Academic Writing Skills Course: Developing Writing, Analysis, Critique, And Grammar

Course Objectives

In his book on the language of science fiction called The Jewel Hinged Jaw Samuel R. Delany pointed out that it is the metonymic disclosure of the science fiction world in the mode of reading which imparts the science fiction to it. To give an instance, as we read along the text the metonymic emergence of absurdity is what makes the text a science fiction i.e., if we read ‘the red sun is high..’ and go along the statement to find out ‘The red sun is high, the blue low’ as the finished sentence, it immediately evokes the aesthetic pleasure of science fiction in mind (Delany and Cheney 7). ‘A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm.’ does not read like a science fiction yet but as we proceed through the chapter 1 of Do Androids Dream of Electric Ship we read the rest of the sentence: ‘‘piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ..”, we are in science fiction already, in familiar ground (Dick 2). Such is the function of Android, it creates a secret metonymic excess over humanity which is only formally possible in science fiction. In the history of western philosophy Descartes was the first one to think of this metonymic block in the mode of cogito ergo sum that the thing which thinks and the thing which is, are not one and the same in ‘I think therefore I am’. The whole philosophy of android seemingly bases itself on it that one’s own narratives and thoughts are controlled elsewhere and the supposedly android subject is alienated from the innermost essence of her/his subjectivity; from  Angel Heart to Blade Runner  this thematic of the subject recovering its lost essence and finding itself to be an android, is a frequent one. Throughout ‘Do Android Dream..’ the difference between utility in disposal of anthropomorphic subject and symbolic status of animals have been differentiated to the point that real lives animals have become fashionable status symbol due to the enormous cultural trend for greater empathy in midst of extinctions and all. In Philip K Dick’s writings, this particular theme of establishing an identity rooted in deep socio symbolic status is intermittent as in the concerned text it appeared as the religion named after Wilbur Mercer which endorses the use of empathy boxes to link users to a virtual reality of collective suffering, i.e. to the substance of the subject. In one sense the quest of Deckard (strangely homophonous with Descartes) to gather enough money for being able to buy an animal of flesh and blood, is also an endeavour to find his own innermost ‘authentic’ substance which will impart existential stability in the course of his life. Thus this text including the filmic adaptation kind of points at the irreducible gap between the feeling of apperception of the subject and ‘the noumenal thing which thinks’ (Zizek 17)ensuing the existence of father in noir genre who controls the subject’s mind by being the noumenal thing and creating the effect of subject’s apperception of itself. In neo-noir and this is its own distinction from noir, this father appears in the guise of a new kind of father which characterizes the ‘post industrial, corporate late capitalism, a father epitomized by Tyrell in Blade Runner, a lone figure of uncanny, ethereal, frail materiality, devoid of a sexual partner’ (Zizek18). When the subject is constituted as if it is deprived of its own symbolic knowledge and its own symbolic knowledge is being ordained by ‘The thing which thinks’, we get the notion of Android which can be traced back to Dr. Frankenstein’s creature whose essential knowledge i.e. substance was at the hand of Frankenstein only but also exceeded his grasp creating the moving contradiction of the literary text. In this context, Dr. Frankenstein can be compared to the classical father figure in noir film while on the other hand Tyrell in ‘Blade Runner’ can be compared to the post noir father figure par excellence who is not in the position of master but in the position of symbolic knowledge itself. The Proto Jungian idea of finding a substantial connection to tfhe collective symbolic order is also prevalent in Dick’s other oeuvres as in Man in the high castle this appeared as the guarantee of originality to pre war artefacts; how can it be symbolically guaranteed that a piece of antique jewellery is original and not a replica?: this question surrounds the whole book in itself (Dick and parker 12). Comparatively, the question posed in ‘Do Androids dream…’ is between human and androids and concerns the problem of authentic distinction which can formally separate human from android, a real flesh and blood animal from an electric sheep. Thus the question which the text raises is simply where is the position of knowledge which can guarantee the originality of the human subject? In this contemplative venture Deckard repeats the gesture of Descartes.

Prerequisites and Transfer Credit

The answer to what makes an artefact an original and not a replica is read in ‘Man in the high castle’ to be simply a piece of paper which is sold with the original and thus guarantees its historicity. In ‘Do androids dream’ this problem appears with an additional twist due to absence of such a piece of paper guaranteeing historicity and originality to the human subject, what makes someone human and not an android, is nowhere to be discerned in reality; not in the body, not in the flesh, even all the authentic memories and fantasies have been meddled with and controlled. This radical non place of substance and absence of innermost knowledge create subjectivity out of it; the hysterical subject who asks who she is. Interestingly the test which was devised to identify any android posing as humans in the text was a kind of question-answer empathy test which functions by stimulating the parts of the collective memory by short circuiting subject’s thought to the preordained repository of knowledge; this test in terms of the text itself is based on the supposedly humane drive towards collective empathy in Mercerism which androids are not supposed to react to when linked to the virtual reality of collective suffering, triggered by questions. The text, disclosing humanity’s own knowledge of itself as decentred, points out the necessary human fantasy of their being androids. Between the two versions of ‘Blade Runner’ i.e. the 1982 version and the director’s cut of 1992, we discern a very nuance difference in ending and compilation with the former one making Deckard’s realization of being an android explicit enough and while the later one just hinting at the possibility of Deckard being a replicant. In contradistinction to the first ending, the second one blurs the human/android distinction in many ways, for instances in the Tyrell building when Deckard proves to Rachael that she is an android by quoting her most intimate child-recollections she did not share with anyone, the camera provides a brief narration of Deckard’s own past memories and childhood memories of a piano and an unicorn, hinting that Deckard’s own innermost memories are always already in the locus of Other; though without explicitly drawing the conclusion (Scott 15). This second version seems more subversive as it clearly states the human condition is itself deprived of its innermost knowledge that the price for the access to reality is that something must remain un-thought and unknown which delineates the stepping stone of human subjectivity itself; in the sense before wondering about the existence of androids out there, we should ask the question how we ourselves are in any way something more than androids. In this sense the idea endorsed by Peter Singer in his book can be referred to, instead of grounding universal equality for each and every human subject, the irreducible difference within them must be invoked. If there needs to be an universal moral guideline besides being inclusive, it must base itself on the difference which is immanent in subjectivity itself. (Singer 9). Interestingly quoting Jameson, Heise in this context reminds us of the self consciousness achieved by science fiction at this particular juncture of its history where the traditional robot has been substituted by the Android-cogito, in this new imagination of the other the emphasis is placed on the flaw of self relation itself; the way the android asks question about its own self certainty.

References

Delany, Samuel R, and Matthew Cheney. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. Wesleyan University Press, 2011. 

Dick, Philip K, and Tony Parker. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. BOOM! Studios, 2015.

Dick, Philip K. The Man in The High Castle. Penguin books, England, 2016.

Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner. Cronenweth, Jordan. The Ladd Company, Warner Bros. 1982

Zizek, Slavoj. “Tarrying with the negative”. Duke university press, Durham, 2014, pp.16-19

Singer, Peter. Speciecissm and moral status, 2016, pp. 9-12

K.Heise, Ursula. PMLA volume:124, No. 2 (Mar., 2009), pp. 503-510