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Blade Runner and Electric Sheep in Cyberspace: the question of human identity (Denise de Mesquita Corrêa)


Blade Runner and Electric Sheep in Cyberspace: the question of human identity
Denise de Mesquita Corrêa
Dissertação de Mestrado- UFSC,1995.

       The aim of this dissertation is to discuss the meaning of the term humanity in the postmodern context,through the analysis of “Do androids dream of electric sheep?”(P. K. Dick) and the adaptation Blade Runner (Ridley Scott).

       Theoretical basis: Frederic Jameson (late capitalist society) and Jean Baudrillard (simulacrum).

Introduction
       What does it mean to be human in the postmodern world? Classical cyberpunk science fiction formulates its own definition of humanity by rearticulating the postmodern condition of the individual.
       Starting point: broadening of the notion of reality postmodernist texts attack conventional perception of reality and subvert the traditional paradigm of the subject and of its representation (reality is composed by images or simulacra, new reality is governed by the new technology of simulacra).
       Attempt to explore the sci-fi idea that, in the age of technological reproduction, human features can be described and replicated that a machine can be made to simulate human life to the point that it can no longer be identified as human. The endeavour to identify the individual in the alture of simulacra foregrounds one of the postmodernist’s main concern, that is, the questioning of the existence of a specifically human identity.
       In the novel and the film the attempt to define humanity becomes blurred because the difference between human and replicants has faded away. Replicants are perfect copies of human beings and, as such, they challenge the possibility of identifying the human in the postmodern world. The erasure of those features reveals the outcome of mechanical reproduction, the challenge of identifying the origin of reality in the human self.
       The examination of the human behaviour (in the film) can fail to produce a distinction between humans and replicants the (latter formers) are perfect copies, no longer existing an “original”. In this context, the technology of simulacra undermines the notion of an original by rejecting any differences between humans and replicants. Replicants reached such a perfect simulation that they cannot identify their own status (Rachael fails to grasp her status). Replicants have fallen into the frame of humanity but they have also surpassed their originals and thus threatened the possibility of distinguishing between reality and representation. In the context of simulacra, everything is reduced to representation and the individual can no longer be located.
       Need for new definitions of humanity in a postmodern hyperspace (man’s self-doubt). This search signals the loss of a self that can no longer be located behind his simulacrum.
       In searching for redefinition of the notion humanity, postmodernism challenges conventional perceptions of reality and witnesses the disappearance of originality [the concept of simulacra] new arrangement of time and space, as a result, new concept of individual.

  1. The Concept of Simulacra
       In the postmodern world the term simulacra generates a new concept for the word “real”. It’s a central concept in J.Baudrillard theory of history, it is “the identical copy for which no original has ever existed” (Mc Hale, Brian constructing postmodernism, Routledge, 1992, p.229)* The real is not what can be reproduced but that which is always already reproduced, namely the hyperreal. The real is proliferation of copies, indicating the disappearance of the referent. The hyperreality is a proliferation models, the real cases to exist. This is the principle of technological reproduction which is incapable of demarcating the limits of reality and reproduction due to the rapid spread of copies. The result of this proliferation is the loss of originality by the shattering of one’s own identity.
       In the film and in the novel the concept of replicants illustrates the hyperreal world, they are perfect copies remaining within the frame of simulacrum underming “the notion of an original by disavowing any differences between themselves and their creators” (Celeste Olalquiaga. Megalopolis: Contemporary Cultural Sensibilities. Minnesota UP, 1992, p.11). Crossing the border artificial x nature into something new. The artificial beings become representatives of a new reality which rejects all notions of originality.
       Replicants become humanized by the appropriation of human features, like feelings, whereas human beings become mechanized by the replacement of their bodies for artificial features. Replicants become ultimately a threat to human identity.
       The age of simulacra is thus an age in which everything is reduced to images, to representation. Contemporary image not only mirrors life but structures and reproduces it, thus, provides a new id for the postmodern subject. “Gradually, technological images have become the mirrors in which to look for an identity. Characterized by proliferation and consumptiveness, these readymade images are easily interchangeable. Like all commodities, they are discardable identities. Mobile and perishable, their traits wane after a few uses. (p.4)
       The postmodern identity is thus defined by the new technology of simulacra which dissolves the individual’s sense of identity by the proliferation of copies. Given this point, the task of the postmodern individual is to establish his identity from transitory images which circulate endlessly in a space without depth.
       Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum implies precisely the inability to locate te referent in the presence of depthless image, everything circulates in a in an endless circuit. The articulated picture of natural/artificial (in the film) can not be distinguished as images of either because none of them holds a particular identity, this is abolishing the referent. This is to deny a theory of correspondence between images and their object of reference.
       Deconstruction between images and reality. The picture itself (the sign) becomes reality. In Baudrillard's account, hyperreal is a coincidence with itself, rather than a copy of the real.
     
    Hyperreality Definition
       See: J. Baudrillard. “The Evil Demon of Images and the Precision of Simulacra”in : Postmodernism, a reader. GB: Harvest Wheatsheaf, 1993, (p. 195).
       The principle of the representation is displaced by the principle of reproduction. The postmodern concern with the image which simultaneously effaces and valorises the real and undermines the very possibility of representation as real, or more real, than the reality they replicate, replicants challenge the idea of human being as models. So that, at a certain point, the question emerges: the human model is not a model itself (cidadão-modelo, operário-modelo, modelo-fotográfico, “human-model?”) Technology challenges the definition of humanity, as in the case of artificial intelligence.
       In this context, the notion of the originality and of truth have to be redefined. As Baudrillard puts it, reality has been so perfectly reproduced by technology that representation has come true, for “the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth- it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” J. Baudrillard. “Simulacra and Simulations” selected writing. Stanford University Press, 1989 (p.166).
2- The Postmodern Idea of Time and Space
       The problem of defining humanity in the pm world is also related to the concern with locating the individual within some pm hyperspace. In this context, the search for identity becomes a function of place and time (don’t know where you are, don’t know who you are). Space and time in hyperreality have been redefined, collapse of the boundaries:”spatial temporal coordinates end up collapsing: space is no longer defined by depth and volume, but rather by a cinematic (temporal) repetition, while the sequence of time is frozen in an instant of (spatial) immobility.” (Olalquiaga, p.2).
       New sense of time/ space provided by post-industrial technological changes stresses a collapse in temporality(new rearrangement of the historical time), collapse of boundaries/limits of space. The postmod-> moment is, then, portrayed by a temporal a disruption in which all boundaries between past, present and future are effaced. Incapable of demarcating the limits of the historical contivity, postmodern timelessness locates the individual in a perpetual present time. The present contains both past and future; pm regards history as a collage, a series of multiple perspectives of signs circulating nondogmatically.
       Postmodernism rejects the idea of a general consensus and asserts the preference for a process of differentiation undermining feelings contivity. Past becomes “a vast collection of images, a multitudinous photographic simulacrum” F. Jameson. “Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism.” New depth Review, n.º 146- July/ August 1984. (p.43). PM reconstructs the past from images that convey a nostalgic feeling.
       “We are condemned to seek history by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remain forever out of reach.” (Jameson, p. 48)
       Nostalgia keeps past alive by means of representation. Ex: Greek column in Tyrrell's house (Blade Runner). Past and present supports one’s historical identity.
       Breaking of historical contivity condemns individual to live in a perpetual present time. For replicants one of the greatest difficulties in achieving a human status is thus the disappearance of the historical referent which renders replicants unstable. With individual lives pervaded by technology in almost all levels, man becomes aware of his own existence over time and extended his control over it. New systems of concepts and values which challenges the limits of time. Cyborgs are apparently immune to natural deterioration.
       We no longer perceive ourselves as a subject of time but as a location (site on the net)
       Another aspect of hyperreal space is the blurring of the spatial frontiers of the body Demarcations of the limits of the body become difficult when copies of the body cannot be different from the original, as in replicants. A world devoid of spatial boundaries challenges one’s identity as the conventional limits of one’s own body is transcended. The body can no longer be compared to something different, which would function as “the last refuge of identity.” The body is thought as a system whose parts are perfectibe and replaceable. Slowly body and computer have begun to exchange their peculiar traits.
       Establishing one’s image has become the most challengeable task for postmodern man.
       “Both an organical and a technological body, the fictional cyborg represents the ultimate spatial transgression, an accomplishment that it shares with holograms” (Olalquiaga, p. 13).
       Technology has raised the confusion and the concept of humanity is found in change rather than in an established image (replicants develop emotions with time)
       Postmodern hyperspace transcends the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself  in another space. Referentiality is broadened/absented. (all places at all times). As a result, characters in both texts establish a fragmented image of themselves and their world.

3- The Postmodern Concept of the Individual
       The technological advances collapse the boundaries between humans and machines. The blurring of the frontiers between the artificial and the natural, the temporal and spatial entails the destruction of an unified concept of human.(survives a fragmented one).
       At least, 3 conditions define the term humanity:
1-Sense of time
2-Sense of space
3-Concepts of natural and artificial
*Motif in sci-fi, thematic of human x inhuman symbiosis, collapse of the definition of natural x artificial.
       Locating the real in society full of fakes and imitations.
       This study is about the problematization of the real in a postmodern society. Blade Runner suggests that technology is threat.
       The problems related to a new reality pervaded by technological changes will be analysed here in 2 different narratives forms, literature and film.
       The variants of the robot motif which is used to propose a definition of the term humanity.
       Purpose: to define the term humanity in the postmodern realm.
CHAPTER 1- Dicks do androids dream of electric sheep? and its dominant postmodern themes.
       Dick’s novel presentation, review main dominant postmodern themes articulate issues which shape postmodern identity.
       Real= set of representations, individuality is manipulated by memory implants, technology redefines reality(destruction of any unified conception of the truth. Where is human identity in an endless representation of reality (Dick’s questioning) Build up of a new set of values systems and concepts.
1- The Novel’s Genre: Cyberpunk
       A sci-fi text which incorporates elements of postmodernism, “which has already been science-fictioned” Brian Mchalle.
       Cycling process which conflates sci-fi + postmodernist texts= cyberpunk.
       Features of postmodernist texts: 1) limitations of human knowledge of truth and reality, 2) sci-fi repertoire (spaceships, other worlds, futuristic weaponry, androids). Legitimacy to the identity crisis in our technological era. 3) new concept of real, 4) schizophrenic condition of time, 5) loss of subjectivity, 6) appropriation of the past, 7) obsolence of commodities, 8) new logic of space.
2- Entering the Novel’s Terrain
       Film’s plot implanted memories(artificial) no established hierarchy of truth. Allegory of our consumer society, but commodities are now represented by living stock(cows, goats)
2.1) The New Concept of Real
       The real has become a commodity transformed into something with market value (real becomes hyperreal by discourse and simulacrum). Androids especially overturn the idea of originality and human identity. Reality is defined by what can be commodified. “Real world”is then a set of commodified truths. In this postmodern world, organized by the logic of simulacrum, the idea conveyed is that people lost their connections with origins and originals, replaced by copies.
2.2) The Nexus- 6 Android Group
2.3) Depthless Images
       Human being is commodified and transformed in its own image, people become commodities with discard able identities (Android Rachel). Images are central to the shaping of identities (perception of the self), identity resorts to image, without which the self is fragmented. (Jameson, Schizophrenic).
2.4) Schizophrenia
       Breakdown in the relationship of signifiers among each other (Jameson). Perceptual present. The postmodern individual is introduced to a new logic of time which reproduces fragmented experiences and establishes new temporal codes. Only when one connects past and present one finds the narrative thread that supports one’s identity, history becomes a proof of existence and grants the right to exist and to understand oneself as an effect of previous codes.
2.5) Loss of Subjectivity
       Impossibility of locating the individual within an endless chain of signifiers of the postmodern world provides a sense of loss (fears of the void of subjectivity).
       Undermining of humanist assumptions, leads to the question of simulation and impossibility of boundaries between real x copy. Identity revealed by technological means proves to be useless.
2.6) Commodities and Deterioration


*F. Jameson. Postmodernism of the Cultural logic of late Capitalism. New left review, n 146, 1984. p. 43.

Control over time (death)


19th-century literature in Britain: the advent of a social narrative


19th-century literature in Britain: the advent of a social narrative

Social novels, also known as realist fiction, have its origins in the C18th. William Godwin (Caleb Williams and St. Leon) and Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary, a fiction and A vindication of the Rights of Woman) are two exemplary authors who inserted social commentary in their fictional works. However, some of the most representative social narratives were written during the C19th century with the rise of the Victorian Age. In more than one way, the C19th social narrative emerges as a reaction to industrialisation and its socio-political and economic impact on people’s life.
The overriding social and political problem facing British society in the early decades of the Industrial revolution was what to do with the poor. In the long run, industrialisation led to a growing standard of living for workers, but the short run it lead to great problems such as inadequate housing (slums), high infant mortality, appalling working conditions and bare subsistence wages – according to the economic theories of the time to pay higher wages would only encourage the poor to have more children and thus drive down the value of labour creating only more misery.
Around the 1830s the social novel emerges as a literary means of protest, promoting awareness of governmental and industrial abuses and other repercussions suffered by those who did not profit from Britain’s economic prosperity i.e. children, women, the working class in general.
Most liberals rejected the idea of social legislation designed to monitor the factories, regulate child labour, and protect women workers as intolerable invasions of the sacred right of property. Liberals deplored the misery of the poor and often gave generously to charities, but they firmly rejected any government intervention in the name of property rights and the free market. For the most part, Liberals in Europe looked on the poor with a mixture of sympathy, fear, and contempt. Only a few visionary with a penchant for social reform voiced ideas such as government providing unemployment insurance for workers. Two watershed civil rights laws that passed in the 1830s and helped change this situation were: The Reform Bill of 1832, which gave the middle class the political power it needed to consolidate their economic position, and The Poor Law of 1834, the first attempt to create a welfare system under government supervision.
The social changes provoked by Industrial Revolution were so swift and brutal that intellectuals and artists of the age had to deal in some way with the upheavals in society, the obvious inequities of abundance for a few and squalor for many. Initially some often sensationalised accounts and stories of the deprived population were directed toward middle class audiences to help incite sympathy and action towards pushing for legal and moral changes. Godwinian utopianism rapidly gave way to attempts either to justify the new economic and urban conditions, or to change them. and crystallized different issues in periodicals and novels for a growing literate population.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of dramatic change and development in Britain During the Victorian Era, Britain experienced an enormous increase in wealth, but this rapid and unregulated industrialisation brought a host of social and economic problems. Writers such as Thomas Babbington Macauley applauded British progress, while others such as Mathew Arnold felt the abandonment of traditional ways of life represented a terrible toll in human happiness. The economic and social difficulties associated with industrialisation made the 1830s and 1840s a “Time of Troubles” characterized by unemployment, desperate poverty, and rioting.  Moreover, the “Condition of England” became a central topic for novelists including Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Benjamin Disraeli in the 1840s and early 1850s.
One of the most prominent writers of the social narrative or the so-called realist novel of the Victorian period was Charles Dickens. He was a prolific author who wrote over 20 novels as well as short-stories and plays. Dickens is the creator of some memorable fictional characters, such as Ebeneezer Scrooge in the book A Christmas Carol, the character was not merely a miser, but a representation of the mentality behind the Poor Law. Scrooge personifies the unfeeling the mentality lying behind classical liberalism and laissez­faire economics, which transformed the welfare system under government supervision, represented by the workhouses into a place of hardship, strictness, degradation, humility and punishment rather than a welfare system of relief.
For example, when his business associates ask Scrooge to contribute to charity he denies giving money claiming “I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help the establishments I have mentioned [workhouses]—they cost enough”. In response the associate says those are degrading places and many would rather die to go got there. Scrooge responds that it would decrease the surplus population. The ethics of Ebeneezer Scrooge (which echo the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, as well as the ethics of the mill­owners and factory builders who created Victorian England) are redeemed by a heavy dose of Christian love and charity.
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1937) explores the world of the workhouses, orphanages and underage gangs of pickpockets in the slums of London. In Bleak House (1952) Dickens took on the outdated British legal system, describing British lawyers as “a ravenous flock of birds of prey, an avaricious tribe of extortionist making an unsavory living out of what was, in effect, a form of considered and organized oppression.” His accusations revealed a society filled with widespread injustice. But Dickens stops short of blaming the political system, in his world, both good and evil are the product of individual personality.
Today, Dickens’s novels often strike modern readers as overly sentimental or, from a feminist perspective, downright insulting to women - his female characters are all too often stereotypes of feminine weakness. There are far too many scenes where a young woman swoons. His heroines are all too often bright and strong young women who sacrifice their lives to care for some adored male like a father or a husband. His novels are full of emotional death scenes for angelic children carried off by some disease or other.
From a modern perspective, Dickens is always tugging at our heartstrings or pumping our tear ducts! Many of the benevolent male characters strike modern readers as simplistic and unrealistic in the extreme. In spite of this extravagant sentimentality, or because of it, Dickens impressed his huge reading public the image of a society that tolerated injustice and simply could not keep up with the human needs of its population.It is difficult to place Charles Dickens on the political spectrum. He criticized both Tory and liberal. He probably would have described himself as a liberal. But politically, Dickens had a real conservative streak; no one exposed social abuses with  such clarity, but ultimately his art was descriptive and passive He has few suggestions for reform. George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm wrote of Dickens: “There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown.” (Hibbert, p. 301)
He absolutely misunderstood the significance of the conflict between capital and labor. Like many reformers of the 1830s, Dickens had a naïve faith in the possibility of reconciliation between the classes. He hopes that charity on the part of the rich and sacrifice and patience on the part of the poor can guarantee social peace. At heart Dickens regarded revolution as a far greater evil than exploitation. Although he describes the social horrors of the early Industrial Revolution in unforgettable language, he has no sympathy with the emerging labour movement.
The only route towards social justice was through education and gradual reform not through strikes or resistance. Dickens was the spokesperson for the liberal bourgeoisie, the comfortable middle class.
So far as the poor are concerned, they are idealized in Dickens’s novels only so long as they remain poor and virtuous. Charles Dickens was not a real believer in social mobility. In all of his novels, not one working class person really rises out of a humble background into the middle class, into wealth. Those who try to do so, like Uriah Heep, in David Copperfield (1949) are soon brought down. For the poor, Dickens preached a message of patience and endurance.

Women in society
The extreme inequities between men and women stimulated a debate about women’s roles known as “The Woman Question.”  Women were denied the right to vote or hold political office throughout the period, but gradually won significant rights such as custody of minor children and the ownership of property in marriage.  By the end of Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve universities.  Hundreds of thousands of working-class women labored at factory jobs under appalling conditions, and many were driven into prostitution. While John Stuart Mill argued that the “nature of women” was an artificial thing, most male authors preferred to claim that women had a special nature fitting them for domestic duties.

Editorial market
Literacy increased significantly in the period, and publishers could bring out more material more cheaply than ever before.  The most significant development in publishing was the growth of the periodical.  Novels and long works of non-fiction were published in serial form, fostering a distinctive sense of a community of readers.  Victorian novels seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, constructing a tension between social conditions and the aspirations of the hero or heroine.  Writing in the shadow of Romanticism, the Victorians developed a poetry of mood and character.  Victorian poetry tends to be pictorial, and often uses sound to convey meaning.  The theater, a flourishing and popular institution throughout the period, was transformed in the 1890s by the comic masterpieces of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.  Very different from each other, both took aim at Victorian pretense and hypocrisy.

Democracy, Science and Imperialism
In a word, English government, society and literature have all become more democratic. This is the most significant feature of modern history. The second tendency may be summed up in the word “scientific.” A third tendency of the Victorian age in England is expressed by the word “imperialism.” 

The great novels
Realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long the novel was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways.
Thomas Hardy’s profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland county he called Wessex. Robert Louis Stevenson a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction and children's verse. H.G. Wells.
By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.

Poetry
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although romantic in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues. Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the soldiers of British expansion.
During the 1890s the most conspicuous figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde. The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty comedies of Oscar Wilde and the comic operettas of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements of 19th-century British drama

Notes on Frankenstein


Notes on FRANKENSTEIN

It was proposed that Victor is the scientist while Walton is romantic. However, it depends of how you understand Romanticism. If you think of the sublime. Victor Frankenstein is the one who goes for the sublime (his quest is Napoleonic), while Walton can be seen as a “classical” figure. In this sense Victor is romantic. // Walton x Frankenstein (double)

GOTHIC X BAROQUE:

             English renascence is a bit baroque, Shakespeare was alive during the baroque, he does not obey the classical rules, he is excessive, packs in too many discourses. French classicism (Carvel, Racine) do not like Shakespeare excesses. // Cloning as a bad word (Mobile cloning, credit card cloning, etc)

DRACULA:
            John Polidori wrote The Vampire the first story of that sort. Sheridan Le Fann writes Carmilla references to homosexuality, fear of giving yourself up to strong feelings; she seduces a girl but, eventually, gets caught in the end.
            Bram Stoker’s Dracula deals with unbelievable things, structurally complex it is a genre which needs validation. This validation is shown in the narrative in things as short-hand writing (indicative of business – like language) and it is still linked to the women work-force in the job market. Type writers, telegraphs, etc are also indicatives of this making of the “thrush”, validation. This come in the sense of making records, people work: contracts, solicitors, and business. The novel is put together in a way that nobody (no narrator) takes responsibility for it. The novel ends up with Mina’s account, which could mean that all the documents weren’t true.

MODERN X MEDIEVAL (Associated with foreign lands)
            First time a novel measures up England to the continental countries (unlike the Gothic novelists). It takes a catholic man to take care of a catholic threat (primitiveness).

            There is a super imposed sexuality in the females, at the time, critics did not acknowledge the sexuality in the novel or either did not want to talk about it. Whether one or the other, as fares Victorian Society goes, it was a way of having your kicks and not having to mention it, which might explain the success of this book.

            The Catholic witch-doctor is necessary to cure the savage/primitive in the realm of the city. Stage accents are used to depict different nationalities.

            Characters in Dracula are always around a dinner table. Oral pleasure associated with the society, characters stuck in oral phase? Dracula does both the orally the phallic. Lucy gets symbolic raped (stake) and the body is mutilated.

             Dracula invades England, buys property there. He gets there on a Russian vessel and he is described as having an aquiline nose, there are heaps of gold in his room, he is associated with the Jew. History rectifies the novel, play (thrill by). Jew echoes the question of the blood/Christ/chuch.

            Jonathan introduces Dracula to paper money, the new economics. Dracula bleeds money 2 scenes: going down the wall with black cape flowing behind him (?) and a scene where he is among old type gold coins from all over the world. (L’Argent – E. Zola). But Dracula is not the old Jew banker he’s a transitional type of financer, (but also the foreigner and aristocrat), who must be stopped before he learns, everything. (Prejudice xenophobia. Fiction slightly out of control. Violence in the books, Dracula guards the frontiers of the orient (greater evil) against the contamination (fear of contamination).
H.Ibsen → Ghost
Characteristics of English Modernity:
Frames:
England → other countries
Protestantism → Catholicism
Science → Superstition
            Invasion of non-modernity into Modern England the solution is to attack this “antiquity” with its own weapon (Van Helsing). Dracula is the invader from the past. IN Frankenstein the scientific development brings fear of the future. (Frankenstein trying to create life, while women are supposed to). Only entities, like the church or women, have the legal right to create (Gothic x Religion) 19th century trying to be naturalistic/scientific but still co-opting withhold costumes, such as going to church. Romanticism had a direct relationship with God, did not need to go to an establishment (church).
            Jan Watt decides the novel begins in the 18th century in England. Bakhtin mentions the Alexandrian Greek novel. And there’s the Spanish Model. Is there such a thing as a gothic novel? Tudor in decidability.
             Theodor Storm – Germany x Denmark (Shimmed Rider) -  dam, burial, imposture, all side dishes of the Gothic. Natural elements – destructive power of nature, Gothic landscape hostile relation, sublime which is however valued in the sense human beings do not control nature, impulse for domination, hubris in trying to dominate nature. Cautionary tale. Acknowledge the power of nature “appropriate” → co-opt, adapt, “bourgeoisie order” → not in good use.
            The Bourgeois order tame the Gothic, reasonable because most of us prefer order, fictional control although acknowledging the power of nature.