「她只是個軟體！」：後人文主義視角下的虛擬偶像

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 「她只是個軟體！」：後人文主義視角下的虛擬偶像. “She Is Only a Software!” : A Posthumanist View on the Virtual Idol. 指導教授：黃. 涵. 榆. Advisor: Dr. Han-yu Huang 研究生：邵. 恩. 中華民國 104 年 11 月 November 2015. 雨.

(2) 摘要本論文藉由後人文主義對於人類與智能機器結合等科技文化現象的視角，以期能形塑一套有別於傳統人文主義中「人類」與「非人」之間涇渭分明的價值觀。本文探討電腦龐克（Cyberpunk）中的塞爆空間（Cyberspace）並以「虛擬偶像」為研究對象，其中又以威廉．吉布森的《阿伊朵》（Idoru）和安德魯．尼可執導的科幻電影《虛擬偶像》（S1m0ne）為主要文本。本文將從人機合體的簡史開始論述，並簡介電腦龐克和賽伯格的世界。在電腦龐克中，「身體」僅被視為「肉身」說明了人類的有限，進而歌頌主體離身於塞爆空間的自由。「虛擬偶像」變成了一種尋找出打破現實／虛擬界線之方法的離身性主體。第二章以後人文主義觀點闡釋科技／文化產業對虛擬偶像的想像。後人文主義彌平了人文主義和反人文主義間的對立，更進一步發展可能的替代方案。本章援引了凱瑟琳．海爾思（Katherine Hayles）、凱利．沃爾夫（Cary Wolfe）和唐娜．哈樂薇（Donna Haraway）等學者的理論。筆者認為，凡以人類觀點解釋宇宙萬物的論述，仍無可避免地視其他物種為階級中的「他者」，人文主義的傲慢使得人類持續掌控了評價的權力。哈樂薇則單視人類為相互依存的世間萬物中（包含賽伯格及其他非人物種等芸芸眾生）的一小群。第三章試圖分析威廉．吉布森《阿伊朵》中的塞爆空間和各個要角。小說中，角色透過化身在塞爆空間中互動，甚至生活其中。虛擬空間糢糊了人類與非人物種間的分界。非人物種因而不再僅作為客體或邊界，他們以與人類同等的身分存在。簡而言之，通過吉布森所想像的未來，提供了我們對於人類與非人的關係另一面向的思考。他以人類與所有非人物種互為主客作為舞臺，發想了人與非人無休止的互動情境之模式。. 關鍵詞：虛擬偶像、威廉．吉布森、電腦龐克、塞爆空間、賽伯格、《阿伊朵》、後人文主義、凱瑟琳．海爾思、唐娜．哈樂薇 i.

(3) Abstract Through a posthumanist view of the articulation of humans with intelligent machines, my thesis aims to explore the possibilities of crafting a value that rejects the classic humanist divisions of the human and the non-human. This thesis discusses cyberspace and the virtual idol in cyberpunk, and the sample texts include William Gibson’s Idoru as well as Andrew Niccol’s film S1m0ne. This study begins with a brief history of the hybrid of human bodies and machines, followed with an introduction on cyberpunk and the cyborg. In cyberpunk, the reduction of the physical body as merely meat questions the limits of humanity and leads to the celebration of the freedoms of disembodied subjectivity in cyberspace. Blurring the border between actual and virtual reality, the virtual idol becomes a further challenge to the disembodied body. In Chapter Two, I turn to posthumanism to investigate the virtual idol within techno-cultural production and imagination. Posthumanism marks the end of the opposition between humanism and anti-humanism and goes further in exploring alternatives. Theorists discussed in this thesis include N. Katherine Hayles, Cary Wolfe and Donna Haraway. My argument is that because “human” as a first-order observer still unavoidably regards other beings as political “others” in a hierarchical system, the humanistic arrogance continues to control the measure of values. Haraway recognizes the human as just another knot among the organic or technological nonhuman beings, including cyborg and all other kinds labeled as “posthuman,” in the worldwide web of interspecies dependencies. Chapter Three intends to analyze cyberspace and characters in William Gibson’s Idoru. In Gibson’s novels, characters employ avatars to interact and even dwell in cyberspace. The virtual environment blurs the boundaries between humans and multiple nonhuman beings. Thus, nonhuman beings are not merely objects or ii.

(4) boundary points anymore; rather, they exist in the same sense as humans. To be brief, Gibson’s vision of the future offers a different way for us to think about the relationship between humans and nonhumans. He sets the stage where humans and all significant others interact as both subjects and objects in ongoing intra-action.. Keyword: virtual idol, William Gibson, cyberpunk, cyberspace, cyborg, Idoru, posthumanism, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway. iii.

(5) Acknowledgement It has been a long journey in the process of academic studies and the thesis writing. Without certain people, I may not have made it this far. I owe my greatest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Han-yu Huang. His seminar on Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” introduces me the appeal of posthumanism, which later I find the direction for my thesis and devote my efforts. His advice and inspirational comments on my draft are extremely helpful. More importantly, his persistent guidance and encouragement guide me and help me proceed. Then, I would like to thank two committee members, Prof. Sun-chieh Liang and Prof. Yung-chao Liao, for their insightful suggestions and critical comments on my thesis. All the inspirations and advice that every teacher offered had equipped me for this academic journey. Also, I would like to thank my classmates for many kindnesses they have shown me throughout these years, including Charmin Cheng, Gary Chen, Ingrid Liao, Kristy Fan, Susan Su, Vivian Lee and White Bai (according to alphabetic order). Of all the classmates, I would like to give special thanks to Angel Hsieh who encourages me a lot and keeps pushing me to schedule my thesis deadlines. During the final stage of my writing, my father was ill in hospital and I have to look after him. I am deeply grateful that my friends, Isabelle Lin, Ting Hsu, Apple Dai and Angie Chen give me hopes and cheers of encouragement. I am truly blessed to have support from all of them. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my dear parents and brother. Without their love and support, I would not be who I am today. Last but not least, I am mostly grateful to the One who creates humans. I met Him when I was 10. Since then we have been friends. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. iv.

(6) Table of Contents. Introduction. 1. Literature Review. 3. Research Questions. 10. Methodology. 11. Outline of Chapters. 16. Expected Findings. 19. Chapter One. Cyberpunk in Contexts. Reimaging the Body. 21. Cyberbodies in Cyberpunk. 25. Cyberspace in Cyberpunk. 31. Some Preliminary Views on the Posthuman. 34. Chapter Two. A Posthumanist Rethinking of Humans and Nonhumans. The Legacy of Humanism in Posthumanism. 42. N. Katherine Hayles’s Posthumanist View: Embodiment and Materiality. 45. Cary Wolfe’s Posthumanist View: Beyond Humanism. 52. Donna Haraway’s Posthumanist View: Companion Species. 57. Chapter Three. A Posthumanist Reading of William Gibson’s Idoru: Virtual Identities as Companion Species. 62. Gibsonian Cyberspace in Idoru. 63. Virtual Bodies in Idoru. 69 v.

(7) Conclusion. 81. Works Cited. 85. vi.

(8) Introduction In 2010, Hatsune Miku (初音ミク), meaning “first sound of the future,” held her first overseas live concert in Los Angeles, with more than 5,000 tickets sold out at once. The event was simulcasted to nine theaters across U.S. cities as well as others in Taiwan, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It also streamed over the Internet to nearly 100,000 viewers around the world. In fact, this school girl with long teal-colored twin-ponytails is a humanoid persona voiced by a vocal synthesizer software called “Vocaloid” which is sponsored by the engine of Yamaha Corporation. Developed by Crypton Future Media Inc., a Japanese company that specializes in sound-generation software, Vocaloid software features the humanoid robot model, Hatsune Miku, as an image for the marketing promotion and was initially released in August of 2007. As an animated 3-D hologram, she becomes the first virtual idol performed onstage. “Six years into her career, she has already selling out shows and performing with a live backup band for crowds as large as 27,000 people” (Fairbairn). Hatsune Miku’s voice is created through vocal samples from a Japanese vocal actress, Saki Fujita. Each vocal sample contains a single English or Japanese phonic. By stringing different samples together, users can create a song with Vocaloid software. At first, Vocaloid was intended for professional musicians or computer music users, but more and more amateurs, whose only limits were their own singing skills, used it to replace actual singers. With this “singer” in the computer, those amateurs released their own songs on video-sharing websites. A lot of original Vocaloid compositions which were posted on Youtube became popular in the musical software market in Japan. Those hit songs were even recorded and released as albums by major CD companies. Derivative products as diverse as anime-style dolls and musical games have been on sale as well. Due to Hatsune Miku’s popularity, the mass -1-.

(9) marketing also expanded to commercials. She was featured in advertisements for Domino’s Pizza in Japanese market and performed sold-out 3D concerts all over the world. From a vocal synthesizer product to a worldwide beloved cyber celebrity, Hatsune Miku did achieve great commercial success. Another example of the virtual idol is a science fiction film called S1m0ne (2002). In this film, the protagonist, Viktor Taransky, happens to get the software from a programmer and uses it to create a virtual actress, Simone. With a high-tech computer and his careful manipulation of the mass media, Viktor successfully makes Simone, being really good at acting and singing, a wonderful idol. He cheats the crowd into buying Simone’s album, various types of derivative products and even Simone’s live performance ticket. In the end of the movie, Viktor faces the dilemma of achieving both fame and wealth as the manager of a big star or revealing the truth that Simone is not a human being but only a computer program. As this brief summary suggests, while Viktor disguises Simone as an artificial image performing a media career in ways according to the demands of the managers, the existence of this virtual idol blurs the boundaries between the biological body and the artificial body. From Hatsune Miku to Simone, these virtual idols mentioned above not only look like humans, sound like humans but also have been humanized. The virtual idol represents an interplay between the human bodies and digital technologies. In this thesis, I would take William Gibson’s science-fiction novel Idoru, the second novel in the Bridge trilogy, as an example of the computer-generated media figure. This novel deals with the techno-cultural production and imagination of virtual idols. It imagines a near-future Tokyo in which human and posthuman beings can interact through network relations between physical space and “cyberspace,” a term Gibson has invented in his masterpiece Neuromancer. The story begins with rumors that the -2-.

(10) internationally famous rock singer Rez is going to marry Rei Toei, or so-called Idoru, a Japanese best-known virtual idol singer created by information software agents existing only in the virtual world. As a computer analyst, the main character, Colin Laney, is hired to investigate rumors surrounding Rez. At the same time, fourteen-year-old Chia Pet McKenzie is sent by the fan club for Rez’s band to uncover what is going on with Rez. But the virtual celebrity, Idoru, is not at the center of the text. Rather, it serves as a combination of both human body and information technologies to explore a variety of political, social, and psychological issues in the virtual community, Kowloon Walled City. Long before the invention of the Internet, this concept of cyberspace has shaped up an illustration of the Information Age.. Literature Review Bodies and Machines: Deconstruction of the Cyberpunk Fiction Donna Haraway first reflects on digital technology and artificial intelligence in early 1990s. Extending the meaning of “cyborg,” she explores a combination of both organic and artificial life in which human beings search new ways to break the boundaries between nature and culture. Haraway’s cyborg theory calls for a world of fusions between humans and machine. As she expresses in “A Cyborg Manifesto,” “[m]onsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations…. Cyborg monsters in feminist science fiction define quite different political possibilities and limits from those proposed by the mundane fiction of Man and Woman” (Haraway 315). Proposing a revision of the concept of gender, Haraway uses the metaphor of the cyborg to encourage feminists to move beyond naturalism and essentialism. Although Haraway’s argument has been labelled as a post-gender statement, her concept of the cyborg is an attempt to break away from rigid -3-.

(11) boundaries, especially those separating “human” from “animal” and “human” from “machine.” My thesis will apply her cyborg theory to analyze the breakdown of boundaries between humans and artificial machines in cyberpunk. Hence, this thesis would show specific problematic dualisms of self/other, natural/artificial, right/wrong, human/machine, mind/body and so on. In my opinion, the cyberpunk literature provides a possibility to break down these contradictory dualisms. Cyberpunk actively shapes what the scientific theories signify and what the technological artifacts mean in cultural contexts. Several Gibson’s novels written in the 1990s including Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties provide narratives through which the multiple implications of the posthuman can be explored, especially the virtual idol in Idoru that features the difference between a mediated persona and a living media celebrity. Blurring the border between actual and virtual reality, cyberpunk “[becomes] a general cultural term for an outlaw or critical attitude to the effects of information technology on society” (Jordan 20). As Han-yu Huang states in Working through the Unbearable Ambivalence, [C]yberpunk always stands exactly at the blurred border between SF and the empirical world. While cyberpunk fiction is ascending to its publicity in the early and mid-eighties, a new global cyberculture is also coming into being, though the transformative effects brought about by high technology upon our perceptions of time, memory, body, identity, space, and reality still remain to be fantasized, narrated, and grasped. (14) Huang’s thesis adopts the strategy of symptomatic reading to examine and interpret narrative, text, and discourse of cyberpunk fiction in connection with the techno-cultural realities. The symptomatic reading of cyberpunk fiction and cyberculture can be further specified as the following points. Firstly, symptomatic -4-.

(12) reading exposes and interprets the hidden language of narrative and text in relation to the techno-cultural realities. Secondly, symptomatic reading regards cyberpunk as representation of the near future world that can be interpreted as the metaphors for imagining the postmodern conditions. Thirdly, while the Other is lacking and fail to offer the subject a stable identity, the subject itself is unable to identify with the Other. Therefore, technological fantasies come into existence to connect the lacks among the Other, the subject itself and the symbolic realities. Since no technological fantasy can deal with all the constitutive lacks without any contradiction, the symptomatic reading is significant to readjust the contradictory relationship with the Other. Accordingly, a rethinking and reconsideration of the subjectivity, space and time interacting with the Other is my main concern in this essay. I would interpret the context and narrative in cyberpunk, mainly Gibson’s works, to deal with the interrelationships between the Other and the subject itself.. Cyberpunk as Social and Culture Theory Cyberspace refers to virtual environments where humans can interact. According to Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, some of the main variants include Barlovian cyberspace, virtual reality (VR), and Gibsonian cyberspace (Featherstone and Burrows 5). For Barlovian cyberspace, interactions use both telephones and computer network systems, while VR is a computer-generated system providing a realistic sense of being immersed in a simulated environment. On the other hand, Gibsonian cyberspace is “a global computer network of information which Gibson calls ‘the matrix,’ which operators can access (‘jack-in’) through headsets (‘trodes’) via a computer terminal (‘cyberspace deck’)” (6). Gibsonian cyberspace, which will be further specified in the following chapters in this thesis, represents a combination -5-.

(13) of the Internet and VR systems. In Gibson’s novels, characters use avatars to interact with other people in cyberspace. However, it is not until Idoru that Gibson applies the concept of avatars as ways that people not only employ avatars to interact but also to “dwell” in virtual spaces (Henthorme 70). Baudrillard’s socio-cultural observations of the effects of cybertechnology upon the subject, body and reality most closely approach the main concerns of this thesis. Baudrillard focuses on the impacts of technological medium and mass media upon society with concepts such as “hyperreality,” “simulation” and “implosion.” As he claims in his The Ecstasy of Communication, cyberspace presents a form of hyperreality: “That which was previously mentally projected, which was lived as a metaphor in the terrestrial habitat is from now on projected entirely without metaphor, into the absolute space of simulation” (Baudrillard, Ecstasy 16). For Baudrillard, this transference from the real to the hyperreal brings about the collapse of the distinctions between subject/object and reality/representation by means of technological simulation. Within this virtual space, the concept of alienation disappears. The subject no longer differs from itself and is, therefore, indifferent to itself. From a Baudrillardian perspective, this “indifference to oneself” is a mirror-image of all these kinds of indifference: “The indifference of space,” “political indifference,” “sexual indifference” and the individual’s indifference to oneself (Baudrillard, Illusion 108). That is, the subject has left behind all of the embodied bounds of material worlds, and then enters a virtual world where “the subject is neither the one nor the other; it is merely the Same” (Baudrillard, Transparency 22). To be more specific, Baudrillard deals with the escape from embodiment of the lived-body and its limitations in cyberculture. Not only Baudrillard reads cyberpunk as social theory, Doug Kellner also regards -6-.

(14) cyberpunk as an analytic resource for the postmodern social theory. As Kellner indicates in Media Culture, cyberpunk science fiction can be read as a sort of social theory, while Baudrillard’s futuristic postmodern social theory can be read in turn as science fiction. This optic also suggests a deconstruction of sharp oppositions between literature and social theory, showing that much social theory contains a narrative and vision of the present and future, and that certain types of literature provide cogent mappings of the contemporary environment and, in the case of cyberpunk, of future trends. (Kellner 299) He suggests that cyberpunk involves the postmodern literary expression and cultural milieu from which it derives inspiration. By operating outside the law, cyberpunk takes on a politically subversive connotation of the uses of technology and science. Because of the various numbers of significations at play, postmodern culture and cyberpunk study should be considered together when dealing with the cyberpunk text. As I have pointed out, various strands of contemporary social and cultural theory bring up many of the themes inherent to cyberpunk. Other writers like De Landa systematically examines the consequences for the human sciences. Through a materialist non-metaphorical reading of Deleuze and Guattari, De Landa has outlined a theory of “stratification” that the complementary functions of “sorting out” and “consolidation” are shown to be behind structural forms. Based on computer simulations of cultural, social and economic processes in cyberspace, the future of social theory will be in the construction of new “epistemological reservoirs” (Featherstone and Burrows 14). De Landa suggests that the social sciences have to begin the process of “purging” some of their domain assumptions. The closed and static notion of stability has been replaced by the new science of systems in which our -7-.

(15) understanding of the world is fundamentally altered.. The Virtual Body in Cyberspace Among various scholarships concerned with the relationship between the biological organism and the artificial, the notions of the body’s lack of clear boundaries play a prominent part. Bioengineering and bionics (biological electronics) especially relate to this context. According to Dani Cavallaro, the former term focuses on the application of engineering methodologies to the body through studying the system of the biological organism in terms of the mechanical properties of substances, such as prosthetics and hospital equipment to include engineering at the cellular level. The later concentrates on the possibility of applying biological processes to technology and works on the premise that certain design principles characteristic of the human body might be used as models for producing new mechanical devices (Cavallaro 74). Cyberpunk echoes contemporary developments of technologies to show the ever-changing boundaries between the body and technology in an imaginative articulation. In Gibson’s cyberspace, Walled City, character’s body flows in a world of temporal and spatial dislocation. According to Cavallaro, though technologies seem to take the materiality of the body away, “[i]mmersion in the virtual environments produced by technoscience does not automatically amount to an experience of disembodiment for it is grounded in ritual/ceremonial experiences of an eminently material nature” (78-79). Cavallaro makes it quite clear that the relationship between the organic and the artificial is an ever-changing boundary. She concentrates on the application of technological processes to the body by promoting specific mentally needs and desires. In Cyberpunk and Cyberculture, Cavallaro focuses on the media malaise in the virtual singer. She regards Idoru as a “desiring machine” that -8-.

(16) “servers to channel the media-generated yearnings of fans and consumers into an intricate structure of mutating images” (81). Idoru organizes the bodies of its fans by regimenting their desires. It carries traces of personal life stories, submerged memories, and fleeting scenes, sounds and images. Proceeding from a similar assumption of Gibson’s construct of Idoru and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of corporeality, Cavallaro argues that the virtual idol is not only deployed to evoke Rez’s fans’ desire, but also presented as a perfect figure to attract their consumption. According to Cavallaro, Idoru “exemplifies the idea that bodies are technological products and that technology, in turn, embodies specific cultural forms of production and consumption” (79). Designed as a corporate commodity by the male software designers, the virtual idol is a digital representation of male fancies in popular culture. Gibson draws upon issues such as public space and urban condition throughout his work, especially in Virtual Light. Since Gibsonian concept of cyberspace about cultural, economic and social phenomena provides a sociologically coherent dystopic vision of a near future, cyberpunk and cyberculture thus become analytic resources for cultural critics like Jean Baudrillard, Doug Kellner and De Landa. As De Landa calls for a radical shift in the methodological implications of cyberculture, this essay intends to offer a reconstruction of the body/mind dichotomy and a reconstitution of cyberspatial virtual environments. In order to provide an imagination of the posthuman future, I would like to carry out a concise survey on Gibson’s cyberpunk fiction, Idoru, in this thesis. At the end of All Tomorrow’s Parties, Gibson leaves undeveloped and unanswered the implications of Rei Toei’s multiple emergence. In many ways, while Gibson has set the stage for a posthuman interrogation of the patterning of presence, he still remains those implications ambiguous. Although Gibson cannot offer closure to the Bridge sequence, he leaves the emergence of Rei -9-.

(17) Toei, as an emergent system based on randomness, for readers to think about the next evolutionary step of information.. Research Questions In this thesis, I would reconsider the advent of the virtual idol by questioning the understanding of the virtual idol as a representation of a biological body: What makes the virtual idol different from other representations of living celebrities? How this interaction of body and machine becomes so well-established in common conceptions of technology? The human beings create virtual idols and animated computer creations which appear as singers or catwalk models, to have their appearance youthful or attractive in order to match consumer tastes of nowadays. Moreover, virtual idols are designed by computer programmers as female characters with slender figures and tender personalities. In Gibson’s Idoru, the figure of the virtual idol, though artificial, represents an underlying narrative of conservative view points of sexuality and gender. Can this phenomenon be interpreted as an objectification of the female? Does it mean that people tend to project their ideal figures on to those virtual idols? What transformations govern the connections between users and virtual idols? The development of technology makes more possibilities and breaks limits of human’s capabilities such as the creation of cyborgs and virtual idols. But will we humans create “something” opposite to our plan? Could it be possible for a revenge on humans from another Frankenstein’s creature? Just like what the protagonist said in Margaret Atwood’s science fiction Oryx and Crake: “Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much? How far is too far?” (206) Identifying the virtual idol within techno-cultural production and imagination, this thesis aims to embrace the possibilities of crafting a value that - 10 -.

(18) rejects the classic humanist divisions of the human and the non-human in the face of such technologies.. Methodology The above questions pertain to the virtual idol and its phenomenon with a posthumanist rethinking of the articulation of humans with intelligent machines. To investigate the virtual idol within techno-cultural production and imagination, I turn to N. Katherine Hayles. According to Hayles, “The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles, How 3). In How We Became Posthuman, Hayles challenges the human-posthuman dichotomy. She supposes, “If human essence is freedom from the wills of others,” the posthuman is “post” not because it is necessarily unfree but because there is no a priori way to identify a self-will that can be clearly distinguished from an other-will (4). Hayles’s critique of the cybernetic view of the posthuman is motivated by Hans Moravec’s dream of transplanting one’s consciousness into the cyberspace. In Mind Children, he imagines a future that a person’s mind can be liberated from his body because the identity of a person is the pattern and the consciousness in one’s head. Through understanding human being as a set of informational processes, this construction implied that embodiment is not essential to human being. Accordingly, Hayles attempts to discuss the following three issues. First of all, how does information lose its body? In other words, how does information come to be regarded as a separable stuff from the material substrates. Secondly, how was the cyborg created as a technological artifact and cultural icon? Lastly, how is a historically specific construction called the human giving away to a different construction called the - 11 -.

(19) posthuman (2)? That is, we leave the old cosmos characterized by presence and absence, entering a world where the binary of pattern and randomness computes. Part of her questions of the conception of the posthuman share similar points with my research questions about the possibility of new ways of thinking about the humanist subjectivity and what being human means. Hence, the methodology that I intend to perform upon cyberculture and cyberpunk will be further elaborated in the light of the following Halyes’s theoretical statements. Halyes makes reference in relation to the history of cybernetics: the three main movements or “waves” of cybernetics are homeostasis (1945-1960), reflexivity (1960-1985) and virtuality (1985 to the present). She does not just provide a historical examination of the history of cybernetic but explores the complex interplay between embodied forms of subjectivity and arguments for disembodiment throughout the cybernetic tradition. Halyes offers the following four assumptions of the posthuman: Firstly, the posthuman is a new kind of subjectivity that privileges informational pattern over material instantiation. Therefore, embodiment in a biological substrate is not seen as an inevitability of life but an accident of history. Both “humanist” and “cybernetic posthuman” perspectives engage in the erasure of embodiment from subjectivity. While the former views cognition taking precedence over the body as an object to possess and master, the later imagines the body as a receptacle for data and information. The erasure of embodiment, including sex, race and ethnicity, in the cybernetic construction of the posthuman takes place in ways that have not occurred in other critiques of the liberal humanist subject, especially in feminist and postcolonial theories (4). With Hayles’s posthumanist views and cybernetic theories about the binary opposition between embodiment and disembodiment, this thesis would explain what embodied forms of subjectivity means in the cybernetic tradition - 12 -.

(20) and illustrate the complex interrelationships between subjects, their bodies and the cybernetics. Secondly, the posthumanist view regards consciousness as an epiphenomenon. The implication is that consciousness is not the main show in the evolutionary process but merely a minor subsystem “running its program of self-construction and self-assurance while remaining ignorant of the actual dynamics of complex systems” (286). Conscious mastery is not the essence of human self-identity, but “merely the story consciousness tells itself to explain results that actually come about through chaotic dynamics and emergent structures” (288). In the field of Artificial Intelligence, consciousness can be created inside a machine as an intelligence comparable to that of a human. By contrast, in Artificial Life, human consciousness is regarded as an epiphenomenon of nervous systems for intelligent machines to understand human beings. This refashioning of the human into the posthuman deconstructs the liberal humanist subject, an emphasis on anthropocentric views, because “the essential function for both intelligent machines and humans is processing information” (239). Hayles’s insight into the essence of human and her posthumanist thinking would help me dive into discussion of anthropocentric views and the blurred boundary between the human and the non-human issues. Thirdly, the posthumanist view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to operate, so that expanding or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born (3). Fourthly, the the posthumanist view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. Accordingly, the posthuman has no essential differences or absolute distinctions between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals (3). Hayles’s - 13 -.

(21) views of the posthuman offer me resources for thinking about extending embodied awareness in ways that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis (291). Hayles questions the materiality/information separation by complicating the leap from embodied reality to abstract information. In her another essay, “Embodied Virtuality: Or How to Put Bodies Back into the Picture,” she discusses “virtual reality” to oppose the conception that regards cyberspace as a disembodied medium. She questions the reason why we want to leave the body behind by erasing it from cyberspace discourse. In fact, the bodies are actively involved in the construction of virtuality from determining the precise configurations of a virtual reality interface to influencing the speed with which we can read a CRT screen (Hayles, “Embodied” 1). Then, why do so many conceptions regard cyberspace as a disembodied medium if we, being embodied, can interact with virtual worlds? Hayles finds a clue from the ways to form constructions of virtuality: a boundary between the body and the screen image is marked to create the illusion of disembodiment. And then, the image is reified as an alternative universe where our subjectivities can inhabit. After erasing awareness of the perceptual processes which brought this “world” into being, “the illusion compelling is now close to the surface: we want this alternate world to exist so that the body can be left behind, and we know the body can be left behind because this world exists” (2). In the age of virtuality, the body is regarded as a flawed and superfluous container while the mind equates subjectivity. The dream of transcending the body to achieve immortality comes true with the mind continuing in its incarnation as electronically coded information. To challenge the assumption that cyberspace is a disembodied medium, Hayles conceptualizes the concept of virtualiy from two perspectives of subjectivity: one links the subject to the mind, the other links the subject to the body. Hayles suggests - 14 -.

(22) that the binary construction of masculine/feminine still exists in the domain of cyberspace, as Nancy Stepan has shown taking race and gender as example, the characteristics of one duality can transfer onto another when the two are consistently associated (Hayles, “Embodied” 3). Yet this duality becomes mind/body: mind is superior to body while silicon technology is superior to protein organism. Thus, in the discursive practices among these terms, the “stigmatized terms” (body, organism, female) are erased or left behind. Hayles uses the “semiotic square” to transcend the persistent binary thinking by explicating the concealed terms which help to generate meaning and stabilize significance (Hayles, How 247). Both sets of dualities, “presence/absence” and “randomness/pattern,” are used to investigate the implication of virtuality as a crossing between “materiality” and “information.” (see fig. 1). Fig. 1. Virtuality and the Semiotic Square (Hayles, “Embodied” 9). The pattern/randomness and presence/absence dialectics interact dynamically with their partners. Through these interactions, new synthetic terms arise. The semiotic square shows “the possible relationships that can emerge when materiality and information mutually imply each other, thus providing a theoretical framework in which such apparently diverse ideas as hyperreality and mutation can be understood - 15 -.

(23) as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon” (Hayles, “Embodied” 10). The body is no longer regarded as simply material object or informational pattern. This interplay between pattern and presence can explain how the virtual body is constituted. In posititng a shift from presence/absence to randomness/pattern, Hayles shows how these categories can be transformed from the inside to arrive at new kinds of cultural configurations. That is, it signals the end of a certain conceptions that have applied to the fraction of humanity having the wealth and power to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings. Hayles’s semiotic square has much in common with Gibson’s narrative in cyberpunk. It can be used to investigate the implications of virtuality as a crossing between information and materiality. For example, the contrast between the limitation of Rez-the-flesh and the power of Rez-the-icon that consists of patterns without randomness highlights the advantages of pattern over presence. As an extension of the body, Rez has attained a kind of immortality. Here I would like to discuss the subject in the flow of relations with multiple others in contemporary posthuman address. When body and mind interact, any reconfiguration of the body must necessarily affect how subjectivity is constituted.. Outline of Chapters This thesis deals with cyberspace and virtual idols in cyberpunk fiction, and the sample texts include William Gibson’s Idoru (1996) as well as the film S1m0ne. The whole thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One provides a brief history of cyberpunk in relation to postmodernity and cyberculture. As a representation of the near future world, cyberpunk can be interpreted as a metaphor for imagining postmodern conditions. Meanwhile, cyberpunk also represents the social, cultural, and - 16 -.

(24) technological realities. Thus, the focus is placed on topical issues of cyberpunk such as the impact of technology on everyday lives and on all sorts of spatio-temporal experiences. The discussion proceeds to different kinds of technological production like cyborg and AI fictionalized by cyberpunk. This chapter also highlights the controversial issues concerning the border between actual and virtual reality. To investigate how critical thinking has reacted to placing cyberpunk in postmodern context, the theorists to which this chapter refers include N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti, and Cary Wolfe. Here I especially rely on Hayles’s posthumanist studies to investigate the cyberbodies within techno-cultural production and imagination. This chapter would also discuss Hayles’s semiotic square. This theoretical framework crosses the persistent binary thinking by explicating the concealed terms which help to generate meaning and stabilize significance. Chapter Two presents the implications of becoming posthuman. I will draw on Hayles’s posthumanist theory to explore cyberpunk by reading cyberculture and the virtuality. This chapter attempts to confirm the following theses. First of all, the posthuman is a new kind of subjectivity that privileges informational pattern over material instantiation. And information came to be regarded as a separable stuff from the material substrates. Secondly, conscious mastery is not the essence of human self-identity. This conception proves the deconstruction of the liberal humanist subject in cybernetics. Thirdly, since the body is regarded as the original prosthesis we all learn to operate, expanding or replacing the body with other prosthesis becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourthly, the posthuman configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. To elaborate a more solid understanding of the posthuman, the second section of Chapter Two provides a survey on works of Cary Wolfe and Donna - 17 -.

(25) Haraway. I attempt to recontextualizes our taken-for-granted normal human experience and rethink the “human” as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals (human or nonohuman). With a detailed analysis of posthumanist views, I argue that posthumanism does not make an absolute fracture from the legacy of humanism since the human, as a first-order observer, still unavoidably recognizes nonhumans/animals as significant others in a hierarchical system. Finally, in the last chapter, I would interpret the context and narrative in cyberpunk by adopting André Nusselder’s methodology, a Lacanian analysis of cyberspace, to deal with the interrelationships between the Other and the subject itself. One of the key themes of cyberpunk involves a combination of both organic and artificial life in which “human beings” search new ways to break the boundaries between self and other, natural and artificial, and those problematic dualisms. Cyberpunk thus provides possibilities to break these contradictory dualisms. Gibson’s works address fundamental questions about disembodiment. It comes into existence to connect the lacks among the Other, the subject itself and the symbolic realities. My main concern is the fluid boundary between the biological body and the artificial one in cyberpunk. Besides, I would focus on the virtual idol within techno-cultural production and imagination. To find out the origin of computer-generated media figure, I would take Gibson’s Idoru and the film S1m0ne as sample texts for clarifying problems of the interplay between human bodies and digital technologies. This chapter argues that the virtual idol in Gibson’s cyberpunk fiction provides the possibility of transcending the binary of biological bodies and information technologies that creates a metaphorical union without being seduced by fantasies of boundless power and disembodied immortality. Besides, this chapter would mention a most recently virtual celebrity, Hatsune - 18 -.

(26) Miku, and those virtual idols in Idoru and S1m0ne. Hatsune Miku appears to share more similarities with Gibson’s idoru. Like Rei, she revolutionized the traditional media market through emerging from the digital realm into an analogue reality. However, compare with Rei, Hatsune Miku is more than a particular work qualifies as corporate property for their own profit, but a “royalty-free” media for users to make any further distribution or publication of the works for individual, non-commercial end-use. Without copyright problem, every users of Vocaloid software can create their own songs or remix other users’ compositions. As technological progress, maybe one day in the future, the virtual idol would replace the actual one. Perhaps the greatest reason for Hatsune Miku’s commercial success is that at some point she stopped being treated as a software program and started being regarded as a legitimate idol. The lines that once separated humans from machines and analog from digital have been blurred.. Expected Findings In cyberpunk fiction, I find that posthumans regard their bodies as flawed and superfluous containers rather that the ground of being. A combination of both organic and artificial life in which human beings search new ways to break the boundaries between self and other, natural and artificial is also the key themes of cyberpunk. In examining the phenomena of virtual reality, I hope to explore specific problematic dualisms of mind/body, human/machine, natural/artificial, self/other, right/wrong, and so forth. In my opinion, the cyberpunk literature provides a possibility to breakdown these contradictory dualisms. Hence, this thesis intends to offer a reconsideration of the body/mind dichotomy and a reconstitution of cyberspatial virtual environments. To rethink subjectificaion, spatialization and temporality interact with the Other in the - 19 -.

(27) cyberpunk fiction, this essay deals with William Gibson’s works. His novels provide case studies for investigating the technical-cultural concept through embedding ideas in the specific narratives about culture and science. My main concern in this thesis is the fluid boundary between the biological body and the artificial body in cyberpunk. In Gibson’s Idoru, the division of the subject/object dichotomy lays the foundation for the mediation of the posthuman coded as information topology. The virtual idol Rei transcends of the boundary between flesh, data and digital information, creating a metaphorical union with the biologic rock star Rez. From a posthumanist view, this thesis aims to embrace the possibilities of crafting a value that rejects the classic humanist divisions of the human and the non-human in the face of such technologies. In short, this thesis attempts to rethink the human existence which changes from natural existence to technological existence.. - 20 -.

(28) Chapter One Cyberpunk in Contexts. Reimaging the Body New technologies are reshaping our cultural forms. Among the various technologies concerned with the relationship between the natural and the artificial, we are facing the potentiality of a future world in which our humanity itself will be transformed beyond recognition. During the Second World War, the invention of a new type of liminal machine exhibited lots of the behaviors characterizing living entities, such as homeostasis, self-directed action, adaptability, or reproduction. The expansion of this new realm suggests a possibility of the combination of nature and modern technologies. The liminal machine may be any self-organizing system. For instance, a physical robot operates without centralized control and mirrors the purposeful action of organic life. These liminal machines exhibit what John Johnston terms “machinic life,” which describes “the forms of nascent life that have been made to emerge in and through technical interactions in human-constructed environments” (Johnston iv). In The Allure of Machinic Life, Johnston suggests that machinic life mirrors “the behavior associated with organic life while also suggesting an altogether different form of ‘life,’ an ‘artificial’ alternative, or parallel, not fully answerable to the ontological priority and sovereign prerogatives of the organic, biological realm” (Johnston 1). For Johnston, this machinic life is not distinctly opposed to organic life. Rather, it actualizes its fundamental principles in another newly animated area in which “the biosphere and artifacts from the human world touch and pass into each other, in effect constituting a ‘machinic phylum1’” (1). With the evolution of liminal 1. The “machinic phylum” is a term Deleuze and Guattari used to describe the existence of a special - 21 -.

(29) machine, the human subject is constituted a human-machine cyborg body. It is a process of becoming machinic which constitutes new forms of life. In the 21st century, the intermingling of human bodies and machines is more obvious. For example, a human with artificial cardiac pacemaker or prosthetic implants would be considered a “cyborg,” since these attachments can keep the person alive or enhance his/her sensoriums or biological capabilities above and beyond what’s currently normal for humans. Recent progress in life sciences anticipates that cyborg technology will form the future human evolution. A “cyborg,” the coinage of “cybernetic” and “organism,” hybridizes both organic and synthetic parts. In the context of science fiction, cyborgs are often portrayed as beings with both machine and organism. When it comes to the figure of cyborg in SF, most of the people may think about Data in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and the feature films or the Japanese anime Ghosts in the Shell (1995). We might have no problem considering Iron Man (2008), the super hero who fitted with a heart pacemaker, as a human rather than a cyborg. But if one day in the future, people’s brains are jacked into computers, bodies are invaded by technology, limbs and organs are amputated and replaced by machines, to such an extent that their figures are barely recognizable as human.2 Can we still call them humans? Conversely, to what degree do non-humans share other characteristics still thought to be exclusively humans? We no longer have a clear idea of what a human being is. It seems that cyborgs offer the possibilities of post-bodied realm which crosses over the opposition between the organic and the non-organic, the human and the non-human. They show how the machinic phylum comes about and how it operates in the history and nature. Manual DeLanda, following Deleuze and Guattari, extended this realm to include all forms of non-organic life with self-organization. It is a different way of conceptualizing the development of technology. 2 See the related news. Victoria Woollaston. “Meet Frank, the world’s first walking, talking bionic man complete with artificial limbs and a beating HEART.” Daily Mail. 29 Nov. 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2465853/Meet-Frank-worlds-walking-talking-bionicman-complete-artificial-limbs-beating-HEART.html#ixzz3VB4h3sRB> - 22 -.

(30) and post-human forms of existence repeatedly suggesting that boundaries are fluid. And the increasingly blurred boundaries among humans, animals, and machines are frequently invoked when one questions the difference between humans and non-humans. The very concept of the human has been extraordinarily controversial over the last decades. Many theorists have attempted to explore the vague boundary between the physical and artificial bodies. On the one hand, some theorists believe that humans are about to enter a new era. Francis Fukuyama, for example, in his Our Posthuman Future, argues that the contemporary biotechnology will alter the concept of the human: “the sum of the behavior and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from genetic rather than environmental factors” (Fukuyama 130). And this new biotechnology moves human beings into a “posthuman” stage of history. According to Fukuyama, traditional argument about the boundary between nature and nurture is transferred by the argument that human nature is a meaningless concept because of the plasticity of human behavior. On the surface look, human beings look, speak and act variously from person to person. Most of the apparent differences between human beings are conventional rather than natural. Human nature is not fixed, since human beings could be shaped by their social environments and thus behave in open-ended ways. Although human nature has provided a stable continuity to humans’ experience as a species, modern natural science has cooperated in expanding our view of who qualifies as a human being. As time goes by, the posthuman future may give human beings the capacity gradually to alter shared humanity over time. However, this shared humanity still locate and direct human beings by drawing boundary lines of humans with animals and machines. The concept of who qualifies as human beings thus marks the space in which humans are distinguished from every other living - 23 -.

(31) creatures. It also appears that this preponderance of human beings marks or makes an absolute break from non-human/animal. On the other hand, other theorists see the posthuman future as breaking down conventional assumptions and boundaries, especially those separating “human” from “animal” and “human” from “machine.” In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway first reflects on digital technology and the artificial intelligence of the early 1990s. Extending the meaning of “cyborg,” Haraway explores a combination of both organic and artificial life in which human beings search new ways to break the boundaries between nature and culture. Haraway suggests that the cyborg body represents a humanoid hybrid of computer technology and human flesh. From her statement, I associate cyborg monsters with the monster Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This well-known story focuses on the issue of what constitutes humanity. Victor Frankenstein, a student of natural philosophy, would like to create an ideal perfect man with about eight feet in height and proportionately large. However, he created something horrible that was opposed to his plan. With the plot about Frankenstein’s fascination with new science and the creation of a human being, from Haraway’s perspective, the Creature can be considered as a cyborg monster which takes on the image of independent woman as “other” than the traditional female figure. Making some alterations in the concept of gender, Haraway uses the metaphor of the cyborg to encourage feminists to move beyond naturalism and essentialism. Though Haraway’s argument is mostly labelled as a post-gender statement, her concept of the cyborg attempts to break away from rigid boundaries. Therefore, her feminist cyborg offers the potential for liberation from the confines of specific problematic dualisms of self/other, male/female, natural/artificial, right/wrong, human/machine, mind/body and so on in the cyberpunk literature. - 24 -.

(32) My thesis argues that we should not try to imagine a “posthuman culture” or “posthuman age” that comes “after” the human when dealing with the existence of non-human subjects. Instead, it is only through a fundamental change in the concept of the human that we can move beyond the problem of anthropocentrism, speciesism and the dialectic of the human/non-human dualism.. Cyberbodies in Cyberpunk A number of writers use science fiction as a device to comment upon the dilemma of such contemporary issues as cosmetic surgery, biotechnology, genetic engineering and nano-technology. Their fictional worlds deal with the potential consequences of futuristic technology and scientific innovations, from outer space travel to inner space landscapes of psychology and the media. Two common themes of science fiction are bodily modifications and the system operators.3 Through these imaginative contents they question the key analytical categories people have long used to structure the biological, the technological, the natural and the artificial. For example, Philip K. Dick explores the issue of defining qualities which separate human beings from androids in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). This novel focuses on the development and use of an empathy test, the Voigt-Kampff test. It is designed to measure empathetic responses. Unable to be empathetic, androids fail the test by hesitating in response to what should be normal human responses. But the test turns out to be useless for detection of androids. Joanna Russ was another SF writer who challenges gender roles and sexist views during the 1970s with her novel, The Female Man (1975). The story focuses on four female characters living in different time and place. They encounters different views on gender roles when they 3. System operators move around in cyberspace. Their bodies are connected to computers for input and output flows of information. - 25 -.

(33) cross over to each other’s worlds. The novel ends with the characters returning to their own worlds, each with a new idea of what it means to be a woman. These SF writers claim that categories deriving from the fundamental divisions among subjects, their bodies and the outside world, are in danger of decomposing. Hence, science fiction which features computers, information technology and cyberbodies make predictions about the human future with utopian and dystopian possibilities. The history of cyberpunk, as a subgenre of science fiction, can be traced back to the 1980s. The coining of the word “cyberpunk” first appeared as the title of Bruce Bethke’s short story “Cyberpunk.” It is a fusion of two very different words, “cyber” and “punk.” The term “cyber” stands for “cybernetics,” which is relevant to the exploring of regulatory systems, including their structures, possibilities and limitations. On the other hand, “punk” is a subculture that emerged in the mid-1970s. The punk subculture is centered on a diverse array of ideologies, fashions and forms of expression. It is mostly concerned with anti-establishment or progressive views and the promotion of individual freedom. Many cyberpunk protagonists usually belong to the working or lower middle-class. These anti-heroes are placed in difficult circumstances which they have little chance to overcome. The fusion of these two words thus emphasizes the main idea of cyberpunk: high technology and antisocial attitudes. Most of the cyberpunk novels feature a near-future Earth taking place online or in cyberspace, such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and William Gibson’s Bridge trilogy4. Films like The Martix Triology (1999, 2003), Avatar (2004), and Sleep Dealer (2008) can also be categorized as cyberpunk. Cyberpunk projects a dystopian vision for postmodern times. Stories are set in a world of the illegal which is a combination of high technology and low life. The most 4. William Gibson’s Bridge trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). - 26 -.

(34) visible example is William Gibson, whose novel Neuromancer is characterized as a near-future world of computer networks and artificially intelligent entities. The protagonist, Case, is a talented cyberspace hacker. He can jack his consciousness into the global computer network in a virtual reality dataspace called the “Matrix.” However, his central nervous system is injured as punishment for his betrayal, leaving him unable to jack into the Matrix. The setting is centered on the virtual environment or cyberspace which liberates the protagonist from the constraints of the physical body. The technology and computers represent the cyber part of the term while the street life in the fiction provides the punk part. As cyborgs currently are on the rise, the rejection of the physical body as mere flesh leads to the celebration of the freedoms of disembodied subjectivity in cyberspace. This discourse of the disembodiment has been central in Gibson’s cyberpunk novels. In his cyberspace world, the human body is like a mutable container of the self identity and consciousness. Many characters in his novel have their body parts readily being replaced, like Ratz the bartender’s stainless steel teeth and prosthesis arm in Neuromancer. And even dead bodies are recycled for the reuse of hearts or kidneys in the service of strangers. In the following discussion, I would be concerned with these different bodies. In cyberpunk, the body is often referred to as the “flesh” and represented as weak, mortal, irrational. It should be left behind or blended with computer technology. It has been seen as the disembodiment of the subject. Thus, subjectivity becomes much more varied and flexible, surpassing the limitations of the physical body. The new technologies offer an escape from the conceptual dualisms of natural/artificial and body/machine and open up spaces for the human body to be transcended through a greater degree of flexibility. Some are human-machine hybrids like animal or human - 27 -.

(35) transplantations and prostheses, while others are autonomous artificial intelligences which can only exist in the cyberspace. Once a particular location has been selected, from outer space to inner cyberspace and virtual reality, it allows interactions among a variety of manifestations of the “body” to question the limits of humanity. Examples of blending machines and humans are provided by such films as the RoboCop series (1987, 1990, 2014), the Terminator series (1984, 1991) and Blade Runner (1982). Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987) is about the transformation of the almost-dead policeman into a cyborg. The film describes the doubts and complexities of the human mind struggling to oppose the invasion of the technologically rebuilt human body. These movie characters present visions of the bodies ranging from pure machine-based military figures to genetically customized human simulation. If the interchangeability of bodies and machines is a recurring theme in science fiction, equally important is the representations of cyborgs. Here, the term “cyborg” dose not only mean a combination of biological and artificial parts anymore. The combination of human and technology, including cell phones or computers, can also be called the cyborg. Take the network computer system for example. Through the application of the Internet to connect with millions of computers across the world, people become much more capable than they were before: information networks and communication technologies can be used by individuals through global interlinking of computers. These world-wide networks of computers intermingle the physical and the virtual bodies. Unlike the earlier prosthetic technological extensions, this networked visual avatar body creates a new type of “virtual cyborgian body5” which enables humans to extend the physical body and psyche to reach beyond the immediate 5. Although the cyborg typically represents a merging of human and machine, Donna Haraway and other theorists, like N. Katherine Hayles and Andy Clark, argue for a broader definition of the cyborg. They bring up a definition including our daily interaction with the cybernetic technologies (Halyes, How We Became Posthuman 115). - 28 -.

(36) physical environment. “Virtual” indicates the transformation from the user’s pulse, heartbeat and blood flow to the graphic and audio information in the VR environments. That is, the computer technology has been expanded from a person’s extension of the body image and sensation to a vehicle for human to escape from the body. And the image of the “cyborgian body” represents a communication channel based upon the accurate interaction and exchange of information, messages and feedback within a virtual world. The creation of virtual idols becomes a further challenge to the disembodied body. As computer-generated media figures, virtual idols exist independently in the digital media world. They do not need to eat, drink, or excrete, their bodies will not get tired and they will not become sick, either: in one word, they are immortal. These idealized idols are produced and packaged to maximize consumption, from popular music to advertising of other products and services. Virtual idols open up fresh opportunities for experiment recombination and play between human/computer relationships. Take Gibson’s Idoru as example. Through Laney, the novel’s protagonist, Gibson explores the conflict between the actual person and the virtual celebrity. It is in the abstract space of the Lo/Rez fan club data bases that Laney encounters the interrelationship of space, place and digital architexture that is the idoru, Rei Toei. Idoru gradually introduces to the reader the concept of the posthuman-as-data structure, from Laney’s unsuccessful search for the information surrounding the idoru’s “life.” Laney described his first sight of the idoru as follow: “She is not cyberpunk; she is information. She is the tip of an iceberg, no, an Antarctica, of information. Looking at her face would trigger it again: she was some unthinkable volume of information. She induced the nodal vision in some unprecedented way; she induced it as narrative” (Gibson 233). Such descriptions - 29 -.

(37) conjure images of cyborgs. The idoru is an architectonic systems of information and data, but Laney can watch Rei Toei’s hands and the way she ate. Although lacking in flesh, the figure of the idoru becomes a new mode of being. The potential of computer technology does challenge traditional boundaries. The combination of the physical and the technological marks the reduction of the body to merely meat. By leaving the body behind, computer technologies such as VR systems take control over the nature of humanity and the self. As I observed above, for some years now there have been growing concerns about the apparent growing dependence of humans upon computers. The recent exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taipei, Post-humanist Desire (2013-14), addressed these anxieties. Curated by Dr. Ming Turner, this exhibition responds to the continuously developing and significant theme of the “post-human,” under three subjects: the “cloned human,” the “transgendered human,” and the “transformed human.” A group of twenty-five artists were invited to show their works which interpret the effects of body concepts and gender consciousness upon the psychology, value, and culture. The content and structure of the three aspects of this exhibition questions our anthropocentric views and guides us to discuss the following issues: In this modern computer-mediated world, how should we define ourselves as human beings with so many divergent and complex life expectations and identities? And to what extent can we seek new ways to break the boundaries between nature and culture? Though new technologies are often presented as a hopeful key to a better future, we users become victims rather than beneficiaries. Rather than being delivered from the restrictions and bonds of the mundane reality and the physical body, we are actually extremely limited. We do not transcend our physical bodies, but are addicted to computing as if it were a drug. From personal computers to smartphones, we rely on computer technologies too much - 30 -.

(38) to live without it. These products seem to be regarded not only as useful instruments for practical tasks but actually as defining aspects of our identities and value systems. The more we use the Internet’s networking tools, the more likely that our human bodies are becoming indistinguishable from their computer prostheses.. Cyberspace in Cyberpunk William Gibson and other cyberpunk writers construct visions of the future worlds of information space. In 1984, Gibson coined the phrase “cyberspace” in his novel, Neuromancer, and thus created an iconography for the Information Age long before the invention of the Internet. Cyberspace, as Gibson formulates, combines all the information around the world and can be entered by cranial implants which “allow a physical connection between computer and person, all the world’s data collected and pictured and access to this data through virtual reality” (Jordan 22). As a generic term, cyberspace refers to an information space in which users can be linked together. Cyberspace enables the users to form and reform their social groups on the basis of temporary modes of identification. According to Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, some of the main variants of cyberspace include Barlovian cyberspace, Virtual Reality (VR), and Gibsonian cyberspace (Featherstone and Burrows 5). Barlovian cyberspace is only recently available. Virtual Reality is emerging. And Gibsonian cyberspace is fictional. Barlovian cyberspace refers to the international networks of computers consisting of some 30 million people. For Barlovian cyberspace, interactions use both telephones and computer network systems. Since the interaction relies upon only a limited range of human senses, more advanced forms of cyberspace are used to simulate the face and the body interactions more vividly by using co-ordinated multi-media systems. - 31 -.

(39) Virtual Reality attempts to surround the human body with a computer-generated visual, audible and tactile multi-media system to stimulate our other senses. Besides providing an artificial sensorium of sight, sound and touch, VR systems produce a simulated environment in response to the movements of the body. However, sometimes graphics resolution may have much delay in response to the interactive movements of the body between the simulated environment and iconic representations. Through the use of computer technologies, VR systems aim to provide a nearly real environment in the sense that simulates a sense of presence. Gibsonian cyberspace, as Gibson also calls “the matrix,”’ is “a global computer network of information where operators can access (‘jack-in’) through headsets (‘trodes’) via a computer terminal (‘cyberspace deck’)” (6). This fictional world intermingles the internet and VR systems. Operators move inside the three-dimensional system of data simulated environments where every document is coded into different highly vivid architectural forms. Gibsonian cyberspace also allows for realistic interaction between operators and other autonomous posthuman artificial intelligences (AIs). Other intelligent entities even live in cyberspace, like some previously downloaded personality constructs of humans. The virtual community, Kowloon Walled City, in Idoru gives a more detailed description of Gibsonian cyberspace. The city sits in near-future Tokyo where human and posthuman beings interact through network relations between physical space and cyberspace. Essentially, the main theme of cyberpunk focuses on the intersection of various urban settings in cyberspace and technological body modification. While cyberspace stands for the space computer networks create, what Neal Stephenson terms “avatars” in his Gibson inspired novel, Snow Crash, represents operators in cyberspace. After logging in, operators connect to cyberspace and enter their own individualized place - 32 -.

(40) or move to other virtual spaces. Avatars in cyberspace are constructed through self-description, the style of one’s writing or from any other motley virtual possibilities. The characters in Gibson’s novels use their virtual representations to interact with other people in cyberspace. Gibson offers two different kinds of the cyberbody. The “disembodied” but perceiving consciousness which can be operative in cyberspace and the computer visualization image of human body in virtual space projected by the media. However, in Idoru, Gibson applies the concept of avatars as ways that people employ avatars not only to interact but also to “dwell” in virtual spaces (Henthorme 70). As Ross Farnell demonstrates in “Posthuman Topologies: William Gibson’s ‘Architexture’ in Virtual Light and Idoru,” the central concept of Idoru is the combination of flesh and technology: “the mark on the flesh is also a sign system that uses the body as an ‘instrument of communication,’ a notion commensurate with envisioning the body as information” (Farnell 466). In other words, the user designs a screen persona with both visual and audio features that can interact with others in virtual domains. “In Idoru, avatars do more than project a sense of their users’ identities: they also allow users to reinvent themselves, to be who they would like to be” (Henthorme 70). Farnell stresses in his essay the cyborgian union of organic and cybernetic representing the “new modes of being.” This involution of two heterogeneous creates a Deleuzian assemblage which runs its own line ‘between’ the terms in play…[analog/digital, nature/technology, human/posthuman and beneath assignable relations. The apartheid differences between these relations are replaced by diffractions, differences within, the altered effective and - 33 -.

(41) affective capacities of a new posthuman ethology. (Farnell 473) Hence, from Gibson’s discrimination issues of “Otherness” between humans and posthumans, Farnell proposes that the term “posthuman” should be re-concevied and re-interpreted not as a binary negative of the “human” but as a non-linear genealogy opening multiple futures and permutations. As cyberpunk focuses on virtualities and the interaction between the human and the mechanical, these literary texts actively shape what the above theorists signify and what the technological artifacts mean in cultural contexts. In my opinion, such literary texts provide case studies for investigating the technical-cultural concept through embedding ideas in the specific narratives about culture and science. Through a research of the cyberpunk fiction, this thesis would try to explore the future of the human bodies within various technological innovations. In this regard, the literary texts I would discuss in detail later in this thesis are all cyberpunk fictions, mainly Gibson’s works, which not only invent our future but reflect our present. In looking at cyberpunk, I try to reconsider what has been posed in an abstract sense as the question of technology and what makes us human in today’s world. Then, it may be clear to see what kinds of concepts stand up under the weight of new evidence; what hypotheses seem to have been disproved; and what theories need to be amended in accordance with what we have learned in recent years.. Some Preliminary Views on the Posthuman What does it mean to think beyond the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, natural and artificial, human and non-human? Is it possible to craft a mode of interpretation that responds to our changing understanding of ourselves and the redefinition of humanity’s place in our future world? To solve these - 34 -.

(42) questions, we should put “posthumanism” under consideration. Posthumanism provides a ground to communicate with the humanist principle at the heart of contemporary technologies. The theoretical approaches I have been sketching here will be developed in much more detail in Chapter Two. The term “post-human” originates from Maurice Parmelee’s 1916 Poverty and Social Progress. In a section entitled “Eugenic Measures and the Prevention of Poverty,” Parmelee states that human nature could be changed to the extent that would involve the elimination of fundamental human and mammalian instincts and emotions. His argument identifies “post-human animal.” This term is widely used to describe the divergent and complex life expectations and identities of people in the 21st century. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles states, “The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles, How 3). Hayles demonstrates the shift from the human to the posthuman. She further details, “If human essence is freedom from the wills of others,” the posthuman is “post” not because it is necessarily unfree but because there is no a priori way to identify a self-will that can be clearly distinguished from an other-will (Hayles, How 4). Accordingly, the construction of the posthuman implies that even a biologically unaltered being can be counted as posthuman. This shift from the human to the posthuman evokes the deconstruction of the liberal humanist subject in cybernetics. Hayles’s main concern is not about the human versus the posthuman but an imagination of the future of our posthuman. As her book title says, we have already become posthuman. “[T]he question is not whether we will become posthuman, for posthumanity is already here. Rather, the question is what kind of posthumans we will be” (Hayles, How 246). - 35 -.