteristics of the merging of media and architecture. Architects have started using computing as a basic tool for developing new aesthetics. The utopias that mixed building and machines slowly started to move beyond the science fiction realm to become real. The importance attributed to pop culture, as well as the research in new architecturally-related technologies in the Netherlands, has made this country a focus of this phenomenon. Through a qualitative analysis of texts, projects, and interviews with experts, I have approached works of Dutch offices like MVRDV, ONL, or UN studio. These are perfect examples of this new method of designing, researching, and looking for a new relationship between media and architecture. My main objective is to show how videogames have crossed the mere playing frontiers, to influence a new generation, changing along the way not only how architects, but also how their users, deal with these changing buildings. I plan to delve further into this issue in future research. Key Words: Videogames, architecture, The Netherlands, Dutch, hyperbody, MVRDV, ONL, UN Studio, interactivity, city. ***** 1. Introduction Digital games are ‘any interactive game operated by computer circuitry.’ 1 During the last forty years, videogames have entered our lives. Separated by a ‘porous membrane’, 2 our physical world is influencing our digital ones and vice versa. The number of players and the average time dedicated to digital playing have been growing incessantly. 3 These increments have led some researchers, like J. McGonigal, to affirm that they are ‘fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy.’ 4 Being already the most consumed cultural product by sales in some countries, 5 it seems reasonable to think that digital games are strongly influencing our collective imaginary. Situationists said that ‘play...

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__________________________________________________________________ must invade the whole of life.’ 6 Utopian architectural projects, like Fun Palace (1959) of C. Price or Plug in city (1964) by P. Cook, already depicted an interest in creating ludic spaces applying technology. From then on, technologies have evolved and some architects have kept researching this field. Knowing that each medium models our perception, 7 my hypothesis is that videogames have modified our sense of time and space. Therefore, my objective in this chapter is to trace the existing connections between videogames and architecture. 2. Structure and Methodology In this research, I apply a qualitative methodology for delving into these links between videogames and architecture. I base my study in bibliographic research, a critical analysis of semi-structured interviews with experts, 8 and artistic-historical analysis of architectural projects. I focus on a period of approximately fifteen years in The Netherlands. My chronology is defined by the appearance of the first depictions of 3D space in games. Wolfenstein 3D, released by id Software in 1992 was the first game that built a three dimensional space. It would take some years for videogames to appropriate and configure this feature to develop their own language. Therefore, my chronology starts around 1995 and ends in 2010. The phenomenon I study is in an embryonic state. I suppose that it appears only in areas with high economical and industrial development. In this context, I have chosen to study the work of Dutch architects because they show a special sensibility towards innovation though the application of technology, 9 pop culture, and playfulness. In this chapter I am specifically focusing on the work of the generation that set up their studios around the 1990s. I will first introduce the main spatial characteristics of videogames in order to trace them in architecture. Then, I present the Dutch context, to focus on later in case studies. I analyse critically the projects and discourse of MVRDV, ONL, and UN Studio that can be related to videogames. Finally, I present my conclusions while proposing future lines of research. 3. Videogames and Space: Transparent Cities Fictional worlds in digital games are one of their main characteristics and sets them apart from other games. 10 Videogames create spatial environments that can be accessed through screens and technological devices. Prior to 3D environments, videogames applied the resources of previous media to construct space. The arrival of more powerful processors and increasing memory storage allowed them to offer coherent 3D representations of space. 11 Nevertheless, their revolutionary feature was the increasingly growing sensation of navigational and action freedom in those 3D spaces. The players relate to space through avatars 12 in an indirect physical interaction, yet the actions they decide with controllers are immediately reflected and answered on the screen. Interaction has been evolving towards the simplification of controls and the increase of comprehensive sensorial experiences

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__________________________________________________________________ and coherence in actions. More intuitive interfaces have appeared. All of these developments aim to generate a deeper feeling of immersion. Every game needs to generate a space where the laws of our physical reality are temporarily suspended, letting the rules of the game work. This space is called, the ‘magic circle.’ 13 J. McGonigal points out that those game rules ‘unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking’, 14 generally focusing on the achievement of a goal. The magic circle creates a safe environment, where participation is ‘voluntary.’ 15 To maintain the magic circle, the gameplay has to keep the attention and motivation of the players by using different types of feedback, and without becoming too difficult or easy. These elements generate immersion, and as long as the players feel it, the magic circle exists. The postmodernist transparency theory 16 indicates a tendency to forget that the experience is being mediated by technology. Therefore, applying it to videogames, the experience of their worlds is felt as real, as physical spatial experiences. If the border between videogames and physical reality is porous, in the same way as physical environments are influencing videogames, we could find new ludic relationships with physical space. They should be technologically mediated interactions, enhancers of ‘engagement’ and ‘collective attention’ as well as tools for a creative attitude. 4. Playfulness and Architecture in The Netherlands: Cases of Study After World War Two, Amsterdam became the first city to design a plan for a comprehensive group of playgrounds. They were a ‘polycentric net’, distributed in ‘interstitial’ spaces that were proposed by communities that turned them into ‘participatory public spaces.’ 17 This model would be applied later to urban planning. In 1959, Situationists were invited to create an exhibition for the Stedelijk Museum, in which they planned to apply their urban theories by installing a labyrinth in the Museum. 18 In parallel and under their influence, Constant Nieuwenhuys was working on his urban project, New Babylon. In this utopian project, technology would bring prosperity to allow the advent of the homo ludens, 19 for whom 'space is a ‘toy.’’ 20 These three projects not only were influential, they point towards a peculiar sensibility and value of the relationship between play and the city. A quick survey of books and exhibitions about architecture and new technologies shows frequent references to Dutch architects. This led us to look for specific relationships in this territory between Architecture and videogames. Videogames started to enter the home market in the eighties, and by the end of that decade computer-programming courses began to enter the curricular programs of architecture schools. 21 At that moment, a generation of Dutch architects were completing their studies, while others started to consolidate their offices. R. Koolhaas, a key figure for understanding contemporary Dutch architecture, was one of the latter, with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). He has insisted on the need to adapt architecture to its cultural context. 22 Nevertheless, it

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__________________________________________________________________ would be the generation that was studying in the eighties that would take a step further. I found three approaches to architectural linkages with videogames: theoretical, conceptual applications to projects, and aesthetical. I will apply them to the study of ONL, MVRDV and UN Studio. A. Theoretical. It can be Conceptual or Used as a Tool i. Conceptual: Architects have researched concepts that are key elements of the perceptual experience of videogames: interactivity with technological devices in real time, communication, new architectural experiences, immersion. K. Oosterhuis studied at TU Delft and the Architectural Association (AA). He started to work with the artist I. Lénárd in the late 1980’s, founding ONL. Their premise was merging art, architecture, and new technologies. Oosterhuis has developed a theory for a ‘quiet revolution,’ which understands ‘buildings as a medium’. He states that we are ‘idiot savants’ when relating with computers, and that architecture had to be redefined by literally merging with this technology. He proposed ‘swarm architecture’, 23 in which every element of the building should be active, connected and interacting harmoniously with all the others and with its users continuously ‘in real time.’ 24 The continuous streaming of information allows new computerized design techniques, avoiding ‘Platonic geometry.’ 25 This leads to ‘e-motive architecture’, proactive architecture that can be adapted and reprogrammed while being able to ‘stimulate [its users] to act and explore.’ 26 Architects must take a democratic approach in the design process, and must actively work with engineers and ‘deploy game theory.’ 27 ii. Tool: The creation of videogames by architects is especially significant, as they considered it the best manner of reflecting their research or trying to find more effective tools. In 2000-2001 Oosterhuis started teaching his ideas at TU Delft. There, he created the Hyperbody centre with an associate Research Group. ONL and Hyperbody use game development software like Nemo or Virtools 28 and have developed serious games 29 as art installations, like ProtoCITY 2005 ++ (2005), 30 or multiplayer collaborative design and planning tools, like the protoPLAN DESIGN TOOL (2006). 31 Oosterhuis is interested in their engines and their capacity for creating new alive worlds, although he is disappointed with the urban vision videogames generally offer. MVRDV started in 1993 as a group of three principal architects educated in the TU Delft, although W. Maas, their media figure, ‘fascinated by the[ir] research,’ had contacts with the Architectural Association. J. van Rijs and W. Maas had been

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__________________________________________________________________ working in OMA, while N. De Vries worked at Mecanoo. 32 MVRDV focused on new processes of design and urban planning, and from an iconoclastic position they researched how to use great amounts of data for managing ‘datatowns.’ 33 For analysing and visualizing data, they worked on developing software and computer animations, the aim was optimizing and clarifying concepts. Various are their theoretical projects following these premises, which they later apply to their designs. 34 With the ‘accumulated knowledge’ of their previous works, Regionmaker and Climatizer, appeared Spacefighter: The Evolutionary City (2007). 35 It is a digital game ‘meant to model the complexity of time-based competitive urban developments.’ 36 This tool for urban planning aimed to democratise this task, engaging individuals interactively and continuously in this field. 37 It can become an analytical and critical tool, and can also offer the chance to generate unpredictable directions. W. Maas finds videogames interesting because they are a greatly ‘successful media’ that is constructed on ‘an intellectual model’ defined by ‘evolution’. Their capacity for optimizing and generating adaptability will gradually be applied in architecture, because automation is already happening. B. Conceptual Applications to Projects The application of concepts related to videogames in architectural projects shows a quest for a new architecture. New spaces adapted to new informational and experiential values and uses are possible due to the appearance of new computational technologies. These projects represent the merger between the physical and the digital, with an increasing interest in avoiding prosthetic results. This reveals a growth in the confluence of the work of architects and engineers. Experts are needed from the beginning of the projects and teams grow in members. Many of the most experimental projects of ONL and Hyperbody have not been built or remain as prototypes. One of the most significant built works of ONL was the Web of North-Holland (2002), created for the Floriade World Exhibition and later, transformed in the iWeb that housed the protoSpace 2.0 Laboratory of Hyberbody. This ‘sculpturebuilding’ 38 was converted into an ‘augmented design studio’ whose interior allowed collaborative work in real time, with different interactive elements: movement and pressure detection, projections, speech recognition, etc. That same year, they proposed Digital Pavilion for Seoul, ‘a complex adaptive robotic system of interacting installations’ 39 that intended to show the technological advances. The complex interior was planned to offer a fully sensorial immersive experience. UN Studio heads are the architect B. van Berkel, graduated from the Architectural Association, and C. Bos, art historian. The duality of practice and theory provided the office with a clear internal discourse. UN Studio has been interested in how the complex forces related to architecture could relate to its own shapes, like ‘how to translate time to space.’ 40 For this reason, they started to use

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__________________________________________________________________ diagrams, ‘multidimensional graphics’, 41 that showed the dynamic relationships of those forces. They researched how software could help, and started to use CAD in 1990. 42 This new tool showed a new fluid way to work in which information and forces continuously and immediately modelled the shapes of architecture and challenged traditional ‘assumptions’. Mixing these concepts, they worked in structures ‘without a geometry.’ 43 This led them to reflect on the perception of space and how to make it dynamic and interactive. Their projects with videogames were experimental. They applied the philosophy of gaming to two installation projects for leisure spaces. One focused on what activities could take place in an airplane and the other reflected on different behaviours at different times of the day in a collective space for exhibition projects. In some of their built projects, I trace some elements that can be linked to videogames. The Changing Room (2008) was a temporary folie that through its plastic white curved shapes and its interior game projections altered space perceptions. 44 While still keeping the same aesthetical characteristics, Burnham Pavilion (2009) added a new feature, interactivity. Instead of video loops, here the lighting reacted to the presence of visitors detected by a system of sensors, hardware, and software which would change colours and patterns. 45 C. Aesthetical Although this category shows a direct awareness and use of the imagery of videogames by architects, I find it the poorest connection since it is just a formalist approach. This approach can be found in some publications by MVRDV, such as Visionary Cities (2008). The influence of SimCity is noticeable in the image 46 where they ask if it is possible to build a collective dream. The Enter the Matrix 47 videogame is mentioned after stating that images of future cities produced by media enter the ‘popular consciousness [...] determining the future of our cities.’ 48 Later on they wonder if architects and urbanists should not become the authors of our cities and therefore determine the future. The interest in pop culture and its repercussions in architecture is evidenced by these statements, but the allusions to videogames do not deepen in its complexity. 5. Results and Conclusions The previously analysed architectural studios share interests and characteristics in creating a new type of architecture answering to a new context of complexity in which an experience economy is rising. These studios continue the research of avant-garde architects on merging technology and architecture. They have reflected, consciously or not, on key concepts related to digital games, 49 reaching to research about their use as tools for theory and practice. Their offices have become big and interdisciplinary, becoming especially interested in merging engineering and art, 50 while denying the role of the architect as the ultimate creator.

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__________________________________________________________________ Nevertheless, at least in the beginning, the architects define the rules that delimit the possible interactions with the space, as game designers. Applying software to design is innovative, both formally and structurally, and represents an innovation in mass production and in testing new architectural materials. In these hybrid projects, there is a growing importance of the immaterial. Their designs make use of software and hardware that manage different visual displays and responsive devices. Light allows these works to ‘skin dress’, have innovate functions, and communicate during the night. The objective is generating a comprehensive sensorial, and therefore emotional, experience in order to stimulate a direct and active communication with citizens while offering a ludic event. This enhances a new feeling of immersion, seemingly with the purpose to gain a social role of community and space engagement, proposing new spatial approaches. These changes in the perception of buildings relate to a dynamic and immediate sense of time, 51 like games. The projects built were thought as public, temporary and were linked to exhibitions or commemorations. But they are ‘glocal’, 52 the individual experience is shared with a collective and although they were built for a concrete context, they became representative at a world level. These works answer to a concrete consumer oriented model that can be related to Postmodern ideas. But their proposals are also connected to the utopian views of the Situationists and Archigram that aimed for a democratic, creative and playful experience of the urban. Finding in game play the opportunity to rethink the city and subvert its rules, and having overcome the problems related to the high cost of technologies and sustainability, these projects still have to face the reluctance of commissioners, the market, and some critics. S. McQuire has pointed out the risk of control, manipulation, or ‘hyper-commodification’ 53 that these new environments could bring. A. Picon argues that many remain in a formalist applications and asks if this instability is desirable. 54 Meanwhile, these architects recognize that they are just at the beginning and that we should expect more changes from future generations. In further research, I intend to study the relevance of the TU Delft and the AA as possible seeds for this new architecture, and also examine how a younger generation of architects has claimed to continue working in interactive playfulness.

Notes 1

Henry E. Lowood, ‘Electronic Game’, Encyclopædia Britannica, viewed 22 March 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/183800/electronicgame. 2 Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 147. 3 For further information visit: http://www.newzoo.com.

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Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken (London: The Penguin Press, 2011), 4. Julián Díez, ‘El videojuego ya mueve más que cine y música juntos’, El País 9 April 2008, Viewed 10 April 2012, http://elpais.com/diario/2008/04/09/radiotv/1207692005_850215.html. 6 Guy E. Débord, dir., ‘Contribution to a Situationist Definition of Play’, Internationale Situationniste 1 (1958), viewed 2 May 2012, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/play.html. 7 Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message (Corte Madera,CA: Ginko Press, 2005), 12. 8 During a research stay in the TU Delft for the research for the PhD thesis Ciudades pixeladas, between April and June of 2011, we had the opportunity to interview some experts related with the research. In the present chapter we have included information and cites from the interviews with W. Maas, Principal Architect of MVRDV and head of the Why Factory of the TU Delft; A. Piber, Director and Senior Architect of UN Studio; and K. Oosterhuis, Principal Architect of ONL and head of Hyperbody in TU Delft. I would like to thank them and the Delft School of Design for their kindness. 9 Bert Bongers, Interactivation – Towards an E-cology of People, Our Technological Environment and the Arts (Amsterdam: SIKS Dissertation Series, 2006), 80. 10 Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005), 199. 11 Frans Mäyrä, An Introduction to Game Studies: Games in Culture (London: SAGE, 2008), 90-116. 12 Avatar: an icon or figure representing a particular person in a computer game, Internet forum, etc. ‘Avatar’, Oxford Dictionaries, viewed 10 April 2012, https://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/avatar. 13 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998), 46. 14 McGonigal, Reality is Broken, 21. 15 Huizinga, Homo ludens, 42. 16 Slavoj Zizek, ‘Cyberspace and the Virtuality of the Real’, viewed 10 June 2010, http://www.jcfar.org/past_papers/Cyberspace%20and%20the%20Virtuality%20of %20the%20Real%20-%20Slavoj%20Zizek.pdf, 1. 17 Liane Lefaivre, ‘Ground-up City. The Place of Play’, in Ground-up City. Play as a Design Tool, Liane Lefaivre and Döll (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007), 58. 18 Guy E. Débord, dir. ‘Die Welt als Labyrinth’, Internationale Situationniste 4 (1960), viewed 2 May 2012, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/diewelt.html. 19 Homo Ludens (1938) by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga is one of the most significant studies about playing and games. 5

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Scott McQuire, The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2008), 93. 21 Antoine Picon, Digital Culture in Architecture. An Introduction for the Design Professions (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010), 95. 22 Ibid., 81. 23 Kas Oosterhuis, Towards a New Kind of Building. A Designer’s Guide for Nonstandard Architecture (Rotterdam: NAi, 2011), 16. 24 Kas Oosterhuis, ‘A New Kind of Building’, in Disappearing Architecture from Real to Virtual to Quantum, ed. Georg Flachbart and Peter Weibel (Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2005), 104. 25 Oosterhuis, Towards a New Kind of Building, 28. 26 Ibid., 99. 27 Ibid., 172. 28 Oosterhuis, ‘New Kind of Building’, 104. 29 Serious game: Serious games involve the use of electronic games technologies and methodologies for primary purposes other than entertainment. The purposes include e-Learning, simulation, team building, collaboration, social networking and opinion shaping. Serious Game Institute, ‘What are serious games?’, viewed 7 May 2012, http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk/about.aspx?section=18&item=41&categor y=16. 30 Chris Kievid and Tomasz Jaskiewicz, ‘protoCITY 2005+’, viewed 5 May 2012, http://www.hyperbody.nl/research/projects/protocity-2005/. 31 Chris Kievid and Tomasz Jaskiewicz, ‘Manhal Oasis Masterplan, Applying Swarm Logic to the Urban Scale’, viewed 5 May 2012, http://www.hyperbody.nl/research/projects/manhal-oasis-masterplan/. 32 Cecilia Márquez, Fernando and Richard Levene, eds., ‘MVRDV Biography’, El Croquis 111 (2002): 4-5. 33 Datatown: attempt to summarize contemporary cities only in data. It answers the increasing technical process that rules city planning and architectural design nowadays. CAAC, ‘Datatown’ in Glosario de atributos urbanos. Viewed 6 May 2012, http://www.atributosurbanos.es/terminos/datatown/. 34 Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda, ‘The Space of Optimism [a conversation with Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries]’, El Croquis 111 (2002): 11. 35 SpaceFighter was developed in collaboration in the Delft School of Design (TU Delft), the Berlage Institute, MIT and cThrough. A book explains the project: Maas, Winy, and MVRDV/DSD, Space Fighter: The Evolutionary City (Game:) (New York: Actar-D, 2007).

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Maas, Winy, ‘SPACEFIGHTER. A Game for the Evolutionary City’, in Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, ed. Friedrich van Borries, Steffen P. Walz and Matthias Böttger (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2007), 362. 37 Maas, Winy and MVRDV/DSD, Space Fighter: The Evolutionary City (Game:), 24. 38 Oosterhuis, Towards a New Kind of Building, 97. 39 ONL, ‘Digital Pavilion Seoul. A Complex Adaptive Robotic System of Interacting Installations’, viewed 5 May 2012, http://www.oosterhuis.nl/quickstart/index.php?id=digital-pavilion. 40 Picon, Digital Culture in Architecture, 68. 41 Greg Lynn, ‘Conversation by Modem with Ben van Berkel’, El Croquis 72 [I] (1995): 13. 42 Ibid., 10. 43 Ibid., 14. 44 MESO Digital Interiors, ‘The Changing Room’, viewed 6 May 2012, http://meso.net/UNSVenice08. 45 Studio Daniel Sauter, ‘Burnham Pavilion - Lighting Program’, viewed 6 May 2012, http://danielsauter.com/display.php?project_id=59. 46 Winy Maas et al., Visionary Cities (Rotterdam; New York: NAi Publishers, 2008), 28-29. 47 Ibid., 198. 48 Ibid., 196-197. 49 Marco Biraghi, Storia dell’architettura contemporánea II. 1945-2008 (Torino: Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, 2008), 496. 50 Contemporary art has a longer trayectory in merging with new media and space, some examples are the Works of J. Holzer or R. Lozano-Hemmer. 51 We can relate this to the proposals of Giedion or the Situationists. ‘The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a means of action’. Gilles Ivain, ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, Internationale Situationniste 1 (1953), viewed 2 May 2012, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/formulary.html. 52 Gianni Ranaulo, Light Architecture: New Edge City (Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2001), 28. 53 McQuire, Media City, 108. 54 Picon, Digital Culture in Architecture, 156.

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Bibliography ‘Avatar’ in Oxford Dictionaries. Viewed 10 April 2012. https://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/avatar. Beigl, Michael, Georg Flachbart, and Peter Weibel. Disappearing Architecture from Real to Virtual to Quantum. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2005 Biraghi, Marco. Storia dell’architettura contemporánea II. 1945-2008. Torino: Einaudi, 2008. Bongers, Bert. Interactivation – Towards an E-cology of People, Our Technological Environment and the Arts. Amsterdam: SIKS Dissertation Series, 2006. CAAC, ‘Datatown’. In Glosario de atributos urbanos. Viewed 6 May 2012. http://www.atributosurbanos.es/terminos/datatown/. Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Débord, Guy E., dir.. ‘Contribution to a Situationist Definition of Play’. In Internationale Situationniste 1, 1958. Viewed 2 May 2012. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/play.html. –—–. dir. 1960. ‘Die Welt als Labyrinth’. In Internationale Situationniste 4. Viewed 2 May 2012. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/diewelt.html. Díaz Moreno, Cristina, and García Grinda Efrén. ‘The Space of Optimism [a conversation with Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries]’. El Croquis 111 (2002): 10–30. Díez, Julián, ‘El videojuego ya mueve más que cine y música juntos’. El País 9 April 2008. Viewed 10 April 2012. http://elpais.com/diario/2008/04/09/radiotv/1207692005_850215.html. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998. Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ivain, Gilles. ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’. Internationale Situationniste 1, 1953. Viewed 2 May 2012. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/formulary.html. Kievid, Chris, and Tomasz Jaskiewicz. ‘protoCITY 2005+’. Viewed 5 May 2012. http://www.hyperbody.nl/research/projects/protocity-2005/. –—–. ‘Manhal Oasis Masterplan, Applying Swarm Logic to the Urban Scale’. Viewed 5 May 2012. http://www.hyperbody.nl/research/projects/manhal-oasis-masterplan/. Lefaivre, Liane. ‘Ground-up City. The Place of Play’. In Ground-up City. Play as a Design Tool, by Liane Lefaivre and Döll. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007. Lowood, Henry E. ‘Electronic Game’. Encyclopædia Britannica. Viewed 22 March 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/183800/electronic-game. Lynn, Greg. ‘Conversation by Modem with Ben van Berkel’. El Croquis 72 [I] (1995): 6–15. Maas, Winy. ‘SPACEFIGHTER. A Game for the Evolutionary City’. In Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, ed. Friedrich van Borries, Steffen P. Walz, and Matthias Böttger. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2007. Maas, Winny, and MVRDV/DSD. Space Fighter: The Evolutionary City (Game:). New York: Actar-D, 2007. Maas, Winy, Alexander Sverdlov, Emily Waugh, and Why Factory. Visionary Cities. Rotterdam; New York: NAi Publishers, 2009. Márquez, Cecilia, Fernando and Levene Richard, eds. ‘MVRDV Biography’. El Croquis 111 (2002): 4–5. Mäyrä. Frans. An Introduction to Game Studies: Games in Culture. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008. MESO Digital Interiors. ‘The Changing Room’. Viewed 6 May 2012. http://meso.net/UNSVenice08.

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__________________________________________________________________ McGonigal, Jane. Reality is Broken: Why Games make Us Better and How They can Change the World. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Message. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press, 2005. McQuire, Scott. The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage, 2008. Newzoo. Viewed 1 May 2012. http://www.newzoo.com. ONL, ‘Digital Pavilion Seoul. A Complex Adaptive Robotic System of Interacting Installations’. Viewed 5 May 2012. http://www.oosterhuis.nl/quickstart/index.php?id=digital-pavilion. Oosterhuis, Kas. ‘A New Kind of Building’. In Disappearing Architecture from Real to Virtual to Quantum, edited by Georg Flachbart, and Peter Weibel. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2005. –—–. Towards a New Kind of Building. A Designer’s Guide for Nonstandard Architecture. Rotterdam: NAi, 2011. Picon, Antoine. Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions. Basel: Birkhäuser : [Springer Verlag], 2010. Ranaulo, Gianni. Light Architecture: New Edge City. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2001. Serious Game Institute. ‘What are Serious Games?’. Viewed 7 May 2012. http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk/about.aspx?section=18&item=41&categor y=16. Studio Daniel Sauter. ‘Burnham Pavilion - Lighting Program’. Viewed 6 May 2012. http://danielsauter.com/display.php?project_id=59. Zizek, Slavoj, ‘Cyberspace and the Virtuality of the Real’. Viewed 10 June 2010. http://www.jcfar.org/past_papers/Cyberspace%20and%20the%20Virtuality%20of %20the%20Real%20-%20Slavoj%20Zizek.pdf.

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Convergence between Architecture and Videogames

__________________________________________________________________ Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea (México D.F., 1983) graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in History of Art (2006), was awarded with degrees in Advanced Studies (2008) and in University Specialist in Theory, Methods and History of Humanities and Social Sciences (2009). She was a predoctoral María Barbeito fellow (2006-2011) lecturing in the University of Santiago de Compostela and completing her education in the Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Delft University of Technology. She currently is a PhD candidate in the USC. Her research focuses on the relationships among new media, especially videogames, architecture and cities.

‘Redefining Perfect’: Post-Humanist Views of Gender and Beauty Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira Abstract Gender has been held up as a defining trait of mankind and has been the target of deep and conflicting scientific analysis in the past century, with contrasting approaches ranging from the biological to the social realms. The influence of gender categorizations on traditional aesthetics is becoming ever more sophisticated as transgendered and queer communities entice awareness in the mainstream for new aesthetic paradigms, as emerging technologies such as plastic surgery and genetic engineering become common place. The reformulation of traditional gender roles encourages a rethinking of the sensible experience of physicality and the traditional definitions of beauty, especially in light of postmodernist theories. This shift can give way to a new and more radical redefinition of ‘beauty’ and mutate cultural constructs of gender, as both are correlated. PostHumanist aesthetics encourage us to frame the alternative and the ‘Other’ as part of a sole unique cultural plane, and as science brings us close to a self-determined evolutionary path, questions arise on what ‘beautiful’ can mean in an age of genetic engineering: a call for variety or a factor of harmonization? This chapter argues that ‘perfection’ is framed as an achievable human quality by the media and can be equated with a broadening perspective on the decentralized discourse of the Human in a transitioning society. It will also examine the implications of the redefinition of gender and aesthetics in the light of Post-Humanism. Key Words: Posthumanism, gender, androgyny, sociology, postmodernism, transhumanism, sex, culture, aesthetics, beauty. ***** The surge of sex change surgeries in the past 20 years has been directly correlated to medical technological advancement, with hundreds of thousands of people applying for sex reassignment surgery with varying degrees of thoroughness since the 1960s. Certain studies 1 point to a prevalence of 1:4,500 males and 1:8,000 females worldwide, while a general review numbers the postoperative success rate of male to female surgeries as 87% and female to male as 97%. 2 According to the 2011 update on the ‘Prevalence, Incidence, Growth and Demographic Report,’ 3 assembled by the Gender Identity Research and Education Society, the growth rate for the transsexual population was an estimated 11% with a mean age of 42 that is progressively lowering. Our culture is only now catching up with the instability of identity, sexual or otherwise. However, gender dysphoria is not a modern phenomenon by any means,

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__________________________________________________________________ nor is the attempt to change one’s own phenotypically-driven identity. The conflict between body as a phenomenological interface and as an ideological entity is pervaded by cultural discourses, prompting a redefinition of the ‘second skin’ identity of gender in the public discourse and social personas. Whereas technologies merely facilitate the physiological reconfiguration, the embodiment of gender is a composite that overflows the mere physical capsule of the organic body. The study of gender roles as imposed cultural constructs contributed 4 to their now relentless scrutiny and demystification in the public sphere. The very conceptualization of gender is a categorization prone to various linguistic and cultural pressures, 5 and the phenomena of gender reassignment and the possibilities of gene and hormone therapy, as well as growing subcultural and mainstream trends towards androgynous fashions, bring us closer to two questions: is ‘gender’ still a valid relational categorization and, if so, is there room for additional genders within a postmodern sociological approach? Alternative sexualities are increasingly becoming widely accepted. Legislations are being refactored all over the world to support gay marriage and transgenderism became an acquired right for individuals (albeit there are conservative pockets of political resistance, particularly in Western societies). The mainstream mindset is adapting to a new ontology of gender roles and aesthetics, where the traditional dichotomy of ‘female’ and ‘male’ is interlinked and weaved into itself. Gender ambiguity is not merely linked to either physical or cosmetic factors, nor is it exclusive of Western societies. In many historical cultures, gender was linguistically determined, regardless of the biological sex of the individual. Certain Native American populations defined gender roles based not only on biological sex, but also on age or social strata. 6 Gender roles could even be interchanged depending on the social environment and context, as certain individuals would engage in behaviours that could range from forms of transvestism to overt sexuality in ways that were neither condemned by nor subversive to the social group. Lesbian erotic relationships were commonplace in Lesotho, under a social ritual called ‘motsoalle.’ 7 E.E. Evans-Pritchard 8 observed that male Azande warriors commonly bought young boys to act as wives; the boys performed household tasks and the warriors often engaged in sexual activities with them. None of these practices were socially condemned by these cultures, and these practices were embedded in a social organization that also encouraged sharing and teaching in the context of the needs of the group, in activities such as hunting or fabric weaving. While we can trace a communitarian vein running through many of the gender roles engaged in by many non-industrialized societies, gender roles are very much tied to individual emancipation in Europe and America. Support groups and associations tend to grow in geographical clusters, having sprouted with the aim to provide legal and psychological aid to gays and lesbians who face prejudice when

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__________________________________________________________________ wanting to assume a different social role by redefining their presumed sexuality in the public eye. These micro-communities inherently share collective and individual acceptance of their members’ sexual and personal identity, apart from the burden of mainstream sexuality. In light of these changing roles, these communities also strive to promote wider awareness of the identity of the ‘alternative sexuality’, therefore seeking a validation of the ‘queer’ identity. Personal emancipation is only relevant when it seeks to validate a specific role in the eye of the majority, and the concepts of acceptance and tolerance are often mixed with that of individual freedom and differentiation, as the personal desire to change one’s physical sex is linked inextricably to the social context and the mainstream discourse in which one is embedded. While you might be motivated by psychological motives to transform your body, the decision-making process to assume a different sex or sexuality is prey to cultural factors and, even when regulated by personal choice, often reflects the dominant discourse and acceptability of specific subcultures and sexualities. The growth of the transgender community and lobby in the mainstream media has popularized the use of the term ‘transgendered’ as an amorphous abstraction of both male and female. While transvestism has always been an underground practice, and therefore hard to quantify, transgenderism statistics 9 show exponential growth since Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s, the first widely mediatized case of gender reassignment surgery. While technology helped to perpetrate the idea of the utilitarian sex, changeable on demand, regardless of its nature at birth, the media discourse often steered into the sensationalist alienation of the transgendered as a sideshow attraction or, at best, an underground subculture with limited acceptability. 10 However, the penetration of these concepts in public discourse has assisted in the awareness of redefined gender by highlighting the delta state of sexual ambiguity, regardless of its acceptance in most social contexts. The growing facility in constructing supportive micro-communities, and the increased media presence and awareness of queer and transgendered groups, were also direct consequences of changing social tissues and organization, brought on by industrialization and the implementation of Capitalism in most Western societies. The cultivation of specific gender roles in societies has served the purposes of implementing specific morals and reinforcing a specific social structure. This has been propagated primarily by political, economic, and religious institutions. The latter in particular has been instrumental in implementing gender roles as a basis for a patriarchal social structure and fixed social strata. While Karen Hansen and Ilene Philipson, 11 echoing the feminist thinking of the time, might have argued that capitalism and patriarchy have conditioned women to a subservient economic role, the fact stands that, since the implementation of capitalism in Western societies, the means for economic independence are individually achievable on an unprecedented level, regardless of gender. After World War Two, the economic

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__________________________________________________________________ emancipation of women impacted the larger perspective on gender roles, enabling the refactoring of social and gender roles in a new social and economic framework which encouraged variety and physicality is a mirror of a changing notion of identity. Our unfinished bodies, constantly redefined and under (re)appreciation, are, as architect Rem Koolhaas has stated, ‘mini-construction sites’, 12 decomposable and upgradeable, anatomized according to a functional conceptualization of physicality. This change, and the choice over the expression of this physicality, is correlated also with the aesthetic liberty that cosmetic surgeries allow. At once an attempt to thwart time and the expectancy limit of our own bodies, they represent also the makings of a ‘makeover culture’, 13 where all subcultures are heavily stylized, even in their apparent lack of style. From Goths to gay subcultures, there are definite aesthetic standards that surface in the way that these groups find their intrinsic identity in a makeover culture that is inclusive by encouraging variety, albeit under a very strict set of rules. 14 In practical terms, discrimination is as much physical as it is social. Hamermesh and Biddle have reported on studies which show that being in the top third best-looking people in a company is usually accompanied with a five percent salary bonus, 15 a trend that is also applicable to attorneys. 16 This phenomenon was labelled ‘lookism,’ and several theorists 17 have argued that it is a real factor of discrimination in the workplace and in society at large. While cultural standards of beauty tend to be unstable and historically inept markers of stable gender roles, it is important to consider the existence of universal traits in the way beauty is perceived and how it can transpose itself into the poetics of gender aesthetics. Evolutionary and anthropological conceptualizations of beauty rely on correlating attractiveness with fitness, health, and genetic compatibility. 18 While this might be affected also by cultural tendencies and impositions, the concept of beauty is not necessarily limited by these models, regardless of the social or gender context. Hönekopp, Bartholomém and Jansen 19 argue that standards of female facial attractiveness, while historically variable, 20 share common patterns that can transcend culture. 21 While facial symmetry plays a role in male attractiveness, and a good fitness level arguably translates into an attractive body and facial frame, none of these elements played as important a role as ubiquitous clear eyes, smooth skin, small chin and nose, and shiny hair. These neotenized traits are often correlated with youth, and infant features often represent a discontinuity between sexual maturity and androgyny. Infancy itself as an aesthetic standard is culturally embedded in notions of values and protectiveness, but the appeal that stems from not yet developed (or underdeveloped) secondary sexual characteristics is also a popular motif in art and fashion. 22 Androgyny has been historically prevalent in Western societies with massive reconfigurations and surges stemming from both political and economic contexts.

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__________________________________________________________________ As an example of early androgynous social practices, there are numerous records of eunuchs being commonplace in China. 23 Similarly, eunichs were an essential part of the nobler strata of the Byzantine Empire, having participated in a number of sexual rituals both on and off duty. Etruscan art frequently emphasized athletic women bodies as well as other androgynous models linked with a Spartan aesthetic influence. 24 The later Classical influence in the Roman aesthetics of the human body, which emphasized images of valiant warriors and charismatic leaders, is not at odds with the libidinous orgies and hedonistic pleasures of the Roman Empire. This aesthetic changed dramatically with the advent of Christianity. Once one of many Mediterranean cult sects, Christianity was transformed, through the development of its theological and political roots, 25 into the social and moral basis of the Holy Roman Empire and became arguably the strongest of all discourses in Western societies. Depictions of the humanized divine have followed artistic trends as contemporary artists worked reoccurring themes of piety and sacrifice with changing iconography and transient aesthetic motifs. The representation of the Christ as a suffering figure drew comparisons to certain female traits by scholars such as Caroline Bynum, 26 who argued convincingly that the body of Christ, as often portrayed in the Passion, was highly feminine, its suffering akin to that of a rape victim, its crucified body ‘passive, rent, and exposed.’ 27 Most Christian artistic motifs came to emphasize androgynous traits in their depictions of male portraits, including its most important icon. After the Renaissance, and in particular in Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ painting, portraits of Christ never again portrayed an ascetic, unruly figure with its face covered with curly facial hair, instead depicting a figure with a perfectly trimmed beard, wide glowing eyes, long eyelashes, lengthy thin fingers, and long hair. These traits came to represent the personification of ‘sinless,’ ‘immaculate,’ ‘eternal’: all traits of the undying self, as much a figuration to aspire to as a paragon of immutability. In this representation, perfection presents itself as blunt and unvarying. It conjures up its own materialization as an idealistic abstraction of the potentially optimal traits of any given concept. Kant has equated perfection as the ‘concept of the totality of something composite’, as per the Wolffian rationalist thought, 28 but there its institutionalization is emphasized by its very abstractness and relativity. While the concept of perfection might be variable, the way we think about it (that is, its meaning) negates variety or variability by equating desirable traits with their best possible manifestation, sealed and enclosed in the den of the ideal. In the twenty first century, the concept of perfection is still flimsily linked to moral righteousness, but it has been redefined as an ideal cultural construct regarding physical appearance. This model is not universal and instead encompasses only accepted models for specific societies. For example, the Japanese standard of beauty, fleeting and shocking, is worlds apart from the blonde

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__________________________________________________________________ hourglass standard of beauty that informed the influential Western fashion industry for decades. Nowadays, however, perfection does not represent the end of movement and the beginning of staticity, but has rather come to represent the illusion of perpetual enhancement. As our cultural constructs are conditioned and redefined by the dominant culture, ‘self-work’ and personal change become inescapable paradigmatic values of the individual. The process of continuous development and becoming are the mainstays of the ‘makeover culture,’ turning the physical body as the customizable capacitor of culture and acculturation. As per Foucault’s assertion that the body is an ‘inscribed surface of events [....] and a volume in perpetual disintegration,’ 29 body perfection is now decomposed and regulated in the market of dreams that is mass consumerism, often construed as a need, inheriting the indoctrinating power of traditional and conservative ideology while still, on a social level, decomposing reality into material objects of desire and, on a physiological level, the human body into components to be maintained, enhanced and, whenever possible, renewed. This atomist view of the human body favours a plug and play approach that coagulates into a functional mind-set that affects other areas of our discourse. Traditional physically-related typologies such as age and gender are thus decentralized and redefined, the former no longer the object of social stigmatization, the latter no longer the object of social emancipation. In its stead, youth has emerged as a commodity relevant across generations, progressively growing in importance, while ageing becomes not an ascent into social relevance and respectability through experience or wisdom, but rather a descent into frailty and dependency. 30 While youth as an aesthetic can be seen as the aspiration to deceive mortality and degradability, the demographic concept of youth was the direct result of the capitalist industrialization after the World War One. 31 Through the ideological intervention of advertising and marketing, this new market has come to represent a lifestyle, one that entails a given social context or expected side benefits. Advertising strategies targeted teenagers because, besides being a vulnerable and permeable group, their purchasing power also grew with the ascension of middle class. The progressive social permeation of images construing needs and targeting younger markets conditioned the artistic representation of age, arguably leading directly to the stigmatization of the elderly and social invisibility for ageing women. 32 However, through this very media discourse, youth has become ageindependent. Youth is now a quality that can be transposed and acquired through the application of cosmetic products and surgeries as the iconography of beauty plastered on the media serves to agglutinate a set of conformity standards. 33 Every website and newsstand sports adulterated images of models, both male and female, sporting the unblemished look of a skin undamaged by the ravages of wrinkles or scars. The weight of representation has fallen on highly feminine faces imbued .

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__________________________________________________________________ with neotenized traits, as the boundaries of age become more and more flexible and our productivity extends into later years. 34 Technology has thus provided the necessary tools to equate functionality and productivity with physical appearance and the increasing emphasis on fitness and expanding the age limits for given lifestyles squarely redefines the nature of our social roles and, even more tellingly, our sexuality. Sexual reconditioning is inhibited by the biological determinism of our current physical states. While gothic fantasies such as those presented in Stone Constantine’s novels, where characters conjure up sexual organs freely on their mutable selves, belong in the realm of fantasy, sexuality has become an empowering tool of self-assertion and exploration for gender redefinition. As Patricia McCormack defined it, the ‘hybrid desire’ 35 of the Other and the redefined Self have given way to modes of existence in the cultural mainstream where sexuality is no longer a meeting of complementary and dialectical parties, but rather a vibrant realm of seducible signs. The notion of the Other has even transcended the human species, such as Badmington’s fetishization embodied by the alien 36 or the multiplicity of the monstrous, both micro and macro-cellular, that is found as a psycho-erotic threat in many a thriller-of-the-day. In an adversarial capitalist world, professional specialization and the dissemation of personal space, with the advent of portable communication devices and social networking, have contributed to transform social structures, blurring traditional easy categorizations. As the discursive and social nature of gender fragments, a multiplicity of identities that cannot be characterized easily or dismissively as ‘homosexuality’ or ‘heterosexuality’ 37 emerges. The multiple transgendered communities that have sprouted in the past decades cast a relativistic outlook on current power and social structures, negating traditional bipolar notions of sex and challenging the perception of the biological as a primordial mark of social status and role. While it is difficult to knowingly ascertain how the various biological, social, and cultural components affect the sexual object or the self-concept of gender, Post-Humanism brings together the politics of the human body and social power structures, as well as the acknowledgement of the variability of our own physical and psychological identity. The Humanist discourse of the inherent and absolute value of the Human is being obsoleted in the contemporary Western mind-set, promoting the absence of references and the lack of a spiritual essence. Capitalism and technology have relegated the role of the individual to that of a functional node in a network of information and interchange, 38 where corporatism and economic unruliness cast the individual into a state of anxiety and confusion, effectively compromising its identity and role. As a decentralization of discourses, Post-Humanism can highlight the role of alternative sexualities and the relativity and interconnectivity of the body, including its progressive formalization and instrumentalization and the role of

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__________________________________________________________________ gender politics, aesthetics, and the inconsistency of our own perceptions in many an ethical and social issue of our day. Indeed, as the concept of Human is decomposed, probing into questions of gender and sexuality will allow us to trace the evolution of identity, bound culturally and socially, and the paradigm shift that such a path would bring us to. The fragility of concepts that are so often taken for granted, such as beauty, is becoming increasingly relevant, and the discussion generated will hopefully also aid us in reaching a deeper truth, that of the core of humanity and the richness of its boundless manifestations.

Notes 1

Femke Olyslager and Lynn Conway, ‘On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism’, paper presented at the WPATH 20th International Symposium, Chicago, Illinois, September 6, 2007. 2 R. Green and D. T. Fleming, ‘Transsexual Surgery Follow-Up: Status in the 1990s’, Annual Review of Sex Research 1 (1990): 163-174. 3 ‘Information and Research into the Incidence, Prevalence and Growth of the Transssexual Population’, Gender Identity Research and Education Society, accessed July 20, 2012, http://www.gires.org.uk/prevalence.php. 4 Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Alice Hendrickson Eagly, Anne E. Beall and Robert J. Sternberg, The Psychology of Gender (New York: Guilford Press, 2004). 5 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004). 6 Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang. Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 160. 7 Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001). 8 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 9 ‘Information and Research into the Incidence, Prevalence and Growth of the Transssexual Population’, Gender Identity Research and Education Society, accessed July 20, 2012. http://www.gires.org.uk/prevalence.php. 10 Larry P. Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 11 Karen V. Hansen and Ilene J. Philipson, Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-Feminist Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). 12 Rem Koolhaas, ‘Junkspace’, October, 100 'Obsolescence' (2002): 190.

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Meredith Jones, Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2008), 11. 14 Dick Hebdige, Subculture the Meaning of Style (London; New York: Routledge, 1979). 15 Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle, ‘Beauty and the Labor Market’, American Economic Review, American Economic Association, Vol. 84(5) (November 1993): 1174-94. 16 Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle. ‘Beauty, Productivity, and Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre’, Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 16(1) (January 1998): 172-201. 17 Jacqueline Granleese and Gemma Sayer. ‘Gendered Ageism and “Lookism”: A Triple Jeopardy for Female Academics’, Women In Management Review, Vol. 21 Iss. 6 (2006): 500-517. Colin Duncan and Wendy Loretto, ‘Never the Right Age? Gender and Age-Based Discrimination’, Employment Gender, Work & Organization 11 (1) (2004): 95-115. 18 Helena Cronin, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (New York: MacMillan, 1993). 19 J. Hönekopp, T. Bartholomé and G. Jansen, ‘Facial Attractiveness, Symmetry, and Physical Fitness in Young Women’, Human Nature 15 (2004): 147-167. 20 Karl Grammer, Signale der Liebe. Die Biologischen Gesetze der Partnerschaft. (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1995). 21 Michael R. Cunningham, Alan Roberts, Anita P. Barbee, Perri B. Druen and Cheng-Huan Wu, ‘“Their Ideas of Beauty are, on the Whole, the Same as Ours”: Consistency and Variability in the Cross-Cultural Perception of Female Physical Attractiveness’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68.2 (Feb 1995), 261-279. 22 Rebecca Arnold, Fashion, Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the 20th Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 122. 23 Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996). 24 Bridget K. Sandhoff, Androgyny in Etruscan Art and Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa, 2007). 25 E. L. Fortin and J. B. Benestad, Classical Christianity and the Political Order: Reflections on the Theologico-Political Problem (Rowman & Littlefield Pub., 1996). 26 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast : The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

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Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury, Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 108. 28 Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 213. 29 Michel Foucault and Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 83. 30 C. J. Gilleard and Paul Higgs, Cultures of Ageing: Self, Citizen, and the Body (Harlow, England; New York: Prentice Hall, 2000). 31 T. K. Hareven, ‘Changing Images of Aging and the Social Construction of the Life Course’, in Images of Aging. Cultural Representations of Later Life, ed. M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (London: Routledge, 1995), 123. 32 Hazel Biggs, ‘The Ageing Body’, in Real Bodies. A Sociological Introduction, ed. M. Evans and E. Lee (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), 175. 33 The infamous study case of Dove and its advertising campaign led to the newsreel on the brand’s official website with the title ‘Only Two Percent of Women Describes Themselves as Beautiful. New global study uncovers desire for broader definition of beauty’ (PR News Wire 2009), a telling corporate example of the exploitation of beauty standards and their implication. 34 Deborah Caslav Covino, Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture (Albany N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Press, 2004). 35 Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke, The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 111. 36 Neil Badmington, Alien Chic Posthumanism and the Other Within (London: Routledge, 2004). 37 Sexual categorizations have been primarily instrumentalized as political and social means of classification, whereas the complexity of alternative sexuality lies in the physical intimacy with non-standard entities outside of the mainstream indoctrination, like bestiality (Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality (London; New York: Verso, 2000)) or machine stimulation (David N. L. Levy, Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relations (New York: Harper Collins, 2007)), are also substantially present in a widening array of sexual practices where such traditional constructs serve merely as large reference markers for standardized social practices. 38 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965).

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__________________________________________________________________ Jones, Doug. Physical Attractiveness and the Theory of Sexual Selection: Results from Five Populations. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1996. Jones, Meredith. Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2008. Koolhaas, Rem. ‘Junkspace’. October, Vol. 100 'Obsolescence' (Spring 2002): 175–190. Kuefler, Mathew. The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Küng, Hans, and John Stephen Bowden. Women in Christianity. New York: Continuum, 2005. Levy, David N. L. Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relations. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. Lomperis, Linda, and Sarah Stanbury. Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Louie, Kam. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge; Oakleigh, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Murray, Stephen O., and Will Roscoe. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Olyslager, Femke, and Lynn Conway. ‘On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism’. Paper presented at the WPATH 20th International Symposium, Chicago, Illinois, September 6, 2007. PR News Wire. 2009. ‘Only Two Percent of Women Describe Themselves as Beautiful’. Accessed July 19 2012. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/only-two-percent-of-women-describethemselves-as-beautiful-73980552.html. Ridley, Matt. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: MacMillan, 1993.

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__________________________________________________________________ Sandhoff, Bridget K. Androgyny in Etruscan Art and Culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa, 2007. Simon, Rita J, and Alison Brooks. Gay and Lesbian Communities the World Over. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Spurgeon, Christina. Advertising and New Media. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. Tougher, Shaun. The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society. Routledge, 2010. Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965. Wiesner, Merry E. Gender in History: Global Perspectives. Malden, Mass; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Zuckert, Rachel. Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira is an Ethnology PhD student at LudwigMaximilians-Universität in Germany. His research interests are linked to Ethnography, Philosophy and Sociology, particularly post-humanism, ethics and economic sociology. When not changing into his alternative guise as an anthropology student, he is employed in the software localization industry.

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What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy Robert Gadowski Abstract The twenty first century brings humanity to the verge of technologically mediated transformation from human to posthuman—a clash of two extremes bringing unprecedented consequences. In this process, the posthuman seems to take on the role of an avatar of humanity’s own anxieties and potentials. By the same token, Donna Haraway’s ‘cyborg monsters’ herald the coming of technological singularity as empowering humankind to compromise corporal and spiritual boundaries. Indeed, considerations of the posthuman are strongly present in popular culture, particularly in science fiction. I argue that Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy can be seen as a narrative that sets a new paradigm for the argument that the posthuman condition and the values it entails have yet to be determined. Informed by such penetrating approaches to the posthuman as those presented by Francis Fukuyama, Chris Hables Gray, and others, my chapter aims to reflect upon the Uglies trilogy as an important narrative commenting on the possibilities of becoming posthuman. In the novels, society alters the body of everyone who turns sixteen, changing people into unnaturally beautiful beings. Humans before the operation are called uglies, while the ones already altered are called pretties. However, there is a dark secret behind the transformation—the operation changes not only one’s looks, but also the way one thinks. A young girl, Tally, passes from human to posthuman form and, through her struggle to free herself from limitations imposed by both the state and her own consciousness, proves that the idea of freedom as self-determination will be an important element of the posthuman future. In my view, the example of Tally shows that the freedom imperative is a force that must shape the ideal of humanity in the posthuman age. Key Words: Freedom, posthuman, Scott Westerfeld, Uglies trilogy, dystopia, science fiction. ***** In this day and age, humankind stands at the threshold of technologically mediated change from human to posthuman. I deeply believe that at the root of all posthuman conceptualizations lies an assumption that posthumanity is not the end of the human, rather it is simply a new kind of humanity with its beliefs, ideas, and culture transformed. In this chapter, I argue that Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy can be seen as a narrative that sets a new paradigm for the considerations on the posthuman condition. I propose that these young adult dystopian science-fiction

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__________________________________________________________________ narratives comment on personal freedom as a necessary component of human agency that must be preserved within the core of posthumanity. In my view, the concept of the posthuman epitomizes a particular frame of mind connected with the rapid progress of scientific inquiry. The implications of this process are addressed by Robert Pepperell in The Post-Human Condition. Pepperell maintains that the investigation of posthuman possibilities is marked by ‘a distinct kind of self-awareness of the human condition that owes something to our anxiety about, and our enthusiasm for, technological change.’ 1 Indeed, one of the characteristic of the growing awareness on posthuman possibilities is the realization that for the first time in history science influences ways in which human life is not only lived, but also imagined and theorized about. The experience of posthuman prospects is also addressed by N. Katherine Hayles, who argues in How We Became Posthuman that humankind is deeply affected by a change of perspective on what it means to be human. This perspective is ‘mediated by a technology that has become so entwined with the production of identity that it can no longer meaningfully be separated from the human subject.’ 2 Thus, posthuman imaginings such as cyborgs or clones reveal themselves as a kind of thought experiment that extrapolate on future identities and values of posthumanity. Almost always, visions of the posthuman future imply mastery over human nature achieved with the help of biotechnology, a field of scientific inquiry which in the last decades has gained a prominent place within mainstream science, mainly due to its rapid advancements in eugenics. Michio Kaku poignantly describes in Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century that biotechnology is, in fact, a part of a much bigger biomolecular revolution that, along with the quantum and the computer revolutions, constitutes ‘three elements [that] form the pillars of modern science.’ 3 Kaku also believes that the power of biotechnology will enable humankind to ‘make the transition from unraveling the secrets of Nature to becoming masters of Nature.’ 4 Needless to say, when Kaku discusses mastery over nature he also seems to point in the direction of the nature of human beings. Hope of attaining mastery over human nature spurs many posthumanists to dream of accelerating or even steering the course of human evolution. In general, this idea holds that since humanity developed the means to alter its genetic makeup it is only natural to enhance human capabilities. On the one hand, supporters of this view, like Chris Hables Gray, herald that such artificial evolution is in accord with human nature itself. Gray explains: ‘[o]ur technologies, our cultures, our will, and nature are weaving a future.’ 5 In other words, there should be no conflict on the matter because desire to control our nature is encoded in human nature itself. On the other hand, critics of biotechnological approaches, such as Francis Fukuyama, point to the consequences that these experiments may result in. The gist of Fukuyama’s argument is that human nature is a source of values and to alter it is to modify the inmost values of humankind. 6

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__________________________________________________________________ At this point I would like to discuss how biotechnology is portrayed in speculative fiction, particularly in science fiction narratives. First of all, the power of science fiction to engage with this notion is recognized by Elaine Graham in Representations of the Post/Human. As Graham says: ‘speculative forms of fiction—epitomized by science fiction—shock our assumptions and incite our critical faculties,’ 7 and by doing so provide new frameworks for envisioning biotechnology as a part of the posthuman future. Secondly, it seems that the biotechnological turn in the sciences calls for an accurate response from science fiction texts. In my view, this trend is especially seen in young adult science fiction narratives. In New World Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature, Clare Bradford, Kerry Mallan, John Stephens, and Robyn McCallum recognize the growing attentiveness to the posthuman in the novels for young readers. The authors claim that such explorations not only equip young people with specific conceptual tools, but also provide them with an insight into ‘some (positive) sense of being human’ 8 and, of course, how it relates to the posthuman. In the light of the aforementioned theories, I would like to highlight the main point of my chapter, namely that Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy can be seen as a mode of exploration on the human-posthuman relation. Set in a dystopian future, the novels disclose a society that alters the body of everyone who turns sixteen, changing people into unnaturally beautiful beings. Humans before the operation are called uglies, while the ones already altered are called pretties. The importance of the operation is underscored by the educational system. Thanks to propaganda, the main protagonist, a young girl named Tally, is deeply convinced that the desire to be beautiful is what ‘a million years of evolution had made … part of the human brain.’ 9 The operation is presented in a good light for one more reason: it eliminates randomness that characterizes the distribution of genes. In other words, randomness of the gene pool is perceived as a weakness that must be cured with biotechnological means. What is more, it appears that the operation is a form of passage from shabby life in Uglieville into a luxurious lifestyle of New Pretty Town. The dystopian society plays on the emotions connected with this change when it forces children to play a game that presents simulated models of their future bodies. It is at this point that the reader is introduced to an opposing view on the operation. Tally’s best friend, Shay, spells out her apprehension towards the game by simply stating: ‘[the game] is just designed to make us hate ourselves.’ 10 Later Shay openly defies the system by pointing out to Tally: ‘you weren’t born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.’ 11 It is apparent that the novels underscore the interconnectedness of the state’s policy and the manipulation of a person’s body and mind. Control over one’s body and mind is central to the theories developed by eminent French philosopher Michel Foucault. In his seminal Discipline and Punish, Foucault observes that one way to maintain power is to convince people

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__________________________________________________________________ that there is a universal norm that needs to be obeyed. A very similar situation plays out in the Uglies trilogy. The society presented in Westerfeld’s novels discloses yet another similarity to Foucault’s vision. Typically, people think of their body as their own possession, something that cannot be controlled by others—a stronghold of personal freedom. The body is seen as an extension of the will, an instrument for experiencing the world. However, Foucault postulates that the body itself is the subject to the policy of the state: ‘[a docile body] … may be subjected, used, transformed and improved.’ 12 It is now the state that makes the body an extension of its own will. Thus, equally to the posthumanists’ belief, the body becomes literally a tool to be used. I believe that the above examples illustrate that the Uglies trilogy can be seen as an literary extrapolation on possible consequences of biotechnological manipulation. The dangers that stem from this form of intrusion into human nature are even more apparent when it is revealed that the operation changes not only one’s physical characteristics, but also influences a person’s mental capabilities. Tally learns this fact when she meets doctors who conducted the procedure in the past. They inform her that the operation causes lesions in the brain that ‘are a part of the operation … It’s part of the way being pretty changes you.’ 13 This information is corroborated by Shay’s musings on the perfection of pretties. She tells Tally: [M]aybe when they do the operation—when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everybody else, maybe after going through all of that you just aren’t very interesting anymore. 14 For some reason, the lesions gradually diminish the personalities of new-turned pretties, making them shadows of their former selves, dim and childish. Terrifyingly, the pretties turn into like-minded masses, never again questioning the reality they live in. In the second novel of the trilogy, the reader learns that there is one more way to assume a posthuman form. The second volume introduces specials—beings designed to strike terror because of their predatory physique and superhuman capabilities. However, there is a serious drawback in being a special. Dr. Cable— the mastermind that controls the state’s policy—informs Tally how biotechnological manipulations of people’s bodies also shape their emotional condition. She says:

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__________________________________________________________________ [W]e can make people pretty inside—empty and lazy and vapid— but we can also make them … [m]ore intense than you ever felt as an ugly, more alive than a wolf taking its prey. 15 Due to their superhuman abilities, specials are plagued by a constant feeling of superiority. In the last part of the trilogy, both Shay and Tally change from pretties into specials and shortly after Shay begins to view the world as if ‘[e]veryone else was just wallpaper, a blurred background of listless chatter.’ 16 Similarly, Tally starts to believe that she became ‘above average…almost beyond human.’ 17 Just like the brain lesions that render pretties’ agency restricted, the enhancements that the specials possess control their emotions, thereby limiting their freedom. Thus far it is clear that the most horrific aspect of the Uglies trilogy is the manner in which the state abuses techno-scientific means to match its totalitarian agenda. Technology becomes a part of the ideological program that brainwashes people and renders them eager to relinquish their inmost freedoms as long as they can participate in the seemingly paradise-like society. An interesting inquiry into this aspect of freedom was provided by German psychologist and thinker Erich Fromm. In his Escape from Freedom, Fromm argues that it is only since modern times that human beings acquired awareness of being individuals, and by extension, a feeling of personal freedom. Freedom of the individual is thus a construct that empowers people to choose their own pathways in life, but it also entails great responsibility. Fromm observes: ‘though [freedom] has brought [modern man] independence and rationality, [it] has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.’ 18 Fromm’s perspective indicates that at some level people want to pass on their freedoms into the hands of authorities, and by doing so get rid of the responsibility for their own choices. In Fromm’s view, people’s inclination for surrendering personal freedom is one of the reasons for the existence of dystopian states. In conclusion, it seems to me that if humankind will embrace a technologybased ideology that offers an escape from personal freedom, then humanity will not beget posthumanity, rather it will perish during the transition. Westerfeld’s trilogy presents a vision of a false paradise where the ideal of freedom is cast away. Even though society offers means to upgrade humankind, it does so by depriving humans of the key component of their agency. Westerfeld’s novels emphasize that humanity cannot let itself be a passive observer of the technological progress, but it must take an active part in construing the goals of this process and shape them in accord with its innermost values, especially the value of personal freedom. I believe that in this way the Uglies trilogy sets a new paradigm of the posthuman condition.

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Notes 1

Robert Pepperell, The Post-Human Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain (Bristol, UK and Portland, USA: Intellect Books, 1995), 1. 2 N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Prologue’, in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, N. Katherine Hayles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), xiii. 3 Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (New York: Anchor Books, 1997), 7. 4 Ibid., 10. 5 Chris Hables Gray, Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age (New York: Routledge, 2002), 12. 6 Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Picador, 2003), 218. 7 Elaine Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 3. 8 Clare Bradford, et al., New World Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 155-156. 9 Scott Westerfeld, Uglies (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), 11. 10 Ibid., 27. 11 Ibid., 47. 12 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 136. 13 Westerfeld, Uglies, 133. 14 Ibid., 30. 15 Scott Westerfeld, Pretties (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), 45. 16 Scott Westerfeld, Specials (New York: Simon Pulse, 2006), 5. 17 Ibid., 16. 18 Erich Fromm, Foreword to Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1994), x.

Bibliography Bradford, Clare, Mallam, Kerry, McCallum, Robyn, and John Stephens. New World Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Utopian Transformations. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Picador, 2003.

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__________________________________________________________________ Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1994. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Gray, Chris Hables. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. New York: Routledge, 2002. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Kaku, Michio. Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century. New York: Anchor Books, 1997. Pepperrell, Robert. The Post-Human Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain. Bristol, UK and Portland, USA: Intellect Books, 1995. Westerfeld, Scott. Pretties. New York: Simon Pulse, 2005. –—–. Specials. New York: Simon Pulse, 2006. –—–. Uglies. New York: Simon Pulse, 2005. Robert Gadowski teaches at the Philological School of Higher Education in Wroclaw. He is also a PhD Candidate at the University of Wroclaw. His main areas of interest are speculative fiction, particularly young adult science fiction, as well as utopian/dystopian fiction and studies of the concept of freedom in American culture.

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Part 3 Cyberpunk Subjectivities

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Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the Afterlife Christian Johannes Kovacs Abstract An immortal digital existence for all is the world that posthumanists envision— whether this be as ‘foglets’, a human mind controlling a swarm of nanobots, as envisioned by Warren Ellis in Transmetropolitan, or continually cloned or downloaded into real and artificial bodies, as per the future represented by Richard K Morgan in Altered Carbon. Some eschew this world altogether, seeking a new existence in cyberspace as beings indistinguishable from an artificial intelligence, in the manner of the ‘ghosts’ of Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy. Though these solutions are science fiction, the transhumanism movement has members worldwide; cryogenic institutions are ran wherein the heads and sometimes the entire bodies of clients are kept preserved, waiting for a technological eschaton when they may leave the realm of the dead and once again become conscious. These utopian ideas have more in common with traditional religious notions then the rational exponents of posthumanism would care to admit. Merging with an A.I. instead of Osirification, or making a digital avatar instead of the alchemical spiritual body, is the contemporary answer to the fear of mortality. Though mostly still fiction, some of the cyberspaces where these bodies might exist are already present as MMORPGs, and unlike the heavens and hells of older religions they are visitable today, whilst the original body is still in existence. Science fiction gives an insight into what may come if fictional technologies become real. Where the Book of the Dead leaves off at the moment of Osirification these texts pose the questions: what next? Do the lives of those who get what they wished for in fiction offer us relevant insights in our quest for transhumanism? Key Words: A.I., cyberpunk, cyberspace, embodiment, religion, science fiction, transhumanism. techno-fetishism. ***** 1. Introduction – Searching for an Afterlife The idea of posthumanism and the transhuman movements are concerned with using technological means to become ‘more than human’. Both words for the movement imply the idea of moving beyond and transcending being human. Humanity+, formerly the World Transhumanist Association, states its objectives as: 1.

to support discussion and public awareness of emerging technologies; to defend the right of individuals in free and

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3. 4.

democratic societies to adopt technologies that expand human capacities; to anticipate and propose solutions for the potential consequences of emerging technologies; to actively encourage and support the development of emerging technologies judged to have sufficiently probable positive benefit. 1

Essentially, if it is broken, and we can fix it, we should. However, transhumanism is not merely about cochlea implants allowing deaf people to hear again, or the mind-machine interfaces currently developed by organisations such as the Braingate research team. 2 The Braingate team have made direct brain and machine interaction possible. The BrainGate2 Neural Interface System allows people with extensive spinal cord injuries to take a sip of a drink with the aid of a robotic arm that is controlled by them. However, no matter how much it is possible to repair sustained injuries, the body will eventually wind down. Sooner or later organs fail and diseases infect the body, and then there is the natural ageing process. The actual culprit is then, death and it somehow needs to be defeated. There are several ideas as to how technology can be used to accomplish the goal of living forever. The pyramid texts and the book of the opening of the mouth ceremony date to the fourth dynasty in Egypt, that is, between 2575-2467 BCE. The idea behind these texts is that through various incantations and the use of symbols, one portion of the soul of the deceased can be assisted to survive in the afterlife. A statue, or other effigy was fed and given water allowing the dead soul to gain nourishment and thus continue existing. 3 The deceased themselves were also prepared by memorising incantations and hymns to various guardians in the underworld, the existence of which was taken for granted. The Book of the Dead and the Book of the opening of the mouth contain ritual actions to be performed by the priests, spells to be spoken, and descriptions of what the deceased is to expect to happen in the afterlife. All this would guarantee the soul to stay alive and regain a new, non-material body. 4 Presently, new technological means of securing a life after death have been suggested. Though the means are different, some of the methods and concepts share an uncanny resemblance to the earliest attempts. Instead of mummification, the brain, sometimes the entire body, is cryogenically preserved. This is done since the information stored in the brain is the self/persona and if the technology to download that into an alternative storage component or copy it into a new brain is not available at the time of death, then it needs to be preserved until the technology does exist. 5 Though there is criticism against Transhumanism, to the extent of it being called the ‘worlds most dangerous idea’, 6 it is not much different from any dualistic belief system that deals with ideas regarding life after death and how to secure it.

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__________________________________________________________________ As pointed out in Nick Bostroms article ‘A History of Transhumanist Thought,’ we have always sought means to transcend the human condition, from palaeolithic times through the middle ages and up to the present. The technologies of past and contemporary religions for securing the afterlife are at the moment as unproven as the potential western scientific technological means. There is no way of knowing without a doubt that transferal into a simulation is feasible and will work, there is simply the faith and hope that it will. 7 The wisdom traditions are not replete with information regarding what the world will look like when everyone has attained the posthuman condition described as attainable in their dogma, whether this be an existence in a transmaterial immortal body, or existence in a parallel underworld universe. Modern literature that engages with the posthuman condition delights in a form of projective anachronism. 2. Who Would want to Live Forever? Transhumanism owes as much to the dualistic, escapist notions of the western obsession with the immanence of the apocalypse as it does to science fiction texts. 8 Kurzweil, in The singularity is near and The age of spiritual machines, offers a general overview of how accelerating technology will lead to posthumanity emerging and the technological information based singularity becoming a reality. His overview clearly echoes Isaac Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’ (1956). 9 The story narrates almost the entire lifespan of the Universe, from the creation of the first artificial intelligence to the final heat-death of the universe, and beyond that. The narrative jumps forward millions of years at a time. The A.I. Multivac is shown to evolve between each jump, as are the posthumans living in that time. The posthuman evolution is roughly shown as: humans, humans with enhancements, designed humans who live for hundreds of years, imperishable posthumans who are downloaded into the A.I. and can freely explore the world, and a human-A.I. amalgam condition where the posthumans give up their identity and self to become more than the sum of their parts in the single consciousness of the Universal Multivac that exists in hyperspace. Every jump in Asimov’s story ends with a member of the current generation of posthumans asking the Multivac whether entropy can be reversed. The Multivac solves all other problems, mankind is flourishing, spreading throughout the universe. Energy is abundant. The posthumans even conquer death, though this may not be as desirable as one would think. The posthuman MQ-17J remarks, Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions. 10

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__________________________________________________________________ Each and every mind has its own direct link with the Universal A.I. that exist beyond time and space, and every mind is able to fully fuse with this alien intelligence, passing beyond the confines of the space-time continuity themselves. This allows a final escape when the great universal entropy clock is winding down. The timescale of the novel is unfathomable, stated as ten trillion years. The setting is utopian, with all of postmankind’s worries solved and cared for. But there is the constant nagging feeling, felt by all the posthumans encountered, that there is an end approaching. The end, no matter how distant, will come and this is why they keep asking the Multivac the only question they think matters: ‘How can entropy be reversed?’ 11 Existence in the non-dual state of hyperspace, when ‘Matter and energy had ended and with it, space and time’ seems unacceptable and unwanted. 12 Perhaps because this means giving up the individuality and merging with a collective. One could at this stage ask why the combined multivac-antropos entity doesn’t choose the way of simulated reality as per Moravec’s argument. 13 In the end, the Multivac finds a solution to the problem it was thus far unable to solve and delivers the solution by means of a demonstration. The narrative ends with the words ‘Let there be Light (and there was light),’ the same sentence that the Elohim of Genesis utters. Asimov’s text can be seen as a blueprint for narratives of posthumanity, since almost all other texts can be slotted into its vast timeline as expansions of specific aspects. 3. Digital Minds – Existence as Information Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon presents a world where the mind can be downloaded, copied and stored, and even shared amongst several bodies. The minds are sent through space to inhabit clones, artificial bodies, and even bodies that have previously housed other minds. This process is referred to as resleeving, the bodies being the sleeves into which the minds fit. There is still permanent death if the implant that stores the memory is destroyed. There are rich individuals that store their memories remotely via satellite uplinking, making sure that even if their implants were destroyed they would survive. One of the great hurdles, the ageing process, is also overcome. Cloning allows the same mind to inhabit an almost identical body over and over again. The story is a murder mystery detective story, where the victim, now in a new sleeve, refuses to believe he would have committed suicide and wants his own murder solved. 14 Though physical death is less an issue, the wealth and power that an individual commands still affects the quality of life. Only the rich can afford the best sleeves and thus to not have to go through the growing and ageing process. Life is otherwise fairly unchanged. There are still criminal elements and mankind does not seem to devote itself to altruistic ends searching for self-betterment. The sleeving technology allows the creation of simulated sleeves in simulated reality. The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is placed in one of these scenarios, at first unaware of

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__________________________________________________________________ the fact he is in a simulation. The reason for this is so that his captors can torture him more efficiently. Sleeving has a few effects that seem to be logical extrapolations. First, not everyone wishes to be sleeved more then a few times, especially if they cannot afford better than run of the mill sleeves. Second, certain religious denominations are opposed to the technology. In the narrative this is represented by the Catholic Church. Their fear lies in the idea that the mind and soul are not the same thing. The resleeved are seen as soulless simulations and not the real thing. This echoes the well known issue in the research of A.I. that deals with the question of whether qualia and self-awareness can be modelled or not. Third, there are those who start to either identify more with the various sleeves they have inhabited or completely dis-identify from them all. When being met in virtual reality, most will look like their image of themselves, irrespective of current sleeve. Kadmin, a hired hitman looks like a patchwork of ethnicities, genders and people: Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc. 15 Kadmin might very well be the only real posthuman, from the point of view that he has gone beyond the human on more levels then the surface one. What is shown with most other characters could be paralleled with the idea of the wheel of rebirth present in vedic tantra, gnosticism, and vajrayana buddhism. The mind goes from body to body without transcending itself. The difference lies in that the mind construct remembers the past sleeves reminiscent of the past lives. Nigh immortality is not shown to have solved any of the greater issues of the human condition. 4. The Embodied Mind Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan is famous for showing a convergence of all possible posthuman cultures and subcultures. The series depicts various levels of cyberneticised humans and posthumans. One of the more interesting sub-plots follows a minor character, Ziang Huai. Ziang becomes more and more synthetic as he keeps showing up in the series, dating Channon, the secretary of Spider Jerusalem, the protagonist. In the end, he undergoes the process to become a foglet, having his consciousness uploaded into billions of foglet nanobots. 16 The process is shown since Ziang wants his ex-girlfriend to see as his mind is transferred and the inert body is slowly transformed by the countless nanobots stripping it into its nuclei and building more robots. The foglets could be expected to be shown as extremely detached from society since they exist in a state of nigh-omnipresence.

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__________________________________________________________________ A single foglet can instantiate a new series of itself using dust in space if it so wills. The foglet fog can take on any shape and manipulate matter in almost infinite ways due to its minute size. 17 Existence as a foglet strikes Channon as alien. She cannot wrap her mind around why anyone would want to choose to exist as dust. Tico, the foglet that Spider and his secretary Channon interact with, is trying to impress her with why he chose existence as a foglet rather than changing bodies or simply altering his body. Growing tired of his showmanship, Spider remarks, ‘And this is why I wanted you to meet Tico. He’s blunt. He’s a showoff. He’s rude. He’s human.’ 18 Transmetropolitan also comments on cryogenics. There is a mini-plot showing a woman being awakened from her frozen state, cured of the illness she was trying to escape and set loose in the futuristic city. With no money, everyone she knows long dead, and an inability to cope with the Transhumanist culture, she finds herself incapable of fitting in. Instead of a quirky Captain America like anachronism, she ends up in a shelter, almost psychotic from being overwhelmed by the culture. In both cases there is a technological trick that cheats death but doesn’t prepare the mind for what is to come. With the technology to create a posthuman comes the responsibility to know when to use the technology on willing and unwilling subjects. Euthanasia is a topic with many ethical and practical grey-zones; when it becomes possible to keep Altered Carbon like copies of persons, would their plea for deletion be listened to? Not all posthumans wish to become posthuman. DC Comics’ Robotman, television’s Steve Austin, star of ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, and several of Gibson’s minor characters, especially Dixie Flatline, are involuntary posthumans. In the case of Steve Austin, the process to become a cyborg saves his life and leads to a life that he subjectively experiences as pleasant. 19 This is not the case with Gibson’s Dixie Flatline. Dixie, or McCoy Pauley, was a famous hacker who survived several encounters with the A.I. that flatlined him. The hacker has the contents of his mind saved by the Sense/Net corporation into a ROM. As the construct is read only, when he is accessed at first he has no memory of anything that happened before he was turned on and if turned off again is without continuous memory. Case works around this issue and gives McCoy sequential memory. Being aware of his status as a ROM Personality Matrix, his greatest wish becomes to be erased, which Case obliges him with after the main events. 20 Similarly, Neuromancer the A.I. is able to create constructs existing in a simulation. In a faustian pact he offers Case the option to become one of his simulation: ‘Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn’t know it. Neither will you.’ 21 While Grant Morrison was writing ‘Doom Patrol’ for DC comics, he made a point with Robotman’s strange predicament: a human brain in a robotic body with super strength, speed, and endurance, artificially enhanced senses but still removed from the world, experiencing it as mediated. Robotman is depressed and suicidal.

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__________________________________________________________________ He cannot be destroyed. In the last sequence written by Morrison it is also revealed that his biological brain was destroyed at some point and he is completely artificial, with only his personality being original. 22 Needless to say, Robotman did not choose to have his brain implanted into a robotic frame after his body was destroyed, thus he sees his own existence as suffering. Not only can things go wrong with the process, leaving you more than human in some respects but less in others, but what existence as a posthuman is like might also be more than what the candidate bargained for. Continuous memory without the chance to forget or ignore unpleasant memories could make life unbearable, especially if every detail is remembered. Similarly, if there is the possibility to delete memories, or if the memories are changed, then essentially the change that happens over millions of years could be so vast that no trace of the original entity and its memories will remain. 5. Beyond Heavens and Hells One thing that is apparent in all the fictional posthumans presented is their humanity. The posthuman has transcended the limitations of the body, what Gibson inspired hackers call the ‘meat.’ The mind, or whatever cultural significator is chosen to be used for that which is here signified, is left almost intact. Julian Huxley’s idea of the posthuman is perhaps closer to the notions of our mind children, the A.I: I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. 23 Science fiction texts are an extrapolation on trends that are present at the time of their writing. Transhumanism is only the latest in a long series of paradigms that seek to use an existing technological tool to accomplish the transformation of an individual into something that is more than man. The hurdle is that the self is not given up. The current representations of posthumans are recognisably human. Anthropocentrism has long been the bane of western culture. That the technologically transformed beings are recognisable might be a hint that they are not the true posthumans. If human beings build their own posthuman world it will be recognisable as it is their world, in a different matter. Not very different from how ancient Egyptians saw their posthuman world or the afterlife in Amenti as consisting of pleasurable existence with slaves, good harvests, and plenty of beer. Thus the duality between keeping the status quo or only removing the bits that are seen as bad needs to be removed for a true posthuman to emerge.

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Notes 1

‘Humanity+ Constitution’ last modified 11 September 2010, viewed 3 April 2012, http://humanityplus.org/about/constitution/. 2 The Braingate research team, viewed April 20, 2012, http://www.braingate2.org/aboutUs.asp#adm. 3 In the Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, Dimitri Meeks and Christine FavardMeeks argue that Egyptian theology grew out of ancestral worship, thus both the cult of the dead and the cult of the gods would share the same origin. 4 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1914), 10-24. 5 Ralph C. Merkle, ‘The Molecular Repair of the Brain’, accessed 2 August, 2011, http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html. 6 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas: Transhumanism’ (reprint), Foreign Policy 144 (September/October 2004): 42-43, viewed 20 January 2012. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/09/01/transhumanism. 7 Searle’s Chinese Room argument is in fact based on the notion that only brains are capable running the software that is self-awareness. 8 David F. Noble argues convincingly and extensively in The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 1999) about the western, Christian quest for redemption and the reclaiming of Eden. 9 Isaac Asimov, ‘The Last Question’, last modified 2007, viewed 4 January, 2011, http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Nick Bostrom’s article ‘Are you Living in a Computer Simulation’, in Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 53, No. 211, (2003): 243-255, discusses this issue in greater detail. For The original argument by Moravec see ‘Simulation, Consciousness, Existence’, http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.9 8.html. 14 Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2004), 343. 15 Morgan, Altered Carbon. 16 Foglets are a cyborg version of a utility fog, which in turn is a collection of countless microscopic robots. 17 What I want to be When I Grow Up is a Cloud, by Storrs Hall gives further insight into the transhumanist view of existence as foglets. Published on KurzweilAI.net July 6, 2001, viewed 9 July 2011, http://www.kurzweilai.net/what-i-want-to-be-when-i-grow-up-is-a-cloud.

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Elis Warren, ‘Boyfriend Is a Virus’, in Transmetropolitan Vol. 1, Vertigo, March 17, 2009. 19 Harvey Bennet, prod., The Six Million Dollar Man, Television Series, ABC Network Jan 18, 1974. 20 William Gibson, Neuromancer (London: Harper Collins Ltd., 1995). 21 Gibson, Neuromancer, 289. 22 Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol: Planet Love collects #58-63 and Doom Force #1, trade paperback (London: Titan Books Ltd., 2009). 23 Julian Huxley, ‘Transhumanism’, in New Bottles for New Wine (London: Chatto & Windus, London, 1957), 13-17.

Bibliography Asimov, Isaac. ‘The Last Question’. Last modified 2007. Viewed 4 January, 2011. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html. Bennet, Harvey, prod. The Six Million Dollar Man. Television Series, ABC Network Jan 18, 1974. Bostrom, Nick, ‘Are you Living in a Computer Simulation’. Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 53, No. 211, (2004): 243–255. Braingate Research Team, The. Viewed 2012-04-20. http://www.braingate2.org/aboutUs.asp#adm. Budge, E.A. Wallis. The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1914. Elis, Warren. Transmetropolitan. Vol. 1, ‘Boyfriend Is a Virus’, Vertigo, March 17, 2009. Fukuyama, Francis. The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas: Transhumanism (reprint). Foreign Policy 144 (September/October 2004): 42–43. Viewed 20 January, 2012. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/09/01/transhumanism. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. London: Harper Collins Ltd., 1995. Hall Storrs, J. What I want to be When I Grow Up is a Cloud. Published on KurzweilAI.net 6 July, 2001, Viewed 9 July 2011.

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.kurzweilai.net/what-i-want-to-be-when-i-grow-up-is-a-cloud. Humanity+ Constitution’. Last modified 11 September 2010. Viewed 3 April 2012, http://humanityplus.org/about/constitution/. Huxley, Julian. ‘Transhumanism’. In New Bottles for New Wine. London: Chatto & Windus, 1957. Meeks, Dimitri, and Christine Favard-Meeks. The Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, translated by G. M. Goshgarian. New York: Cornell University Press, 1996. Merkle, Ralph C. ‘The Molecular Repair of the Brain’. Accessed August 2, 2011. http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html. Moravec, Hans. ‘Simulation, Consciousness, Existence’. http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.9 8.html. Morgan, Richard. Altered Carbon. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2004. Morrison, Grant. Doom Patrol: Planet Love. Collects #58-63 and Doom Force #1, Trade paperback, London: Titan Books Ltd., 2009. Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Searle, John R. ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’. The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3, 417–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Christian Johannes Kovacs is a PhD student at the Department of English studies, Durham University. His research interests include cybertheory, artificial entities and comparative religious studies, and the impact on socio-cultural phenomena that these have via textual media.

‘The theatre in me’: VR and New Models of Gendered IntraSubjectivity in the Futuristic Cyberpunk Fiction of Pat Cadigan Ana Makuc Abstract In her latest book, the psychoanalyst Sherry Turkle refers to the ‘subjective computer’—‘the machine as it enters into social life and psychological development’. She suggests that ‘[t]echnology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies’ and that ‘technology reshapes the landscape of our emotional lives’. Since the early 1990s, scholars such as Turkle have traced the growing engagement with and dependence on computer technologies, in her case arguing that they are radically transforming subjectivities and inter-personal relationships. Prior to this recent research, feminist cyberpunk science fiction published during the 1980s and 1990s explored how cybertechnologies might be implicated in such changes, with specific emphasis on gender and sexuality. These cyberpunk explorations also relate to specific developments in the psychoanalytic theory of Jessica Benjamin. Benjamin developed new models of subjectivity and personal relations, challenging traditional, patriarchal, Freudian models of the psyche. This chapter provides a close reading of the representation of virtual reality in Cadigan’s third cyberpunk novel, Fools (1992), in terms of intra-subjectivity, by reading Cadigan alongside Benjamin to identify and reflect upon the forms of subjectivity extrapolated by both authors. Fools thematizes neuroses by portraying the main protagonist of the novel—a ‘memory junkie’, Marceline—with Dissociative Identity Disorder, artificially induced through memory transplantations in virtual reality mind-to-mind contacts. The chapter then explores the dynamic interaction between ‘original’ and ‘copy’ in Marceline’s consciousness and reflects upon how this complicates her gender and sexuality. In other words, Benjamin’s ‘relational’ model of subjectivity—predicated upon the subject’s inter-subjective exchanges with (external) ‘others’—is here explored vis-à-vis an intra-subjective model of the psyche that exceeds and challenges Freud’s fixed hierarchy of id/ego/superego. Finally, this chapter examines Cadigan’s depiction of virtual reality in relation to more recent, theoretical, and popular literature on the impact of online social networking and virtual reality games on gendered and sexual subjectivities and personal relations. Key Words: Virtual reality, feminist cyberpunk science fiction, intra-subjectivity, Pat Cadigan, Jessica Benjamin, gendered and sexualized subjectivity, personal relationships, Sherry Turkle. *****

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__________________________________________________________________ Since the mid-1990s, cyberpsychologists, such as Sherry Turkle and Patricia Wallace, have traced the human’s growing engagement with and dependence upon computer technologies, showing how they are radically transforming our subjectivities and inter-personal relationships. Feminist cyberpunk science fiction from the 1980s and 1990s explored how cybertechnologies might be implicated in these changes, with a specific emphasis on gender and sexuality, several years before these issues became widely theorized. This chapter is a close reading of the conceptualization of virtual reality in Pat Cadigan’s third cyberpunk novel, Fools (1992), with reference to the concept of ‘intersubjectivity’ explicated by the American psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin in The Bonds of Love (1988), Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995), and The Shadow of the Other (1998). Virtual reality, as envisaged by Cadigan in the 1990s, works as a domain for experimentation with our gendered and sexualized identities and interpersonal relationships. This relates to how, also in the 1990s, psychoanalysts, such as Benjamin, began to model new versions of subjectivity and personal relations, challenging traditional, patriarchal forms of the psyche. In particular, this chapter examines how virtual reality, as portrayed by Cadigan, may be impacting upon subjectivity and self-other relations, with a specific emphasis on gender and sexuality, in terms of intra-subjectivity. Fools approaches the complex relationship between intra-subjectivity and memory through the main protagonist’s experience of Multiple Personality Disorder, a consequence of memory transplantations or ‘overlays’ in virtual reality mind-tomind contacts. This chapter tries to answer the question about how interdependent the relationship between the ‘original’ and the ‘copy’ is, and how gendered and sexualized subjectivity is negotiated inside the main protagonist’s mind. The focus of this chapter is therefore not the relationship between sameness and difference, or self and other, but rather between self and alter ego, sameness and sameness. Finally, this chapter reads Cadigan’s depiction of virtual reality in relation to more recent theoretical and popular literature on the impact of online social networking and virtual reality games on our (gendered and sexualized) subjectivities, to assess the extent to which prospects and dangers envisioned by Cadigan are being realized. In the futuristic universe of Fools, personality traits are transplantable, downloadable, and for sale, psychosis is an acquired taste, and plastic surgery is widely used to accommodate incessantly changing states of consciousness. Virtual reality is depicted as a computer-generated graphic environment, not bound by hardware limitation, but rather actively imagined by the participants. In hermeneutic terms, the novel operates at two distinct levels. At first glance, the novel is a thriller, a detective whodunit mystery, which requires the reader to sort out the complex power dynamic between Marceline, Mersine, and Marva, and the realization that they represent a single but divided consciousness. More

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__________________________________________________________________ profoundly, Fools may be understood as a psychological search for (gendered and sexualized) identity. Before the plot pursued by the novel begins, there are two bodies/consciousnesses, namely: Mersine, ‘Brain Police’ officer, working in deep undercover as Marva, an actress, to investigate illegal personality sells; and Marceline, a memory junkie, working for an ‘Escort’ service, helping people to dispose of unwanted personalities in virtual reality or to pursue virtual suicidal euthanasia. The actress realizes that she is in fact the police officer so she hires the Escort to kill the aberrant persona, the officer, in virtual reality. But because Mersine, the officer, does not want to die, she offers some of her memories to Marceline, the Escort, who is a memory junkie, addicted to other people’s memories. Consequently, both Marva, the actress, and Mersine, the police officer, spill onto Marceline, the Escort/memory junkie, and the latter ends up with three personalities. The novel, however, is about this one woman/consciousness/body who is already three personalities. It is, moreover, structured as three, equally reliable, first-person narrative strands, corresponding to three different personalities, distinguished by various typefaces: Times New Roman for Marceline; Century Gothic for Mersine; Bold Times New Roman for Marva; subliminal italics for leak-throughs from other personalities. As already observed, the main protagonist of the novel, memory junkie, Marceline, is a multiple personality with an artificially induced Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder. In ‘The Intrapersonal Civil War’ (2009), psychiatrist Rebecca Johnson describes Dissociative Identity Disorder as ‘the most severe form of dissociative pathology whereby the patient displays at least two distinct and enduring identities/personality states that recurrently “take control” of the person’s behaviour.’ 1 Different identities present in one person are called ‘alters’, since they can have different memories, life histories, ages, and genders, and can represent a particular feeling, perspective, or personality trait. Often alters, despite their close proximity, have no knowledge of one another, and are accompanied by amnesia beyond that of ordinary forgetfulness, called ‘interidentity amnesia.’ 2 It can be deciphered from the text that all three personalities in the novel, Marceline, an Escort and memory junkie, Marva, an actress, and Mersine, a Brain Police officer, inhabit one body, Marceline’s original body, and experience memory losses. Moreover, whereas Marceline acquires Dissociative Identity Disorder through a memory transplantation, or ‘overlay’, in the virtual reality mind-to-mind contact with the original Marva (or Mersine), in today’s scientific terms, Dissociative Identity Disorder is considered to be an effect of a severe trauma during early childhood, usually a consequence of extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse, commonly inflicted by a caregiver.

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__________________________________________________________________ The reason why Marceline, the memory junkie, accepted the Escorting job was because it represented the easiest way to incorporate other people’s memories, to which she is addicted, or to ‘feed her beast’: You get plenty of memories when you’re Escorting. That’s what people are when they’re dying, one big bundle of memories, their lives passing before their eyes. Of course, I don’t get to keep it all—I have to pass it all on to Bateau [her employer] afterward. What he’s got a use for he keeps, sells it if nothing else. The dregs are mine, though he charges me for them. 3 This extract seems to suggest that Marceline, both as an Escort, helping unwanted personas to commit suicide in virtual reality mind-to-mind contacts, and as memory junkie, ingesting other people’s memories, could represent what is in Freudian psychoanalysis called ‘bodily ego’. ‘Bodily ego’ is a Freudian term for the earliest, the original experiences of self, which are constructed around the experiences of bodily functions, as a child ‘forms a rudimentary sense of self via a sense of having taken mother [or mother’s milk] inside her.’ 4 It denotes a pregenital phase of psychosexual development, called ‘oral sadism’, in which sexual activity is indistinguishable from food ingestion. In this phase, wanting to become like and having, identification and desire, are indistinguishable. If Marceline, the Escort and the memory junkie, could therefore be seen to be bodily ego, then she does not have to separate identification from desire. Since identification and desire are two concepts central to the construction of gender and sexuality, Marceline does not seem to have to choose a fixed gendered identity and heterosexual objects. Indeed, as literary critic Thomas Forster argues, virtual reality technologies, by unsettling the distinction between inner (mind) and outer (body) worlds, and relocating subjectivity outside the space of the physical body, enable the imbrications of identification and desire, or ‘allow sexual desire to be combined with identification with the object of desire.’ 5 Moreover, staying within the Freudian taxonomy, Marceline, the Escort and the memory junkie, could also be seen to be what, in the Freudian structure of the psyche, is called the id, in contrast to Marva, the actress, who could be seen to represent the ego, and Mersine, the police officer, the super-ego. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the id represents the human’s instinctual needs and passions, encompassing sexual, or ‘life’ instincts and destructive, or ‘death’ instincts, and, following the pleasure principle, demands an immediate satisfaction of desires. The ego, by contrast, is a psychic expression of the reality principle; here, momentary unpleasure is tolerated for the sake of the long-term pleasure. And the superego, is the human’s conscience—the exercise of moral censorship, a symbolic internalization of parental agency and cultural regulations, a so-called ideal principle, striving toward acting in a culturally and socially appropriate manner. 6 In

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__________________________________________________________________ gendered terms, Marceline, the memory junkie, may therefore be seen as an expression of the sexual pleasure principle, not distinguishing between desire and identification; Marva, the actress, may be viewed as the sexual reality principle, representing a strategic performance of gender and sexuality; and Mersine, the police officer, may be seen as the idealizing principle, advocating fixed gendered identity and heterosexual orientation. Yet, Marceline (id) acquires Marva (ego) and Mersine (superego) through memory transplantations in virtual reality, not as a consequence of the Oedipus complex, as argued by Freud. According to Freud, individuation is preceded by a state of ‘oceanic’ consciousness in which the child experiences itself and its mother as a continuity. Then, as the child acquires an independent sense of self, Freud suggests, there opens up a possibility of relating to her parents in two ways: first, as someone she would like to have (choosing the parent as an object); second, as someone she would like to be (identifying with the parent). Further, central to the expression of the Oedipus complex and the conditions for the emergence of the superego are feelings of helplessness, ambivalence (the feeling of love and hate for both parents), and prohibition, or the need to ‘abandon certain aspirations of acting on their feelings of love and hate.’ 7 The result is the split in personality—‘one part of the ego sets itself against the other, judges it critically and, as it were, takes it as its object.’ 8 Freud calls this critical internal voice the superego and sees it as a solution to an infant’s problem; in this process, ‘the child has reacted to wishes for one parent by internalizing the other parent’s prohibitions.’ 9 The creation of the superego, according to Freud, as a consequence of the Oedipus complex, is therefore closely linked to the formation of a stable and fixed gendered identity, based on anatomical difference, and to normative heterosexuality. 10 Contrary to Freud, Jessica Benjamin argues that the oedipal phase, based on gender complementarity, is not the last phase of the development of gendered subjectivity. She says: The idea that the child renounces the other’s prerogatives in the oedipal phase seems to misconstrue gender identity as a final achievement, a cohesive, stable system, rather than an unattainable oedipal ideal with which the self constantly struggles. 11 Benjamin’s understanding of gendered subjectivity is arguably the point of Cadigan’s novel, since the ego (Marva, the actress), the id (Marceline, the Escort and memory junkie), and the superego (Mersine, the police officer) acquire equal status, establish an ‘intersubjective’ self-other (in the self) relationship, and interact dynamically. Benjamin defines ‘intersubjectivity’ as mutual subjectivity, mutual recognition of self and other, as the meeting of two (or more) minds, as the interplay of two (or more) subjective worlds. Put differently, the copy (Marva,

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__________________________________________________________________ Mersine) in Fools is as good or the same as the original (Marceline). As all three personalities in the novel acknowledge the separate, authentic existence of one another, they give one another an equal space in the consciousness by shifting among themselves quickly: The first time we went over this cliff, the cop saved us. This time—am I supposed to do it this time? Migid … I can’t. I need the mirror, there’ll be some other character in it better at this than I am. You want to check the line? Sovay. Migod, yes, I want to check the line. It’s a dirty trick, but that’s how it happens sometimes. Sovay is the one thing they all agree on, and if one of them checks the line, they all will. They just won’t know that I’ve changed the line to read, Good-bye. (Exit.) Curtain. Exit now? If that’s the line, than that’s the line. How good an actor am I? Good enough to play both parts. That’s the Method. I know her; I can be her. And I’m still her when she goes over the cliff. 12 Since all parts of the psyche have an equal claim on Marceline’s identity, the self in the novel is not dominated by the authoritative superego and, as a consequence, not fixed in terms of gender and sexuality. The multiple self in Fools is also not a pathological subject, not a Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer, whose parts of the self are not in easy communication, and whose multiplicity—similar to traditional, unitary, and fixed self—exists in the context of repressive rigidity. Rather, the self-depicted in the novel is what Turkle, in her work on virtual reality gaming environments called MUDs, designates a postmodern, multiple, flexible self: ‘[T]he many manifestations of multiplicity in our culture, including the adoption of online personae, are contributing to a general reconsideration of traditional, unitary notions of identity.’ 13 ‘The Internet’, Turkle argues, ‘has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of the self that characterize postmodern life.’ 14 Turkle contends that MUDs are roleplaying games, in which the participants adopt personas or virtual masks, with their own independence and integrity to play aspects of themselves. In the novel, Marva, the actress, similarly observes, ‘I was the stage,’ 15 and, ‘Somewhere in the theatre—in me.’ 16

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__________________________________________________________________ As all three personalities interact inter-subjectively, and because the self is multiple rather than unified, traditional oedipal complementarity, in the novel, is replaced by what Benjamin calls postoedipal complementarity, in which ‘identification and object love do not break down along the clear lines suggested by the oedipal model,’ 17 and singular gendered and sexualized identity is replaced by plural gendered identifications. Because of anonymity, cross-dressing and experimental virtual sex, Turkle argues, are the most popular activities in textbased virtual reality gaming environments, MUDs. Turkle contends that virtual gender swapping enables greater emotional range in everyday reality and is a reflection on the social construction of gender, as well as the way ideas about gender shape our expectations. Virtual sex, experienced so authentically by the participants, makes us think about what is at the heart of sex and fidelity: is it in the head or in the body, in the desire or in the action? 18 In the novel, Marva and her coactor at Sir Larry’s theatre, Sovay, engage in virtual sex, which is by Sovay’s wife Rowan described as more intimate than sex in social reality: ‘We thought that mind-to-mind contact was more intimate than a married couple should be.’ 19 Sovay and Marva represent two types of Method actors: Sovay is the ego that swallows everyone, so all the characters that he plays have to become him, whereas Marva is able to split her mind and become the many different characters that she plays. Sovay goes mind-to-mind with Marva not because of love, but because he wants to become like her; he says, ‘I thought if I could feel the way you did, I could learn how.’ 20 He continues, ‘who we are depends on who we’re with. And you’re with me now,’ 21 and when he is mindsucked, he continues to live in her, which is why his wife Rowan asks Marva to be Sovay for her: ‘I’m still not the man you wanted me to be. Nobody is.’ 22 However, as it has been explained, even though virtual reality, as depicted in the novel, enables superimpositions of desire and identification—the two concepts central to the construction of gender and sexuality—and, consequently, fosters a wider emotional spectrum in the social reality (or multiple gender identifications), virtual reality cannot operate in a vacuum in which traditional gender roles and heteronormativity do not exist. Benjamin explains that, whereas ‘postoedipal complementarity’ allows sexualized and gendered multiplicity and ambiguity, which are denied by the oedipal form, it does not exist outside the terms of gender division. Indeed, in The Psychology of the Internet (1999), Patricia Wallace observes that gender stereotypes persist (and are sometimes even reinforced) on the Net; they are enacted in the way men and women were supposed to communicate with each other: On the Internet, people want to know whether you’re male or female. Gender has not vaporized in cyberspace, and problems related to gender roles and conflicts have, in some ways, been exacerbated as we migrated into to the online environment in

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__________________________________________________________________ large numbers. Unlike skin colour, age, or other visual features that trigger stereotypes, gender is often apparent on the Internet because of the person’s signature, nickname, or use of pronouns. 23 Throughout the novel, the main protagonist not only remains fixedly gendered female, but is also involved in heterosexual relationships—this relates to Marva’s virtual lover, Sovay, and Marceline’s real life boyfriend, Anwar. To conclude, according to both Cadigan’s fictional, futuristic conceptualization of virtual reality, and contemporary popular analyses of online social networking, virtual reality games, and the Internet, virtual-reality-abetted (gendered and sexualized) individuation has both positive and negative implications for our subjectivities and personal relationships. One of the prospects of virtual-realityabetted intra-subjectivity is broader interiorization. The component parts of the multiple self are full-blown personalities (in the novel these are imagined as clusters of memories), rather than just drives. By assuming these roles, the self can take on alternative identity markers and explore undiscovered (gendered and sexualized) aspects of herself. Consequently, the self develops a greater emotional range in everyday reality, and, it could also be claimed, a single gendered and sexualized identity becomes replaced by plural gendered identifications. The latter also means that the self is not essentialist, but rather constantly changes through relationships. However, it is arguable that one of the dangers of virtual-realityfacilitated intra-subjectivity is that gender categories and stereotypes (including compulsory heterosexuality) are still prevalent, both in virtual reality and social reality.

Notes 1

Rebecca Johnson, ‘The Intrapersonal Civil War’, Psychologist 22 (2009): 300. Lauren L. Kong, John J. B. Allen, Elizabeth L. Glisky, ‘Interidentity Memory Transfer in Dissociative Identity Disorder’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 117 (2008): 686. 3 Pat Cadigan, Fools (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 126. 4 Jonathan Lear, ‘The Structure of the Psyche’, in Freud (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 165-191. 5 Thomas Forster, ‘“The Postproduction of the Human Heart”: Desire, Identification, and Virtual Embodiment in Feminist Narratives of Cyberspace’, in Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture, ed. Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth (London: The MIT Press, 2002), 469-504. 6 Sigmund Freud, ‘The Mind and Its Workings’, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (London: The Hogarth Press, 1973), 1-28. 2

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Lear, ‘Structure of the Psyche’, 181. Freud cited in Lear, ‘Structure of the Psyche’, 168. 9 Lear, ‘Structure of the Psyche’, 185. 10 Ibid. 11 Jessica Benjamin, Like Subjects, Love Objects (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995). 12 Cadigan, Fools, 149. 13 Sherry Turkle, Life on Screen: Identity in the Age of Internet (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995), 260. 14 Ibid., 180. 15 Cadigan, Fools, 95. 16 Ibid., 99. 17 Benjamin, Like Subjects, Love Objects, 18. 18 Turkle, Life on Screen, 223-225. 19 Cadigan, Fools, 259. 20 Ibid., 280. 21 Ibid., 281. 22 Ibid., 258. 23 Patricia Wallace, The Psychology of the Internet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 208. 8

Bibliography Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. –—–. Like Subjects, Love Objects. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. –—–. Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. Routledge: New York and London, 1998. Cadigan, Pat. Fools. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1992. Forster, Thomas. ‘“The Postproduction of the Human Heart”: Desire, Identification, and Virtual Embodiment in Feminist Narratives of Cyberspace’. In Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture, edited by Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth, 469-504. London: The MIT Press, 2002. Freud, Sigmund. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. London: The Hogarth Press, 1973.

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__________________________________________________________________ Johnson, Rebecca. ‘The Intrapersonal Civil War’. Psychologist 22 (2009): 300– 303. Kong, Lauren L., John J. B. Allen, and Elizabeth L. Glisky. ‘Interidentity Memory Transfer in Dissociative Identity Disorder’. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 117 (2008): 686-692. Lear, Jonathan. ‘The Structure of the Psyche’. In Freud. London and New York: Routledge, 2005, 165–191. Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. –—–. Life on Screen: Identity in the Age of Internet. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995. –—–. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Wallace, Patricia. The Psychology of the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Ana Makuc is a PhD research student in Women's Studies at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Lancaster University, UK. Her project investigates issues of gender in feminist cyberpunk science fiction literature, with a specific focus on virtual reality.

Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in Cyberpunk Carla Zeltzin Tirado Morttiz Abstract Neal Stephenson is considered one of the most important writers of the second Cyberpunk wave. One of his most important novels is Snow Crash, originally published in 1991. Even though in his novel he explores traditional cyberpunk themes such as the oversaturation of technology, cyberspace, and the hybridisation of antinomies such as, male/female, machine/human, past/future, reality/artificiality, he does so from a satirical perspective that sets him apart from predecessors such as William Gibson, and establishes him as a paradigmatic example of this second wave. Stephenson’s novel is set in an alternative contemporaneity in an attempt to enhance the critical function of the text in relation to the transformation of existence due to technological entities that aim to overcome human limitations. These modifications may be in the physical plane (cyborgs) or in a psychological plane, with the constitution of a reality based on simulation (cyberspace). In either case, the microcosmical diversification in postindustrial societies based on objects, images, and information, ends up eroding social identities, causing a destabilisation of the individual. In Snow Crash, both reality and cyberspace are equally important, constituting parallel universes in which the story takes place. Nevertheless, the implosion of traditional identities, as well as the overlapping of worlds in both society and the different characters, makes the construction of identity a more complex and liquid phenomenon. Cyberpunk initially had a speculative function—wondering what the near future would be like in a Post Cold War society, under the domain of technology, corruption, and multinational capitalism. The refraction of contemporary ideology in this genre, and particularly in this novel, establishes it as a paradigmatic postmodern example in which the so-called evolution of humanity, both in the present and in a near future, is greatly criticized and reflected upon. Key Words: Postmodern identity, implosive science fiction, cyberpunk, essentialism, anti-essentialism, hybridization, globalization, cybernetic identities. ***** One of the key concepts in recent decades has been the concept of crisis. Crisis of economy, of identity, of subjectivity, of language, of narrative. However, a crisis can also be a productive phenomenon since it forces a rethinking of things in order to find a solution, thus enabling creativity as a principle of problem reformulation. Throughout history, human experience has been organised through narratives that make reality intelligible. Both history and literature have this as a common ground since reality is always mediated through language. Therefore, both types of

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__________________________________________________________________ discourses constitute sociohistorical constructions that retain a pragmatic function, even when they differ in their primary referents and, consequently, in their truth regimes. However, the totalising function of narratives produced what Lyotard refers to as metanarratives, 1 which played a key role in the organisation as well as the unification of modern states since they set the rules that would create a notion of community and also a certain direction and meaning of existence. For instance, the idea of progress as constant improvement and a unified perception of the self is an example of a metanarrative. Nevertheless, with the rise of globalization and multinational economies, as a result of the acceleration of capitalism that took place around the 1960s, came a new world order ruled by international capital in the form of privatized enterprises. The role that technology has played in the rise of this new global vision has been crucial, for it has permitted what seemed to be impossible—a bending of spatiotemporal boundaries in order to allow a constant flux of data in this Information Era, in which information is money. Vivian Sobchack explains cyberspace in the following way: Television, video cassettes, video tape recorder/players, video games and personal computers all form an encompassing electronic system whose various forms “interface” to constitute an alternative and absolute world that uniquely incorporates the spectator/user in a spatially decentred, weakly temporalized and quasi-disembodied state.’ 2 Science Fiction has been considered a crucial cognitive tool that approaches and explores the qualitatively new techno-logic and attempts to ‘cognitively map the new terminal spaces, to establish a cartography within the paradigms of the simulated and the spectacular.’ 3 It is important to consider two main stages in the development of science fiction, as proposed by the co-editor of the magazine Science Fiction Studies Istvan Csicsery-Ronay: the expansionist, which deals with outer space from a positivist perspective that reflects a scientific ideology that still has ethical control over technological production, and the implosive, which, having become extremely disappointed with the positivist outlook as a consequence of the mass destruction caused by technology during World War One, World War Two, and the Cold War, turns towards microcosms. Cyberpunk belongs to the second stage for, according to Brian McHale, it focuses on the diversification of postmodern societies through microcosms 4, which imply the impossibility of establishing clear-cut frontiers between perceptual, cognitive, epistemological, and even ontological categories such as life/death, machine/human, man/woman, natural/artificial. The term cyberpunk contains in itself new forms of overlapping and an integration of the Eighties counterculture and technologies in an

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__________________________________________________________________ increasingly privatized environment. This establishes cyberpunk as the apotheosis of postmodernism, which encompasses a symbolic map of contemporary ideology. Neal Stephenson is considered one of the most important writers of the second Cyberpunk wave. One of his most important novels is Snow Crash, originally published in 1991. Even though in his novel he explores cyberpunk themes such as the oversaturation of technology, cyberspace, and the hybridization of antinomies such as male/female, machine/human, past/future, reality/artificiality, he does so from a satirical perspective that sets him apart from predecessors such as William Gibson and establishes him as a paradigmatic example of this second wave. The plot consists of the emergence of a new drug that can be acquired both in the real world and in the cybernetic world. The drug, also known as snow crash, contains a neurolinguistic virus that alters the brain’s structure. This draws the attention of the main character, Hiro Protagonist, who is one of the most famous hackers who participated in the development of the cyber world or metaverse; hedecides to do some research after one of his friends is affected by the drug. With the help of his intelligence partner Y.T., Hiro finds out that the virus has its roots in a Sumerian myth concerning the linguistic consequences of the biblical myth of the tower of Babel. Simultaneously, the virus is being distributed by the magnate L. Bob Rife, who is looking to augment and spread his power by infecting refugees in the real world and hackers in the metaverse. Thus, the main conflict revolves around Hiro and Y.T. trying to stop and revert the infection. Stephenson’s novel is set in an alternative contemporaneity in an attempt to enhance the critical function of the text in relation to the transformation of existence due to technological entities that aim to overcome human limitations. These modifications may be in the physical plane (cyborgs) or in a psychological plane, with the constitution of an alternate reality based on simulation (cyberspace). In either case, the microcosmical diversification in post-industrial societies based on objects, images, and information ends up eroding social identities and causing a destabilization of the individual. In Snow Crash, both reality and cyberspace are equally important, constituting parallel universes in which the story takes place. Nevertheless, the implosion of traditional identities, as well as the overlapping of worlds in both society and the different characters, makes the construction of identity a more complex and therefore liquid phenomenon. The novel has a fragmented narrative structure in which the omniscient narrator alternates between the stories of the two main characters, Hiro Protagonist and Y.T., both in the real and the cybernetic plane. According to Fredric Jameson, fragmentation is a structural characteristic of postmodern texts since identity in the post-industrial era is compared to schizophrenia due to the imminent simultaneity rendered by the media culture, making it impossible to experience continuity and thus resulting in a fragmented experience of the self. 5 On the one hand, Martha Agoustinos, in her book Social Cognition: An Integrated Introduction, 6 considers

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__________________________________________________________________ that identity originates from distinguishing the ‘me’ from the ‘other,’ which is why she mentions two basic types of identity: personal identity, which refers to characteristics that we see in ourselves and that are strictly individual, for instance a trait of character; and social identity, which is the part of an individual’s selfimage that derives from the acknowledgement of belonging to a certain social group. On the other hand, Amin Maalouf, in Murderous Identities, defies the notion of essentialism when he says that identities are composed of all the elements that have shaped it, emphasizing the fact that the particular dosage varies from one person to another and that it is precisely the singular dosage that conforms an identity. 7 As a consequence, Maalouf states that the importance of diversification relies on the mediation between different cultures that creates numerous bonds, making identity a more specific phenomenon considering all the individuals belonging to different communities. Due to the microcosmic diversification in postmodern societies, as well as the multiplicity of worlds, and the simultaneously converging identities, personal identity becomes a far more complex issue. In Snow Crash, the story takes place in Los Angeles, California, which constitutes a heterogeneous zone in which an imploded cultural juxtaposition takes place, turning it into a microcosm or compressed referent of the global community. It is important to bear in mind the way society is organized, for it is divided into different franchulates 8 and burbclaves that appeal to specific identity features, such as race or culture, for instance: Nova Sicilia, Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, White Columns (for White people only, non-Caucasians must be processed), Metazania, New South Africa, Narcolombia, among others. Therefore, the moment identity is reduced to several membership cards and multiple bar codes that reduce one’s identity to a series of data that can be easily reproduced, it is turned into a mass consumption product, thus liquidating its transcendental value. In the accelerated process of globalization, hybridization is one of the inevitable consequences that leaves the idea of identity as a pure concept behind. Taking the main character, Hiro Protagonist, as an example of this idea, we come across a complex identity for he is the result of a merge between an AfricanAmerican and a Korean origin, mixed with an adopted Japanese identification, in a North American environment. Nevertheless, these peculiarities are not fortuitous for they refer to representative moments of the United States’ history, mainly the Korean War, Vietnam War, World War One, World War Two, as well as the Cold War, thus becoming a reminder of the cultural and ethnic hybridization that derived from these events: His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro didn’t know whether he was black or Asian or just plain Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant, talented or lucky. He didn’t even have a part of the country to call home until he

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__________________________________________________________________ moved to California, which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. 9 In addition, Hiro’s hybrid nature is not only racial but also professional, for he is an unemployed freelance hacker and at the same time ‘the greatest sword fighter in the World.’ 10 This particular combination is interesting for it incorporates two different historical approaches on the heroic image: a traditionalist one, represented by the samurai, and a new one, represented by hackers, who are the new heroic symbol for they fight against the oppressive regime of mega corporations in the era of hyper technology. As a result, this configuration not only reaffirms the allegorical nature of the character but also functions as a link between different historical concepts of heroism, thus creating a dialogue between the past and the present. The reconciliation of categories that historically have come across as excluding, such as East and West, past and present, technology and conservatism, to name but a few, illustrates the postmodern notion of identity that Maalouf refers to as composite identity; Maalouf says, ‘With the accelerated and vertiginous process of amalgamation and merge in the globalized era it is necessary—urgent— to elaborate a new conception of identity.’ 11 However, there is a clash in the novel between a traditionalist and conservative perspective of identity that Maalouf refers to as ‘tribal’—for it stands for an essentialist and reductionist viewpoint—and the postmodern one when Hiro faces the Neo-traditional Nipponese man in the Metaverse. The conflict has its origin in Hiro’s hybrid nature, which leads to a patronizing and discriminatory attitude on behalf of the latter character: His path [Hiro’s] is being blocked by the Nipponese man—the neo-traditional. The guy with the swords. He’s facing off against Hiro, about two sword-lengths apart, and it doesn’t look like he intends to move. Hiro does the polite thing. He bows at the waist, straightens up. The businessman does the much less polite thing. He looks Hiro rather carefully up and down, then returns the bow. Sort of. ‘These—’ the businessman says. ‘Very nice.’ ‘Thank you, sir. Please feel free to converse in Nipponese if you prefer.’ ‘This is what your avatar wears. You do not carry such weapons in Reality,’ the businessman says. In English. ‘I’m sorry to be difficult, but in fact, I do carry such weapons in Reality,’ Hiro says… ‘These are ancient weapons[…]How did you come to be in possession of such important family heirlooms from Nippon?’ the businessman says. Hiro knows the subtext here: What do you use those swords for, boy, slicing watermelon? ‘They are now my family heirlooms,’ Hiro says. ‘My father won them.’ ‘Won them? Gambling?’ ‘Single combat. It was a struggle between my father and a Nipponese officer[…]’ ‘Please excuse

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__________________________________________________________________ me if I have misinterpreted your story,’ the business man says, ‘but I was under the impression that men of your race were not allowed to fight during that war.’ […] ‘Do you think that the manner in which you came to possess these swords was honorable?’ the businessman says. ‘If I did not, I would long since have returned them,’ Hiro says. ‘Then you will not object to losing them in the same fashion,’ the businessman says. ‘Nor will you object to losing yours,’ Hiro says. 12 In the end, the postmodern perception represented by Hiro prevails. Nevertheless, these constant juxtapositions throughout the novel imply a new conception resulting from transcontextualization. According to Linda Hutcheon, ‘parody, by its very doubled structure, is very much an inscription of the past in the present, and it is for that reason that it can be said to embody and bring to life actual historical tensions.’ 13 In the novel, and specifically in the metaverse, where the possibility of self-modification is unlimited and privileges subjectivity and interiorization, the past paradoxically works as a point of reference to model cybernetic identities. For instance: Ng’s Metaverse home is a French colonial villa in the prewar village of My Tho in the Mekong Delta. Visiting him is like going to Vietnam in about 1955, except that you don’t have to get all sweaty […] He has a large office with French doors and a balcony looking out over endless rice paddies where little Vietnamese people work […] She’s [Y.T.] not a bithead, but she knows that this guy is throwing a lot of computer time into the task of creating a realistic view out of his office window […] Ng himself, or at least Ng’s avatar, is a small, very dapper Vietnamese man in his fifties, hair plastered to his head, wearing military-style khakis. At the time Y.T. comes into his office, he is leaning forward in his chair, getting his shoulders rubbed by a geisha. A geisha in Vietnam? Y.T.’s grandpa, who was there for a while, told her that the Nipponese took over Vietnam during the war and treated it with such cruelty that was their trademark before we nuked them and they discovered that they were pacifists. The Vietnamese, like most Asians, hate the Japanese. And apparently this Ng character gets a kick out of the idea of having a Japanese geisha around to rub his back. 14 Considering parody as a rhetorical strategy that creates historical continuity in a new context through repetition and ironic criticism, the use of the past in the cybernetic universe contributes to legitimating an artificial plane by referring to

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__________________________________________________________________ certain historical tensions. The resulting transcontextualization alters the significance of the traditional context it is reinserting, thus creating a new synthesis and acting according to the double function that Linda Hutcheon attributes to parody. The importance of the past and of traditional identities that verge on extreme conservatism in an electronic space that allows new realities is both significant and paradoxical, for it shows how our current representations derive from the past ones, as well as revealing the ideological consequences that continuity and difference imply. As a result, the metaverse becomes an easily recognisable world representation that constitutes an extension of reality on a different plane instead of an authentic alternative universe. In consequence, this calls for an interpretative evaluation from the reader, taking into consideration the importance—or lack of it—of historical continuity. Cyberpunk, and specifically Snow Crash, is an example of how popular genres are a reflection of their context, for they depict a society’s scientific, technological, social, and cultural changes, thus mirroring the current situations and preoccupations that derive from a particular economic system—in Snow Crash, mass consumerism or multinational capitalism. Snow Crash is a paradigmatic novel in which we find clear representations of the postmodern ideology in which traditional concepts turn out to be ineffective in relating to an increasingly globalized context that, although it has a homogenization tendency on the one hand, also has a more diverse and individualized one on the other. At the same time, the influence of traditional models in the novel’s contemporary conception of identity questions the so-called ‘development’ in postmodern societies, more specifically, the North American one, through its parody. Moreover, the critical distance created by the use of parody as the main rhetorical strategy, through the open use of conventions and cliches that refer to their metatextual nature, creates an auto-reflexivity that makes the novel’s discourse simultaneously critical and auto-critical. In conclusion, science fiction proves to be fertile ground for questioning and exploring not only the future but also our present by creating a recognisable atmosphere that at the same time distances itself from reality. Furthermore, the study of popular genres greatly contributes to a deeper understanding of the cultural production of a specific epoch for they incorporate and reflect different cultural, technological, political, and social dilemmas of the time that make them symptomatic and enable new creative polyphonic and multicultural solutions to postmodern situations.

Notes 1

Jean François Lyotard, La condición posmoderna (Madrid, Cátedra, 2008), 73.

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Vivian Sobchack, ‘The Scene of the Screen: Towards a Phenomenology of Cinematic and Electronic Presence’, Post-Script 10 (1990): 56. 3 Scott Bukatman, Terminal Space, The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 107. 4 Brian McHale, ‘Elements of a Poetics of Cyberpunk’, in Critique 33, No. 3 (1992), viewed 19 May 2009, http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=95178508. 5 Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernist and Consumer Society’, in The Anti-Aesthetics, Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster (New York: New Press, 1998), 111-125. 6 Martha Agoustinos, Iain Walker and Ngaire Donaghue, Social Cognition: An Integrated Introduction (London: Sage Publications, 2006), 25. 7 Amin Maalouf, Identidades Asesinas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008), 10-13. 8 The word franchulate originates from the fusion of the terms franchise and consulate. 9 Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (New York, Bantam Books, 1992), 61. 10 Stephenson, Snow Crash, 17. 11 Stephenson, Snow Crash, 41. 12 Stephenson, Snow Crash, 85-86. 13 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody (The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms) (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), xii. 14 Stephenson, Snow Crash, 43.

Bibliography Agoustinos, Martha, Iain Walker, and Ngaire Donaghue. Social Cognition: An Integrated Introduction. London: Sage Publications, 2006. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Space, The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody (The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms). Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Jameson, Fredric. ‘Postmodernist and Consumer Society’. In The Anti-Aesthetics, Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, 111–125. New York: New Press, 1998. Lyotard, Jean François. La condición posmoderna. Madrid: Cátedra, 2008. Maalouf, Amin. Identidades Asesinas. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008.

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McHale, Brian. ‘Elements of a Poetics of Cyberpunk’. Critique 33 No. 3 (1992). Viewed 19th May 2009, http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=95178508. Sobchack, Vivian. ‘The Scene of the Screen: Towards a Phenomenology of Cinematic and Electronic Presence’. Post-Script 10, 1990. Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Carla Zeltzin Tirado Morttiz studied her master's degree in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (English Literature) and has participated in several conferences such as the Literature Encounter in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the same university (March 2007) and the 2nd International Simposium on Russian Literature in Moscow, Russia (December 2006). She has also collaborated with a few articles and translations in several magazines on culture and has published in the memories of the 2nd International Symposium on Russian Literature organised by the Dostoevsky Fund in Moscow.

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Artificial Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William Gibson’s Idoru Imola Bulgozdi Abstract ‘Rei’s only reality is the realm of ongoing serial creation…. Entirely process; infinitely more than the combined sum of her various selves.’ 1 This definition of the idoru closely resonates with ideas proposed by Judith Butler in her seminal essay ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’ (1988). At the same time, the idoru, a personality construct, is nothing more than information, ‘some unthinkable volume of information,’ and yet, she has dreams. The marriage announcement of a famous musician to a Japanese virtual media star leaves fans and friends baffled, while Gibson further probes into the question of the humanity or, lack thereof, of artificial intelligence that is already present in the Sprawl trilogy. In this novel, however, the idoru has a very visible female persona which is also capable of interacting through a holographic representation in real time. My chapter will explore, firstly, the links between Butler’s gender performativity and the idoru’s performance of a human identity; secondly, the surprising similarities between the data traces and fan activity of the two celebrities, one human and the other virtual; and finally, the discrepancy between performed virtual gender identity and flesh-and-blood person of various female characters. Last but not least, data analyst Laney’s climactic discovery has to be discussed as well: his analysis of Rez and Rei’s data imprints shows how the idoru learns through interaction: she acquires complexity, randomness, and what he calls ‘the human thing.’ Here Gibson forges another amazing link between computer science and humanity: the idoru induced the nodal vision as no one before—as narrative, a pivotal element of human identity, which takes the form of the narrative of the self, according to sociologists Anthony Giddens and Stuart Hall. Key Words: William Gibson, Idoru, Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, gender performativity, identity, artificial intelligence, narrative of the self, posthumanism, cyberspace. ***** William Gibson’s Idoru was published in 1996 as the second volume of his Bridge trilogy and it revolves around the series of events prompted by the marriage announcement of world-famous rock star Rez to Japanese virtual media star Rei Toei, a personality construct. Despite the fact that in the world of cyberpunk the boundaries of the human body and sensory experience have incredibly expanded due to plastic surgery, prosthetics, and sim/stim, the decision to marry a software

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__________________________________________________________________ agent still causes upheaval among friends and fans, even raising the suspicion of Rez being manipulated. This idoru, however, has a very visible female persona which is capable of interacting through a holographic representation in real time and, surprisingly, is not some industrial-strength synthesis of Japan’s last three dozen top female media faces. That was usually the way in Hollywood, and the formula tended to be even more rigid… their features algorithmically derived from some human mean of proven popularity. 2 Rei Toei, in contrast, presents as a young woman with ‘black hair, rough-cut and shining…. She had no eyebrows, and both her lids and lashes seemed to have been dusted with something white, leaving her dark pupils in stark contrast.’ 3 It is Rez’s description of her existence, her only reality as ‘ongoing serial creation… entirely process,’ 4 that shows striking parallels with Judith Butler’s conception of gender in her seminal essay, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’ (1988). Butler argues that gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.…This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of a constituted social temporality. 5 Given that gender is instituted through the stylization of the body, which also involves bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds, flesh and blood female characters in Idoru are often described in terms of performing their gendered selves. From the nameless waitress wearing ‘a shapeless grey cotton boilersuit and cosmetic bruises’ 6 to enhance the atmosphere of the Franz Kafka themed bar, to Kathy Torrance, highly capable executive of Slitscan, ‘palest of pale blonds’ due to certain cosmetics and wearing mint-tinted contacts and ‘an expensively savage pictoglyph’ 7 tattoo on her thigh, the majority of Gibson’s female characters are very much children of their times. The fact that the book’s first mention of women describes the Russian prostitutes in Tokyo as Slavic Barbies, the products of routine plastic surgery that ‘lent them a hard assembly-line beauty,’ 8 foretells how aggressively gender is inscribed on the body. While the technological levels of the beauty industry and plastic surgery in Gibson’s book surpass our wildest dreams, cyberspace gives women even more freedom to experiment with different self-representations. The fourteen-year-old protagonist, Chia, who travels from Seattle to Tokyo to find out more about Rez

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__________________________________________________________________ and the idoru’s alleged ‘alchemical marriage,’ does not pay excessive attention to her looks and has very mature views of her friends’ virtual representations: Chia herself was presenting currently as an only slightly tweaked, she felt, version of how the mirror told her she actually looked. Less nose, maybe. Lips a little fuller. But that was it. Almost. 9 Zona Rosa’s presentation as a ‘blue Aztec death-head burning bodiless’ and Kelsey’s ‘saucer-eyed nymph-figure out of some old anime’ 10 do not give away personal characteristics. This technology, naturally, enables women to cover up physical characteristics they are not pleased with, like the instance of overweight Hiromi presenting as a robot: a slender, chrome-skinned thing like mercury constrained within the form of a girl. The face was smooth, only partially featured, eyeless, with twin straight rows of small holes where a mouth should have been. 11 Zona Rosa’s cyber identity as leader of a knife-packing Mexico City girl gang, however, is far more than a cover. In the process of saving her friend, Chia, from mortal danger, she sacrifices her persona, and turns out to be a twenty-six year old Mexican girl severely deformed due to an environmental syndrome, who ‘has lived for the past five years in almost complete denial of her physical self’. 12 Chia is confused since she feels as if her friend was dead, though she hadn’t really existed, but Arleigh reassures her that the fact that her friend wasn’t Zona didn’t matter, since ‘she’d made Zona up, and that was just as real.’ 13 This particular instance of a constructed persona resonates with Butler’s assertion that, [t]he appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief, 14 Butler’s view on identity definitely raises the question as to whether the idoru herself can be considered real, as she does fit certain points of the description. While it is clear that Rei Toei does not possess a physical body, her performance makes it up, in the same sense as Zona’s persona is made up. Butler also states that the body is ‘not merely matter but a continual and incessant materializing of possibilities. One is not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one’s body.’ 15 The idoru is not a programmed puppet. She makes her own videos, which ‘emerge directly from her ongoing experience of the

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__________________________________________________________________ world’ 16 and, surprisingly, she has business interests and owns real estate in Tokyo, which she is able to trade for the nanotech assembler in the possession of the Russian mafia to complete her and Rez’s union. Dani Cavallaro’s analysis in Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson, however, considers the fact that the idoru is an immaterial construct and an object of erotic desire as her most intriguing and paradoxical trait. The other characteristic she focuses on ‘is the notion that the idoru, though artificial, carries traces of a personal history.’ 17 As for the paradoxicality in Cavallaro’s first observation, I do not see why Rei Toei should be treated differently from the countless fictitious characters who have inspired erotic desire. She presents as an interesting and beautiful young woman, all the more so since individual consumption monitoring allows her to project an image tailored to the tastes of each and every viewer. The question of the idoru having a ‘personal history’ is far more intriguing, especially when compared with the imprints left by a flesh-and-blood person. The reader gets glimpses of these traces through the eyes of Laney, who describes himself as an ‘intuitive fisher of patterns of information,’ tracing the ‘signature a particular individual inadvertently created in the net as he or she went about the mundane yet endlessly multiplex business of life in a digital society.’ 18 Employed by Rez’s head of security, he is expected to unveil the conspiracy that has supposedly manipulated Rez into trying to marry a virtual media star, but Laney’s overview of the Lo/Rez database leaves him baffled. Rez, as a person, is not present in it due to security reasons which cover up exactly the traces that Laney needs. Laney finally manages to do his job by hooking up the worldwide fan database of the band to the corporate one, thus introducing the traces of Rez as an individual. The data-scape becomes fascinating, though, when Rei Toei’s database is added to the previous two: Through the data… ran two vaguely parallel armatures. Rez and the idoru. They were sculpted in duration, Rez’s beginning, at the far end of it all, as something very minor, the first hints of his career. And growing, as it progressed, to something braided, multistranded.…. The idoru’s data… began as something smoothly formed, deliberate, but lacking complexity. But at the points where it had swerved closest to Rez’s data, he saw that it had begun to acquire a sort of complexity. Or randomness, he thought. The human thing.…. And both these armatures, these sculptures in time, were nodal and grew more so toward the point, the present, where they intertwined…. 19

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__________________________________________________________________ This virtual closeness of Rez and Rei witnessed by Laney makes sense, as by the end of the book they are in almost constant contact and she is allowed to roam both the Lo/Rez corporate and fan databases. While Rei’s armature constantly grows more complex, it is important to notice that there is a point in Rez’s when it becomes smaller again and the strands start loosening. Laney puts this down to him taking up celebrity space just because he is of that order of magnitude, but I would also associate such a change, on the one hand, with Rez’s digital data-trace being filtered by security and on the other hand, with the Lo/Rez corporate formation taking over the traces left by the person. Numerous cyberpunk writers, Cavallaro reminds us, show that perception and knowledge comes through our flesh and blood bodies, rather than as incorporeal consciousnesses, despite the highly virtualized situations. Gibson, however, shows us characters who exult in the bodiless experience of cyberspace. David Bell, in An Introduction to Cybercultures (2001), cites Gibson’s notion of ‘jacking in’ to cyberspace as a most potent symbol of the ‘mind–body split, with the “meat” discarded and the unconstrained consciousness flowing free in (and as) data.’ 20 With this in mind, in cyberspace, Laney, Zona Rosa, or the idoru herself do not differ from each other, and, what is more, in Mona Lisa Overdrive (the third novel in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy) several characters, like Angie Mitchell and Count Zero, continue their lives after death by being uploaded, which complicates the definition of a ‘real person.’ Bell also discusses other ways of imagining the body-technology relationship, which are based on the ‘conjoining or mixing of carbon and silicon, the “wetware” of the flesh with the hardware and software of our machines.’ 21 This new union gave rise to the notion of posthumanism and denotes the human morphing into new hybrid forms through technological augmentation, offering the transmutation of the body into the new formations that populate Gibson’s world. In How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Hayles sees the expansion of the parameters of the cognitive system as the reason for the expansion of human functionality in the posthuman model. In this model, it is ‘not a question of leaving the meat behind but rather of extending embodied awareness in highly specific, local, and material ways that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis.’ 22 When taking a closer look at how Rez and Rei Toei’s union is described, a definite pattern emerges: ‘our “marriage”’ says Rei, ‘will be gradual, ongoing. We wish simply to grow together.’ 23 Rez also speaks of ‘new modes of being, of something he called “the alchemical marriage.”’ 24 Kuwayama, the initiator of the Rei Toei project explains the Japanese frame of mind: ‘we have never developed a sinister view of technology…. It is an aspect of the natural, of oneness. Through our efforts, oneness perfects itself.’ 25 These quotations are all indicative of the beginnings of a posthuman mode of existence between Rez and—the question remains—what exactly?

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__________________________________________________________________ The reader gets the benefit of Laney’s musings on the nature of the idoru. The researchers he worked with claimed to never have achieved true artificial intelligence, and Laney is aware of the fact that the current direction of research is not at all geared towards the creation of software that is good at acting like beautiful young women, or pretending to be human in general. Nevertheless, he finds himself considering the possibility of Rei Toei being an AI, based on her data traces. While studying the armatures, he perceives Rei’s growth in complexity and achievement of randomness when swerving close to Rez’s armature as ‘learning’ how to be human. Gibson yet again hits the nail on the head regarding the way Rei’s individual subjectivity might come into existence: the inner core of the subject is ‘not autonomous and self-sufficient, but was formed in relation to “significant” others, who mediated to the subject the values, meanings and symbols—the culture—of the worlds he/she inhabited,’ 26 explains sociologist Stuart Hall in ‘The Question of Cultural Identity.’ While the medium of human perception is undeniably the physical body, we must bear in mind that culture is not only a veneer. Judith Butler’s gender performativity has also paved the way to anti-essentialist views of human identity: ‘identities are wholly social constructions and cannot “exist” outside of cultural representations,’ 27 argues Chris Barker in Cultural Studies – Theory and Practice, pointing at the possibility that it is the presence or absence of a flesh and blood body that might be the only difference between an AI and a human being. What exactly is the role of the body? According to Hall, culture is involved in ‘all those practices which are not simply genetically programmed into us.… It is what distinguishes the “human” element in social life from what is simply biologically driven.’ 28 In this sense, Rei Toei, who has access to cultural practices in cyberspace and, by the end of the book, both through her real-time hologram manifestation and via Rez, is capable of constructing an identity. Gibson definitely puts her in possession of two of the most important building blocks of identity: one is gender, without which human identity at present would be very difficult to conceptualise, and the other is her story. He forges another fascinating link between computer science and humanity: while the idoru is ‘some unthinkable volume of information,’ it is not stored or ordered in the manner associated with science. ‘She induced the nodal vision in some unprecedented way; she induced it as narrative,’ 29 the pivotal element of human identity, as explained by sociologist Anthony Giddens. In Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Giddens confirms that modern identity is a ‘reflexive project’: ‘the process whereby self-identity is constituted by the reflexive ordering of selfnarratives.’ 30 This process results in the construction of a ‘narrative of the self,’ in Hall’s terms, due to which individuals feel that they have a unified identity throughout their lives, though it is no more than a constructed autobiography of continuity, not necessarily different from Rei’s.

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__________________________________________________________________ A final question remains: what has come of Rez and the idoru’s union? What form of posthuman existence does Gibson envision? Since their union is still a work in progress, it is not an easy question to answer, but the nature of their endeavour might give us clues: they are rebuilding Hak Nam, the Walled City, which was an outlaw settlement in the Kowloon region of twentieth century Hong Kong. This lawless, maze-like place, constructed randomly as the need arose, was later secretly recreated in cyberspace in an attempt to escape the government and company regulations and live ‘like when the net was new.’ 31 The fact that Rez and Rei want to live in a rebuilt Walled City, of which only a simulacrum survives now in cyberspace, makes me conclude that they envision a part physical and part virtual existence. They are recreating out of debris ‘a thing of random human accretion, monstrous and superb,’ 32 a copy of something seen as an ‘“organic megastructure,” not set rigidly for a lifetime but continually responsive to the changing requirements of its users.’ 33 Hak Nam ‘is being reconstituted here, retranslated from its later incarnation as a realm of consensual fantasy’ 34 to be the place where possibilities are not restricted: ‘Walled City is of the net, but not on it. There are no laws here, only agreements.’ 35 It is the place that incorporates both human and virtual dreams.

Notes 1

William Gibson, Idoru (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1997), 202. Ibid., 175. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 202. 5 Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, in Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 402. 6 Gibson, Idoru, 8. 7 Ibid., 6. 8 Ibid., 3. 9 Ibid., 11-12. 10 Ibid., 11-12. 11 Ibid., 98. 12 Ibid., 285. 13 Ibid., 291. 14 Butler, ‘Performative Acts,’ 402. 15 Ibid., 404. 16 Gibson, Idoru, 237. 2

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Dani Cavallaro, Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson (London & New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 2000), 79. 18 Gibson, Idoru, 25. 19 Gibson, Idoru, 251. 20 David Bell, An Introduction to Cybercultures (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), 140. 21 Ibid., 142. 22 Hayles quoted in Ibid., 143. 23 Gibson, Idoru, 237 (italics mine). 24 Ibid., 229 (italics mine). 25 Ibid., 238 (italics mine). 26 Stuart Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in Modernity and Its Futures, eds. Stuart Hall, David Held, and Tony McGrew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 275. 27 Chris Barker, Cultural Studies – Theory and Practice (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), 220 (italics mine). 28 Stuart Hall, ‘The Work of Representation’, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), 3. 29 Gibson, Idoru, 178 (italics mine). 30 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 244. 31 Gibson, Idoru, 221. 32 Ibid., 289. 33 Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City (Chiddingford, Surrey: Watermark Publications, 1993), 13. 34 Gibson, Idoru, 289. 35 Ibid., 209.

Bibliography Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies – Theory and Practice. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003. Bell, David. An Introduction to Cybercultures. London & New York: Routledge, 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’. In Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, edited by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, 401–17. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Cavallaro, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. London & New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 2000. Gibson, William. Idoru. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1997. Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Girard, Greg, and Ian Lambot. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Chiddingford, Surrey: Watermark Publications, 1993. Hall, Stuart. ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’. In Modernity and Its Futures, edited by Stuart Hall, David Held, and Tony McGrew, 273-316. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. –—–. ‘The Work of Representation’. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 13–74. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997. Imola Bulgozdi is an Independent Scholar researching Southern Culture and literature with a focus on the figure of the ‘Southern lady’ in 20th century women authors. Her interest in Cultural Studies and her passion for Science Fiction and Fantasy provide the core of her other main research area.

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Part 4 On-Screen Hybrids

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Are We Not Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks Back Evelyn Tsitas and Lisa Dethridge Abstract The invented animal, a term used by Donna Haraway to describe the genetically engineered, patented animal, has its genesis in science fiction in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. In the twenty first century, this invented animal is, according to Haraway, a ‘genetically engineered being who haunts many places.’ Both human and animal, this hybrid character—a true cyborg blurring the species boundary—also haunts contemporary science fiction. Vincenzo Natali’s 2009 transgenic science fiction horror film Splice joins Mikhail Bulgakov’s long-banned novel A Dog’s Heart, Maureen Duffy’s parable of the destruction of human individuality Gor Saga, and the postmodern Frankenstein that is Kirsten Bakis’s Lives of the Monster Dogs, in providing a voice to a protagonist who is a hybrid with the power of language. Jeremy Bentham’s famous response to Descartes, ‘the question with animals is not can they talk, or can they reason, but can they suffer,’ is turned on its head in science fiction when the animal, merged by science with the human, can both reason and talk about its suffering. The hybrid creature represents cultural and social anxiety, challenging us to consider cyborg citizenship and rights in a posthuman reality. This paper investigates Splice, a science fiction narrative that raises the question of how we consider the status of the hybrid creature. With language a challenge to speciesism, we are forced to confront whether the hybrid’s animality or its humanness is to be privileged. By using Donna Haraway’s theories about the cyborg, this paper explores what is revealed when language, which has defined a key aspect of humanity, is now shared with the animal. Key Words: Cyborgs, Donna Haraway, posthumanism, science fiction, language, speciesism. ***** In this age of Artificial Intelligence, stem cell research, advanced transgenics, cloning, and xeno transplantation, the physical, chemical, and atomic bonds between body tissues are often tested and recombined. This means the borderlines between the human, the non-human, the animal, and the machine are constantly shifting. Science fiction is defined as fiction based on scientific practice of the day. This paper investigates the status of the human-animal genetic hybrid in a work of contemporary science fiction. We survey the broad history of the hybrid humananimal as a character in the arts. We apply insights from the work of literary

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__________________________________________________________________ historians and of the cultural studies theorist Donna Haraway to understand the mythical and sociocultural elements that are reflected in such characterisation. As a case study, we examine Vincenzo Natali’s 2009 science fiction horror film Splice. We observe how the hybrid character Dren raises questions about the acquisition of language as a crucial element in the discussion and definition of what is human in science fiction. In all this we seek to understand the demarcation between the human and the hybrid human-animal. We ask what may be revealed when language, which has been defined as a key aspect of humanity, is shared with the animal. 1. The Human-Animal Hybrid Let us survey important traditions and representations of the human-animal hybrid in literature. Creatures such as Centaur, Siren, Cynocephalus, and other semi-human mythological creatures have been the subject of art and literature for centuries. From Ovid to Kafka, our literary history is filled with stories about the transformations of species. These narratives have served as a vehicle for discussing human identity, for what lies at the heart of these myths and stories is our basic fear of change. 1 If humans can change, can they lose both their identity and their humanity? According to literary historian Joyce E. Salisbury, by the late Middle Ages, the paradigm of separation of species was breaking down and it was harder to determine the border between the human and the animal. The modern cyborg in science fiction is a hybrid creature of the industrial age. Rather than emerging through supernatural or mythic creation, this is a hybrid created by science. It has its genesis in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. In this seminal science fiction novel, the hybrid creature is sewn together from various body parts—animal flesh conjoined to the human. The creature is, however, quintessentially ‘human’ despite its animal parts. H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896, provides us with scientifically created human-animal hybrids in the form of the Beast Folk. These are animals altered to human form using vivisection and, via ‘mental adjustments,’ introduced to language. 2 Are these Beast Folk man or animal? Confusion over their status concerns the narrator, Prendick, and also the Beast Folk, who are hybrids. Prendick observes their anguish in a quasi-religious ceremony: The dark hut, these grotesque dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying and in unison and chanting: “Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we Not Men?” “Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

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__________________________________________________________________ “Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” 3 More recently, we may observe hybrid human-animal characters in Mikhail Bulgakov’s long-banned novel A Dog’s Heart, 4 in Maureen Duffy’s apocalyptic Gor Saga, 5 and in Kirsten Bakis’s Lives of the Monster Dogs. 6 What these hybrids have in common is that they are created by science. 2. The Movie Splice Science fiction is created not in a vacuum, but in parallel with scientific achievements and research. The movie Splice 7 is speculative vision of what would happen if biotechnologists spliced together human and animal DNA. In Splice, genetic scientists Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) covertly conduct an experiment to create a human-animal hybrid within N.E.R.D— a pharmaceutical company that funds their research. When they are told that other ‘splice’ projects they are working on are to be shelved for more commercial but pedestrian research, they attempt to prove they can create a new life form by secretly blending multiple animals’ DNA with human DNA. Elsa uses her own egg without Clive’s knowledge. Although they realize their experiment is ethically suspect and illegal, they decide to go ahead and implant the hybrid ovum after their human-animal splice is successful. Mythology and fiction have long entertained the fantasy of the animal and human fused into one being. Atwood writes of ‘the very thin line between gods and monsters’ where people are transformed by gods into natural beings such as animals and birds. These hybrids were the result, says Atwood, of ‘crossing boundaries, offending divinities, of breaking taboos.’ 8 This is exactly what Clive and Elsa are doing, and the result of their experiment is the human-animal hybrid character Dren, who is born resembling a writhing, hissing lump with a long tail. Dren rapidly develops into a grotesque creature that looks like a plucked chicken with long emu legs, a kangaroo tail and a porpoise like head with side set eyes. Her fast growth transforms her into a girl who has a normal torso and arms, an increasingly normal looking head, and animal legs and hooves. While Dren does not have the power of speech, she rapidly develops the ability to use and understand language. Problems arise for Clive and Elsa when their experiment ‘talks back’ using communication tools. We see in Dren not just an ‘experiment’ straddling the boundary between human and animal, but a complex creature who has her own needs, wants, and desires that genetically reference her mixed heritage. 3. The Hybrid’s Use of Language When Dren reveals the ability to communicate via language, how does this affect the relationship she has with herself and with humans? With his depiction of the inner subconscious of the hybrid Dren, Splice director Vincenzo Natali creates

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__________________________________________________________________ a situation in which Dren’s human qualities are as confusing to her as her animal attributes and inevitably erupt into the final, tragic events at the end of the movie. From the start of the movie, the viewer perceives many of the events through the hybrid’s perception visually, though character identification and empathy with Dren’s suffering intensifies when we realise she can understand human language and is able to communicate through the written word. As an inter-species character, Dren forces an examination of both the nature of the human and the animal. Language has been traditionally seen as a distinguishing divide between the animal and the human. Descartes denied speech, language, and rationality to animals; however, by the 1990s, Giorgio Agamben insisted that animal communication is fully linguistic—the difference between animals and human beings with respect to language being that animals are identical with, and full immersed in, the language they speak. 9 Cultural theorist Donna Haraway argues that the cyborg ‘appears in myth precisely where the boundary between the human and the animal is transgressed.’ 10 Both human and animal, Dren is a true cyborg blurring the species boundary. Yet she is as an animal as Agamben suggests, ‘always and totally in language’ 11 as she has no animal mother to learn from, but communicates through her animal language from birth via howls, hisses, growls, hums and clicks. Dren has to learn human language, however, from her human mother Elsa. We argue that it is the process of learning human language that develops Dren humanity and gives her a sense of self. As Dren grows, Elsa bonds with her as a mother, isolating Clive who is wary and distant—emotions the hybrid is aware of from birth. He calls Dren ‘it’, never ‘she’. The relationship between Elsa and Dren is conveyed in the movie via action, with the hybrid physically interacting as a dog or small child might, conveying emotions by vocalizing without words, and by using its body to signal fear, happiness, or distrust. At this time, Dren is still called the ‘H50’, her experimental tag name. After two months, when the hybrid resembles a small girl with arms that formed after birth and more human facial features, Dren engages in word games via a Scrabble board. At this point, Elsa realizes the hybrid has growing intelligence that is probably ‘human’. Unable to speak, Dren nonetheless communicates verbally via Scrabble letters, spelling out N.E.R.D, ‘free associating’ her mother to the N.E.R.D company T-shirt she is wearing. This prompts Elsa to name the H50 ‘Dren,’ NERD spelled backwards. Clive is angry that Elsa has named her (thereby making her ‘human’ by giving her a name) and Dren runs away and hides from him, understanding his anger communicated via language: Clive: Specimens need to be contained. Elsa: Don’t call her that.

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__________________________________________________________________ Clive: What do you want me to call her? Elsa: Dren…her name is Dren. 12 The viewer is now well aware that the hybrid can comprehend language at a human level. Dorrit Cohn’s definition of Psycho-Narration 13 is useful when observing the consciousness of the hybrid character Dren. The act of language acquisition forces us to confront whether the hybrid’s animality or its humanness is to be privileged. The fact that Dren is not a completely human character means that viewers cannot assume they know what she is thinking—and neither can the protagonists. According to Cohn, the stylistic features of dissonance and consonance allow the narrator’s superior knowledge of the character’s inner life and his or her superior ability to present it and assess it. 14 There is a sliding scale between dissonance and consonance, and in analysing the hybrid’s use of language in Splice we have found that dissonance and consonance shift with how each narrator (Clive, Elsa, and Dren) perceives the events and how their presentation of events differs according to their vantage point of those events. When Dren becomes seriously ill with a fever and in distress, Clive takes the opportunity to try to kill her and end the experiment. Submerging her in cold water, he holds her down until she cannot breathe while Elsa cries and screams. But Dren does not die; she can breathe underwater. At this point, in one of only three instances in the movie, we see the action via Dren’s eyes as she looks up from the water at her ‘parents’. As their ‘child,’ she should expect them to protect her, but one has tried to kill her and the other will maim her before the end of the movie. She hears them discuss this: Elsa: You saved her. You did know she could breathe under water, right? Clive: Yes….Yes. 15 Relocated into hiding at Elsa’s family farm, we see Dren looking at Elsa and Clive through a hole in the transport box. She immediately takes the opportunity to run away, finding, killing, and eating a rabbit. Watching her, Elsa is horrified but Dren smiles and continues eating. Elsa informs Clive that this is ‘a mistake’ and that Dren ‘is a vegetarian’, even though Dren rejects the gruel Elsa insists she eat. Here we see Elsa determined to highlight Dren’s human rather than animal nature. This is reversed later in the movie, when Dren rebels. At neither point is Dren allowed to explore either her animal or human side without Elsa putting conditions on her. The teenage Dren becomes bored, lonely and restless. On the Scrabble board she spells out ‘tedious’ and ‘outside’. While Dren does not have the power of speech, she is able to communicate via Scrabble letters and drawings. This

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__________________________________________________________________ indicates to the audience that she has an inner creative life. Yet Elsa keeps reminding Elsa she is ‘a bad girl’ and ‘you must do what I say…because we care about you.’ To Clive, she adds that the teenage Dren ‘is so hard to control’. The power struggle over a stray cat Dren has taken as a pet results in both being upset. Elsa goes to bed and Clive seeks out Dren in the barn to comfort her. As he teaches her to dance, we see her laughing and making noises of enjoyment. We are aware that Clive and Elsa have a growing sexual attraction. When Clive sees the facial similarities between Dren and Elsa, he realises that his partner has used her own DNA in the experiment and abruptly leaves Dren alone; we assume as the role of her social father he fears an incestuous liaison. When confronted by an angry Clive, Elsa agrees to tell Dren they are related: Elsa: I am a part of you, I am inside you. 16 To make amends, Elsa returns the cat. But Dren is angry and tries to kill Elsa, then attempts to run outside to freedom. Elsa manages to overpower Dren, ties her up and ‘dehumanises’ her by removing her jewellery and clothing and maims her by cutting off the end of her tail that contains a deadly stinger. Just as Clive had insisted on calling Dren ‘it’ and not ‘she’, now Elsa refers to Dren as ‘it’, further reducing Dren to an ‘experiment’ rather than a person. Dren again becomes ‘H50’ and we know this as Elsa speaks not to Dren but into a digital voice recorder, telling us what Dren is thinking and feeling: Elsa: Although physically the H50 has evolved well, there is disproportionate species identification. 17 Elsa’s dialogue is typical of psycho-narration with maximum dissonance: she uses highly abstract analytical vocabulary to describe Dren’s inner world. 18 The change from dissonant to consonant narration occurs again at the end of the movie, when Dren morphs into the deadly male version of herself and is able to speak as she/he attacks and then rapes Elsa. Elsa screams: Elsa: What do you want? Dren: Inside you. 19 At a time when s/he has metamorphosed into something unlike anything that exists, except in mythology, Dren becomes both a fearsome dragon yet can speak human language for the first time. From the outset, Clive questions whether the potential deadly side of Dren is animal or human. This becomes more pronounced when we discover Elsa’s mother was mentally disturbed and Elsa may also be unstable, passing those genes onto Dren. Certainly Dren craves high sucrose food like Elsa, who constantly snacks on sweets, an indication of inherited traits. Clive

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__________________________________________________________________ realises Elsa could never be the mother of his child in the nurturing fantasy he has held throughout their relationship: Clive: You never wanted a normal child. You wanted something you could control. 20 4. Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Theory How may we understand the mythical and sociocultural elements that are reflected in such characterisation of a human-animal hybrid? To do this we will apply insights from Donna Haraway's seminal essay ‘The Cyborg Manifesto.’ 21 Here her metaphor of the cyborg, which has had a far-reaching influence beyond feminist politics and science, can help us understand the power of the hybrid and its role in twenty first century science fiction. According to Haraway’s ‘Manifesto,’ a cyborg is a hybrid that challenges the distinction between the organic/technological systems, human and animal life forms, mind/body, and male/female. Calling the cyborg ‘a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’, Haraway points to the fact that cyborgs have both a real and imagined context. 22 While Haraway uses the ironic metaphor of the cyborg to suggest a new way of constructing ideas of feminism outside traditional ideas of the women's movement and politics, in ‘The Cyborg Manifesto’ she sets out detailed theories about the cyborg incarnation. To introduce the concept of the cyborg, Haraway signals ‘three crucial boundary breakdowns’ which make her analysis possible. The first is the breakdown of the boundary between human and animal. The second is the ‘leaky distinction’ between animal-human (organism) and machines, where what counts as nature ‘is undermined, probably fatally’. The third distinction is a breakdown of the boundary between the physical and the non-physical. 23 Dren rapidly grows into a teenager, with the torso, breasts and genitals of a woman. But she literally ‘tests her wings’ and rebels, escaping to the barn roof where she discovers to her surprise that she has wings. She only comes back to her creators when Clive tells her that they love her. Elsa watches, concerned, as Dren hugs Clive. Like a mythological siren or mermaid, Dren later seduces Clive, tantalizing him through the CCTV coverage of her swimming in the water tank. She has seen Elsa and Clive have sex and imitates her mother. Her sounds as she makes love to Clive are as human as the soundtrack to a pornography film, though the leg that pins his willing body to the ground is an animal leg. Haraway contends that her cyborg myth is ‘about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities’ 24 and we see this in the ways the scientists knowingly transgress the ethics of their profession in creating a hybrid creature:

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__________________________________________________________________ Clive: We changed the rules. We crossed a line between right and wrong. There are no boundaries. 25 5. Conclusion We have seen how Dren struggles, as a new species, to communicate to those around her using human language. Haraway argues that cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, ‘against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly.’ 26 For Dren, it is the gap between what she understands to be human and what she is—a cyborg—that causes her grief. Alienated, rejected by her mother, she finds her true power as a species alone. Her death, according to Rosi Braidotti’s theory of monsters, is inevitable. We all have bodies, but not all bodies are equal; some bodies matter more than others, some, like the hybrid Dren, are disposable. ‘The monstrous body,’ Braidotti argues, ‘which makes a living spectacle of itself, is eminently disposable.’ 27

Notes 1

Anat Pick, ‘Pigscripts: The Indignities of Species in Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales’, Parallax (2006): 43-56. 2 H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (London: Penguin, 1896), 72-73. 3 Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, 59. 4 Mikhail Bulgakov, A Dog's Heart An Appalling Story (London: Penguin Classics, 1925). 5 Maureen Duffy, Gor Saga (London: Eyre Metheun, 1981). 6 Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997). 7 Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 8 Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds: Sf and the Human Imagination (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2011), 44. 9 Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 84. 10 Donna Jeanne Haraway, The Haraway Reader (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), 10. 11 Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida, 85. 12 Sarah Polley, ‘Conversation with Clive’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 13 Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton; Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1978), 46.

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Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, 46. 15 Sarah Polley, ‘Conversation with Clive’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 16 Sarah Polley, ‘Conversation with Dren’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 17 Sarah Polley, ‘Monologue into Digital Recorder’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 18 Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, 29. 19 Sarah Polley, ‘Conversation with Dren’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 20 Adrien Brody, ‘Conversation with Elsa’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 21 Haraway, The Haraway Reader, 6. 22 Ibid., 7. 23 Ibid., 151. 24 Ibid.,151. 25 Adrien Brody, ‘Conversation with Elsa’, Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Gaumont/Splice (Copperheart) Productions Inc. 2009), DVD. 26 Haraway, The Haraway Reader, 176. 27 Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti, Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace (London: Atlantic Highlands, N.J., USA: Zed Books, 1996), 136.

Bibliography Atwood, Margaret. In Other Worlds: Sf and the Human Imagination. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2011. Bakis, Kirsten. Lives of the Monster Dogs. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997. Bulgakov, Mikhail. A Dog's Heart An Appalling Story. London: Penguin Classics, 2007. Calarco, Matthew. Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton ; Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1978. Duffy, Maureen. Gor Saga. London: Eyre Metheun, 1981. Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader. New York; London: Routledge, 2004. Lykke, Nina, and Rosi Braidotti. Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace. London; Atlantic Highlands, N.J., USA: Zed Books, 1996. Natali, Vincenzo. Splice. 2009. Warner Bros. Film. Norris, Margot. ‘The Human Animal in Fiction’. Parallax 12, Issue 1 (2006). Pick, Anat. ‘Pigscripts: The Indignities of Species in Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales’. Parallax 12, Iss. 1 (2006). Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus. London: Routledge and Sons, 1818. Wells, H. G. The Island of Doctor Moreau. London: W. Heinemann, 1896. Evelyn Tsitas is an award winning writer and Creative Writing PhD student at RMIT University. Lisa Dethridge is an RMIT lecturer, author of How To Write A Screenplay, and has a PhD in Media Ecology from New York University.

Brothers of the Future: Minority Male Cyborgs and the White Imaginary in Modern Science Fiction Films David E. Isaacs Abstract Donna Haraway offers the cyborg trope as a new image that allows women specifically to explore beyond gender boundaries. However, this trope seems less able to move us beyond stereotypical gender and racial roles when the cyborg is a racially-coded male, at least as seen in Hollywood cinema. We must ask how being a cyborg helps these male characters redefine their identity beyond cultural norms. Thus, in such films as Sleep Dealer; I, Robot; and Pitch Black, the minority male cyborgs either play the villains or must sacrifice themselves in ways white cyborgs (Cruise, Stallone, Worthington, etc.) do not. While the cyborg argued by Haraway offers boundary-breaking possibilities for women, the racially-coded male cyborg of mainstream Hollywood films reinforces social norms; the male either identifies with white ideology by reintegrating with humanity (favouring his humanity over his robotics), or, if the villain, he will go the way of all villains and be destroyed, which also preserves the (white) society. Either way, he cannot enjoy the privileges the white male cyborg attains (getting the girl, receiving a hero’s welcome, for example). While a number of examples could be offered, this paper will focus on two Hollywood films – I, Robot and Pitch Black – and the independent film Sleep Dealer, to explore the feasibility of the minority cyborg as a potential role model. Is it possible for the non-white cyborg to get the girl? Does technology erase racial and cultural boundaries or reinforce them? If the cyborg transgresses norms, as Haraway argues, then the minority-coded cyborg should offer possibilities that transfer into the cultural arena, possibilities that seem not to be readily forthcoming. Key Words: Racially-coded male cyborg, I, Robot, Sleep Dealer, white imaginary, Proyas. ***** If, as Donna Haraway argues, ‘bodies are maps of power and identity,’ 1 then the postmodern cyborg raises political questions regarding how we might reimagine identity, power, and inclusion. However, this trope seems less able to move us beyond stereotypical representations when the cyborg is a racially-coded male, at least in Hollywood cinema. We must ask how being a cyborg helps these male characters redefine their identities beyond cultural norms. In such films as I, Robot, Pitch Black, and Sleep Dealer, the cyborgs either portray the anti-hero or the villain or must sacrifice themselves in ways white cyborgs (as portrayed by Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, e.g.) seldom do. While the cyborg proposed by

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__________________________________________________________________ Haraway offers boundary-breaking possibilities, the racially-coded male cyborg of Hollywood films reinforces social norms—he either favours his humanity over his robotics and reintegrates with society (I, Robot) or must leave the society to preserve it (Sleep Dealer), or, if the villain, he will be destroyed, which also preserves the (white) society (see Demolition Man, e.g.). Either way, he cannot enjoy the privileges the white male cyborg attains (getting the girl, receiving a hero’s welcome, etc.). If cyborgs transgress norms, then the minority-coded cyborg should offer possibilities that transfer into the cultural arena, possibilities not readily apparent in mainstream films; the best hope may come from independent films such as Sleep Dealer. As with other genres, science fiction cinema conveys ideology. For example, a frequent trope posits that in the future, racism will no longer exist. We find this in the Matrix trilogy where humanity’s last stronghold is largely populated by nonCaucasians. While these cinematic treatments seem to portray a potential utopian view of race relations, such cinema instead reflects—usually subliminally or unintentionally—white racial and gender ideologies. Popular science fiction films typically re-envision racially coded bodies as white ones: such characters are made ‘safe’ or neutral, divorced from almost any inherent cultural associations. The characters’ racial identities are rarely mentioned (as in The Matrix and Star Trek films), so we assume that racism has been vanquished in the future even as white ideals are portrayed as normative. Racism, though, can be inferred in the making of such films. Sean Brayton asserts that a ‘suspicious disavowal of white racism ... occurs ... distinctively in sf film,’ as seen through such films’ performances of the alien ‘other,’ which create subliminal political contradictions even while imagining a ‘“post-white” mythology.’ 2 White as used here refers not to a specific race or color but to ‘a historically specific formation of meanings that characterize social, political, and individual experiences. ... “white” as a category of human beings is determined by history’ centred on privilege and power. 3 Racially coded bodies serve to work in the imaginary of the movie audience. While it sends a positive message to see non-whites as protagonists, this is mostly superficial: these heroes become ‘white’ in subliminal ways, making them ‘safe’ for white consumption. 4 This can be seen by examining two Black stars in mainstream Hollywood films, Will Smith 5 and Vin Diesel, and Hispanic actor Luis Fernando Peña. Each plays a cyborg, but their characters do not get the same treatment as corresponding characters played by white actors. Linda Mizejewski has argued that in sci-fi films, the focus on the male hero body allows it to be a palimpsest on which shifting cultural values can be written. 6 The body, in short, becomes a focus for ideological performativity. When the body is racially coded, it ironically sends both progressive and conservative messages. A close examination of Alex Proyas’s I, Robot will explore some of these meanings.

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__________________________________________________________________ In I, Robot, Smith plays Detective Del Spooner, ostracized from society since he is part robot—his left arm and shoulder have been replaced after an accident in which a robot saved Spooner instead of a young girl. His hatred for robots reflects the self-loathing he feels for surviving at the expense of a child. Proyas thus offers two tropes in the same character: the male action hero and the cyborg. The plotline develops the idea of doubles—hero/anti-hero, human/robot, natural/unnatural, masculine/feminine (the protector), aggressor/defender—all in the same body, destabilizing the notion of the body’s meaning. Is this hero a true outsider or the ultimate caregiver? Spooner’s discomfort with his body belies the fact that he needs it to save humanity; the thing he hates is the only thing that will save him. He finally gets to define his identity even as it has in many ways been defined for him. In many ways, Spooner realizes many of the slippery boundaries Patricia Melzer articulates: The cyborg makes impossible clear categories that structure power relations based on gender, race, and class, including ... a division of the world in static categories (such as men versus women, culture [technology] versus nature). 7 However, instead of using the opportunity to challenge embedded white ideology, Proyas’s use of Smith’s body elides easy definition to viewers, as he is seen as a black hero who initially seems subversive but who eventually reifies hegemonic views. The centrality of Spooner’s body is evident in the opening sequence of I, Robot. We get a montage of Spooner’s nightmare as he relives the accident and then a close-up of his eyes as he wakes up. As he gets out of bed, clad only in his underwear and a cap, the camera reveals his body as tangible and attractive. Proyas then shows Spooner eating, stretching, exercising, and showering, all focused on his body. He rubs his left shoulder where we see scars from the accident, and he holds the left arm stiffly. As he lifts a dumbbell with his left arm, we see how fit he is, yet as he showers, he keeps flexing the left hand. 8 These opening shots define Spooner’s character: He is attractive but alone. The scars and dream sequence also reveal in part his accident. However, we also see a very fit body, over which the camera lingers. When Spooner stands in the shower, we get a long shot as the camera comes into the room, revealing the entire nude body before slowly panning up to his face in one of the longest and slowest shots in the film. There seems to be a voyeuristic pleasure in revealing this body in this way, for it serves little purpose beyond presenting a decidedly heterosexual masculine image, epitomizing Mizejewski’s claim that science ‘fiction visualizes masculinity as an even more fantastic illusion and special effect’ than actual special effects. 9

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__________________________________________________________________ This opening sequence further frames Spooner not only as a black body, but a ‘safe’ one. As the camera scans the apartment, we see a Gibson guitar, an instrument in blues and jazz music, 10 assuring us he is mainstream and even oldschool. As he wakes from his nightmare, we get a series of contrasts: Although Spooner awakes from a startling dream wielding a handgun and wearing a ‘do rag, the ‘threatening’ black body is soon contained by the film’s soundtrack. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ animates the scene, reassuring the viewer of a more benign trope of blackness: Spooner enjoys Motown rather than gangsta rap. As the detective turns to the nightstand, he scoops a spoonful of sweet potato pie. The blackness of the body before us, in other words, is confirmed by the visual and aural accoutrements of his apartment and person, and yet the image of blackness presented is manageable and unthreatening. For the white liberal buddy film to function, Spooner must be black but not too black. 11 His non-threatening stance is enhanced in the next scene, in which he pursues a robot carrying a purse. Thinking the robot has malfunctioned, Spooner treats it as a hostile criminal. In reality, the robot is merely bringing its master—an African American woman—her purse. She exemplifies the mammy figure, with her large size and spunky attitude, and she belittles Spooner for his error. Thus, we see him shamed; and we see that his fear of robots is irrational in the same way our fear of him would be irrational. This black policeman is more buffoon than threat. The strong body seen earlier is no match for the woman’s scolding, so his masculinity, already defined in a fit body, becomes deflated and essentially useless. This view of Spooner as buffoon, however, changes when we later realize Spooner is a cyborg. While fighting a renegade robot, Spooner’s arm is damaged, revealing his cybernetic frame. Spooner then uses his artificial arm to defeat the robot. Here, we redefine our understanding of Spooner. We now realize that his favouring of his left hand in the opening sequence shows his struggles with integrating the technology into his sense of self—he is uncomfortable with it yet must maintain it. While Spooner was first portrayed as a damaged human, he was not shown as a cyborg. He is capable of superhuman feats such as punching a hole in concrete, making him Other: His body, first seen in a pleasurable light, is now more threatening. We also learn that we cannot judge this body by its appearance, for Spooner’s robotics come as a surprise. He is more than he seems and, at the same time, less human than we had thought. If science fiction stresses the tensions ‘between surface and depth, between the private body and the body on public display as self-

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__________________________________________________________________ aware image,’ 12 then I, Robot fulfills this standard by putting this body on full display and continually redefining it. It should also be noted that the film downplays references to Spooner’s race; perhaps, in the imagined future, this is not an issue. However, Spooner’s xenophobia about robots echoes issues of identity politics. To borrow from Mizejewski, is his race to be ‘dismissed as an artificial surface feature without ideological implications’? 13 This becomes more pressing when all of the scientists—the elite—are Caucasian, and we see the few minorities in stereotypical roles—the heavy-set black woman (the mammy trope), the black mother figure, and the fellow minority police officers. One might assume, then, that having the most successful black actor as the star would lead to more inclusion, but Spooner’s feelings are one-dimensional. While hints of an attraction between Spooner and Dr. Calvin arise, their relationship is never consummated, even after Dr. Calvin examines the once again shirtless Spooner (if Spooner had been played by Tom Cruise, surely a sex scene would have followed). 14 Thus, the film misses an opportunity to speak directly to issues of race and only touches on issues of sexuality. Perhaps casting Smith was seen as enough inclusion to offset these questions, but this silence on race is telling; as Toni Morrison reminds us, silence has been a standard way of addressing race in cultural discourse. 15 Many think that the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous, liberal gesture. To notice is to recognize an already discredited difference. To enforce its invisibility through silence is to allow the black body a shadowless participation in the dominant cultural body. 16 However, by not speaking of race, those who would change attitudes ironically allow hegemonic ideas of race to go unchallenged. The endings of such films usually have the hero restoring traditional cultural norms in some way. I, Robot ends with Spooner shaking hands with the robot rebel Sonny. The linking of the robot and human hands bridges the two worlds, yet by using a close-up of the hands, a traditional paradigm is invoked as Spooner is seen as more human in contrast to Sonny. Sonny goes off to lead the other robots into a new, self-aware future based on freedom, a traditional virtue based in humanity, but Spooner merely goes back to detective work—he does not even get the girl. According to King and Krzywinska: This is a strategy typical of Hollywood production. Potentially contentious political issues form a point of reference. Their implications are not explored in detail because this is considered likely to be divisive and alienating to audiences seeking ‘entertainment,’ which is usually understood as entailing the

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__________________________________________________________________ avoidance of explicitly ‘political’ material. A focus on two central characters offers both a means of avoiding the larger issue and of offering a reconciliation of the individual relationship: it is much easier to reconcile two individuals of the different backgrounds than to solve social problems. The individual reconciliation offers an emotional pay-off. ... a substitute for any real engagement with the issues: a device that masks real and enduring conflict through the illusion of magical reconciliation. 17 King and Krzywinska thus suggest that Haraway’s model for cyborg stories may not be sufficiently strong, at least in mainstream science fiction cinema, to challenge social norms or subvert ideology. This Hollywood approach persists in mainstream films such as Men in Black, Pitch Black, and Demolition Man in which the Black lead is either an outcast or outlaw, an anti-hero, a buffoon, or a villain; in each, the Black character must either adopt white ideology (if he does not already embody it) or be shown as a non-threatening agent after all. For example, in Pitch Black, Riddick starts as a muscular murderer who saves the survivors of a crash due to his cyborg-style eyesight. However, the one character with whom he forges a possible love interest is taken from him at the end, so no cross-racial romance will be possible. The strong Black character, often compared to a wild animal in the film, is neutered once he begins to reintegrate with white society, paralleling the example of I, Robot. The best possibility for challenging these Hollywood norms comes from independent films such as Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer. Rivera offers a near-future dystopia in which Mexican labourers do not have to cross the border to service the U.S.; instead, as ‘node workers,’ they can plug into machines to control robots that do their work for them. Sleep Dealer centres on Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña), a young Mexican man who dreams of going north to America, his imagination fuelled by his homemade radio, which allows him to hack into broadcasts from the U.S. Memo’s family barely makes a living since a mega-corporation, Del Rio Water, has built a dam on the local river. When Memo uses his radio to eavesdrop on Del Rio, they consider him a spy and attack the farm, killing his father. Memo barely escapes and goes into hiding. He becomes a node worker and helps build a skyscraper in a city he will never be able to visit. As his foreman tells him, ‘This is the American Dream. We give the United States what they’ve always wanted ... all the work— without the workers.’ 18 Memo begins a relationship with Luz, a journalist who writes stories about her memories, downloads them to a commercial website, and sells them online. Meanwhile, the pilot who has bombed Memo’s house, Rudy,

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__________________________________________________________________ begins his own journey and eventually teams up with Memo to defeat the corporation. In this film, being a cyborg is the equivalent to being a slave or day labourer— even Rudy, who enjoys some fame and comfort as a virtual drone pilot, is ultimately disposable once he turns on his employers to help Memo. Even personal memories are commodities, as Rudy purchases Luz’s. This commodification of the Mexican body is clearly seen when Memo first enters the factory—the node workers look like marionettes warehoused in a metal bunker. When a worker burns out, he or she is quickly replaced as if nothing has happened. Memo’s nodes are clearly visible, and he takes pride in being able to earn money to send to his family. These nodes, then, become a brand: Memo is no longer his own person. In one scene, he and Luz walk along the border fence, an image repeated throughout the film—the fence, like the cybernetic implants, separates people who otherwise could have much to offer each other. Rivera challenges our notions of how society changes as we become more connected through technology: ‘The more connected we become, the more we are divided,’ he argues. 19 He then applies the false promises of online connectivity with the plight of the migrant worker: The problem is that the worker comes with a body. ... That body needs health care, and gives birth to children that need to go to school. So keep the body outside of the United States. Suck its energy and leave the cadaver or the problematic shell out of the picture. 20 Thus, Rivera plays with the idea of disconnecting labor from people. 21 Memo is a fugitive from his home but unable to cross the border as he dreams—he is stuck in a no-man’s land. Likewise, Rudy is shown as more privileged but detached; the more he connects to the technology as a virtual pilot, the more he ironically finds himself disconnected and unfulfilled emotionally as a man. As cyborgs, they do not fit where they are but feel they have nowhere else to go. The film thus uses science fiction tropes of a futuristic world—cyborgs, drones, technology, dystopian cityscapes—as metaphorical representations of the present. As the characters approach the border, and as Rudy actually crosses it, so Rivera offers a way of understanding the longings and dreams of immigrants even as he critiques current border politics. As with I, Robot and Pitch Black, Sleep Dealer ends with the hero having to leave his society. Memo, Luz, and Rudy take out the dam and thwart the security company, at least temporarily; Rudy goes into exile to join the resistance, and Memo lives along the border, waiting for the day he can cross it. However, unlike the other films discussed, this one offers some hope as we see Memo planting a new crop along the border. His narration looks forward to the day when he will be

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__________________________________________________________________ able to go in person to the land of his dreams, and the glowing sunset and growing plants indicate that his dream may come true. This optimism gives Sleep Dealer a hopeful note that perhaps, once Memo and Rudy have learned how to resist the hegemonic forces, they can defeat them, sending a subversive message to the audience that minorities can likewise overcome similar real-world obstacles if they work together and embrace their own cultural ideals. Indeed, Haraway hopes cyborg stories will subvert ‘the structure and modes of reproduction of “Western” identity, of nature and culture, of mirror and eye, slave and master, body and mind.’ 22 While this may apply to feminist science fiction (Haraway’s focus), it still leaves most science fiction film—that which most people consume—embedded in the traditional paradigms. While small films such as Sleep Dealer offer alternatives, they do not yet have the power to make much of a change; perhaps, though, the fact that such a film can be made is a sign of hope. Perhaps incremental changes will start to subvert the standard Hollywood visions. Perhaps, one day, Will Smith will get to kiss his non-white love interest.

Notes 1

Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 180. 2 Sean Brayton, ‘The Post-White Imaginary in Alex Proyas’s I, Robot’, Science Fiction Studies 35 (2008): 72. 3 Daniel Bernardi, ‘The Voice of Whiteness: D.W. Griffith’s Biograph Films (1908-1913)’ in The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema, ed. Daniel Bernardi (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 105. 4 George Yancy, ‘Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body’, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 4 (2005): 216. 5 While Smith is generally called a ‘Black’ actor and is thus coded as such, he claims a mixed heritage that includes Native American ancestry. Diesel also eschews claiming a specific racial identity. 6 Linda Mizejewski, ‘Action Bodies in Future Spaces: Bodybuilder Stardom as Special Effect’ in Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn (New York: Verso, 1999), 154. 7 Melzer, Alien, 25, brackets in original. 8 I, Robot, DVD, directed by Alex Proyas (Los Angeles, CA; 20th Century Fox, 2004). 9 Mizejewski, ‘Action Bodies’, 170. 10 Brayton, ‘Post-White’, 80. 11 Ibid., italics in original. 12 Mizejewski, ‘Action Bodies’, 170. 13 Ibid., 165.

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In Smith’s sci-fi and fantasy films, he almost never gets the girl even if there is an attraction, and his female leads are invariably of other races: see I Am Legend (he dies to save his new ‘family’), Hancock (his proximity to Charlize Theron literally leads to death and destruction), and Men in Black II (the alien princess must leave earth) as examples. Independence Day is an exception, but even here Smith’s playboy character is ‘made safe’ when he marries his live-in girlfriend (who is also Black) before he can defeat the aliens. 15 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 9. Morrison points out that even so-called ‘progressives’ fall into this trap despite their rhetoric. 16 Ibid., 9-10. 17 Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace (New York: Wallflower, 2002), 32-33. 18 Sleep Dealer, DVD, directed by Alex Rivera (Los Angeles: Maya Entertainment, 2009). 19 Jason Silverman, ‘Sleep Dealer Injects Sci-Fi into Immigration Debate’, Wired, January 24, 2008, accessed 30 March 2011, http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/01/sleep_dealer. 20 Ibid. 21 Charlie Jane Anders, ‘Cyberpunk South of the Border: io9 Meets Sleep Dealer’s Alex Rivera’, io9, Nov. 17, 2008, accessed March 30, 2011, http://io9.com/#!5089202/cyberpunk-south-of-the-border-io9-meets-sleep-dealersalex-rivera. 22 Haraway, Simians, 176.

Bibliography Anders, Charlie Jane. ‘Cyberpunk South Of The Border: io9 Meets Sleep Dealer’s Alex Rivera’. io9, Nov. 17, 2008. Accessed March 30, 2011. http://io9.com/#!5089202/cyberpunk-south-of-the-border-io9-meets-sleep-dealersalex-rivera. Bernardi, Daniel. ‘The Voice of Whiteness: D.W. Griffith’s Biograph Films (19081913)’. In The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema, edited by Daniel Bernardi, 103–128. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. Brayton, Sean. ‘The Post-White Imaginary in Alex Proyas’s I, Robot’. Science Fiction Studies 35 (2008): 72–87.

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__________________________________________________________________ Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. I, Robot. DVD. Directed by Alex Proyas. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 2004. King, Geoff, and Tanya Krzywinska. Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace. New York: Wallflower, 2002. Melzer, Patricia. Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006. Mizejewski, Linda. ‘Action Bodies in Future Spaces: Bodybuilder Stardom as Special Effect’. In Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, edited by Annette Kuhn, 152–172. New York: Verso, 1999. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Pitch Black. DVD. Directed by David Twohy. Los Angeles: Universal, 2000. Silverman, Jason. ‘Sleep Dealer Injects Sci-Fi into Immigration Debate’. Wired 2008. Accessed March 30, 2011. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/01/sleep_dealer. Sleep Dealer. DVD. Directed by Alex Rivera. Los Angeles: Maya Entertainment, 2009. Yancy, George. ‘Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body’. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 4 (2005): 215–241. David E. Isaacs is an Assistant Professor of English at California Baptist University with interests in science fiction, modern fantasy, film, and Young Adult Literature. He is also working on a PhD in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate School.

Pressures and Possibilities of Being Bionic: Intersections of Gender and Humanity in the Bionic Woman Series Aino-Kaisa Koistinen Abstract This chapter discusses the intersections of gender and humanity in the science fiction television series Bionic Woman—both the original and remade, or reimagined, version. In both series a woman called Jaime Sommers is transformed into a half human, half machine cyborg when some of her body parts are replaced with technological components, or bionics (biology applied to electronic engineering). Being a cyborg makes Jaime different from other human beings—as well as other women—which creates interesting scenarios considering her identity. She is, depending on the situation, regarded as an animal, a weapon or a machine, which dehumanises her character. This chapter discusses how dichotomies such as nature/culture, human/animal, and human/machine are negotiated in the series through the figure of Jaime, a cyborg woman. This chapter also asks what kind of gender and humanity the original and re-imagined series produce, how intersections of gender and humanity are negotiated through the representation of Jaime, and how the figure of the cyborg woman represented in the series relates to feminist cyborg discourses. Being bionic also puts Jaime in an interesting position considering her agency. The bionic organs give her extraordinary strength and other capabilities that enable her to become a secret agent who works for the organisation that has created the bionics. The same abilities, however, are also the reason why she is not given any other choice but to work as an agent. As Jaime’s bionics have been very expensive, her employers see her as their investment that they do not want to lose. Thus, this chapter also deals with issues of control, agency, and the cyborg body. Key Words: Cyborg, gender, Bionic Woman, science fiction, television, human, animal, machine. ***** The bionic woman, Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner), was first introduced in The Six Million Dollar Man (USA 1974-1978) as the love interest of the bionic man, Colonel Steve Austin (Lee Majors). She suffers a sky diving accident and is saved by the help of Steve’s employers, the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence), who replace parts of her body with bionics. Because of her popularity, Jaime was soon given her own series, The Bionic Woman (USA 1976-1978). 1 In the reimagined series, Bionic Woman (USA 2007), Jaime (Michelle Ryan) is also transformed into a cyborg after a tragic accident, this time by her fiancé (Chris Bowers) who works for a private clandestine organisation called the Berkut group.

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__________________________________________________________________ In both series, Jaime ends up working as an agent for the organisation that saved her. This chapter discusses intersections of gender and humanity in both the original and re-imagined versions of Bionic Woman. According to Susanna Paasonen, ‘Bionic fictions figure futuristic possibilities of human reconstruction but in doing this, also make visible the norms and conditions of this figuring.’ 2 This chapter sets out to discover what kind of norms and conditions of gender and humanity the original and re-imagined series address, how intersections of gender and humanity are negotiated through the representation of Jaime, a cyborg woman, and what kind of issues of control and agency the figure of the cyborg woman evokes. 1. The (Im)Possibilities of the Bionic Body According to Paasonen, bionic characters, such as Jaime and Steve, ‘guard the unity of gender, body, and desire even with technological rearrangements.’ 3 She writes that, ‘bionic fictions […] may be post-human in the sense that they traverse from human to machine and back yet humanist […] in their individuality, autonomy, and heterosexual desire.’ 4 In the character of Jaime, individuality, autonomy, and desirability intersect. In both Bionic Woman series, Jaime is represented as conventionally beautiful and heterosexual. In both versions, she is also transformed into a cyborg against her own will and is initially horrified by her cyborg body. In the made-for-TV film that served as the pilot episode for The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve is also first horrified by his bionics. 5 The bionic man and bionic women are, thus, all afraid of losing their individuality and autonomy as human beings by being turned into something inhuman, a machine. In the case of Jaime, horror towards the cyborg body can also be linked to gender. Rosie White and Tricia Jenkins have connected this horror in the original series to the fact that technology and power do not suit the image of a desirable woman. 6 This is in line with Judith Butler’s notion that bodily figures that do not fit into either gender constitute the domain of the dehumanised, the abject against which humanity itself is constituted. 7 Thus the female cyborg is horrifying because she is partly an inhuman machine, but also because the connection to technology differentiates her from traditional femininity. In the Western imagination, women have traditionally been connected to nature and the body—in contrast with the socalled masculine domains of culture, technology, and the mind. 8 By turning into a cyborg, Jaime becomes a hybrid figure situated on the boundaries between these binary oppositions. In comparison to Steve and other male characters, Jaime’s emotionality is emphasised in the original series, which underlines her femininity but also her humanity. Being a woman allows Jaime to show emotion, and humans are usually differentiated from machines in terms of emotion. This kind of differentiation is typical for science fiction narratives. 9 In the original series Jaime is also mirrored against fembots, female robots that masquerade as humans. In the episodes ‘Kill

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__________________________________________________________________ Oscar pt. 1-3’ the fembots are controlled by Dr. Franklin (John Houseman), an engineer formerly employed by the OSI. 10 Franklin refers to his fembots as ‘the perfect women: programmable, obedient, and as beautiful or as deadly I choose to make them.’ 11 Jaime, however, proves that the fembots, controlled by a male engineer, are not as capable as she, an independent woman not (fully) controlled by anyone. According to Sharon Sharp: On one level, the styles of femininity evoked by the fembots— docile, complacent, and malleable to male needs and desires— are positioned against and proved inferior to the style of femininity offered by the bionic woman—strong, assertive, and independent. On another level, the positioning of Jaime Sommers against the fembots explicitly foregrounds the thematic of human versus machine. 12 Thus, this positioning of Jaime against the fembots reveals the intersections of gender and humanity: in comparison to the unemotional fembots, Jaime is seen as a representative of legitimate femininity but also legitimate humanity. 13 However, as Jaime is part machine, she complicates the categories of the human and the woman. It is stressed in the series that the bionics make Jaime a very special lady, which implies her difference from other women. Her femininity and emotionality are therefore highlighted to remind us that she is still human—and still a woman. In the new Bionic Woman, Jaime is mirrored against another bionic woman, Sarah Corvus (Katee Sackhoff). Sarah represents the cyborg body taken over by its programming. She has even been hacked, which made her kill fourteen of Berkut’s agents. Hacking signals the loss of individuality and agency, which makes Sarah appear more machine than human, a robot that can be remote-controlled. 14 The bionics have also made Sarah lose her mind. She has become less emotional and therefore less human, a thing (as she describes herself). Another explanation of Sarah’s madness is also given: she has lost her baby sister in a car accident caused partly by her own reckless driving. Sarah has, in a way, failed the traditional feminine role of the caretaker. Because Jaime is the guardian of her teenage sister Becca (Lucy Hale), she is represented here as the right kind of femininity in contrast to Sarah’s less emotional, less nurturing, and therefore less traditional—or natural—femininity. If emotions are considered to differentiate humans from machines, the differentiation from animals is usually made in terms of rationality. 15 In both Bionic Woman series there is a threat that the bionics may cause Jaime to act irrationally in an animal-like way, completely out of control. In The Six Million Dollar Man, Jaime starts to reject her bionics, which leads to erratic behaviour and loss of control over the bionics. For Sharp, a threat like this signals fear of the union of woman and machine, because Steve does not reject his bionics in a similar

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__________________________________________________________________ manner. 16 However, it can also be read as a sign of kinship between Jaime and animals. Jaime is even given a bionic dog sidekick, Maximilian; together they form a bionic family that crosses the boundaries between human, animal and machine. 17 According to Donna Haraway, cyborgs are, on one hand, symbols of human control and the military interests of (white) men conquering space. 18 On the other hand, they can also be hybrid figures that blur the boundaries between the human, the animal, and the machine, and their respective agencies, as in the use of simians in space flights as substitutes for human astronauts. 19 With help from the OSI, Jaime recovers control over her body but must regularly be inspected and monitored by (mostly male) scientists. In the new Bionic Woman there is a threat of Jaime becoming infected with a fatal disease that will make her behave erratically. With or without the disease, Jaime only has five years to live—unless the Berkut group invents a way to improve her bionics. She also needs help from their scientists to repair parts of her body. Because Jaime has to be monitored by the male scientists, one could say that Jaime’s body is subjected to patriarchal control. 20 However, on a broader scale, this control is not focused only on the female body, but may be linked to the possible threat that technology— or nature—might pose to human bodies and identities. In the pilot episode of the new Bionic Woman Jaime is also compared to a wolf. 21 It is implied that a wolf, out of control, should be killed, and if Jaime turned out to be more wolf than human, killing her would be permissible. It is, however, Sarah Corvus who takes the position of the wild animal when Jaime begins integrating into the Berkut group. Animals are here represented as something that is out of control and has to be controlled. Haraway writes: We actively determined our design through tools that mediate the human exchange with nature. […] we see our brains and our other products impelling us on a historical course of escalating technological domination; that is, we build an alienated relation to nature. […] This logic leads to the superiority of the machine and its products and ensures the obsolescence of the body and the legitimacy of human engineering. 22 Both Bionic Woman series negotiate these relations between nature and culture, or nature and technology. The bionic women are perfect, beautiful members of their gender that have been made superior to other women (and men, with the exception of Steve) by technology and engineering. Their female gender, nevertheless, connects them to the out of control, animal-like nature. It is, however, noteworthy that the series do not only negotiate the threat posed by nature and the female body, but also the threat posed by technology and human engineering.

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__________________________________________________________________ 2. Possession, Identity and the Bionic Body In the original Bionic Woman series Jaime is usually happy working as an agent for the OSI, but in the final episode of the series (‘On the Run’) this changes dramatically. While saving a little girl, Reiko (Mariel Aragon), from kidnapping in the local zoo, Jaime cuts her arm, revealing her bionics. The girl is frightened and screams, ‘What is that? What are you?’ 23 The wound that reveals Jaime’s bionics is a signal of her monstrosity and inhumanity to the little girl, and, even more importantly, to Jaime. 24 The girl later accepts Jaime’s bionics and wants to learn about them, but Jaime finds her questions uncomfortable: I don’t wanna talk about this anymore. I wanna talk about what makes a person a person. […] And it’s not his hand or his legs, it’s what goes on inside. It’s gotta be what’s inside, otherwise, what would we be, what would that make me? 25 Here, Jaime is pondering what constitutes her personhood, or humanity. She decides to leave the OSI to find out how much of herself is still left in her bionic body. In her letter of resignation Jaime writes, ‘I never asked for this arm […] I didn’t even really enlist, I was drafted. […] I’m tired of looking in the mirror and seeing an OSI agent instead of a woman.’ 26 Jaime clearly sees her identity as a bionic agent as something separate from her identity as a woman. As Jaime’s bionics, however, have been very expensive for the government, the officials consider her an investment that they do not want to lose. They plan to relocate her to a special location designed for retired spies, a glorified prison. Jaime is therefore dehumanised by likening her to the animals of the zoo seen earlier in the episode— again creating a kinship between animals and the female cyborg. Jaime decides to run, but returns to the OSI after only a few days. She has come to understand that what goes on in a person’s head and heart is more important than what happens to the body. This consolidates the humanist values and ideals often central to cyborg narratives. She promises to continue working for the OSI, but only on her own terms: I have found a way to be at peace with my bionics by accepting the fact that I have no choice. […] I need some time to have a life of my own also. That may mean marriage, children, I don’t know, but it does mean some work that I feel good about, my teaching, helping kids […]. 27 Jaime clearly considers femininity and traditional feminine roles, such as helping children, essential for her personality. Her gender is also emphasised by a male senator who comments on her return to the OSI:

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__________________________________________________________________ […] you were afraid you’d become less woman than machine. Well, unfortunately, there are a lot of men, like me, who became machines […] We were too busy making rules and regulations and so worried about our own fears that we forgot what life was all about, which is really just living. I’m very glad that you’re gonna be coming back here to help remind us that we are human. 28 It is underlined that Jaime was afraid of becoming less woman than machine, not less human than machine. It is, perhaps, also implied that Jaime is more in touch with what life is all about because, as a woman, she is closer to nature. Paradoxically, it is this closeness to nature—and therefore also to animals, usually considered less valuable than humans—that, apparently, puts her more in touch with her humanity. In the re-imagined series, the ownership of Jaime’s body is discussed in virtually every episode, which dehumanises Jaime by comparing her to property, an object to be possessed. She is also referred to as a weapon. In the episode ‘Paradise Lost’ Berkut leader Jonas (Miguel Ferrer), for instance, says to Jaime: ‘[…] those legs, that arm, that ear and that eye belong to me. They cost 15,000 000 dollars.’ 29 In another episode, Berkut’s scientist Nathan (Kevin Rankin) is monitoring Jaime as she flirts with a man. He says to another employee: ‘[…] it’s like, keep your grubby hands away from our 15,000 000 dollar piece of…’ 30 We never get to hear the ending of that sentence, since the scientist is interrupted, so we can only guess what it could have been: our piece of machinery, or… something else? It is not clear if the scientist is trying to control Jaime because she has their expensive technology inside her, or because she is being sexually active and therefore not traditionally feminine. Issues of control are also present in The Six Million Dollar Man, but control over a female body evokes certain gendered associations, such as prostitution, or how marriage and the ideas of kinship can be used to control women and female sexuality and to position women as cultural capital. 31 The Berkut group has even implanted a GPS positioning device into Jaime’s brain. The device includes an optical interface that allows Berkut to see everything that Jaime sees. In the episode ‘Sisterhood’ Jaime confronts Jonas about it: 32 JAIME. This is an invasion of my privacy. It’s stripping me of my dignity. And it’s… a little pervy. JONAS. Pervy? JAIME. It’s perverted. JONAS. It’s for your own safety. JAIME. That is crap. It’s so you can watch me and watch your investment.

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__________________________________________________________________ JONAS. That’s also true. Later in the episode Sarah Corvus tells Jaime she can disable the GPS by hacking into herself: SARAH. You have to. Those Berkut guys look at you in the shower, you know. JAIME. Oh my god. SARAH. Yeah, don’t even get me started on how objectifying this whole bionic woman thing is… 33 This scene underlines Jaime’s objectification firstly as a woman being looked at in the shower, secondly as a cyborg controlled by a militaristic organisation. The fact that the new series specifically comments on this objectification highlights the questions of ownership and money and the perverted nature of the surveillance and control of Jaime’s body. This forms an important difference between the new and the original version of Bionic Woman. 3. In Conclusion Going back to the possibilities of human reconstruction, it might seem that the Bionic Woman series do not have much more to offer than perfectly gendered cyborg women who conform to the existing notions of what it means to be a desirable—and thus legitimate—human female. However, the series also invite more complex readings. Not only do the representations of the perfect, desirable women reveal the conditions, or pressures, that being a perfect woman entails, but the series can also be analysed in the light of feminist cyborg discourses. As other papers presented at the Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction Conference also demonstrated, the cyborg imagery is still a useful tool in negotiating visions of gender and humanity and humanity’s relations to both technology and nature. In both series the body of the female cyborg is used to negotiate intersections of nature and culture. Jaime is, depending on the situation, regarded as an animal, a weapon, and/or a machine. She constitutes a borderline figure who addresses certain cultural anxieties: as a female she is linked with nature—traditionally considered feminine—but being a cyborg also links her with culture and technology—traditionally considered as predominantly masculine domains. She therefore represents a sort of hybrid humanity that threatens hegemonic notions about human bodies and (gendered) identities. She also evokes issues of cultural hierarchies and the control of women and animals. In the original version Jaime can only exist relatively freely when she returns to the OSI. As the re-imagined series was cancelled after eight episodes, we can only guess how the new Jaime’s struggle to gain more freedom and agency would have developed.

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__________________________________________________________________ It is interesting to note that even though women are often linked to nature because of their (alleged) emotionality, and human development is so closely connected to the development of culture, technology, and rationality, science fiction narratives treat emotions as an important quality of being human, the factor that separates the human from the machine. In this sense, it is the bionic woman, not the bionic man, who is the perfect figure for negotiating dichotomies such as nature/culture, human/machine or human/animal, and the fears, hopes and desires that they evoke.

Notes 1

Tricia Jenkins, ‘Nationalism and Gender: The 1970s, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman’, The Journal of Popular Culture 44, No. 1 (2011): 93-94. 2 Susanna Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy: Internet, Women, and Cyberdiscourse (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 26. 3 Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 26. 4 Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 30. 5 The Six Million Dollar Man [also known as Cyborg: The Six Million Dollar Man], pilot of The Six Million Dollar Man, Richard Irving (dir.), Henri Simoun and Martin Caidin (writers), orig. aired March 7 1973, London, UK: Fabulous Films Limited, DVD. 6 Rosie White, ‘Lipgloss Feminists: Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman’, Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative 5, No. 3 (2006): 181; Jenkins, ‘Nationalism and Gender’, 106. 7 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 111. 8 E.g. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991). 9 Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 32, see also 27. 10 ‘Kill Oscar pt. 2,’ orig. aired as episode 6 of The Six Million Dollar Man, season 4, 31 Oct 1976, Alan Crosland (dir.), Arthur Rowe, Oliver Crawford (writers), ‘Kill Oscar pt. 1,’ orig. aired as episode 5 of The Bionic Woman, season 2, 27 Oct 1976; ‘Kill Oscar pt. 3’, orig. aired as episode 6 of The Bionic Woman, Barry Crane (dir.), Arthur Rowe, Oliver Crawford, W. T. Zacha (writers); Alan Crosland (dir.), Arthur Rowe, Oliver Crawford (writers), season 2, 3 Nov 1976. All three episodes available on The Bionic Woman: The Complete Season 2. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. Episodes 4-6. (Also available on The Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Collection. London, UK: Fabulous Films Limited, DVD.) 11 ‘Kill Oscar pt. 1,’ The Bionic Woman, season 2.

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Sharon Sharp, ‘Fembot Feminism: The Cyborg Body and Feminist Discourse in The Bionic Woman’, Women’s Studies 36, No. 7 (2007): 520. 13 Cf. Sharp, ‘Fembot Feminism’, 519-521; Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 44-45; Jenkins, ‘Nationalism and Gender’, 107-108. 14 Cf. Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 26. 15 Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 32. 16 Sharp, ‘Fembot Feminism’, 521-522. 17 Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 30-32. 18 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, 150-151, 154; Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 31. 19 Donna J. Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), 137-39; Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 31. 20 Jenkins, ‘Fembot Feminism’, 103; White, ‘Lipgloss Feminists’, 180. 21 Michael Dinner (dir.), Laeta Kalogridis (writer), ‘Pilot,’ episode 1 of Bionic Woman, season 1, orig. aired 26 Sep. 2007. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. 22 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 22. 23 ‘On the Run,’ episode 22 of The Bionic Woman, Thomas J. Blank (dir.), Steven E. deSouza (writer), season 3, orig. aired 13 May 1978. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. 24 Cf. Paasonen, Figures of Fantasy, 27. 25 ‘On the Run,’ The Bionic Woman, season 3. 26 ‘On the Run,’ The Bionic Woman, season 3. 27 ‘On the Run,’ The Bionic Woman, season 3. 28 ‘On the Run,’ The Bionic Woman, season 3. 29 ‘Paradise Lost,’ episode 2 of Bionic Woman, Tim Matheson (dir.), Jason Smilovic (writer), season 1, orig. aired 3 Oct. 2007. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. 30 ‘The Education of Jaime Sommers,’ episode 5 of Bionic Woman, Jonas Pate (dir.), Elizabeth Heldens (writer), season 1, orig. aired 24 Oct. 2007. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. 31 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, e.g. 28-30. 32 ‘Sisterhood,’ episode 3 of Bionic Woman, Steve Boyum (dir.), David Eick (writer), season 1, orig. aired 10 Oct. 2007. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD. 33 ‘Sisterhood,’ Bionic Woman (2007), season 1.

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Bibliography The Bionic Woman: The Complete Season One. Episodes 1976. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD (European release, distributed by Universal Studios (UK) Limited). The Bionic Woman: The Complete Season Two. Episodes 1976-1977. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD (European release, distributed by Universal Studios (UK) Limited). The Bionic Woman: Season Three [Italian release: La Donna Bionica. Stagione 3]. Episodes 1977-1978. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD (distributed by Universal Pictures Italy). Bionic Woman: The Complete Series. Episodes 2007. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Universal Studios, DVD (European release, distributed by Universal Studios (UK) Limited). Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Haraway, Donna J. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989. –—–. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Jenkins, Tricia. ‘Nationalism and Gender: The 1970s, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman’. The Journal of Popular Culture 44, No. 1 (2011): 93– 113. Paasonen, Susanna. Figures of Fantasy: Internet, Women, and Cyberdiscourse. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Sharp, Sharon. ‘Fembot Feminism: The Cyborg Body and Feminist Discourse in The Bionic Woman’. Women’s Studies 36, No. 7 (2007): 507–523. The Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Collection. London, UK: Fabulous Films Limited, DVD.

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__________________________________________________________________ White, Rosie. ‘Lipgloss Feminists: Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman’. Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative 5, No. 3 (2006): 171–183. Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is a PhD student at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland and the University of Oulu, Finland. Her PhD project deals with the intersections of gender and humanity in science fiction television. Her interests include literature, film and television, gender and queer studies, representation studies, cyborg discourses, and body politics.

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Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces Natacha Guyot Abstract In 2009, two Science Fiction movies were released featuring the English born, Australian actor Sam Worthington: Terminator Salvation by McG and Avatar by James Cameron. In both movies, Worthington portrays characters with an augmented body: Marcus and Jake Sully. These characters offer hybrid figures that are possible faces of the Cyborg. First comes the topic of engineered humanity, which poses the question of the place of the original body versus its engineered version, either as upgrade or as a full new being. With those two versions of the Cyborg, both characters offer developments and projections of what possibilities our science has been working on, and has seen come to life during the latest decades, even if, as it often is, the Science Fiction movies’ universes are a few steps ahead of real life. It also tackles the issues of the applications of said scientific creations and upgrades, in terms of ethics, including those due to military usages. The topic of what could be called ‘war and peace’ is developed in the postmodernist ‘no future’ dimension of the storyline of both movies. The two characters portrayed by Worthington have different goals, from the militarist weapon in Terminator: Salvation, to the peaceful alternative to violence as the Avatar program in Cameron’s movie. This leads to the third crucial aspect of those hybrid faces, which is how Worthington’s characters have to find themselves. They (re)discover who they are through the transformations they undergo with their augmented body, of which they both aren’t aware from the beginning of their quest in these movies. The question of path given and chosen also tackles the issue of death in rebirth in a quite literal manner. Key Words: Cyborg, science fiction, hybrid, virtual reality, film studies, post modernism. ***** 1. Introduction In 2009, two Science Fiction movies were released featuring the English born, Australian actor Sam Worthington: Terminator Salvation by McG and Avatar by James Cameron. In both movies, Worthington portrays characters with an augmented body, two different sorts of Cyborg. In Terminator Salvation, he portrays Marcus, a former death convict turned Cyborg by Skynet, an infiltration prototype to get to John Connor's resistance movement. Marcus isn't conscious of his Cyborg state until a later point in the movie. In Avatar, Worthington incarnates Jake Sully, a paraplegic US marine sent to replace his late twin for the Avatar project on Pandora, where humans are connected via a mental link to human-Na’vi,

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__________________________________________________________________ the local species, hybrids, to study that sentient society. In both movies, Worthington’s characters present diverse implications of the Cyborg nature. Three main aspects appear at the core of these storylines and portrayals. The first one is the impact of science and the augmented body on the notion of engineered humanity. This topic is closely related to how cyborgs are perceived and used in both movies, and which goals they are designed for. All of this questions the notion of the self, as these characters suffer from identity troubles as they follow their paths and unveil truths about themselves. 2. Engineered Humanity While Cyborg implies a mix of machine and living flesh, or putting body implants as mere prosthesis according to certain visions of the Cyborg, 1 the notion of the augmented body nevertheless remains another possibility of the Cybernetic Organism. This poses the question of the place of the original body versus its engineered version, either as upgrade or as a full new being. Like Haraway discusses in her chapter, ‘The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse’, 2 the interaction between science and bodies can also imply a sort of invasion that takes the body as target, for good or questionable motives, and such things can be found in both storylines. The first Cyborg occurrence is depicted in Terminator Salvation, with Marcus agreeing, after refusing several times, to give his body to science before being executed at the Longview State Correctional Facility. Fifteen years after, he comes back as a fully-fledged Cyborg, with a mechanical endoskeleton and part of his brain now artificial. Both the lethal injection that leads to his body becoming a scientific tool and then his semi machine state are indeed reminders of the disputable goals of science in its work on human flesh. Yet, it seems important to remark that he retains completely human organs, like his heart that he is able to give at the end of the movie to save John Connor’s life. On the other hand, Jake Sully in Avatar is dependent on a wheelchair until he can get his legs back thanks to surgery. While it isn’t part of his actual body, the wheelchair may be considered a first step towards becoming a Cyborg, at least at the level of present-day science and experiments. This way of seeking medical help to regain the use of his body as a whole offers a more positive contrast to the invasive practices mentioned above about Marcus in the fourth Terminator movie. His true hybrid nature, turning him towards another sort of Cyborg-ness is the Avatar program for which he replaces his late scientist twin brother. The humanNa’vi hybrids are fully created and built by human scientists so the volunteers are able to experience the local culture and interact with those natives. The neural interface that links Jake to his avatar can be related to the notion of virtual reality, which is a common topic in Science Fiction movies. 3 Yet, that neural link allows for more than virtual reality, as the bodies move and interact in the real world on Pandora, while the original one, the human

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__________________________________________________________________ envelope, stays in stasis in a pod to keep it secure during the activation of the avatar. With these two versions of the Cyborg, both characters offer developments and projections of what possibilities our science has been working on, and has seen come to life during the latest decades, even if the Science Fiction movies’ universes are a few steps ahead of real life. The notion of the Cyborg also tackles the issues of the applications of said scientific creations and upgrades. The issues of military goals versus more pacifist uses of progress are at play in Terminator Salvation and Avatar, especially through the two pivotal characters portrayed by Sam Worthington. 3. War and Peace Both movies are from the postmodernist era 4 and one of its narrative characteristics that is at play in the two films is the ‘no future’ theme. 5 In Terminator Salvation, the aforementioned dystopian future where Skynet would have taken over, mentioned in all the other cinema and television productions of the Terminator franchise, is unfolding, as the story focuses on the combat of John Connor’s resistance movement to tear apart the machines’ tyranny. Skynet is the enemy, the one that human survivors are struggling and sacrificing themselves against in the hope that they can regain control of Earth. A mechanical threat is also shown in Avatar in a different fashion, since the prospect of violent colonization to make the Na’vi bend to the humans’ industrial decisions is an important theme throughout the movie. The Marines are heavy technology users, with their human commanded robots, which look like giant exoskeletons. These actually seem like the natural follower of similar figures in Science Fiction cinema from Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) to Matrix Revolutions (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 2003). The combat presented between this technological force and the more ‘primitive’ armed Na’vi, who are nevertheless helped by some humans, including by providing weapons, is also a form of combat: the mythic battle, 6 which is also featured in other Science Fiction movies, such as Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983). In the two movies, the characters portrayed by Sam Worthington have a different objective from the Cyborg creation point of view. In Terminator Salvation, Marcus is designed as a weapon to use against the human resistance led by John Connor, which is revealed when he is at the Skynet headquarters towards the end of the movie, when he realizes that he was a tool from the start. This realization seems like a natural follow up to the prologue of the movie, which takes place in the detention centre. The pattern that links both scenes is Doctor Serene Koggan. Koggan is the one to press him into signing up his body to science after his execution, even though he tells her he doesn’t want any second chance after what he did. Present at his execution by lethal injection, Koggan shows up again in the movie, as the Skynet computer uses her face to address Marcus, revealing what

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__________________________________________________________________ he truly became, including how he recorded everything he saw during his time with John Connor. The other mirroring element is how the computer tells him that he has no second chance, and this time, Marcus simply replies, ‘Watch me’ after he gets free of his physical link to Skynet. As for Avatar, Jake Sully’s Na’vi living avatar, just like the others, was a pacifist answer to the situation on Pandora, to avoid the military violence that nevertheless occurs later during the film. The mission has been orchestrated to get to know and possibly have civilized relations with the locals. The way the military think of it as either foolishness or a tool, especially for Colonel Miles Quaritch, is a recurring pattern throughout the film. Both Worthington’s characters have a pivotal impact on the climax sequences of Terminator Salvation and Avatar, in what can be considered the ‘last stand,’ 7 which is a motif very common in war and war inspired movies. This includes a large number of Science Fiction productions, which are hybrids themselves, with ties to various other cinema genres, as Telotte explores in his final chapter: ‘Conclusion: A Note on Boundaries.’ 8 In the fourth instalment of the Terminator franchise, Marcus not only helps the resistance after he had worked against them without knowing about it, but he goes to the length of sacrificing himself to save their very leader, John Connor, in the finale of the movie, which he considers his true second chance in life. As for Avatar, Jake Sully finally chooses his side, which is the Na’vi one, which includes the few scientists and other human crew members who are against the military’s destructive offensive on the locals. Yet, this is different for Jake, since he had been helping the military by choice, during part of the movie, trying to get the better of both sides, until he has to make a decision. Marcus’s and Jake Sully’s storylines, along with their Cyborg nature and elements have serious influences on how the characters are built. Furthermore, it makes how they understand and decide who they are, a delicate and complex subject. 4. Finding the Self One striking element about both characters portrayed by Sam Worthington is how they experience what Haraway calls ‘fractured identities,’ which she explores in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socalist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, 9 even though Marcus and Jake Sully are male protagonists. Both characters experience paths that will allow them to find who they have become and bring them to decide who they want to be, beyond the changes that were made for them, without really asking. In Terminator Salvation, Marcus gave his body to science but had no idea that he would become a Skynet weapon while Jake Sully was theoretically given a choice to take his twin’s place for the Avatar program, though he was rather pressured to do so.

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__________________________________________________________________ Generally speaking, Sam Worthington can easily fit in the white hero cliché in terms of looks, as explored by Tasker in the introduction of Spectacular Bodies. 10 Yet, this possibly archetypal ‘action movie body’ is weakened in both Terminator Salvation and Avatar. Marcus is shown being injected with his lethal injection, and shown again later on a medical table in the Skynet headquarters. His mechanical ‘guts’ are also displayed, showing how his humanity was damaged, despite his now stronger body thanks to its Cyborg nature. This moment is crucial in the movie as it is the first step in Marcus’s realization of what he has become, which is a shock, and adds to his inner conflict and quest to make things right, including helping John Connor to battle Skynet and defeat the machines. In Avatar, Jake Sully became paraplegic while serving in the Marines, and while able to use his wheelchair without physical problem, he is still struggling with the new limitations it gives him, as it is shown on a few occasions in the movie, especially in an opening scene of the extended cut. This scene shows Sully picking a fight in a bar but losing it due to his disabled state. Both Marcus and Jake Sully experience a quest to find themselves through their new Cyborg nature, be it through a more traditional half human and half machine version like in Terminator Salvation, or a more ‘new technology’ and genetic manipulation version like in Avatar. They both undergo trials similar to the mono myth described by Joseph Campbell in many of his works, including his famous Hero with a Thousand Faces. Due to the darkness and troubled times they live in, products of a postmodern imagination, which offers either a post-apocalyptic dystopian, Terminator Salvation, or a rather environmental fable-oriented result, Avatar, Marcus and Jake Sully can be related to what Campbell says about the hero in contemporary settings. 11 At the end of the two movies, Sam Worthington’s characters ‘die’ for rebirth, actual or metaphorical. They make the choice of the ‘second chance,’ as Marcus expresses in Terminator Salvation, as he makes the choice to give his heart—one of his remaining human organs, free from mechanical addition or replacement—to John Connor so John may live. This time Marcus ‘chooses’ the lethal injection, and finds redemption for what he did, by doing something good. The voice over in the heart transplant scene carries on with that topic of the human heart and how crucial it is for what it means to be human: What is it that makes us human? It’s not something you can program. You can’t put it into a chip. It’s the threat of the human heart, the difference between us and machines. - John Connor, Terminator Salvation. 12 In Avatar, Jake Sully decides to take a more mystic path, and give himself to the hands of the Na’vi for them to perform the ritual dedicated to Eywa, so he may be transferred from his human body to his Na’vi hybrid one. He risks his life—or

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__________________________________________________________________ at least a lack of success—as he does so, though the ritual succeeds as the final shot of the movie confirms, with Sully’s Na’vi eye opening, but he is willing to take that chance, no matter what, as his last video log shows : Well, I guess this is my last video log, cause whatever happens tonight, either way I’m not coming back to this place. Guess I’d better go. I don’t wanna be late for my own party. That’s my birthday after all. This is Jake Sully, signing off. - Jake Sully, Avatar. 13 The locals have indeed become his home, especially after he learns their ways, choses the former tribe leader’s daughter Neytiri as his mate due to their mutual attraction, and helps lead the battle against the Marines. Those choices that help the characters find their path thanks to—or despite— the science and engineering help them find peace with themselves and their previous actions. The will to keep life safe and sound seems like an important common pattern, which isn’t without echoes of Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner, especially in Roy Batty’s—one of the Replicants—final choice to save his hunter, Deckard, as this voice over from the 1982 theatrical version shows: I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments, he loved life more than he ever had before, not just his life, anybody’s life, my life. All he’d wanted was the same answers the rest of us wants. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? - Deckard, Blade Runner. 14 4. Conclusion While their paths and their Cyborg-ness are different, both Sam Worthington’s characters in Terminator Salvation and Avatar share common struggles about their nature and actions. It is interesting to see how both try to make the right choices in the end, putting humanist values at the core of their decisions, but that only one of them seeks to regain humanity as a whole, while the other embraces his Cyborg and hybrid nature, making it a reality. From the moment that Marcus is told to remember what he is by the Skynet computer in their lab, his quest for humanity is all the more crucial to him, which is shown by the way he tears off the chip at the back of his head, saying, ‘I’m better this way.’ From there, his human quest, even as his human flesh gets torn away, finds no pause, until his final step to give his heart to John Connor. One of the final scenes that shows how human he becomes, maybe even more than before he first died in 2003, is the moment that the little girl, Star, who tagged along with him and

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__________________________________________________________________ Kyle Reese during various scenes in Terminator Salvation, comes by his side and take his hand, now purely mechanical as the human skin has been torn away. In Avatar, Jake Sully’s own quest takes him to make his avatar his reality, beyond the experimental aspect it originally held. By going through the Na’vi ritual, he surrenders to both their spiritual beliefs and traditions, and also embraces fully what human engineering had allowed, which is his Na’vi hybrid body. Yet, the body and the life he chooses to live his life at this stage still retain traces of who he was before, not simply in terms of soul and personality, but because his hybrid body has certain attributes that comes from his human body: the five finger hands and some facial features. In short, the characters offer two different and yet related figures of the Cyborg nature. In their own ways, they question the impacts of science and human engineering both in terms of goals and of identity. It seems that John Connor’s final words in Terminator Salvation epilogue applies to both Marcus’s and Jake Sully’s story: ‘There is no fate but what we make.’ 15

Notes 1

François Laplantine and Alexis Nouss, Dictionnaire des métissages (Pauvert, 200), 184. 2 Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, 1991), 203-230. 3 J. P. Telotte, Science Fiction Film (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 118-119. 4 Jullier, L’écran postmoderne (L’Harmattan, 1997), 23-33, Telotte, Science Fiction Film, 54-58. 5 Laplantine and Nouss, Dictionnaire des métissages, 495-496. 6 Adela Yarbo Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: Power of Apocalypse (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1984), 148. 7 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001), 138-141. 8 Telotte, Science Fiction Film, 197-203. 9 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, 149-155. 10 Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (Routledge, 1993), 1-10. 11 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University Press, Reprint Edition, 1973), 387-391. 12 Terminator Salvation, McG (dir.), John Brancato and Michael Ferris (writers), The Halcyon Company, Wonderland Sound and Vision, Warner Brothers, 2009. 13 Avatar, James Cameron (dir.), James Cameron (writer), Lightstorm Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners, 2009. 14 Blade Runner, Ridley Scott (dir.), The Ladd Company, 1982.

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Terminator Salvation (McG, 2009).

Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et Simulation. Editions Galilée, 1981. Boatto, Sébastien, ‘Du Surhomme à Superman. Évolution de la figure du héros dans le film d’action hollywoodien post-moderne’. In Théorème: Du héros aux super héros, mutations cinématographiques [sous la direction de Claude Forest], Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009. Bordwell, David. Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Harvard University Press, 1991. Brooker, Will. The Blade Runner Experience - The Legacy of A Science Fiction Classic. Wallflower Press, 2006. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, Reprint Edition, 1973. Collins, Adela Yarbo. Crisis and Westminster/John Knox Press, 1984.

Catharsis:

Power

of

Apocalypse.

Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, 1990. King, Geoff. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. I B Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2001. Jullier, Laurent. L’écran postmoderne. L’Harmattan, 1997. Laplantine, François et Nouss Alexis. Dictionnaire des métissages. Pauvert, 2001. Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. Routledge, 1993. Telotte, J. P. Science Fiction Film. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Toasovic, Dick. ‘Le masque et la menace. Constitutions et crises identitaires de la figure super héroïque contemporaine’. In Théorème: Du héros aux super héros,

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Part 5 Beyond ‘Human’

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Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of the Robot Other in Literature Eric Forcier Abstract The English word ‘robot’ is a fairly new one, popularized by Karel Čapek in his 1921 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). It comes from the Czech ‘robota’, meaning ‘the work of a drudge’ or ‘drudgery’. The play depicts a race of manmade androids, a new servant class that ultimately revolts and exterminates its human masters. In this way, the narrative re-enacts a sort of Biblical Fall (and Rise) of Man. The robot is both the human reborn in Eden, and also the ultimate product of the Original Sin of Man. Čapek’s robot has inextricably rooted itself in science fiction; we might not instantly pinpoint what it is about the robot—or android or cyborg, Dalek or Cylon—that is so compelling, but there is an undeniable appeal, an anxiety that we feel toward these depictions of artificial humanity. It comes as no surprise, then, that the idea of the robot precedes the coinage of its name. Early modern literature and proto-science fiction are consumed with a preoccupation of the artificial human: the ‘robot other’. Beginning with these early representations of the robot—as golems, automatons, and Frankensteinian monsters—I will explore the reasons why the robot other is both irresistible and terrifying, intimately familiar and utterly alien. This chapter will trace the literary history of the robot other from the early modern into the twenty first century. Key Words: Robots, automatons, androids, humans, literary criticism, other, Milton, Spenser, Karel Čapek, Philip K. Dick, Battlestar Galactica. ***** 1. Identity: An Idea I want to discuss an idea. It is not a new idea. In fact, one might say it is positively antique, traced back to the dusty annals of classical literature and beyond. 1 It is an idea that recurs in every period throughout history, as civilizations develop new understandings of the universe and how we, as humans, exist within it. It is the idea of the ‘artificial human’, and all that such a paradox implies. The literary representations of the artificial human have borne many names over time; in the ancient tradition, they were living statues embued with the breath of the gods. The spirit-possessed automaton of medieval romance gave way to the mechanically animated automaton of the Renaissance. Advancing into the modern age, new terms were coined: the android, the robot, the cyborg. As the mirrors of man, each one of these names finds new ways to challenge what it means to be human. I would like to suggest another name for the artificial human that includes

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__________________________________________________________________ all of these situated types, while emphasizing the way in which they both define and reflect the human: the robot other. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a particular lens with which to explore the idea of the artificial, rather than to tease out the many implications of each representation or to linger on a particular period in time. My introduction of the robot other will, I hope, inspire further research of its countless manifestations. The Renaissance, with its introduction to new ways of thinking about technology, marks a distinct split between ancient and modern conceptions of the robot other, and as such serves as a useful starting point. For this reason, I begin my survey in the early modern period, and will move forward to the present day. 2. The Yron Groome In The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser’s Talus is a curious mixture of mythic monster and early modern mechanics, a cybernetic organism with an ancient ancestry. The iron man’s literary antecedents are described by no less than Plato, Hesiod, Apollonius of Rhodes and Apollodorus. 2 Spenser acknowledges this heritage while distinguishing his Talus from these ancestors of a bygone age: ‘For from the golden age, that first was named, / It’s now at earst become a stonie one.’ 3 Talus is a modern war-machine, not bronze like the Guardian of Crete, but iron and ‘immouable, resistlesse, without end.’ 4 In truth, while Talus behaves more like the classical automata from which he is derived than the mechanical men of the Age of Reason, he embodies many of the common tropes that define later representations of the robot other. As robot other, Spenser’s Talus evokes the tensions between master and slave, man-made technology and divine magic, passion and pure, pitiless reason. Any understanding of a robot other begins with a comparison to its human counterpart. In Faerie Queene, Talus’s counterpart is Sir Artegall, the Knight of Justice and the iron man’s inherited master. Talus was originally servant to a goddess, Astraea, the personification of Justice—her ‘groome’ made of ‘yron mould’. 5 As a champion of Justice, Artegall is not unexceptional, however; Spenser places him in company with Hercules as a subduer of ‘monstrous tyrants’, 6 and thanks to the training he receives from Astraea, he is matchless in his might and morality, feared even by the ‘wilde beasts.’ 7 Talus is described in much the same way, mercilessly committed to the cause of Justice. From the outset, there seems to be small distinction between Artegall and Talus, besides Talus’s metal body and the difference in class status. But, with each new encounter, their personalities diverge to reveal unique characteristics. In the first canto, Spenser demonstrates Talus’s superhuman speed when he pursues—and overtakes—a mounted knight while on foot. 8 Later on, Talus also demonstrates superhuman abilities of strength, smell, and the uncanny sense to detect falsehoods. 9 Moreover, Talus displays an almost total lack of empathy, coupled with a disturbing exercise of autonomy; repeatedly, he takes cruel measures in punishing evil-doers,

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__________________________________________________________________ occasionally to Artegall’s dismay. 10 This is particularly evident in the final canto, when Talus takes on the Grantorto’s army single-handedly: ‘But Talus sternely did vpon them set, / And brusht, and battred them without remorse... That they lay scattred ouer all the land, / As thicke as doth the seede after the sowers hand.’ 11 Seeing this, Artegall orders Talus to stop; the knight had hoped to defeat Grantorto in single combat, and so the slaughter of the tyrant’s men is both needless and regrettable. While Talus possesses physical and sensory abilities beyond even those of a mighty champion of Justice, he is forced to obey his own programming, which prohibits him from operating outside the letter of the law. In Canto VII, Talus is powerless to rescue Artegall from Radigund because his master was legally taken prisoner, due to the contract Artegall had made with the Amazon. Humans, on the other hand, are capable of wickedness—and sometimes this ability serves a greater good, like when Britomart violates the contract and rescues Artegall from the Amazons. Talus also lacks the emotional capacity to show mercy or to possess an understanding for the value of human life. Occasions in the text where this lack is made evident often challenge the master/servant relationship. This usually leads to unfortunate and violent results. Sometimes, however, Talus’s inability also benefits the cause of Justice: In Canto II, after Talus slays an evil giant, the giant’s followers rise up against the two heroes. Artegall is reluctant to fight, either out of disdain for spilling their ‘base blood’, a fear of shaming himself by fleeing, or pity for killing men who know no better, and instead has Talus parley a ‘truce for to desire.’ 12 This has predictable results, in which Talus proceeds to disperse the mob with his ‘yron flail.’ 13 Immune to the uniquely human passions of pride, shame, and pity, Talus is capable of taking action without repercussion. In this way, Artegall and Talus function symbiotically, rather than in opposition. Only together are they capable of the responsibility of meting justice in a world fallen from grace. 3. Milton’s Adam, Proto-Cartesian Paradise Lost may seem a strange choice in a discussion of artificial humanity. After all, what can be more authentically human than the first human? Traditionally, Miltonists have described the universe before the Fall as monist, in which the mind and body are continuous with each other and their environment. We were once one with God in Paradise, and the dualism of mind and body that allow us to define human consciousness as exceptional and which we associate with Cartesianism is, in fact, a reflection of our fallen state. 14 René Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and Milton scholars rarely hesitate to point out how Satan echoes him: ‘The mind is its own place.’ 15 However, the creation of Adam by God follows a pattern common in narratives of the robot other; the maker makes an image of itself, and the image achieves agency and selfhood only when it attempts to become its maker’s equal. An argument can be made that, before the Fall, Adam is artificial, and only after the Fall does he become truly human.

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__________________________________________________________________ After hand-crafting Adam in His own image, God performs a Turing Test on his latest invention; He converses with Adam in order to determine whether or not the man can imitate His divine intelligence. 16 Adam wishes for ‘rational delight’, 17 which the animals—mere automatons all, lacking self-awareness—cannot provide; and God is pleased with his invention. But despite this evidence of autonomous thought, Adam can be observed acting unconsciously; even in the instant when he first becomes aware, Adam moves by reflex: ‘By quick instinctive motion up I sprung.’ 18 Unlike the animals in Eden, Adam was not spontaneously generated from the soil, but manufactured personally by God in His image. 19 In other words, Adam is the only authentically ‘artificial animal’ in Eden. As Scott Maisano puts it, ‘the sine qua non of our existence’, before the Fall, is ‘the fact that we are living images, flesh-and-blood imitations.’ 20 A study of Adam as robot other, therefore, would require a comparison of him before and after he eats of the Tree of Knowledge. As has been noted above, prelapsarian Adam convincingly imitates God in his desire for intelligent conversation, rules over the other beasts of Eden as God’s substitute, and yet moves innocently—unconsciously—through Paradise as the animals do. In Book IX, however, Satan succeeds in tempting Eve to taste the forbidden fruit, and Eve in turn convinces Adam, who will not be parted from his wife—and both are transformed, body and mind. After eating, he is overcome with a carnal desire for Eve and acts upon lust. He falls into a troubled sleep, ‘with conscious dreams / Encumberd.’ 21 Upon waking, he feels shame for the first time and is compelled to cover his nakedness. Both sit and weep, as ‘high Winds worse within / Began to rise, high Passions, Anger, Hate, Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord, and shook sore / Thir inward State of Mind’; 22 the monism known in Adam’s innocence as God’s creation has been replaced by the psycho-physical dualism of the troublingly selfaware, conflicted, postlapsarian human condition. The human is thus defined by these flaws that make him self-aware, while prelapsarian Adam—a robot other—is defined by his innocence and his imitation of real intelligence. 4. Androids: Vaucanson’s Flutist and Kempelen’s Turk While Descartes’ philosophy split the physical from the psychological by reducing the human body to mere machine, Julien Offray de La Mettrie reunited them by making of all human functions matter in motion. In 1748, La Mettrie published L’Homme Machine, in which he stripped away the numinous by reframing the ‘soul’ as the organically-motivated mind: ‘if what thinks in my brain is not a part of that organ and thus of the whole body, why, when I am lying peacefully in my bed and I... follow an abstract line of reasoning, does my blood heat up?’ 23 Thus, it is not surprising that the Enlightenment gave rise to a host of mechanical men unlike any of those before seen in literature or in life. Jacques de Vaucanson, whom La Mettrie named ‘a new Prometheus’, 24 is the most notable of

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__________________________________________________________________ the period’s mechanicians. Vaucanson’s automaton flute player was so popular that it features at length in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, in the entry for the term ‘androïde’, which defined the term as, ‘an automaton in human form, which, by means of certain well-positioned springs, etc. performs certain functions which externally resemble those of man.’ 25 In this definition the dismissal of any metaphysical origin is evident; these are mechanical replicas of the infinitely more complex human machine. Vaucanson’s flutist and its mimickry of physical process was followed by Wolfgang Von Kempelen’s automaton chess-player, which sought to imitate human thought. But unlike the flutist, the chess-player was shrouded in mystery and stagecraft, for it relied on audience members to embue it with the agency they both craved and feared to witness. According to an account by Poe, Kempelen’s chess-player was arrayed in the foreign finery and bore the dusky complexion of a Turk; 26 this image evoked the mysteries of the Orient and emphasized its otherness to western audiences. 27 Rather than reaffirm the audience’s wonder at the fabulous mechanism that is the human body, the Turk had an alienating effect, playing on the anxieties of those who saw it by suggesting that the human mind could just as easily be manufactured. 5. Monsters, Lovers and Revolutionaries The gothic aligns itself perfectly with the anxieties embodied in Kempelen’s Turk. This is no more evident than in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where a man, using the modern science of galvanism, produces an animated humanoid. This is not the mechanical android that captured the imagination of the Enlightenment, but something far more complex: a mummy, 28 a monster, constructed of disparate parts and dead flesh, animated with electricity. A study of the monster-as-robot-other would identify Victor, its maker, as its human counterpart. What makes Frankenstein such a fascinating narrative is that the uniquely human qualities witnessed in Victor’s behaviour are also evident in the monster: (1) selfawareness, 29 (2) a capacity for feeling/sympathy, 30 (3) an appreciation of beauty, 31 (4) a thirst for knowledge, 32 (5) a need for companionship, 33 (6) a desire to leave a legacy. 34 A number of these qualities are lacking from both Milton’s Adam and Spenser’s Talus, but by the time Shelley is writing, these are all characteristics that, disturbingly, can be embodied in an artificial human. Ultimately, the only distinguishing characteristic between Victor and the monster is the ability to fulfill a desire for companionship; in this, the monster appears absolutely cursed, no doubt to the relief of nineteenth century readers. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Eve Future takes a different tack to arrive at the same threshold. Hadaly is a mechanical android that far surpasses her human model, a beguiling yet shallow, bourgeois simpleton. She replaces her human counterpart as the lover of Lord Ewald, imitating precisely both her model’s physical beauty and Ewald’s romantic sensitivities in ways he had only dared hope.

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__________________________________________________________________ But before Hadaly can consummate her relationship, she is destroyed in an allconsuming fire—an act of Fate, as the title of the concluding chapter implies. 35 The tone of the narrative suggests that this is tragedy—not in the way that Frankenstein tragically portrays Victor’s just punishment for his hubris, but tragic because Ewald and Edison both lost a life they dearly loved. Rossum’s Universal Robots, or R.U.R., published in 1921 by Karel Čapek, captures at once the wonder and the anxiety we have witnessed in representations of the robot other, and finally fulfills the transformation the robot other promises. The play’s protagonist, Helena, seeks to emancipate the slavish androids that have replaced the world’s menial workforce. She visits the company factory, and what follows is a fascinating commentary on the human condition. Is what makes us human happiness? Fear? Suffering? Sex? The desire for autonomy? The ability to kill? Eventually, the robots throw down their tools and take up weapons. In the final act, after the extermination of mankind, the leader of the robots says, ‘We were machines, sir. But terror and pain have turned us into souls.’ 36 He desires to leave a legacy: ‘Teach us to have children so that we may love them.’ 37 The play concludes hopefully by re-enacting the moment of creation, transforming Čapek’s robots into prelapsarian humans. 38 6. The Science Fiction Robot The population of robot others has exploded in the twentieth and early twenty first centuries, invading our literature and pushing back the boundaries of what constitutes the human. One text that captures all of the confusions embodied in the robot is Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Dick’s fiction is filled with fundamentally flawed humans who seem to lack that single integrating quality for them to feel whole—whether it be empathy for other living creatures, control over ones urges, or a selfless awareness of others. When Dick introduces ‘andys’ that convincingly imitate these qualities, the whole notion of what constitutes humanity, at least psychically, is thrown into question. Dick imagines a future where moods can be synthesized through the use of machines, blurring the line between authentic and artificial emotion; 39 in a reality where the fake is indistinguishable from the genuine article, does it even matter whether or not it’s artificial? The one distinguishing feature between humans and andys is empathy, or as I have referenced it previously, capacity for feeling or value for life. Spenser’s Talus had no such compunction, and at the outset of Dick’s novel, Rick Deckard believes that to be the case with the andys. But, at every turn, Deckard’s belief is challenged, as he repeatedly confuses humans with androids. 40 In the novel, the robot other has evolved to the point where it has infiltrated the human race, subverting it from the inside—a far more insidious threat than the unsubtle revolution of Rossum’s robots. The division between human and other completely disintegrates with the 20042009 TV series, Battlestar Galactica. Years after the war with humanity’s

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__________________________________________________________________ colonies, the cylons—robots much like those Čapek envisioned—return to supplant it, and promulgate their race. This time, they have perfected the imitation of organic human life, cloning artificial human models, and embedding them in human society. The cylons are motivated by one overwhelming desire to leave a genetic legacy. In time, this desire is shared by the human survivors, who want nothing more than to find a habitable planet where they can rebuild their civilization, safe from the invasion of artificial others. Ultimately, salvation lies in their merging, rather than the dominion of one side over the other; in the final episode, Hera—the hybrid child of cylon Athena and human Helo, the only offspring of the cylon race—is revealed to be ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, the mother of humanity on Earth. This narrative suggests that, like Milton’s prelapsarian Adam, we are all artificial. 41 7. What’s in a Name? This chapter is about putting a name to an idea. Many minds have addressed these same issues over the centuries: What constitutes humanity? And how do we express it? Some have done so through philosophical rhetoric, some with scientific premises, and yet others using literary expression. I have presented an evolution of representations that capture these issues, and in so doing, proposed a term to consider such representations as a whole. The robot other embodies the idea of the artificial human, and the ways in which it reflects our humanity back at us. The robot other is no less than an archetype, and it is only by knowing our archetypes that we can better understand ourselves.

Notes 1

J. Douglas Bruce, ‘Automata in Classical Tradition and Mediaeval Romance’, Modern Philology 10, No. 4 (1913): 511-526, 512. Bruce indicates that ‘the earliest human automata in literature’ appear in the Iliad, xviii. 417 ff., describing Haphaestus’s ‘handmaidens of gold’, artificial humans with the ‘semblances of living maids’. 2 Bruce, ‘Automata in Classical Tradition’, 513-514. Lynsey McCulloch, ‘Antique Myth, Early Modern Mechanism: The Secret History of Spenser’s Iron Man’, The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Wendy Beth Hyman (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011), 61-76, 64-67. 3 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.Proem.2. 4 Ibid., V.i.12. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., V.i.2. 7 Ibid., V.i.8. 8 Ibid., V.i.20.

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Ibid., V.ii. Michael West, ‘Spenser’s Art of War: Chivalric Allegory, Military Technology, and the Elizabethan Mock-Heroic Sensability’, Renaissance Quarterly 41, No. 4 (1988): 654-704, 665-671. 11 Spenser, Faerie Queene, V.xii.7. 12 Ibid., V.ii.52. 13 Ibid., V.ii.53. 14 Bruce Smith, ‘Hearing Green’, Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, eds. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 147-149. Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 246. Scott Maisano, ‘Descartes avec Milton: The Automata in the Garden’, The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Wendy Beth Hyman (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011), 21-44, 23-27. 15 John Milton, Paradise Lost, I.254. 16 Ibid., VIII.369-448. Maisano, ‘Descartes avec Milton’, 27-33. 17 Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII.391. 18 Ibid., VIII.259. 19 Ibid., VII.524-528. 20 Maisano, ‘Descartes avec Milton’, 30. 21 Milton, Paradise Lost, IX.1050-1051. 22 Ibid., IX. 1122-1125. 23 Ann Thomson, ed., Machine Man and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 29. For a history of the Enlightenment debates surrounding the human condition and the challenge posed by increasingly sophisticated humanoid machines, see Eric G. Wilson, Melancholy Android, 97103. 24 Thomson, Machine Man and Other Writings, 34. 25 ‘Androïde’, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1751; Reprint, University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project, 2011), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 21-22. 26 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Maelzel’s Chess-Player’, The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe (1836; Reprint, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1983): 270-289. 27 Martin Willis, Mesmerists, Monsters and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth Century (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), 32-35. 10

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Wilson, Melancholy Android, 28. Wilson defines ‘the mummy’ as ‘an android made of dead things’, which represents a desire for physical life. 29 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1831; Reprint, New York: Dover Classics, 1994). Characterized by Victor: 34. Embodied by monster: 90-97, 163-165. 30 Ibid. Characterized by Victor: 45. Embodied by monster: 71-72, 75, 77-81, 164. 31 Ibid. Characterized by Victor: 18, 45, 64. Embodied by monster: 71-72, 75, 7781, 164. 32 Ibid. Characterized by Victor: 18-19. Embodied by monster: 90-97, 163-165. 33 Ibid. Characterized by Victor: 108. Embodied by monster: 90-97. 34 Ibid., Characterized by Victor: 32. Embodied by monster: 121-122. 35 Robert Martin Adams, trans. Tomorrow’s Eve (1886; Reprint, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 218. 36 Karel Čapek, R.U.R and The Insect Play (1921; Reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 95. 37 Ibid., 95. 38 Ibid., 104. 39 Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968; Reprint, New York: Random House, 1996), 3-7. 40 Ibid., 48-60, 94, 129-144. 41 ‘Daybreak (Part Two)’, (4.20). Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5, dir. Michael Rymer. (Vancouver, BC: Universal Studios, 2009). Roz Kaveney and Jennifer Stoy, eds. Battlestar Galactica: Investigating Flesh, Steel and Spirit (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 272.

Bibliography ‘Androïde’. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc. Edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. 1751. Reprint, University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project, 2011. http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5. Produced by Ronald D. Moore. Vancouver, BC: Universal Studios, 2009. Beaune, Jean-Claude. ‘The Classical Age of Automata: An Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century’. In Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part One, edited by Michel Feher, 430–480. New York: Urzone, Inc, 1989.

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__________________________________________________________________ Bruce, J. Douglas. ‘Automata in Classical Tradition and Mediaeval Romance’. In Modern Philology 10, No. 4 (1913): 511–526. Čapek, Karel. R.U.R and The Insect Play. 1921; Reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1966. Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. 1968. Reprint, New York: Random House, 1996. Hersey, George L. Falling in Love with Statues: Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Kaveney, Roz, and Jennifer Stoy, eds. Battlestar Galactica: Investigating Flesh, Steel and Spirit. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Kern Paster, Gail. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. La Mettrie. Machine Man and Other Writings. Edited and translated by Ann Thomson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kang, Minsoo. Sublime Dream of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Maisano, Scott. ‘Descartes avec Milton: The Automata in the Garden’. In The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, edited by Wendy Beth Hyman, 21– 44. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011. McCulloch, Lynsey. ‘Antique Myth, Early Modern Mechanism: The Secret History of Spenser’s Iron Man’. In The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, edited by Wendy Beth Hyman, 61–76. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 1674. Reprint, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘Maelzel’s Chess-Player’. In The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe, 270–289. 1836. Reprint, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1983. Rickels, Laurence A. I Think I Am Philip K. Dick. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

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__________________________________________________________________ Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1831. Reprint, New York: Dover Classics, 1994. Smith, Bruce. ‘Hearing Green’. In Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, edited by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, 147–168. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. 1596. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1978. Turing, Alan. ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’. Mind: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy 59, No. 236 (1950): 433–460. West, Michael. ‘Spenser’s Art of War: Chivalric Allegory, Military Technology, and the Elizabethan Mock-Heroic Sensability’. In Renaissance Quarterly 41, No. 4 (1988): 654–704. Willis, Martin. Mesmerists, Monsters and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth Century. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006. Wilson, Eric G. The Melancholy Android: On the Psychology of Sacred Machines. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Wood, Gaby. Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Tomorrow’s Eve. Translated by Robert Martin Adams. 1886; Reprint, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982. Eric Forcier is a Master of Arts/Master of Library and Information Studies candidate in Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta. His obsession with fictional robots is only matched by his interests in video game theory and the application of social media to the knowledge management of libraries. He is currently working on his graduate thesis, and indulges any opportunity that distracts him from its eventual conclusion.

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The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the Cases of Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge and Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak) Abstract Roland Barthes utilizes the occurrence of plastic to interpret the zeitgeist of the twentieth century in which ‘the hierarchy of substance is abolished,’ according to Kim Toffoletti, ‘plastic is the substance of simulation which dissolves the real and the representation.’ Barbie is plastic embodiment simulated in human form, a genderly de-naturalized concept of womanhood, and also a subversion of human subjectivity for its refusal of ‘fixed interpretation.’ However, transgender female could be Barbie’s human incarnation through surgical means, aspiring to collapse the established heterosexual dichotomy. Gore Vidal's 1968 cult classic Myra Breckinridge is a tour-de-force illustration of such plastic womanhood. Its transsexual protagonist Myra is a cinephile enamor of 1940s retro-Hollywood (simulacra), and Myra extends her love of simulacra into her obsession with Barbie’s bodily perfection while trespassing the patriarchal domain with her plastic mimesis. The notorious passage is Myra's rape of a macho athlete named Rusty with a strap-on dildo (made of plastic). In this case, plastic disintegrates genders into a teetering state of interchangeability. What Myra Breckinridge shares in common with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is the plasticity, which is crucial in many highlights of Dragon Tattoo: the dildo Lisbeth uses for revenge and the prosthetic breasts she puts on for self-disguise (as a Barbie-esque bombshell). Being a hacker, Lisbeth possesses Pierre Levy’s so called ‘cognitive prosthesis’ which empowers her in the realm of ‘collective intelligence,’ cyberspace, where she’s turned to a nomad with a virtual body devoid of physicality, which enables her to assist Mikael Bloomkvist to solve a serial-killer case of immigrant females. Here plastic liquefies the fixity of genders into a malleable state of transformativity, and the course of posthuman womanhood is initiated by plastic and then is mobilized by the internet to reach its ultimate subversion of binary oppositions. Key Words: Plastic, simulacrum, collective intelligence, cyberspace, cognitive prosthesis, Barbie, posthuman womanhood, binary oppositions, transgender, queer. ***** 1. The Subversion of Myra Breckinridge’s Barbie-esque Plasticity Martin Heidegger tackles the relation of technology to the essence of man’s being in his 1955 essay ‘Question Concerning Technology,’ and he names ‘the external forces to self’ as ‘Gestell’ or ‘enframing.’ In Heidegger’s view, it is the

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__________________________________________________________________ technology, the Gestell, that defines ‘the purposes or motivations’ of man’s being. Machines are no longer resources at human disposals, i.e. tools enframed by humans, and it could be the opposite as well: machines or the inanimate tools come to enframe humans. 1 In the case of plastic, Roland Barthes suggests that the occurrence of plastic renders a loss of natural originality in favour of ‘imitation and artifice’ mercilessly displacing the idea of nature. The concept of meaningful authenticity or authentic meaning is almost lost due to ‘the destabilization of meaning’ that is catalysed by plastic, which leads to a ‘dissolution of established systems of meanings.’ The result is the absence of ‘a coherent case of self’. Plastic also symbolizes the ‘commonality and transience in a throwaway culture’ that dwells within the in-between space of ‘rupture and rigidity’ where everything is turned into an ‘endless propagation of signs’ due to the loss of meaning. 2 Somehow plastic could be interpreted as a token of ‘equality, democracy and accessibility’ due to the abolishment of hierarchy in the difference of values. 3 Of course, Barbie is made of plastic, she is the reification of the zeitgeist after World War Two, and expresses a culture which praises artifice and flexibility in human endeavours, a Heideggerian Gestell which shapes the course of contemporaneous humanity, or maybe of posthumanity. The first appearance of Barbie was in 1959, when Barbies were sold then only for adults, until Barbie’s prevalence had been extended to children’s toys. By then, Barbie started to have a huge impact in popular culture as well as on the conceptualization of womanhood; and Barbie became a paradigm of femininity in dominant discourse since the 1950s. In this case, Barbie became the Gestell that enframed the doctrine of modern womanhood, to sum up, the quintessential mode of Barbie is that she is ‘blonde and busty’ and more and more females resort to surgical means to emulate this Barbie-esque perfection. Barbie also imposes as well as enhances the ‘non-human qualities’ toward women: she is ‘rigid and slender,’ qualities which are opposed to natural womanhood, leading to ‘a cancellation of the conventional signs of feminine beauty,’ in order to subdue woman into a fixed standard in mainstream society. 4 But who says Barbie’s plasticity cannot be used as a means of subversion? Transgenderism is an extreme example of Barbie in human form, and Barbie is a ‘transformer’ with great malleability, so is the transgendered person. Barbie, like the transgendered person, ‘calls established categories into question’ by confusing and blurring the line between ‘the real and illusion’ or ‘the image and its referent’, 5 and she is a Baudrillardian ‘simulation,’ a hyper-reality pre-programmed to topple the conceptualized structure of reality through the excess of simulacra by having ‘longer-than-long legs, masses of blonde hair, and (her) pneumatic breasts exceed [that] the limits of phallogocentric signification.’ 6 Gore Vidal’s 1968 classic cultfiction Myra Breckinridge is a tale perceived through the lens of Baudrillardian simulacra because the protagonist is transgendered, as well as being a cinephile who saturates herself in the 1940s Hollywood cinema, an assemblage of simulacra

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__________________________________________________________________ from the celluloid. In other words, she is a human simulacrum living in a world fabricated also by simulacra. Myra Breckinridge is a story of a transgender female integrating herself into the Academy of acting (owned by her family) as a teacher. She announces herself as the fiancée of ‘her previous self’ before gender-bending surgery, Myron Breckinridge. During her stay in the academy, two students of hers draw her particular attention, Rusty (whom she constantly compares to Gary Cooper), the stud, Mary-Ann, the opera-singing blonde ingénue whose voice somehow resembles Jeanette McDonalds. Myra shows her gender-malleability by succeeding in possessing first Rusty and then Mary-Ann. In the beginning, the story is written in solipsistic diary form, with the protagonist (Myra Breckinridge) claiming that ‘she’ is ‘the New Woman whose astonishing history is a poignant amalgam of vulgar dreams and knife-sharp realities ...’ and her ambition is to be a ‘literary masterpiece.’ 7 Whether it’s Myra or Myron, she/he takes great pride in what she/he possesses through surgical means: ‘What it is like to possess perfect thighs with hips resembling that archetypal mandolin’; Myra’s admired sense of beauty is cinephilic as she deems the celluloid to be what has been ‘imprinted in our century’ with ‘all the dreams and shadows that have haunted the human race since man’s harsh and turbulent origins’, 8 in other words, the external embodiment of the internal human psyche in optical and audible forms. Being a great admirer of 1940s retro-cinema, Myra utilizes the ’40s icons as referents in each scene of the novel, mingling the absorbed images from the celluloid with passages of her life, which is so interwoven with the simulacra that Myra/Myron is incapable of authenticity. Each moment of life is a fabrication of artifice as well as a gesture of performativity for her, such as Myra’s encounter with her student Mary Ann in the book: I realized too late that I was playing Gail Patrick and would have to continue flashing brilliant smiles for the remainder of the twoscene since I seldom abandon a role once I have embarked on it. Artistic integrity demands consistency, even with the unappreciative Mary-Anns of this world. 9 Undeniably Myra/Myron is an urban intellectual dedicated to the ‘labour of leisure’, 10 as she/he always intellectualizes everything since she/he is theoretically well-versed: ‘Mimesis is normal, particularly in youth, and my only demur is that today’s models are, by and large, debasing. In the Forties, American boys created a world empire because they chose to be James Stewart, Clark Gable and William Eythe. By imitating godlike autonomous men, our boys were able to defeat Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo.’ 11 Despite Myra becoming a compound consisting of a great many mimeses, she is highly against soul-less mimesis ‘blank parody’ (according

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__________________________________________________________________ to Fredrick Jameson), 12 although her mind lingers within the utopia of retro-cinema where the magnitude of American manhood thrived during World War Two. Regarding the issue of cinephilic spectatorship, 13 to view is to possess; for Myrna, she is to possess men and not to be possessed, and she shall do it ‘in ways convenient to her tyrannous lust.’ 14 To start off her subversive plasticity, Myra performs the gender reversal through her hostage of spectatorship (which is conventionally preserved for a man) by deceiving Rusty into her snare with the mimes of her plastic womanhood. At this point, Myra officially jeopardizes the fundamental conceit of Rusty’s manhood with a real plastic object, a dildo. Myra even uses words such as ‘religious ecstasy’ to describe her joy in her ‘optical possession’ of Rusty; later she even reaches another stage of ‘rebirth,’ after raping him fiercely with a plastic dildo, that upgrades her to ‘Woman Triumphant’ for having avenged her alter-ego, Myron who has spent his entire time in the miseries of being ‘penetrated.’ To a certain point, she raves narcissistically that she is ‘goddess enthroned, and all-power’ while recollecting the fact she has ruined Rusty and those vain conceits that have made him ‘absolute man.’ 15 According to the aforementioned elucidation about Barbie’s participation in the dominant course of contemporaneous womanhood, another question ensues: how about Barbie-users who are not women? In Barbie’s Queer Accessories, which is about the study of Barbie consumption among queer groups, Barbie offers some unusual alternatives for transvestites to pleasure themselves in acts parodying cultural signifiers within doctrines of femininity; simultaneously, transvestites also serve their purpose of subversion by challenging the demarcation between the real and illusions. Also, there is a gay-connotation in Barbie’s male counterpart Ken, who is a simulacrum who defies the boundary between male homosexuality and patriarchal masculinity. 16 Through raping Rusty with a dildo made of plastic, Myra transforms Rusty into Barbie’s Ken, and Rusty embraces more of his plasticity as a living simulacrum in his pursuit of Hollywood stardom in the dream factory of professionally manufactured simulacra. If we view transgenderism in the perspective of cyborg citizenship, transexuality is ‘profoundly political’ for seeking ‘liberatory potentials’ in all the ways transgendered people could conceive to reform sexual identity; simultaneously the technology functions as a Heideggerian Gestell, a ‘mental prosthesis,’ as some manage to achieve that transformativity in identities without surgical means. 17 The prevalence of sex toys in western society also suggests that the business of private pleasure has been developed from ‘a medical problem’ to ‘a matter of consumer choice.’ 18 Regarding plastic as Gestell which enframes humans, Myra’s transgender surgery by self-choice is a matter of consumer-choice while her malicious intrusion of Rusty becomes ‘a medical problem’ in the moulding of Rusty’s self-identity. 19 In the end of part I, Myra manifests that her true aspiration is to overthrow traditional manhood and her primary mission is to solve the overpopulation of

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__________________________________________________________________ human kind by stopping more heterosexual couples from propagating. After jeopardizing the discourses of patriarchy, Myra is converted to a submissive adoration of feminine overpower, a state of Kristeva’s abjection where the boundaries collapse, and also a state of inseparation from the uterus, which is reflected in Myra’s intimate bond with Rusty’s girlfriend Mary Ann whose body Myra depicts as black oblivion where stars are made and energy waits to be born in order to begin once more the cycle of destruction and creation at whose apex now I stand, once man, now woman, and soon to be privy to what lies beyond the uterine door, the mystery of creation that I mean to shatter with the fierce thrust of a will that alone separates me from the nothing of eternity; and as I have conquered the male, absorbed and been absorbed by the female. 20 Here even Myra cannot help but question herself: ‘I smashed the male principle only to become entrapped by the female?’ 21 Being plastic, Myra’s being (or becoming) is in a condition of implied ‘instability and process’_ the essence of the posthuman spirit, which is about the fluid erasure of the conceptualization of self/Other as ‘we mould plastic. And plastic mounds us.’ 22 The aim of such a ‘transformative entity’ might be a blissful retreat to womb in the bosom of a gracious real woman, in Myra/Myron’s case. 2. The Subversion of Lisbeth Salander’s Virtual Plasticity The most distinguished characteristics of Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are her bodily modifications by subcultural aestheticism (such as Gothic and Punk) with her dragon tattoo and various piercings. One notable characteristic of Salander’s demeanour is her apparent ‘lack of emotional involvement’, and her physical features, which are ‘pale and anorexic,’ with ‘hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows.’ Also, she has ‘a wasp tattoo about an inch long on her neck’ and she dyes her hair ‘raven black.’ In a way, Salander could be ‘almost Asian’ due to her high cheekbones and her ‘extreme slenderness.’ She occasionally wears black lipstick. Above all, she is not conventionally beautiful, but she is ‘inextricably attractive’ to some men because of her mysterious otherworldliness. 23 After the savage rapes from her welfare guardian, she has her ankle tattooed just to feel reborn. Salander chooses ‘a simple little tattoo depicting a narrow band’ as ‘a reminder’ that Bjurman has chosen her as a victim. 24 Ever since ancient times, ‘tattoos, names, blazons, totems, and masks are all signs that signify identity’; Salander’s tattoos could indicate the construction of an identity through voluntary ‘self-organization,’ which could be an expression of ‘direct democracy’

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__________________________________________________________________ since everyone is allocated the freedom to choose an identity or pluralize it into esoteric bifurcations, and eventually multiple self-organizations are turned into ‘the process of mutation and deterrialization.’ 25 When Salander successfully acquires the evidence of Bjurman’s crime against her through videotaping the rape, she knocks Bjurman down with an electroshock taser, and holds a laser-pen to ink Bjurman from ‘his nipples to just above his genitals’; the tattoo says ‘I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.’ 26 Somehow, she avenges herself through inscribing a mark on her enemy, which could be a supreme form of Salander’s ‘self-organization.’ Salander is a self-expressionist through the slogans on the T-shirts she wears in several occasions of the novel. She appears in the beginning with ‘a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs,’ and the slogan says ‘I AM ALSO AN ALIEN.’ 27 ‘I AM ALSO AN ALIEN’ seems to speak loudly how others have viewed her in the official business meeting of Milton Security. The second time Salander uses the slogan on her T-shirt to express herself is her un-expected meeting with Blomkvist, who discovers she’s a hacker due to the exact wording of her investigation-file on him. This time Salander’s shirt says, ‘ARMAGEDDON WAS YESTERDAY. TODAY WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM.’ The third time, also the last time, that Salander reflects her mood and resolution through a Tshirt slogan is when she schemes to steal Wennerstrom’s illicit fortune and serve Blomkvist justice; her ‘washed out camouflage shirt advertising Soldier of Fortune magazine’ says ‘KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT.’ Here Salander uses her body and the slogans on her T-shirt as the vehicles of selfexpression, and her lack of ‘emotional involvement’ is also a choice of selfpetrifaction, which could be self-cyborgization just to sustain her through all the odds against her. Also, there’s no specific gender or racial attributes on her physical appearance, which contributes to her malleability in her boundarycrossing adventures. In her thieving from Wennerstro’s overseas bank account, Salander passes by wearing a pair of prosthetic breasts made of soft latex which she buys in the transvestite shop in Copenhagen. As Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt mention in the book Empire, the demarcations of genders are dissolving and sexuality is transmuted into a plastic form (according to Anthony Giddens), and posthuman bodies are created through a series of transformations and mutations to the extent that there’s no ‘fixed and necessary boundaries between the human and the animal’; particularly in the murky universe of cyberpunk fiction, ‘the freedom of self-fashioning is often indistinguishable from the powers of an all-encompassing control,’ and tattooing and piercings become the ‘initial indications of this corporeal transformations’ that is programmed to reach a thorough subversion of the system.’ 28 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not a cyberpunk fiction but it does have cyber-punk subtext, with Lisbeth Salander, and her posthuman subversion is practiced through ‘fringe inference.’

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘Fringe interference’ is a term in the field of postmodern photographic theories, and it is a technique cultivated through various formats of multimedia ‘where these apparent opposites overlap and interfere both with each other and mainstream notions of art,’ and its purpose is to ‘interrogate and problematize,’ and most of all, to leave its viewers in discomfort. Hence, ‘fringe interference’ could manage to ‘de-doxify’ the norm by manifesting the fundamental paradoxes. 29 In Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander cooperate to solve the mystery of the Vanger family. In this case, Blomkvist is the ostensible detective/journalist who follows the mainstream rules in his investigations while Salander is the invisible, marginal problematizer flowing within the internet-archive; together they compose an engine of subversion. Here, the subaltern substitutes the non-subaltern, and in the end, it is Salander who acts as the vigilante who rescues Blomvkist from the snare of a serial murderer before Blomkvist’s about to be executed. Also, Lisbeth disguises herself as a blonde bombshell (miming mainstream womanhood) to withdraw the assets of a crooked financier to attain her aim of subversion by the ‘fringe.’ According to Pierre Levy, each individual could embrace the freedom of founding a self-identity by personal affinities in cyberspace, and ‘it does not shatter identities but liberates them: it provides everyone with the power to forge their own images’. The crucial part is, self-identity founded within the virtual world is an immanent becoming sufficed with ‘enigma and desire’ because it ‘excludes no one’ in its pursuit of knowledge, while the transcendent pursuit of knowledge is defined by exclusions for its refusals of submissions. Transcendent becoming creates an ‘illusory autonomization’ by inducing ‘terror and mystery’ because its ‘dynamic of learning’ is interrupted while ‘exclusion succeeds mutual recognition.’ Somehow an ‘angelic body,’ devoid of exclusions as well as materialistic boundaries, is created as the Flaneur/Flaneuse 30 ‘traverses’ within the virtual world. At last, Lisbeth Salander is clothed with an interchangeable angelic body in the archival space where she is finally liberated and finds a self-identity in proper nurture. 3. Conclusion Plastic applied to humans would be transgender, and plastic could also be used in the manufacturing of computers that enable transnational flows within cyberspace; here, being is bent by the external force, an apparatus of human invention while the stable attributes of gender are also bent and reshaped through this outside force, a Heideggerian Gestell that contributes to the interchangeability as well as the malleability of our existence as well as our sexes. Plastic here serves as an ingredient of mimesis, just as Myra Breckinridge falsifies her womanhood which was not blessed by nature, while Lisbeth Salander feigns a deceitful image of a Barbie-esque bombshell which diverges from her authentic self-image. Somehow, the dispute about authenticity is made obsolete as the structure of reality

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__________________________________________________________________ is collapsed by the overflow of pluralized simulacra as a materialized form of gender-democracy marches to attain the aim of its ultimate subversion. At last, mainstream discourses are ‘interrogated, problematized and de-doxified’ through the subaltern’s ‘fringe inference.’ But let’s not forget the fact everything’s got a price to pay; Chris Hables Gray notes that sex toys have become matters of self-chosen consumption from medical aids of sexual frigidity to consumer-choice in his Cyborg Citizen; and there is also the issue of whether transgenderism should be a consumer-choice or an issue of medical aid funded by governmental welfare. Also, Lisbeth Salander chooses selfhelp over police-force to punish her victimizer after the rapes (because of her distrust of the legitimate officials), and this lawless bravery is to be praised in contemporary feminist discourses under the global context of neoliberalism ever since the 1980s. Does that mean the subaltern may accomplish their pursuits of democracy/equality/liberty all on their own expenses? Lots of musings shall be required here indeed.

Notes 1

Kim Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body, (NY: Tauris, 2007), 11. 2 Roland Barthes on plastic: ‘the hierarchy of substance is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas.’ Ibid., 71. 3 Ibid., 70. 4 Ibid., 65. 5 Ibid., 58. 6 Ibid., 67-68. 7 Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge (NY: Vintage Books, 1987), 4. 8 Ibid., 5. 9 Ibid., 38. 10 Andrew Ross elucidates that the user of camp, particularly the queer groups, voluntarily disintegrates the once-mainstream pop-culture icons into a series of disjointed esoteric signifiers, for example, once 1930s glamour queens, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich by now are also icons of transvestism. On the other hand the user of camp is also the urban intellectual holding vast amount of cultural capital to enable him to engage in this ‘labour of leisure.’ Being Susan Sontag so-called ‘Modern Dandy’ of Camp, Myra/Myron’s proficient knowledge on tinsel-town Hollywood as well as her/his immersion within the celluloid makes her/him a ‘productionist’ who embraces the freedom for self-creation. See Andrew Ross, ‘Uses of Camp’, 61. 11 Ibid., 34.

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__________________________________________________________________ 12

Fredrick Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke UP, 1990). 13 Laura Mulvey, Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), 833-44. 14 Vidal, Myra Breckinridge, 16. 15 Ibid., 150-57. 16 Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls, 63. 17 Here I refer to the users of cyberspace, and they manage to achieve this fluent gender-tranformativity without surgical means. This shall be better explained in details within the next section discussing Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, trans. Reg Keeland (NY: Vintage Books, 2008). 18 Chris Hables Gray, Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age (NY: Routledge, 2002), 156-57. 19 Ibid., 156-57. 20 Vidal, Myra Breckinridge, 189-90. 21 ‘The destruction of the last vestigial traces of traditional manhood in the race in order to realign the sexes, therefore reducing population while increasing human happiness and preparing humanity for its next stage’. See Vidal, Myra Breckinridge, 36. 22 Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls, 68-72. 23 Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 40-41. 24 Ibid., 277-78. 25 Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, trans. Robert Bononno (Massachusetts: Helix Books, 1997). 26 Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 288. 27 Ibid., 51-52. 28 Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire (Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2000), 215-16. 29 Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (NY: Routledge, 1989), 118-19. 30 Flaneur is a term derived from the context of modern urbanization from Baudelaire, and several basic attributes on Flaneurism would be: a déclassé man whose livelihood relies on his voyeuristic observations of urban surroundings where his involvement is absent (George Simmel’s blasé attitude), such as journalist and private eye. Genderized concept of Flaneur comes from Laura Mulvey’s idea of female objectification through male spectatorship. (Man is to look while woman is to be looked) In the postmodern context of cyberculture, this genderized concept of Flaneur is dissolved and substituted with the notion of Flaneuse: a woman hides within the internet, enjoying her voyeuristic spectatorship in an invisible archive where she could remain detached, non-involved. Here,

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__________________________________________________________________ female hacker (Lisbeth Salander) shall be the best embodiment of woman traversing into the Flaneurism of male domain.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. NY: Straus and Giroux, 1972. Gray, Chris Hables. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. NY: Routledge, 2002. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. NY: Harper & Row, 1977. Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. NY: Routledge, 1989. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1990. Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Trans. Reg Keeland. NY: Vintage Books, 2008. Levy, Pierre. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, translated by Robert Bononno. Massachusetts: Helix Books, 1997. Mulvey, Laura. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy, and Marshall Cohen, 833–44. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Negri, Antonio, and Michael Hardt. Empire. Massachusetts: Havard UP, 2000. Ross, Andrew. ‘Uses of Camp’. In The Cult Film Reader, edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, 53–66. NY: Open UP, 2008. Toffoletti, Kim. Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body. NY: Tauris, 2007. Vidal, Gore. Myra Breckinridge. NY: Vintage Books, 1987. Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak) is a PhD student of the English Department in Taiwan’s National Cheng-chi University. Her research field is popular literature and popular culture, and she has diverse interests over various genres, mainly on

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__________________________________________________________________ cult-fictions, the idea of kitsch and camp in the cultural context of postmodernity, and the literary and social connections between America’s Great Depression literature and classic Film Noir thriving during the Second World War. At present, she intends to extend the range of her studies on intercultural cinema into the globalized Neo-Noir.

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‘Repulsive Other’: Defining Scandal in Interspecies Relations, Technological and Information Posthumanism Jan Stasieńko Abstract Scandal may be perceived as one of the most significant categories in posthuman thought as it refers to the disintegration and critique of the ‘human project’, which may turn out to be appalling for the traditional vision of humanism. Scandal emerges at the point where the differences between the traditional and the posthuman definition and perception of subjectivity occur. In this article, I will adapt such a definition of scandal, which entails politically, culturally, and/or socially determined attitudes towards itself. Analysing selected case studies, I will demonstrate how scandal manifests itself in the following three domains: interspecies relations, technology, and information. The analyses will contribute to the development of a model, which will delineate the deep structure of the posthuman scandal. It will also illustrate the posthuman discourse on subjectivity in relation to the three domains mentioned above. Key Words: Posthumanism, scandal, subjectivity, animal rights, cyborg, video game character, intimacy. ***** 1. Introduction: Defining Ontological Scandal The perception of scandal, understood as the effect of human and posthuman dialectics, should be enriched with the controversies related to defining the subject. In this article, I will demonstrate that scandal appears when that definition is not accepted. It should also be noted here that the process is reciprocal. Scandal may be evoked by the definition formed from the anthropocentric perspective as well as from the posthuman one. For proponents of the traditional viewpoint of the subject, scandal is associated with a lack of acceptance for the living beings and creatures that depart from the ontological status traditionally reserved for the human subject. It is therefore an exclusive definition, which refers to the idea of uniqueness—only a human being understood in a traditional and modernist sense deserves to be named as such. On the other hand, there is the inclusive definition based on Giorgio Agamben’s postulates of openness and responsibility, which extend the repertoire of subjects by adding living beings from other ontological orders. The latter case seems to epitomise the process of ‘de-ontologising’ the subject—it becomes conventional in a sense of anthropological machine discussed by Agamben in The Open. 1 In this case, the human subject becomes a hospitable subject, 2 inviting other individuals to convert into subjects, unlike the inhospitable subject in the traditional humanities. Both of the above mentioned ways of defining

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__________________________________________________________________ the subject (inclusive and exclusive) may cause scandal in the group, which defines it in the opposite way. Such relations may be illustrated by means of the following graph:

Graph 1.1: Relations between scandal and the definition of a subject. Each of the defining programs operates using different rhetoric and displaying diverse methods of action of its proponents. In the next section of this article, I will analyse selected case studies, which illustrate the above dispute over the definition of a subject. Before conducting the analyses, however, I would like to define three domains, within which the case studies will operate. It should also be also noted that the posthuman reflection in its current shape has been formed into three fundamental and intertwining variations related to technology, biology, and information science. The first two are particularly recognisable. Their presence has been marked in the two manifestos by Donna Haraway (on cyborg 3 and companion species), or in other sources based on the human-machine-animal triad. The third variety of posthumanism connected with information develops quite differently. It relies upon cybernetics being essential for posthuman thought, but does not function with such an authority as the domains related to animals and machines. Posthumanism, derived partially from cybernetic thought (see: Luhmann), 4 constitutes a radically anti-subject way of thinking, which contradicts the very notion of the subject. In my opinion, however, there is a need to discuss subject relations in the case of information posthumanism. The spatial constraints of this text do not allow me to confirm and discuss the above assertion in detail. I will, however, come back to this notion in my case studies. 2. Interspecies Scandal The first example focuses on the Hunters Against PETA initiative, which stands in opposition to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), one

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__________________________________________________________________ of the largest organisations defending animal rights. 5 HA PETA defines the human subject in a traditional way. Paradoxically, it does not exclude helping the animals. Hunters Against PETA is an institution, which—according to its founders—is represented by a silent majority of citizens (45 million) in the United States. They can no longer stand aside, watching such organisations as PETA, The Humane Society of the United States, and Defenders of Wildlife, threaten their fundamental right to hunt. The organisation’s rhetoric, demonstrated in their manifesto on their website, concentrates on opposition to the equality between humans and animals. 6 It should be noted here that PETA is attacked not only by Hunters Against PETA, but also by other organisations. PETA’s opponents claim that, instead of taking actions towards ‘complete animal freedom’, every year PETA contributes to a massive killing of animals, mostly dogs and cats, in the shelters established by the organisation. 7 Therefore, there are a lot of campaigns against PETA, such as PETA Kills Animals and Vegans Against PETA. The second example, demonstrating scandal in the interspecies domain, refers to an advertising campaign of PETA, which took place in 2004 under the name ‘Holocaust on Your Plate.’ It used controversial posters juxtaposing images of concentration camps captives with those of animals for slaughter. The campaign was accompanied by the slogans such as, ‘For animals all people are Nazis’ and ‘Baby Butchers’ (with images of children behind wire fences and cramped piglets). In this case, we are dealing with a very distinct rhetoric of coherence—in this project the animals are treated as subjects, and yet the Holocaust is one of the most intimate (reserved for humans) realisations of human suffering, a human subject does not necessarily want to share. The campaign raised a lot of controversies in Poland. They stemmed predominantly from the fact that the Holocaust is still a living memory, and that Poles have a traditional attitude towards animal rights. Negative comments appeared in the United States, and in Germany the posters were forbidden. 8 3. Technological Scandal The first of the examples analysed here refers to Oskar Pistorius, a disabled athlete, who challenged able bodied runners. Pistorius seems to be an ideal example of a cyborg, who—just like the protagonists of Blade Runner—needs to prove his own humanity. A series of humiliating tests, which he was subject to in 2007 and 2008 in Cologne (Germany) and Huston (USA) in order to take part in the qualifications for the Beijing Olympics, resemble both the Turing test and the Voight-Kampff machine applied in Phillip K. Dick’s story and Ridley Scott’s film. In this case, the scandal in the group of inhospitable subjects was repeatedly expressed by the healthy athletes as well as by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The protests were directed towards the alleged usage of a technological stimulant. There were also arguments which claimed that able

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__________________________________________________________________ bodied sportsmen might want to get rid of their limbs in order to achieve better results. 9 An interesting fact in Pistorious’ story is that the arguments against allowing him to compete with the healthy athletes did not cause scandal in the group he is represented by—professional athletes using technological support. The model based on a strict divide between Olympic and Paralympic sport creates a visible borderline between the pure humanism not affected by medical and technological support (which is of course untrue) and the posthumanism of the disabled. The second example refers to the analysis of the peculiar sexual practices which engage complex machines to stimulate orgasm. An intense production of socalled ‘fucking machines’ became a recognisable trend in the erotic business. ‘Fucking machines’ are created mostly for women, which activates the feminist context touched upon in Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ and in other papers by researchers dealing with technology (e.g. Sadie Plant). 10 In this case, man is juxtaposed with the machine. This ‘posthuman position’—an almost topographical framework in which the human being loses its dominating position to a machine— may of course elicit scandal. Such a reaction has a very primary foundation, if one assumes that the male sexuality model is based on competition and men would not necessarily like to lose to a machine. 4. Information Scandal The first case I would like to analyse is a wedding ceremony, which took place in Japan in 2010. One of the Nintendo DS users, under the nickname Sal9000, decided to marry a video game character (Nene Anegasaki) from Love Plus. The ceremony was carried out in the presence of a priest, a gathered audience, and the users of the Nico Nico Douga service. The event did not elicit positive reactions and the ceremony caused a universal scandal. Most of the users accused Sal of mental illness or perversion. People wondered how the couple would have sex and what their offspring would look like. A parody of this unusual relationship appeared on YouTube. Nene seems to be a significant symbol of information posthumanism. She is the product of technology enlivened by an AI script. However, the technology is not the only crucial aspect. To make a long story short, Sal establishes a subject relation between a human being and an information creature. As his partner, Nene obtains the status of the subject. In order to achieve this, Sal needs to restrict himself. His wedding is a sort of pure and conscious sacrifice. The second instance of scandal in the domain of information posthumanism is connected with the specific and yet extremely popular practice of intricately killing the avatars developed by players in The Sims. Research conducted by one of my students (Magdalena Kamyszek, 2010), based on a sample of 250 players, indicates that killing the Sims is the most frequent source of pleasure when taking into consideration non-standard forms of activity in the game. 11 Various comments

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__________________________________________________________________ available online seem to confirm the role of this experience. The Internet is filled with numerous materials and remarks related to the forms of killing the Sims. The majority of those actions, except for the instances of natural death, are done on purpose. It is worth noting here that if killing is such a common practice, and a crucial activity in the game, the postulate for openness towards the information subject is not realised in this case. What is more, it does not even lead to a scandal. Browsing through various online discussions on killing the Sims, I could not find any statements undermining these practices. 5. The Structure of Posthuman Scandal The above case studies of scandal formed towards various posthuman approaches may be summarised by means of the following table (1.1), which illustrates the structure of the relations between human and non-human (‘the other’) subjects. Type of subjectified Sexuality posthumanism

Allegory

Negotiating the Forms of rights oppression/the camp concept

Technological

Fetish/Competition

Cyborg

Right to integrate

Isolation/Ghetto (Paralympics)

Biological

Zoophilie-alienphilie /Inclusion

Animal as companion

Right to exist

Partial permission; Killing – yes; Tormenting – no/Concentration camps

Information

Pygmalionism/ Isomorphism

Solaris

Unspecified rights

Permitted and popular; Experimental field/Penal colony

Table 1.1: Deep structure of the posthuman scandal. 5.1 Sexuality If we assume that the sexual sphere is the one that causes scandal the most frequently, the types of sexuality manifesting themselves in relation to the nonhuman other are depicted in the above table as sexual deviations, which in this case become the symbols of ‘posthuman intimacy.’ In technological posthumanism fetish seems to be the correct description defining the structure of sexuality, as technology may be associated with the materiality of the object that elicits sexual arousal. And yet, in the case studies analysed above, technology as fetish has a slightly different meaning. It is not a kind of materiality that replaces the penis lost by the mother. It is not the substitute of an object but a replacement of the

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__________________________________________________________________ human subject. The late thought of Lacan on fetishism suggests the category of post-fetishism. 12 Post-fetishism does not entail the penis/phallus attached to the ‘human’ categories and roles. The threat is of a different nature. In the motherchild-phallus triad, the phallus becomes the third person (subject), whose absence with reference to the traditional roles terrifies. This particular nature of the sexual relation stems from the alternate construction of the cyborg sexuality. 13 In the zoophilie-alienphilie model of post-sexuality, the abovementioned postulates of openness, responsibility, and sympathy also incorporate the sexual domain. In comparison to technological post-humanism, the biological one is much more scandalous as the proponents of the traditional subject are not able to understand this type of sexuality in terms of substitution and masturbation. The vision of using the machine as the pleasure machine is a lot more acceptable if they assume that the machine replaces the human being. In the case of zoophilie, this perception becomes blurred due to the biological bond between 'man' and animal. In such cases, the zoophilie model is characterised by deep dialectics: engaging in interspecies relations, in which a human being plays the role of an open and responsible protector, is on the other hand filled with the threat of sexuality—a simultaneous imperative of rejection and fascination with it. In the case of information posthumanism, the symbol of sexuality may become a Pygmalion. This particular type of fetishism focuses on the ability to create feelings and achieve sexual satisfaction towards objects of different sorts. I will refer to them as intentional creatures—the objects possessing the features of sensible beings, formed in a creative way, which become subjects through the empowering act of subjectivisation. In this model of sexuality, isomorphism seems to be the leitmotif—Sal’s efforts are supposed to contribute to a consideation of Nene as an equal subject, which in Pygmalion leads to the enlivening of mythological Galatea. 5.2 Allegory The first allegories connected with the technological and interspecies posthumanism do not leave any doubt as they have been officially named as the representatives of posthumanism in Haraway’s manifestos. However, the third category is not as clear-cut. Solaris, a Polish science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem, seems to be an accurate symbol of the subject relations created in the information domain for several reasons. In Lem’s book the Ocean, having a difficult to explain biological structure, is an organism. It is worth noticing several moments in which the Ocean tries to communicate with the workers of the research station by creating subject-based reproductions of their most concealed needs. 5.3 Negotiating the Rights The example of Pistorius demonstrates that the most vital aspect in the process of negotiating rights in technological posthumanism is the right to integration. It is

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__________________________________________________________________ achieved on two different levels. First of all, it is based on activities leading to equal chances and accomplishments. The introductory law to negotiate appears when the athlete begins winning against able bodied opponents. The second level involves referring to various judiciary authorities, which could guarantee Pistorious the right to take part in the Olympics. The negotiations are based on the protocol of coherence, which in this case was accompanied by humiliating tests. If Pistorius turns out too weak, the negotiation of his rights will be groundless. If, however, he is too strong, his right to integration will be questioned. The examples connected with negotiating the rights of animals illustrate that the most crucial aspect is the right to exist as it takes into account co-feeling and responsibility for other species, and guarantees the freedom to exist, which is the embodiment of the highest level of consciousness related to equal treatment. Besides, the rights from a lower level (i.e. forbiddance of tormenting) are partially guaranteed as well. In the context of information posthumanism, analysis of the case study of Nene and Sal depicts the process of negotiating the right to substitution. Sal attempts to introduce Nene to the social order, elevating her status to that of a human subject, who may be married. In this case, a human subject is replaced with a video game character. On the other hand, the case of the tortured Sims demonstrates that the rights of the virtual beings are not the subject of discussion and negotiation. The need to guarantee any rights to them is not verbalised. 5.4 Forms of Oppression/The Concept of a Camp It may be assumed that whenever rights are negotiated, some form of oppression occurs in reaction to the possibility of breaking or experimenting with the established laws, and, in doing so, testing their ‘resistance.’ In the interspecies relations, partial oppression occurs, which is associated with a schizophrenic relation to animals. On the one hand, it is acceptable to kill them (which is the highest form of oppression), and on the other it is forbidden to torture animals, with certain exceptions in place, such as medical experiments and testing industrial products. In this case, the idea of a camp would be manifested as a concentration camp, which is evoked by the animal rights advocates. In the case of technological posthumanism, a crucial form of oppression seems to be ghettoization, revealed during the Paralympics. It turns out that the disability problem is a popular theme in the posthuman reflection (maybe more often in its transhuman variant). 14 The story of the disabled runner seems to confirm this analytical trend. Challenging the healthy non-cyborg organisms, Pistorius makes an attempt to liberate himself from the ghetto of Paralympics. His sporting career isa rebellion against the concept of a ghetto as the South African athlete races with both the able and disabled runners. In this case, the Paralympics is depicted as a parody of Olympics, or as a critical Olympics. It is a place where Agamben’s state of emergency occurs, the consequence of which is the suspension of the laws

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__________________________________________________________________ governing the Olympics for the healthy athletes, for instance by forbidding the use of technological support. The oppression in information posthumanism seems to be unconstrained. The concept of a camp as the place of experimentation is most successfully manifested in the environments such as The Sims, where the range of cruelty is restricted by the topography and the mechanics of the game. Taking all the above into account, the embodiment of the concept of the camp, with reference to The Sims, would be The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, in which the execution machine is the symbol of cruelty. In The Sims, the mod discussed above enables the players to build an electric fence, which allows for the killing of a Sim, and exemplifies the creativity of the players underpinned by sheer cruelty. 6. Conclusions The analytical reflections presented in this article illustrate that the scandalous aspects of posthuman relations between subjects may include the domain of sexuality, the act of granting and withdrawing the rights of non-human others, as well as other posthuman configurations. The non-human subjects depicted in this paper perfectly fit in with Agamben’s notion of refugee as they inhabit the space outside of law and become the subjects of double exclusion. 15 The truth is that redefining subjectivity in posthumanism is a process, which includes both, positive and negative contexts towards the non-human instances. Very often the consent of existence turns into the consent of violence, when non-human subjects, being the objects of discourse in the state of emergency (e.g. camps), are exposed to cruelty and sophisticated forms of oppression.

Notes 1

Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 2 Hospitability is a term used by Jacques Derrida to refer to the figure of a foreigner and the territorial attitude towards strangers. However, it seems suitable for the descriptions of inter-subject relations discussed in this article. See: Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 3 Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, NY: Routledge, 1991), 149-181. 4 Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). 5 According to its members: ‘animals have the rights and their needs deserve to be taken into consideration, irrespective of whether they are advantageous for humans

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__________________________________________________________________ or not. Just like you, the animals suffer and need to live their own lives.’ See: http://www.peta.org/about/learn-about-peta/default.aspx. 6 One of the organisation’s members asks ironically: ‘[…] if they get such huge amounts of money, why don’t they, instead of killing them, rise gigantic reservation camps for animals, so that they live long and happily; if PETA considers them equal to humans and having the same feelings and needs?’ See: http://www.huntersagainstpeta.com. 7 Hunters Against PETA refers to this shady business as euthanasia because PETA claims (although this assertion has been refuted) that it kills only the sick and dying animals. 8 The website of the Polish Jews Organisation featured a characteristic post: ‘Some people think that in defence of the dignity of a chicken, it is justified to abuse the memory of the Holocaust victims and the dignity of the survivors amongst us’. 9 One of the journalists dubbed the reactions of the authorities of the Republic of South Africa and the IAAF to Pistorius taking part in the sport events for the healthy athletes, as inconvenient embarrassment. See: Garteh A. Davies, ‘Pistorius Protests insult, Storms out of Interview’, http://ww.telegraphindia.com/1110908/jsp/sports/story_14480073.jsp, http://www.anhourago.in/show.aspx?l=24991895; see also Gregor Wolbring, ‘Oscar Pistorius and the Future Nature of Olympic, Paralympic and Other Sports’, SCRIPTed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society 5: 1 (2008): 139-160. 10 The opinions of the users of such machines seem to confirm this context. As one of them, under the nickname BINX, notices: ‘F-ing machines are the pornographic equivalent of the third-wave feminism. There are no men abusing women, as males are not taken into account at all; there are only women and their sweet, sweet machines.’ See: Violet Blue, Why Machine Sex? / Violet Blue goes deep undercover to Find out why Women like to have Sex with Machines, and why People Pay Good Money to Watch, http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-10-02/living/17119433_1_machine-ingpornographer/3. 11 Magdalena Kamyszek, Seria gier „The Sims” – porównanie edycji, struktura rozgrywki, profil graczy, strategie promocyjne, unpublished manuscript, 2010. 12 Lacan perceives fetishism in contrast to the traditional interpretation as a sort of perversion inscribed in the female sexuality, where the penis becomes the substitute of a missing phallus. On the other hand, Lacan does not dismiss the male version of fetishism and this allows him to create a grey area between the two categories. In my opinion, such a standpoint sways towards the variety of fetishism, which would not be dependant upon the traditional division between the

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__________________________________________________________________ two sexes. See: Jacques Lacan, Ecrits. The First Complete Edition in English, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 583. 13 As Haraway notices, referring to Zoe Sofoulis, ‘the most terrible and perhaps the most promising monsters in cyborg worlds are embodied in non-oedipal narratives with a different logic of repression, which we need to understand for our survival.’ See: Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 150. 14 See i.e. Ivo Van Hilvoorde, and Laurens Landeweerd, ‘Enhancing Disabilities: Transhumanism under the Veil of Inclusion?’, Disability and Rehabilitation 32, No. 26 (June 2010): 2222-2227; Heather G. Bradshaw, and Ruud Ter Meulen, ‘A Transhumanist Fault Line around Disability: Morphological Freedom and the Obligation to Enhance’, The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy 35, Iss. 6 (December 2010); Gregor Wolbring, ‘Emerging Technologies (Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno) and the Changing Concepts of Health and Disability/Impairment: A New Challenge for Health Policy’, Research and Care Journal of Health and Development 2: 1&2 (2006): 19-37. 15 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 114.

Bibliography Aarseth, Espen. ‘I Fought the Law: Transgressive Play and The Implied Player’. In Situated Play, Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference. Accessed at http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07313.03489.pdf. Ackerman, Evan. Arse Elektronika 2007: F**king Robots. http://www.botjunkie.com/2007/10/07/arse-elektronika-2007-fking-robots. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. –—–. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Animal Subjects. An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World, edited by Jodey Castricano, Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Bradshaw, Heather G., and Meulen Ruud Ter. ‘A Transhumanist Fault Line around Disability: Morphological Freedom and the Obligation to Enhance’. The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy 35, Issue 6 December 2010. Davies, Gareth A. Pistorius Protests insult, Storms out of Interview. http://ww.telegraphindia.com/1110908/jsp/sports/story_14480073.jsp. Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. –—–. The Animal That Therefore I Am, edited by Marie-Luise Mallet. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. –—–. Companion Species Manifesto, Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. –—–. When Species Meet. Mineapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Hayles, N. K.atherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1999. Hilvoorde, Ivo Van, and Laurens Landeweerd. ‘Enhancing Disabilities: Transhumanism under the Veil of Inclusion?’. Disability and Rehabilitation 32, No. 26 (June 2010): 2222-2227. Kamyszek, Magdalena. Seria gier „The Sims” – porównanie edycji, struktura rozgrywki, profil graczy, strategie promocyjne, Unpublished manuscript, 2010. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. The First Complete Edition in English, trans. by Bruce Fink. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. Luhmann, Niklas. Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Stasieńko, Jan. Alien vs. Predator? Gry komputerowe a badania literackie. Wroclaw: Wyd. Naukowe DSWE TWP, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ Violet Blue. Why Machine Sex? / Violet Blue goes Deep Undercover to Find out why Women like to have Sex with Machines, and why People Pay Good Money to Watch. http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-10-02/living/17119433_1_machine-ingpornographer/3 Wolbring, Gregor, ‘Emerging Technologies (Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno) and the Changing Concepts of Health and Disability/Impairment: A New Challenge for Health Policy’. Research and Care Journal of Health and Development 2: 1&2 (2006): 19-37. Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, Mateas Michael, Steven Dow, and Serdar Sali. ‘Agency Reconsidered’. In Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009. Accessed at http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.41281.pdf. Jan Stasieńko PhD, Head of the Digital Media & CMC Program in the Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland; cofounder of multimedia cluster Creativro; 2010-2011 visiting professor in the Department of Communication, SUNY College at Brockport; member of International Digital Media and Arts Association, former vice-president of Games Research Association of Poland; fields of interest: ludology, history and archaeology of (new) media, anthropology of special effects; currently does research focused on posthumanistic analysis of selected media technologies, both historical and modern treated as protocols of negotiations between human subjects and a sphere of information.

Technology and the Self: Toward the Post (Post) Human Shilpa Venkatachalam Abstract With the proliferation of technology has come a change in identity, subjectivity, and notions of space and time as these relate to subjectivity. The old Cartesian cogito, which contained the now infamous mind-body split, has been revised into the digitized/non-digitized, embodied/disembodied self with significant repercussions for an understanding of the very notion of the ‘self.’ The posthuman is no more to be understood as a mixing of the notions of ‘human’ and ‘machine’ in the sense of Donna Haraway, but the new post human, or the (post) posthuman, is the embodied self that performs and the disembodied digitized self that gets ‘observed’, both by itself and by an ‘other.’ How does surveillance technology interact and affect the notion of the self/selves? Cyberspace and emerging technologies traditionally embraced the idea of a liberated bodiless self/person. Instead, can it be argued that with current surveillance technology there is now an increasing re (turn) to the body? Eugenics and bioengineering transform the body from its very own space, ‘the within,’ and surveillance technologies transform it from a space that lies outside of it, ‘the without.’ Within the contemporary information pervasive era, what is of significance is that space is not and cannot be divided into cyber and ‘real’ or ‘physical’; neither can digitized and non-digitized, or embodied and dis-embodied, be separated. This is an erroneous way to represent subjectivity today. What is urgently required are revisions of the notions of space (distinctions between inside and outside) and time. This chapter will engage with the question of what such a revision may entail, and what the implications of such a revision are on previously established modes of thinking about the self. Key Words: Technology, posthuman, philosophy of the self, technoscience. ***** 1. Who are ‘we’? Trans or post human, technology and the individual have collided and have absorbed each other, sometimes amicably and, at other times, with hostility. Whatever it is, body, machine, and the self have demanded that traditionally held conceptions of the body/mind split be radically reviewed. The case of a simple separation can no longer offer any consolation to us. This chapter will engage with the issue of what such a revision might entail. Are we post (post)human? The argument in this chapter postulates that the (post) posthuman necessarily violates distinctions between the inside and the outside, the within and the without, the subject and the object, the digitized and the non-digitized, the embodied and the disembodied self, and cyber and physical

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__________________________________________________________________ space. It subverts the infamous Cartesian split between mind and body. It is in the transgression of exactly these very distinctions that the (post) posthuman emerges (all these distinctions, I think, stem from, or take birth from, philosophy’s first binary: the Cartesian split between mind and body). 2. Who We Are: Contextualising the Human, the Post Human and Post (Post) Human The old Cartesian cogito, which contained the now infamous mind/body split has been revised into the digitized ↔ non-digitized, 1 embodied ↔ disembodied self (not as binaries but as existing along a continuum), with significant repercussions for an understanding of the very notion of the ‘self.’ The cybernetic self already announced the apocalyptic end of the organic human self/subject. The cyborg skillfully unified contradictions such as man and machine, natural and artificial, organic and man-made. But perhaps the posthuman is no more to be understood merely as a mixing of the notions of ‘human’ and ‘machine,’ in the sense of Donna Haraway (1991), 2 but the new posthuman or the (post) posthuman is the organism that at once dissolves boundaries but also re-instates them, honours them and disrespects them, thinks in binaries only to move toward triadic thinking. The (post) posthuman world is a dazzling galaxy where man-like machines and machine-like humans orbit in and out of virtual and physical spaces as if they were conjoined twins—distinct yet one. Our metaphors have changed; we talk about programming ourselves, we express emoticons not emotions, we instant message each other rather than have face to face conversations, we text, we ‘lol’, we upload our vacations and we download information. We attend virtual universities, we electronically monitor our children, and we have conversations with our automobile GPS systems about where we are heading to. We trade with e-money, we have virtual relationships, we break-up with via text message, we cyber-shop, and even cyber-nudge, cyber-poke, and cyber-wink each other. Our language is so infused with these metaphors that we are unable to represent and articulate ourselves without using words that have been generated by cyberculture. But cyberculture has been ceaslessly leaking into what was previously, but is no more, the so called ‘non-cyber’ world. This indicates that what is urgently required is a revision of the notions of space (distinctions between inside and outside) and time. Nick Bostrom, the director of the ‘Future of Humanity Institute,’ when asked in an interview about the difference between the terms ‘transhuman’ and ‘posthuman,’ stated that the terminological difference is at best ‘vague,’ and that ‘posthuman’ in particular offers nothing but confusion. He goes on to state that: some people outside of the transhumanist circle argue that we are already posthuman because we have, say, computers, and this changes the way we think about ourselves and the human mind.

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__________________________________________________________________ So, the perception of what humanity is has changed. There may be something to this, but it’s all very different from the transhumanist concern with how science and technology might not just change our perception of the world, but also change the world—in particular, the human organism in a biological way, which in my view, is a lot more profound than changing the metaphors about how the human mind operates. 3 The cyborg already contained man and machine in one body, but we continued thinking along a distinction, a binary: body and machine. To extend this binary further: embodied and disembodied. But perhaps the notion of ‘body’ itself needs radical re-thinking so that it includes within its meaning ‘disembodiement.’ Machine is still other to the self, but the other has itself becomes un-othered in this new thinking of the ‘self’. A convenient metaphor that we may turn to, in order to understand this, is a spinning music record, which can be in motion only when the centre remains still. In this case, stillness is outside motion, but of course is still within motion. These distinctions must then be erased: inside and outside, within and without, digitized and non-digitized, embodied and disembodied. 3. Technology and the Self Technology is not seen as invasive, as something other to the human, and this is perhaps because our very notion of ‘human’ has changed. After all, we are no longer, ‘human’, we are ‘posthuman’. And because we are ‘posthuman’, it makes little sense to draw a distinction between man and machine. Man and machine have become absorbed into a single being or multiple beings, embodied and disembodied are part of one way of being, the either/or distinction no longer holds. Biology is information is biology and it is this triad which will aid us in understanding ourselves. Sterling announces the beginnings of this new self when he says: The theme of body invasion: prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration. The even more powerful theme of mind invasion: brain—computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, neurochemistry—techniques radically redefining the nature of humanity, the nature of self. 4 How then, we can ask, have notions of subjectivity and the self been radically (de) and (re) constructed in line with current information technologies? My project looks at different types of technologies that I argue are crucial to working out revised notions of the self. The specificity of the technology under

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__________________________________________________________________ questions is, I contend, integral in constituting the subject. Within this framework, then, my project focuses on four particular types of technology. a) Surveillance technology b) Computer interface c) Biometrics d) Eugenics The subject is thus variously (re) presented and determined by what kind of technology we are talking about. First, there is the embodied self that performs and the disembodied digitized self that gets ‘observed’, both by itself and by an ‘other’. What is of significance here, and will be further expounded, is that the embodied self and the digitized self are extensions of one another, so subject and object also become extensions of one another and are indeed contained within the same entity: otherness or the object now exists within the self or the subject and is in a sense subsumed by the self. This is how the binary is broken or rather collapsed. In the contemporary world, ‘body’ implies and contains ‘disembodiment’. It does not negate it, rather it strongly affirms it and anticipates it. That is why we must talk of the (post) posthuman. Not only must the notion of the ‘human’ undergo revision, but also the very notion of ‘embodiment’ should too. One might argue that, the translation of the flesh into information ironically deems the flesh-body redundant and obsolete. There is a transferral of body to mind to ‘pure information’. However, what is ironic is that this transferral can occur only in the presence of a flesh-body. So, in fact, what this now implies is that the flesh-body cannot ever be redundant. Thus, the absence of the body occurs only with the presence of the body as an a-priori condition. Body and (mind) information are not to be separated, we must inform a disappointed Descartes, rather they have become woven together. As Katherine Hayles writes about the posthuman, in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, the posthuman: configures human beings so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals. 5 Haraway’s writing demanded the necessary breakdown of rigid boundaries that have been established since the time of Plato in Western Philosophy. With the breakdown of these boundaries began a need for a changed ontology. Long before Haraway brings this added dimension, there is of course Freud, to whom all

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__________________________________________________________________ technology is prosthesis: the telephone is an extension of the ear, the walking stick is an extension of the eye, the artificial limb is an extension of the leg. Freud writes, in Civilisation and its Discontents, 6 that man is now ‘a kind of god with artificial limbs’; ‘but,’ he continues, ‘those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.’ The presence of technology then amplifies an absence. What is interesting in the case of the phantom limb syndrome is that the absence of the ‘real’ limb is what generates the very feeling of its presence. The brain or the mind continues to receive messages from nerves that carried the original impulses from the missing limb. There is no limb, so the pain that is being experienced is not actually happening, one might argue. This then begs the questions of how much really is consciousness related to the body? Or, if we have to put it in another way, what can be said about the relationship between consciousness and embodiment? And further, when technology enters the picture, is it possible to change our notions of how and what we understand by this relationship between consciousness and embodiment—is consciousness necessarily anchored to a body? Prosthesis here is related to the body, but what can we then say about the mind? Turing 7 proposed what has infamously become known as the Turing test, where an individual in an experimental setting is engaged in a written conversation with both a computer and an individual human being. The intention is to test whether the interrogator is able to distinguish between man and machine; if he or she is unable to do so, we must then raise the question of whether the mind has become machine or whether the machine is now mind. What does this say about the demarcation between man and machine? What is at stake here is not what it means to be human, but rather what it means to appear to be human. Already, we can begin to see the deeply intertwined relationship between technology and ourselves, which necessarily demands a revision of the representation of subjectivity. With the proliferation of technology has come changes in identity, subjectivity, and notions of space and time, as these relate to subjectivity. The problematic lies in the understanding of notions of subjectivity in conjunction with terms that reinstate structures that cannot but help the continued arrogance of a thinking determined by dichotomies. There was a time in the past when technology might have been seen as the new colonizing power, but, with the passage of time, the colonizer and colonized have violated their own roles. What has happened to the ‘subject’ today in a world that is not simply affected by technologies of various kinds but is drenched in it and penetrated by it, so pervasively that the traditional binary of representing the self as organic and active, as opposed to the inorganic and passive machine, has become highly problematic. Eugenics and bioengineering transform the body from its very own space, ‘the within,’ and surveillance technologies transform it from a space that lies outside of it, ‘the without.’ Added to this binary is a sort of ‘third space’ that reflects Donna

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__________________________________________________________________ Haraway’s (1991) notion of the ‘cyborg’—literally an adulteration of the binary that results from the hybrid mixing of man and machine. 8 Cyberspace and emerging technologies traditionally embrace the idea of a liberated bodiless ‘self’ or ‘person.’ Instead, can it be argued that with surveillance technology there is now an increasing (re)turn to the body? The dualistic mind/body Cartesian self can now be understood as a translation into a relational self; embodied self and digitized self-exist then on a continuum, where each has implications on the ‘other’. But because the embodied self (within the flesh) and the digitized self (outside the flesh) are spatialized, and further because the temporal is to be spatially understood, the notion of the so called (post) posthuman self is one that is not dualistic but rather ‘transgressive.’ We have become selves that experience the world not only through our human senses but also through x-rays, ultrasonics, and infrared, thus hailing the age of the postbiological being—a being that has transcended the body but also incessantly returns to it. This is what is spectacular about this ‘new’ self: it exhibits an adamant refusal to give up the body, while at the same time it embraces wholeheartedly any attempt to sporadically transcend it. Descartes’s mind-body dualism has been historically one of the most resistant problems of Western Philosophy and was extensively applied to the philosophy of technology that was seen as a means to escape bodily constraints and also to sustain the discourse around mind-body separation. Within this framework, there was much talk about transcending the body along the lines of a Christian discourse, achieving liberation from the bondage of the body. However, the notion of body has changed because it necessarily carries with it the condition of disembodiment. Perhaps then, this is precisely how to go beyond the binary style of thinking. Disembodiment necessarily contains embodiment. What is in fact evident here is its very contrary, a return to the body. The behaviour of the embodied, biological self is transferred into digitized bites of information, which leads back not only to the body but to future determinations of the behaviours of that particular body. This is precisely the point of biometric technology, such as iris scans, fingerprints, hand-scans, and face recognition technology; with biometric technology there is a stubborn refusal to separate man and machine. But, more than that, the body is the ‘anchor’ to which data can be fixed and must be fixed. Envisioning the post (post) human will involve a careful and detailed examination of precisely the above issue.

Notes 1

The symbol is meant to suggest a two-way flow, rather than an opposition or a binary.

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__________________________________________________________________ 2

Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ Simians, Cyborgs and Women (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), 149-181. 3 Nick Bostrom, ‘A History of Transhumanist Thought’, Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (1) (2005): 1-25, accessed at http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html. 4 Bruce Sterling. ‘Preface to Mirrorshades’, in Storming the Reality Studio: A Casestudy of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, ed. Larry McCafferey (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 343-348. 5 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 6 Claudia Springer, Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age (London: Athlone Press). Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), 44. 7 Alan Turing, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, in The Mind’s Eye: Fantasies and Reflection on Self and Soul, eds. Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Daniel C. Dennet (New York: Bantam, 1998), 53-67. 8 Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto, 149-181.

Bibliography Bostrom Nick. ‘A History of Transhumanist Thought’. Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (1) (2005): 1-25, accessed at http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin, 2002. Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and SocialistFemisism in the Late Twentieth Century’ Simians, Cyborgs and Women. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Springer, Claudia. Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. London: Athlone Press, 1996.

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__________________________________________________________________ Sterling, Bruce. ‘Preface to Mirrorshades’. In Storming the Reality Studio: A Casestudy of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, edited by Larry McCafferey. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Turing, Alan. ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’. In The Mind’s Eye: Fantasies and Reflection on Self and Soul, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Daniel C. Dennet. New York: Bantam, 1998. Shilpa Venkatachalam is currently a lecturer in 'Literatures in English' in the department of Literary, Cultural and Communication studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago. Her research interests include critical theory, postcolonial and postmodern theory and literature, philosophy of science and technology and consciousness studies.

Part 6 Cautionary Tales

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Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity Vishwam Jindal Abstract The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organise, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today search engines and networking sites have revolutionised our outlook towards how we think and communicate with others. However, technologies change at the speed of weather. Sometime not much ahead in future, giants like Google and Facebook might be history. When semantic technologies emerged a few years ago, people started talking about how semantic web or search could prove to be a Google killer. This is because semantic search can deliver more relevant results because it ‘knows’ the content. Today, one can easily find startups applying semantic overlay to information to create search engines with intelligent capabilities and features. Innovation will soon outrank the ‘Page Rank’ search technology of Google in order to create more personalised search results. This would forever change the way we think and communicate. Realising Tim Berners Lee's vision of the Internet will then not seem conceited. This paper seeks to study the impact of such technologies on humanity and consider what they hold for the future. I believe that while the Internet will on one hand act as a ‘Personal assistant’ to its users, on the other, it will reduce human ability to act and make decisions in everyday life. These implications have huge ramifications and affect the nature of the human community in cyberspace. They will also redefine the contours of cyber culture. Key Words: Web 3.0, semantic web, changing cyberspace, humanity, privacy. ***** 1. Introduction It took the radio thirty-eight years to get an audience of fifty million users. To get the same amount of users the television took thirteen years. The Internet merely four, the ipod three, and Facebook only two years! 1 Some people suggest that google+ achieved that number in less than three months. 2 Such is the impact and advent of technology on our lives. With the passage of time, it has become indispensable and something that cannot be ignored. Imagine a life without the Internet, with no social networking sites or e-mail, no blogs or even no personal computers. It surely would have been a much different world had these technologies not been invented. Today, the Internet is growing in Africa at a whopping rate of more than 2500% per year. 3 These technologies not only affect us

216 Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity __________________________________________________________________ in multifarious ways, but they also subconsciously mould our behaviour, who we are, and how we act and react. In one word, the impact of technology on our lives has been profound. In this article, I would like to discuss one such development of technology: the Internet. The advent of the Internet is one of the greatest developments, and shall be remembered by mankind as something as important as the discovery of the ability to speak, read, and write. Even though the former is one of the media through which the latter is often communicated, it holds equal relevance. I would equate this development to nothing short of another ‘Industrial revolution’. Like the earlier industrial revolution, which reduced human effort and mechanised it by machines, the Internet too reduces human effort in numerous ways. Take the case of mail and messages; they can be instantly sent from one place to a remote place on earth, without any physical movement of that text or a postal system needed to put it into effect. I would like to discuss the development of the Internet over the years. Starting from the simple web to the now emerging web 3.0, the Internet has grown in different ways, stemming out in branches in millions of directions and affecting us in even more ways. I have divided my discussion into three parts: First, I deal with the development of the Web over time and space. Second, I discuss the impact that Web 3.0 will have on the present and future generations. Thirdly, I conclude by briefly discussing the issues that need to be addressed by Law & policy. 2. Emergence of Web 3.0 Web 1.0 was when the web was like an information portal. It was characterized by information exclusivity: i.e. everybody wanted to be the first one to own the content. One was in a rat race to be the first one to tear up a part of the World Wide Web and own a part of it. This divided the World Wide Web into usable directories. The result was that everybody had her or his own little space in the cyberworld. The times have however changed since then. Web 1.0 was lacking mainly in terms of context, interaction, and scalability. 4 Web 2.0 was when the web was like a two-dimensional portal. This saw the advent of websites like Amazon, ebay, Facebook, and Dig, to name a few. It focused on the power of community to create and validate, though not subsequently delete. 5 Web 2.0 also introduced a much more connected cyberspace by using technologies like tags, syndication, application programming interface, etc. For many, Web 2.0 is characterized mainly by the ability of users to share information quickly with others, which has been developed into the phenomenon that we call social media. From Twitter to Facebook to YouTube and all sorts of other kinds of communities, Web 2.0 is all about sharing and seeing. The shift from Web 1.0 to 2.0 can be seen from the perspective of one seeking information. In the case of Web 1.0, information was put up on a website—the best way of sharing it was privately through e-mails and such. There was little to no

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__________________________________________________________________ communication, and if one wanted information one had to go to the source for it. 6 This has been changed by Web 2.0, where information is available through a multitude of channels and can be accessed in a multitude of ways. And now we are seeing the emergence of Web 3.0, where the Internet will again be revolutionised in ways that many say will take it closer to Tim Berners Lee’s original vision of having a semantic web. Semantic here refers to being data driven. The data will come from the user and the web will essentially adjust to meet the needs of the user. For example, if one does a lot of searching for ‘design blogs’, one will receive more advertisements related to design. Also, in future if one then searches for ‘jewellery’, the web will remember the search for design and may pull up search queries that combine ‘design’ and ‘jewellery’ to give one more personalized and targeted results on ‘jewellery design’. Web 3.0 means different things to different people. For some, it refers to the emergence of the semantic web. For others, it is just an expansion of the Internet to mobile phones, tablets, and other devices. Entrepreneur Nova Spivack offers the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the Web (2010 to 2020), and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. 7 I feel that Web 3.0 is both and much more, until one specifically defines contours, set limits, and then recognises growth after one stage to be Web 4.0. I believe Web 3.0 includes the application of artificial intelligence on the internet. Whereas, the semantic web would mean changing the Web into a language that can be read and categorized by machines, including personal computers, the application of artificial intelligence would mean extracting meaning from the way people interact with the web. Web 3.0 will also see a lot of personalization, in which the Internet will be contextualized for the people who are using it. And of course, it will be all about mobility. I believe that it will not only extend to cell phones and tablets but will also entail very soon that our televisions, wrist watches, automobiles, and washing machines could connect to the Internet. The table 1 demonstrates the shift of the Internet and its development from Web 1.0 and transformation to Web 3.0. 8

218 Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity __________________________________________________________________ Table 1: Development of Internet. Web 1.0

Web 2.0

Web 3.0

Read only

Read - Write

Interactive

Focused on communities

Focused Individual

Home Pages

Blogs

Lifestream

Owning content

Sharing Content

Consolidating dynamic content

Britannica Online

Wikipedia

Meta-Wiki

HTML, Portal

XML, RSS

Semantic web

Web Forms

Web Applications

Widgets, and mashups

Taxonomy

Folksonomy

Me-onomy

Netscape

Google

NetVibes, igoogle

Page views

Cost per click

User engagement

Advertising

Rich viral

Advertainment

Focused companies

on

media,

on

drags drop

3. Impact on Humanity Every coin has two sides. Like any other development, the Internet too has some good points and others that one needs to worry about. I have elaborated them hereunder. A. Positive Impact ‘Luxuries become comforts, comforts become necessities.’ 9

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__________________________________________________________________ I could have not found a more apt epigraph to describe how comfortable the Internet has made our lives. Forget the Internet, take the case of cell phones. Who had heard of such phones twenty five years back? Slowly, with its invention, it became a luxury which only the upper class of society, who had enough disposable income, could possess. And today, even the poorest of people across the world own one. It has become a necessity. Today, the mobile is also seeing increased use of Internet. In fact, leading British magazine The Economist ran a debate on whether computers are now history, with smaller computing devices like notebooks, tablets, and cell phones displacing the former. 10 Web 3.0 will bring about phenomenal changes and make our everyday lives much more comfortable and easy. For instance, website with Web 3.0 capability would mean an entirely 3D environment where not only individuals will interact with each other but also with the Internet and their machines. This coupled with development of 3D user interfaces will surely enhance one’s user experience and take Internet usage and excitement to a new level. Websites would then be able to combine the virtual reality of cyberspace with one’s online worlds. This is already apparent in Second life, Gojiyo, etc. Web 3.0 will be all about conversation on the Internet. In terms of advertising, one of the primary sources of funding for most websites will be much refined and less irritating to the user. This is because it will initiate the ‘Pull’ methods whereby it will take care of security and relevance for individuals and corporations thus eliminating any waste of resources and bandwidth, both of which are already in scarce supply. Artificial intelligence agents will pull information for us on the basis of parameters that are already established and controlled. This will be delivered to the social networks that exist inside our own data network. This way, Web 3.0 will be the true era of conversation, with real dialogue. 11 Advertisements, as discussed, will be replaced by advertainment. Advertainment is combing advertisement with entertainment, something that is looked at as not being unnecessary and undesirable. This will take the shape of product placements by sculpting stories around a brand and thereby mingling the brand with the story in such a way that it naturally becomes a part of the story. This way, products will interweave with characters and become a part of what people are watching without obstructing them. Advertisements will stop interrupting what people enjoy and start becoming what they enjoy. 12 Web 3.0 will also mark a substantial improvement in audio analytics, and will enable the use of contextual advertising. Google is already experimenting with contextual advertising designed for rich media content. These contextual ads will likely take the form of pre- and post-roll advertising, as well as ads placed inside the content itself. A huge benefit of Web 3.0 is the move towards being able to access data from anywhere. This is mainly being driven by the heavy usage of smart phones and cloud applications. The idea here is to make sure that the users can access as much data as possible from anywhere. Technology is trying to expand this idea in ways

220 Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity __________________________________________________________________ that allow TVs to pick up on user data, and by allowing smart phones to access data on one’s computer. Web 3.0 will see the growth of networks and the reduction of the internet from vast sizes of chunks of information that is not usable to relevant information for all. For instance, one may have to read and scan through large amounts of information available on the internet to make sense out of it and use it for the purpose availed of. This will be reduced with the advent of Web 3.0 will deliver much more personalized information, which is highly relevant, thus saving the lot of time of the user. Opt-in email is another benefit of Web 3.0 technologies. Today, one’s inbox is often full of spam and unwanted messages. Just recount, how many hours do you spend each day filtering, deleting, and going through spam? This also reduces the productivity of companies who work on doing this and keeping the unwanted mail out of inbox. Email is push technology; interactive marketing is based on push technology. Web 3.0 will ensure that email is based on pull technology. One would then put it under the permission marketing category. To have real exchanges, real conversation, pull technology is the only way to go. This would then entail a whole network of encrypted email servers that talk to each other. B. Negative Impact Every great thing comes with a price tag. The Web 3.0 will too come with its fair share of things one might have to worry about and be cautious of. ‘The semantic web (or Web 3.0) promises to “organize the world’s information” in a dramatically more logical way than Google can ever with their current engine design.’ 13 This statement by Mark Fazwi only repeats what many believe. When semantic overlay is finally applied to the Internet, the search engines and their outcomes could prove to be much more noteworthy and relevant to the public. The results will be much more personalized and much more relevant to the individual since it would not only be based on the search keywords but also the user’s preferences, liking, and history of past searches. For instance, if Mr. Z is visiting London for the first time and is staying near King’s cross and he wishes to search for an Indian restaurants in that region, predefining a budget, the results that a search engine today would yield will be completely different from what would be exhibited on application of semantic technologies in a Web 3.0 environment. Today, Google searches the keywords by crawling through the Web and applying its ‘Pagerank’ search technology. Similarly, other search engines would apply their own technologies to reveal results that would seem to have a mixture of those searched keywords near to each other. The same search results would be completely different in a Web 3.0 scenario. Here, the engine would not only look at the keywords but also the user’s past searches, his preferences—for instance if he has written reviews in the past as to what he likes in Indian cuisine, what he likes spending on what dishes, etc. The engine would scan through the food menus and

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__________________________________________________________________ then yield results for the individuals that will be highly personalized and very relevant. This way if two individuals search using the same keywords from the same place on the same systems, they would be given different results based on the range of factors taken into consideration while searching. This will have implications in the future, especially on future generations that grow up in a Web 3.0 environment. Take the case of recent anti-trust and competition lawsuits against Google across the world, especially by the European Commission. Google has been allegedly manipulating its search results by preferring restaurants and others with whom it has a tie-up of sorts. Though these are still allegations until they are proved, I would not be surprised if some search engines actually engage in these anti-competitive practices. In future, with the advent of Web 3.0, this will only increase. Since the websites will be at liberty to give different results to different people in the guise of giving more personalized and relevant results, the results may only be sponsored results, from which the engine is making profits. In this manner, future generations who grow up by making decision based on searches of semantic websites will not think too hard when it comes to everyday decisions such as, for example, where to go out and eat. These decisions will then subconsciously be decided by the search engine, and in turn by whomever pays the engine the most to get its result at the top. Dealing with data and privacy is another major concern. It is not uncommon to see privacy policies being changed by leading Internet companies, including Google and Facebook. Privacy has always been a major concern for people and I believe the biggest showdown on this happened when Google started advertisement in Gmail. Google was widely criticized and its reputation tarnished after it started advertising in Gmail, soon after it was launched and before leading e-mail providers did so. These days, people tend to give a lot of information, be it personal on social networking websites or professional through communication and exchange of e-mails. This information is forever stored in records by these websites who later sell this data to make profits. Very often, this data is illegally sold to advertisers without fulfilling the requisite formalities and following the due procedure. This will only increase as the Internet spreads to telephones, televisions, and other devices. More and more personal information will be recorded and traded by these websites to others, resulting in gross and blatant invasions and violations of the law. 4. Conclusion Like I stated earlier, every coin has two sides. But one cannot simply embrace the good part and forget the bad part. The purpose of this paper is to caution one about the ill-effects that Web 3.0 will have on humanity and our future generations. These too should be embraced with open arms though the effect needs to controlled and tackled effectively by law and policy. As far as behaviour of websites, especially search engines, is concerned, the same needs to be controlled in a

222 Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity __________________________________________________________________ careful manner by the law authorities. This can be done by enforcing stricter competition and anti-trust laws, for starters. This will, however, not suffice. This should be followed by effective dialogue with media giants on their perceived future and plans. Governments should then constructively plan the development and growth of cyberspace in a way which is mutually beneficial to the Internet companies and to its users. With regard to the privacy violations, a stricter law and even stricter enforcement is the best way forward. Companies should be cautioned about the laws and the penalties that will follow in case of violations. I hope that the drawbacks of development of Web 3.0 can be amiably settled and considered by all, and that we can cherish such developments in the longer run from a users and consumers perspective as well as from the Internet industry’s angle.

Notes 1

Chris Moerdyk, ‘It Took Radio 38 Years to Catch On; Facebook just Two’, (March 8, 2009), viewed on June 1, 2012, http://digital-stats.blogspot.in/2011/04/it-took-radio-38-years-to-reach-50.html. 2 Andrew Brown, ‘Should Facebook be Worried about Google Plus?’, (August 10, 2012), viewed on August 10, 2012, http://socialfresh.com/facebook-google-plus/. 3 ‘World Internet Usage and Population Statistics’, last updated on December 31, 2011, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. 4 Marta Strickland, ‘The Evolution of Web 3.0 (presentation)’, Nov 1, 2007, Organic, viewed on June 18, 2012, http://www.slideshare.net/mstrickland/the-evolution-of-web-30?from=ss_embed. 5 Raquel Botelho, ‘Do we Really Die? Bodies in Cyberculture: Life and Social Existence after Death’, paper presented in 6th Global Conference: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction at Oxford, UK, viewed on July 1, 2012, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/clarckvhpaper.pdf. 6 Kendra Gaines, ‘A Brief Introduction to Web 3.0’, viewed on June 3, 2012, http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/web-3-introduction/. 7 Marta Strickland, ‘What the Semantic Web or Web 3.0 – Can do for Marketers’, AdAge (November 24, 2008), viewed on June 30, 2012, http://adage.com/abstract?article_id=132815. 8 Strickland, ‘Evolution of Web 3.0.’ 9 Swachid Rangan, ‘Universal Religion: A Treatise on Cosmic Consciousness’, viewed on July 23, 2012, http://www.swachid.com/DM.htm. 10 Economist Debate on ‘This House Believes we are now in a Post-PC World’, October 31st, 2011, viewed on June 6, 2012,

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/775. 11 Valeria Maltoni, ‘Connecting Ideas and People: How Talk can Change our Lives, Web 3.0 Artificial Intelligence Agents will be Conversation Agents’, viewed on July 2, 2012, http://www.conversationagent.com/2007/11/web-30-artificial-intelligence-agentsas-conversation-agents.html. 12 Marina Del Rivero, ‘Telenovelas: Creating Stories around Brands’, Video Age International, 2007, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Telenovelas%3a+creating+stories+around+brandsa0164878200. 13 Marc Fazwi, ‘Wikipedia 3.0, The End of Google’, last updated on July 3, 2006, viewed on July 4, 2012, http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/wikipedia-30-the-end-of-google/.

Bibliography Botelho, Raquel. ‘Do we Really Die? Bodies in Cyberculture: Life and Social Existence after Death’. Paper presented in 6th Global Conference: Visions of humanity in cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction at Oxford, UK. Viewed on July 1, 2012. http://www.interdisciplinary.net/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/clarckvhpaper.pdf. Brown, Andrew. ‘Should Facebook be Worried about Google Plus?’. (August 10, 2012). Viewed on August 10, 2012. http://socialfresh.com/facebook-google-plus/. Del Rivero, Marina. Telenovelas: Creating Stories around Brands. Video Age International, 2007. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Telenovelas%3a+creating+stories+around+brandsa0164878200. Economist Debate on ‘This House Believes we are now in a Post-PC World’. October 31st, 2011. Viewed on June 6, 2012. http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/775. Fazwi, Marc. ‘Wikipedia 3.0, The End of Google’. Last updated on July 3, 2006. Viewed on July 4, 2012. http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/wikipedia-30-the-end-of-google/. Gaines, Kendra. ‘A Brief Introduction to Web 3.0’. Viewed on June 3, 2012. http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/web-3-introduction/.

224 Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity __________________________________________________________________ Harris, Daniel. Web 2.0 Evolution into the Intelligent Web 3.0. Lulu.com, 2008. Maltoni, Valeria. ‘Connecting Ideas and People: How Talk can Change our Lives, Web 3.0 Artificial Intelligence Agents will be Conversation Agents’. Viewed on July 2, 2012. http://www.conversationagent.com/2007/11/web-30-artificial-intelligence-agentsas-conversation-agents.html. McNarama, Jim. The 21st Century Media (R)Evolution. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010. Moerdyk, Chris. ‘It took Radio 38 Years to Catch On; Facebook just Two’. (March 8, 2009). Viewed on June 1, 2012. http://digital-stats.blogspot.in/2011/04/it-took-radio-38-years-to-reach-50.html. Pollock Jeffrey T. Semantic Web for Dummies. Hoboken: John Willey & Sons, 2009. Strickland, Marta. ‘The Evolution of Web 3.0’ (presentation), Nov 1, 2007, Organic. Viewed on June 18, 2012. http://www.slideshare.net/mstrickland/the-evolution-of-web-30?from=ss_embed. –—–. ‘What the Semantic Web or Web 3.0 – Can do for Marketers’. AdAge (November 24, 2008). Viewed on June 30, 2012. http://adage.com/abstract?article_id=132815. Swachid Rangan K. Universal Religion: A Treatise on Cosmic Consciousness. Viewed on July 23, 2012. http://www.swachid.com/DM.htm. Watson, Mark. Scripting Intelligence. New York:Apress, 2009. World Internet Usage and Population Statistics. Last updated on December 31, 2011. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Vishwam Jindal is currently pursuing Law from the National Law University, Delhi (India). He loves to be au-courant with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super Hero in Cyberspace Pratyush Vatsala and Neelu Raut Abstract In a world where human beings have no time to see and find each other, except on screen, and where Artificial Intelligence takes over Emotional Intelligence, cyberspace, albeit virtual, becomes a living and breathing space throbbing with human activity (Facebook and Twitter), a new culture awaits mankind. Cyberculture, a synergy of humans and technology, a way of life, raises different issues. RA.ONE, a Hindi science fiction super-hero film written and directed by Mr. Anubhav Sinha, conceptualizes the vision of translating the digital world into reality, using the wireless transmissions from multiple wireless devices, and develops the idea of a new generation that is eager to see the antagonist (the villain) more powerful than the protagonist (the hero), unlike the convention in most legends. However, this vision reflects an illusion, and the disillusionment results in an ultimate quest for a human world where Dr. Frankenstein needs to keep an eye on the Monster. Both ‘RA.One’ and ‘G.One,’ translated into Hindi, form the core of the ancient story of Ramayana, in which the mythological Ravana (Homophone of RA.One) is juxtaposed with the life force or Jeevan (Homophone of G.One). The purview of this chapter is to revisit the thin lines between the real and the virtual and the human and the machine, to critically examine the set of values which ancient mythology and systems of learning offer, and to evaluate the need to redefine and redesign the human paradigms of faith and space. The exploration of these issues leans on the critical interpretation, review, and assessment of the motion picture RA.ONE. Key Words: Religion, science-fiction, mythological monsters, cyberspace, virtuous posthuman hero. ***** 1. Human Vision and Illusion ...more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. 1 Though written a little over a hundred years ago, Mary Shelley’s words still hold true. The advent of this age of the Internet has validated the truth behind such a human endeavour to the fullest—i.e., the endeavour to ‘explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.’ 2 Mary Shelly ascribed

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘The Modern Prometheus’ as a subtitle to her novel Frankenstein and that is just as apt a subtitle for the modern technologist of today as it might have been for the protagonist of the eponymous novel. If the Sun held the source of his creation for Prometheus, then the search engines and programming devices and the various internet programmes, applications, and implications generate the same unmitigated fire and supreme force of power, combined with the burning desire of brazen creation, for the technologist of today. Limitless possibilities and unchartered synthesis that inspired a whole generation of story tellers in the day of yore with Prometheus’s fable seem to fire the imaginations and engender a hunger in the cyber technologists of today. Each new day we meet yet another Prometheus yearning to harvest a newer idea or give prosthetic shape to yet another robotic concept. Several years of pacing forward into grand visions of the future has expanded the ever-growing horizons of cyberspace. The advent of the computer age has caused limitless dreams in terms of superlative achievement and relentless strife. Enriching research leads to constant debates to allocate this innovative knowledge to hitherto unknown avenues of integrated cyber technologies. A social milieu with progressive systems of technological advancement often aligns itself with the attendant need for consistent codes of conduct and necessitates stable systems of keeping the ever-growing cyber-population safe. It also demands revision of social norms and underscores the relevance of a value-system in view of the new complexities arising out of increasing dependence on cyber technologies and use of cyberspace. The rise in use of artificial intelligence in every sphere of human interaction renders the question of appropriate expectation, behaviour, and modes of action imperative, be it the anonymous realm of chat-rooms or social networking sites offering possibilities of reuniting with childhood friends. Today one lives in cyberspace with an unabashed regularity and a rather humbling dependence. From these ever changing paradigms arises the call for addressing the need to redefine the realm of human experience and the parameters of ideas of space. Cyberspace, albeit virtual, is a living and breathing area of human existence that throbs with the pulse of an enormous amount of human activity. Therefore, though it exists in nothingness, it evolves with the thoughts of the living; we the humans carry our emotional and cultural baggage into cyberspace. The resultant arising need to imbue and inform values of humanity in a comparatively anonymous world of cyber existence deals with widespread usage of the Internet for personal as well as professional purposes. This leads to the issues of real life values imprinting the virtual ones also, for often what is felt is: the inadequacy of various moral rules, codes of conduct, and emerging ‘netiquettes’, or online codes of conduct, along with software programs and organizations such as Cyber Angels

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__________________________________________________________________ designed to discern appropriate cyber content and protect users from abuses (often illegal) of Cyberspace. 3 2. Human Values in Cyber Space The Food-for-Thought Paper on EU Views on Norms of Behaviour in Cyberspace, states that: The European Union recognises the importance and timeliness of this discussion and offers a number of guidelines for the way ahead: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Cyberspace is part of this world. Cyberspace must be safe. Cyberspace is an area of justice among trusted partners Cyberspace is an area of freedom with an open, single and dynamic architecture. Cyberspace is governed by a democratic, efficient multistakeholder model Towards an inclusive Cyberspace. 4

Thus, it is universally agreed upon that the endeavour to respect the human element in cyberspace be sincerely made. The widespread use of the Internet by humans entails a widespread need for ethical guidelines, extended debates, and resultant codes be drawn up; net nannies or Marshalls for cyberspace may be appointed, who may be able to control and curb unpleasant occurrences such as cyber bullying, pornographic content, harassment, and exploitation such as financial scams or sexual innuendo. Values in cyberspace might be an ambiguous term as the multi-cultural, multilingual, and multi-demographic world that populates cyberspace makes the arrival at a unified concept of an acceptable code of conduct almost unendurable, if not impossible. However, enhancing critical awareness of ethical issues and coming to an agreement upon a commonly acceptable societal code is of the utmost importance. Not addressing these issues now could be detrimental to the ever-growing population of people who will use electronic communication technologies in the future. These technologies shape our expectations and cultures and our concepts of self, and implications of these affect our ethical attitudes, values, and choices. Since the imparting of values seems most effective when it happens through folk lore, local legends, mythology, and other traditional sources where orality is the most important factor, we argue that for India the richest source of learning values are basically the two most famous epics: The Ramayana and The Mahabharata.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Complementary Contraries In his introduction to William Buck’s version of the Ramayana, Sanskritist B. A. van Nooten notes: Few authors in world literature can lay claim to having inspired as many poets and dramatists, and to having transmitted moral and ethical values to as vast and receptive an audience in nations living thousands of miles apart and with radically different languages and cultures as the obscure, almost legendary composer of Sanskrit Ramayana, a poet known to us as Valmiki. 5 Therefore, William Buck’s version of the Ramayana is a well recommended English version, as Buck is an author who: retold the story of Prince Rama—with all its nobility of spirit, courtly intrigue, heroic renunciation, fierce battles, and triumph of good over evil—in a length and manner that will make the great Indian epics accessible to the contemporary reader. 6 The Ramayana is also a necessary text to understand the premise of this chapter; as the chapter progresses, it is crucial to have a working knowledge of the basic narration of the Ramayana to enable the co-relation of the various homophonic references within the story of the motion picture Ra.One. Being a mythological tale, it has several cross-referential interferences with other Indian epical tales; the Ramayana is of epic proportions and its 2,500 verses tell an amazing tale set to the basic narrative pattern not too deviant from the universal epic stories. The narrative is entwined around the quintessential attern of such stories, where the virtuous protagonist goes through many twists and turns in the narrative and in the end gains victory over the tyrannical treachery of the vicious villain, the typical antagonist. Basically, Ramayana, tells the tale of the trials and tribulations of Prince Rama, the protagonist; being the first born to the eldest of the three Queens of King Dushratha, Rama is heir apparent in the state of Ayodhya. Owing to an earlier vow the king had made to his youngest Queen, Rama has to abdicate his right to the throne and go into fourteen years of exile. While in exile, Rama is joined by his newlywed wife, Sita, and his younger half-brother, Lakshamana who is the son of the king and his second Queen. Many miseries befall the trio while moving around in the forest; they encounter local demons and an assortment of villains, none, however, who could be a match for the intensely powerful and deeply knowledgeable Ravana, the king of Sri Lanka or Ceylon. He is the one who abducts Sita; to avenge this injustice, Rama, with the friends he makes in the forest, fights and wins a battle against Ravana, whose ultimate defeat is caused by

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__________________________________________________________________ the information Rama gets from Ravana’s brother, Vibhishana. The battle between Rama and Ravana lasted ten days; today the last day of the battle is celebrated as ‘Vijaya dashmi,’ or the victorious tenth day and effigies of Ravana, his son Meghnada, and his brother Kumbhakarana are burnt all over India to rejoice in the victory of good over evil. Legend has it that Ravana had ten heads and twenty arms, but since he had only two legs, these heads come across as symbols of immense knowledge and deep comprehension, while his arms are symbols of stupendous strength, and bewildering capabilities. Even though, Ravana is depicted mainly negatively in The Ramayana, there are also positive aspects embedded in the epic. He is shown as a great scholar who mastered the Vedas and the arts as well, and he was a known exponent of the stringed instrument called the Veena, playing classical Indian traditional music. He was a master of scholarly as well as warrior skills. Ravana was also a great ruler, which was obvious by the prosperity of Lanka during his reign. Evidently, when Hanuman (a messenger of Rama) first visits Lanka, he is amazed to see the Golden Lanka, ‘splendid yellow-white palaces, like to a city stationed in the sky.’ 7 4. Ravana: A Superhero To understand the premise of this chapter, a working idea of Ravana, the mythological character, helps towards better comprehension; so with an idea of who Ravana was, it is apt to introduce the concept of RA.One. This game in the movie is created by a technologist, Shekhar Subramanium, who, apart from being a genius, is an average father in search of his son’s adulation, flattery, admiration, and hero-worship. He hopes to devise ‘a video game with a difference’ 8 ‘[i]n order to impress his sceptical son Prateek’, ‘and upon the request of his wife, ... uses his son’s idea that the villain be more powerful than the hero.’ 9 In the words of its producer and lead actor, Shahrukh Khan, RA.One is the modern, new age technology version of our mythological 'Raavan', who was a mixture of ten different evil characters. I am essaying the role of G.One or better say 'Jeevan', a superhero who saves the mankind from RA.One's torment. Through this film, I want to prove that Indian superheroes can also be as cool as the international ones. 10 The motion picture RA.One has the familiar concepts of an invincible antagonist who in this case escapes cyberspace and roams at large in search of his opponent in the video game ‘Lucifer,’ who is none other than Subramanium’s son, whose login alias is Lucifer. Obviously, the son has taken on the name of the fallen angel; additionally it is notable that the son of the protagonist bears the name ‘Prateek,’ a name that literally translates as ‘symbol’ in Hindi. He is a symbol of the generation

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__________________________________________________________________ of fallen angels of today. Before we proceed any further, let us take a look at the kind of video games which are most popular among the youth of today. A random search on Google for the ‘Ten most violent video games’ brings one to www.askmen.com; at this site, the author, Andrew Chomik, who is a communications professional based in Canada, comments on these so called ‘Top Ten.’ Here is a sample of the description of the top three. ‘No.3 Manhunt – 2003’ 11 is a game where: the player sneaks around a 3-D environment and commits heinous acts of murder as part of a sadistic form of entertainment. Decapitation, steel-object-to-the-brain impaling and even the ability to jam a sickle up an unsuspecting victim's ass was part of the Manhunt experience. 12 ‘No.2 Grand Theft Auto III – 2001’ 13 this is a game, As the title suggests, you're out to make a name for yourself by accomplishing missions in a third-person environment, and stealing cars is the most light hearted crime you can commit. From massive gangland-style beat downs to barbecuing prostitutes with flame throwers, nothing is too vile or unrealistic in the face of death, blood and mayhem. Subsequent violence from later sequels (including GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV) was simply adding more fuel to the fire. 14 Now, for the most coveted top spot in this twisted contest, ‘No.1 Postal 2 – 2003’, 15 This is a game in which it is not uncommon to drop-kick grenades and whip scythes at unsuspecting civilians if they refuse to participate in your everyday life story (which is, after all, the plot behind the game). Of course, this includes using cat carcasses as silencers on your gun, hitting people with anthraxladen cow heads and playing ‘fetch’ with dogs using the severed heads of your dismembered victims. Postal 2 is the epitome of senseless, over-the-top video game violence. 16 The above facts have been quoted to focus a spotlight on the complete depravity and absolute reign of senseless violence in cyberspace that the present generation is constantly exposed to. With a stark lack of able, positive, and strong role models to make amends, the movie offers, G-One or ‘The Good one.’

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Disillusionment When the mainframe fails to shut down, RA.One uses the new technology to enter the real world. Prateek is pushed into a world of disillusionment when he realises that the villain, RA.One, the villain, has murdered his father. Prateek is further devastated by the ironic realisation that it was his own desire that made RA.One as powerful as he had become. Using the same technology, Prateek then brings G.One (the Good one) to life. Being the life force, G.One brings forth his superhero powers and promises to protect Prateek. It is notable that both RA.One and G.One are products of the same technology, only the basic values fed into their programmes make them so called good or evil; the message of this is that the needs of the hour in technology-based life depend heavily on artificially controlled environments, computer applications, and artificial intelligence. Prateek, symbolizing the present generation, lives in an illusion of perfection fed on inane violence (in the game-world). He lives in a world where mindless entertainment invariably leads to instant boredom and no concept of self whatsoever. It is a world where car theft, sadistic lynching and glorified gratuitous violence offer superfluous instant gratification of baser instincts. Prateek is fascinated by the power and superior strength of RA.One, made extreme by Prateek’s choice (Named Random Access One, homophonic Ravana). In contrast, G.One is the homophonic reference to Jeevan, a word in Hindi-which translates as life-force, which comes as a constructive and affirmative energy for a whole generation of youth reverently playing games where points grow exponentially with the number of crimes that the player commits. The concept of H.A.R.T (a homophone of heart) is the Hertz Amplifying Resonance Transmitter; it is vital to understanding how heart and its conventional functions of loving and sensitising one’s being is still of vital importance, even though we live in a world where real and virtual are constantly identified with each other and the thin lines between them stay consistent. The importance of heart has been identified because its absence is detrimental to basic existence, be it the existence of the villain or the hero. It is said several times during the movie that ‘super heroes are not made of muscles and metal parts, their essence is their HART.’ 17 HART becomes the most vital element, without which even death is impossible (even at the third, or highest, level of the game). It is, therefore, the vital link without which life is impossible. Ultimately, a desire for humanity and the basic need for values comes across through the depiction of the concept of HART. Wars and conflicts and basic understanding, or lack of it, can be comprehensible if hearts are in synch. There is a time when RA.One comments in a snide aside at the whole of humanity, claiming that ‘No one can finish this game!’ 18 The reason is that even though we burn the effigies of Ravana each ‘Vijaya Dashmi’, he still exists in us as hate, malice, spite, resentment, regrets, revenge, and every other negative emotion. The performance of the ritual each year also

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__________________________________________________________________ indicates our own innate knowledge of the virtual indestructibility of the resident evil within all of us. We carry out only a symbolic celebration of ‘good over evil’ while evil thrives in every possible luminal space available to humans. The colourful imagery is also significant; RA.One is red, depicting fires of Hell and Satan and G.One is blue, the symbolic colour of water that can extinguish fires (including those of Hell!).Water is also a source of life (same as the Hindi word Jeevan/G.One) that not only can be very gentle but also has its own force to reckon with. These associations with colours add to the easy recall of the values inherent in the narrative. These values are noticeable at the very end when the third level fight ensues between Ra.One and G.One: The game resumes, with Prateek controlling G.One’s moves. Following a lengthy fight, both of the characters reach the third level. With little power left, G.One and Prateek trick RA.One into shooting G One without his H.A.R.T. attached, which leaves Ra.One helpless. Furious, Ra.One creates ten copies of himself. Prateek, unable to differentiate the real Ra.One, asks G.One to quote one of Shekhar’s sayings: ‘If you join the forces of evil, its shadows shall always follow you’. The pair then realise that only one of the ten RA.Ones has a shadow: the original one. G.One shoots and destroys him, and after absorbing Ra.One’s remains, transports himself back into the digital world. 19 This episode delivers the final message to the youth about how evil follows those who willingly join it, and how the play of freewill still allows one to take charge and to identify and destroy evil. One can conclude that humans, be they superheroes or not, whether a part of real lives or virtual ones, always need to have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the appropriate values; otherwise, pretty early in the course of the life or the game, our illusions can turn into disillusionment and our existence may prove shallow and devoid of any significance and shortly we will read game over!

Notes 1

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ‘Frankenstein’, in Frankenstein, Chapter 3, 1831, viewed 12 April, 2012, http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/chapter-03.html. 2 Ibid. 3 Cees J. Hamelink, The Ethics of Cyberspace (London: SAGE Publications, 2000).

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Food-for-Thought Paper: EU Views on Norms of Behaviour in Cyberspace, accessed at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/droi/dv/2_3_eeas_ /2_3_eeas_en.pdf. 5 B. A. Van Nooten, Introduction to Ramayan, by William Buck (London: University of California Press, 1976), xiii. 6 Ibid. 7 Valmiki. ‘Ramayana’, in Sundarkandam, by Valmiki, accessed at http://www.valmikiramayan.net/sundara_kanda_contents.html. 8 Ra.One is a 2011 Indian science fiction superhero film directed by Anubhav Sinha, viewed on 12 April, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra.One#Plot,. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Andrew Chomik, Top 10: Most Violent Video Games, accessed April 7, 2012, http://www.askmen.com/top_10/videogame/top-10-most-violent-videogames_1.html. 12 Ibid. 13 Chomik, Top 10. 14 Ibid. 15 Chomik, Top 10. 16 Ibid. 17 SRK talks about the H.A.R.T, viewed April 7, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAB-ZuCAbRI,. 18 Ibid. 19 Ra.One plot, dir. Anubhav Sinha, story by Anubhav Sinha. 2011.

Bibliography Food-for-Thought Paper: EU Views on Norms of Behaviour in Cyberspace. Accessed at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/droi/dv/2_3_eeas_ /2_3_eeas_en.pdf. Hamelink, Cees J. The Ethics of Cyberspace. London, Great Britain: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2000, 2002. Chomik, Andrew. Top 10: Most Violent Video Games. Accessed April 7, 2012. http://www.askmen.com/top_10/videogame/top-10-most-violent-videogames_1.html.

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__________________________________________________________________ Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. ‘Frankenstein’. In Frankenstein, Chapter 3, 1831. Accessed at http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/chapter-03.html. SRK talks about the H.A.R.T. Accessed April 7, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAB-ZuCAbRI. Ra.One, dir. Anubhav Sinha, story by Anubhav Sinha. 2011. Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra.One#Plot. Valmiki. ‘Ramayana’. In Sundarkandam, by Valmiki. Accesseed at http://www.valmikiramayan.net/sundara_kanda_contents.html. Van Nooten, B. A. Introduction to Ramayan, edited by William Buck. London: University of California Press Ltd, 1976. Pratyush Vatsala, Associate Professor and Head, Dept of English DBS PG College Dehradun, has more than 22 years of teaching and research experience. Her varied interests range from creative writing to active social work, Indian English Literature, Indian Poetics, Comparative Literature, Indian Culture, Women Studies, ELT and ICT, HR, Educational Administration and Values. Neelu Raut, who has taught the entire spectrum of varied age groups, presently teaches English Literature to Post Graduate classes. Her areas of interest include various aspects of English Literature and language teaching, spirituality, crosscultural similarities, cinema and outbound learning; she is presently engaged in research for her Doctorate Degree in the area of innovative methodology for facilitating Language Learning.