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.
- 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)
