Of Machines and Meat: Cyberpunk, the Postmodern Condition and a Posthuman Reality

By Jennifer Wilson from Edmonton

Try this experiment: walk down the street of any typical, modern city on any typical day and see how many cyborgs you encounter. No, this is not a joke: there is no chuckle to be had, there is no punch line. This experiment is very serious, but perhaps a short explanations of terms is necessary to carry out this seemingly impossible task...

For many, the term "cyborg" will conjure up images gleaned from modern science fiction: the emotionless logic possessed by the character of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the unrelenting justice doled out by Robocop or the emotional anguish experienced by Gabriel in Lawnmower Man. Such modern tales abound with references to beings that seem to posses the best (and sometimes the worst) of the characteristics of both humans and machines. But, let us examine the three examples cited and perhaps we may shed some light on the true definition of a cyborg. The character of Data, a likeable character, and certainly an indispensable member of the crew of The Enterprise, cannot be said to be a cyborg. Though he possesses a humanoid form, his physical body is entirely mechanical. He possesses nothing in his body that can be said to be living: no hormones, no genes, his hair does not grow, his skin cells never mature and slough away. Yes, it can be said that he has self-awareness, but it is made very clear to the viewer that this awareness is the result of a computer program that he possesses in his "brain". As for Robocop, his name says it all. Yes, once again here we see the recognisable humanoid form, but also, once again, this dispensary of law and order is fully a machine, one designed and built with no biological processes. Finally we come to The Lawnmower Man and a completely different subject from that of the previous two examples. At the beginning of the narrative, we see a man like any other. Granted, Gabriel's emotional and mental maturity lags behind his physical maturity at the beginning of the narrative, but the viewer is made aware that Gabriel is human through and through. Through a meeting with a weapons researcher who utilises virtual reality, Gabriel begins to use his unrestricted access to VR software and hardware to extend the limits of his world. As the story progresses, Gabriel's body becomes merely an access point for his further explorations in the realm of computer "simulation". "Simulation" is a word that begins to hold less and less meaning for this once simple lawnmower maintenance man, however. The worlds represented to him through patterns of information begin to hold the possibility for disembodied immortality. The VR machines, like the lawnmowers he once handled with expertise, become an extension of his biological body, allowing him to experience a new reality, a simulacra of the world that he had known previously. Of these three examples, Gabriel is the only character can be said to be a true mix of biology and technology, of man and machine, thus a true "cyborg". The lawnmower man, with his seamless incorporation of his biological body with technology is what is meant by the term "cyborg".

Now what can be said of our experiment? Who among us is truly a "cyborg"? In this new light, we encounter cyborgs every day: the student who is nearly blind without contact lenses, the elderly heart patient who must wear a pacemaker, the young child who wears a hearing aide, and the accident victim who has had titanium screws implanted in a damaged limb are all examples of a cyborg. It is even possible that you yourself are a cyborg and have not realized it until now.

What About Humans and Machines?

The following discussion seeks to outline and understand the relationship between the human body and technology. From the very first time that a Homo habilis used a pointed stick to dig for food to the introduction Virtual Reality games in video arcades, technology has been enhancing the ability of the human body. What has changed, however, is the perceived boundaries of human. No longer is technology used to simply extend the reach of the human body, it inhabits it. The pacemaker sits inside the chest of the heart patient, and yet we do not perceive its owner to be the stuff of fantasy, nor is he perceived as inhuman- he is a human whose continued survival is enabled by technology.

So, what does a pair of contact lenses have to do with ontology and semiotics? The answer is "everything". By examining the new semiotic configurations that surround the notion of humanity in relationship to the human body, and locating these configurations in works of modern fiction, this discussion hopes to see this new understanding of "human" reflected in the products of our human bodies and minds. To do this, three examples from late post-modern science fiction, from sub-genre loosely known as "cyberpunk", as well as the theories of two prominent postmodern thinkers whose work falls into the field of what can be called "cyber-semantics" will be examined in relation to one another. This discussion will be ordered with the view to making clear the relationships between the sub-genre of cyberpunk fiction, the critical works of Donna J. Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles, and the work of William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer, the work of Pat Cadigan in her novel Synners, and that of film director/writer David Cronenberg in ExisTenZ.

The theories of Donna J. Haraway and those of N. Katherine Hayles, despite their differences, are remarkably alike. Both theorists see the technological advances (especially in communications) of the late twentieth century as being one of the major catalysts to the breakdown of previously ridged boundaries that we have known since the time of Plato: the boundaries between man and machine, between nature and culture as well as between reality and non-reality. These breakdowns, they argue, have irreversibly changed our entire ontology. Both also see the articulation of man and machine (what Haraway describes as the "cyborg" Hayles prefers to call the "posthuman") as a perfectly understandable and natural step in our evolution. Finally, both see this new condition as being the end of the liberal humanist subject in Western thought: no longer are we held to a rigid definition of what man is or ought to be- no longer is the free, autonomous man a reality only for the privileged, wealthy few. Hayles and Haraway envision a free for all, a literal orgy of data occurring within the human body and mind. What this discussion will attempt to prove then, in light of the theories of Hayles and Haraway is that cyberpunk writing is thoroughly imbued in the literary tradition of postmoderninsm but that it articulates a human condition which cannot properly be called that. Cyberpunk has taken postmodernism and brought it to bear on what these writers seem to see as a new human condition. According to this, then, it is clear that postmodernism and posthumanism are two sides of the same coin. To think of it most simply, postmodernism, with its attendant semantics and ontology of forced signification, its glory in the breakdown of boundaries and playful creation of new meanings from old forms enables the realisation of a posthuman condition: for if posthuman is what we are, then postmodernism is the way we think about that condition. This discussion will make the argument that the three examples of cyberpunk writing present a posthuman reality through the use of postmodern modes of cultural production.

A Short History of Cyberpunk: Influences and Themes

The path of historical events tend to resemble the roots of a giant redwood- tangled, layered, doubling back on themselves, and many seem to branch off in unlikely directions in search of sustenance. So too are the roots of cyberpunk. This section will attempt to bring about some understanding of the events that led up to the emergence of that sub-genre of postmodern science fiction that has been called (both in praise as well as in disgust) "cyberpunk". While it may be ultimately possible to trace the roots of this literary movement as far back as Mary Shelly's Frankenstien (as Larry Mc Caffery suggests in Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction), this particular survey will begin at a slightly more current point in time for sake of brevity and in the interest of being concise. That point in time is the end of W.W.II.

The end of W.W.II is not an arbitrarily chosen point in history. Rather, this era has been chosen because it has been seen by many as the beginning of the economic/societal and cultural conditions which exist today. The culture of the 1950's underwent a radical change in terms of the way people felt about the world around them. From out of the smoke and dust of the second major war in less than fifty years, huge shifts in both political and economic realms were being realized.

Part I: The Rise of Postmodern Culture

The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.

Jean-Francois Lyotard

The Postmodern

For the purposes of this discussion, there are three main areas that need to be discussed in order to understand the new culture that began to take shape in the late 1940's and early 1950's and which, some would argue, continues to this day. It is through understanding the elements of this new "post-modern" culture, that we may begin to understand the reasons for the rise of cyberpunk fiction in the 1980's. The three areas that must be discussed are: the rise of science and consumerism; the rise of multinationalism; and the major semantic shift that was precipitated by the commodification of information.

With the "success" of the hydrogen bomb in subduing the Axis forces, a new focus began to take shape in the collective mind of the Western World. No longer seen as something that was incidental to everyday life, science began to take prominence in many aspects of daily living. Mathematics and the physical sciences began to enjoy greater emphasis in schools, many jobs began to move towards a more scientific bent, and, coupled with the good economy enjoyed by North Americans and the resulting culture of consumerism, more technological products of luxury and convenience began to make their way into the average household. All this was further emphasised by the announcement that, due to the wonders of science, man would someday very soon set foot on the surface of the moon. Science was seen as the great liberator: the hope for future prosperity and peace lay in the ability to master scientific principles to not only bring the benefits of science into the lives of citizens, but also to lift those citizens to new heights in achievement.

This point about the rise of science leads to the second aspect of postmodern culture that arose out of the end of W.W.II: the rise of post-industrial capitalism. While there are undoubtedly many other threads that tie in with this new phase of capitalism, the one that is of most interest to this discussion is the fact that the rise of science created a new way of thinking about one's role in the world. Larry McCaffery puts this idea rather succinctly in the introduction to his anthology of cyberpunk literature, Storming the Reality Studio. He writes:

This new stage, emerging roughly in the years immediately following WWII, has produced our own postmodern world by expanding capitalism's operations...this unprecedented expansion, made possible specifically by the exponential growth of technology, has profoundly altered not only the daily textures of the world(s) we inhabit but the way we think about the world and ourselves in it (p. 3-4).

McCaffery then goes on to make the next point that has been mentioned- that the rise of technology and science and the corresponding rise of post-industrial capitalism created a new era of the commodification of information on a scale not previously known in human history. No longer were businesses simply in the business of creating goods for other corperations or private citizens. Now they were also in business of buying and selling information (p.4). This information boom was not simply limited to multinational companies engaged directly in the capitalist market, however. With the growing importance of information came an explosion in the advertising and media industries in which a great importance was placed on selling copies of original experiences and simulacra of original consumer products.

It was not only simulations of experiences and products that were emerging in the marketplace for the consumer, but there also began another profound shift in that simulacra of new experiences and products began to appear on the market. The idea of simulacra has been theorised by many critical writers about the postmodern condition, and for good reason: it is a thing uniquely belonging to the late twentieth century and one that has been made possible only through the explosion of technology. Jean Baudrillard summarises this situation well. He writes that this new brand of experience, that is, experience that does not imitate or copy experiences or products that already exist .

Larry McCaffery adds to Baudrillard's theory by saying that this substitution of the real for the equally real constitutes

[a] postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products (1991, p.6) .

In the era that followed W.W.II, economics, politics, semiotics and culture were all undergoing radical readjustments, not the least of which was the way that people in the Western World thought about things that had been taken more or less for granted since the time of thinkers such as Plato and Socrates. This created major boundary instabilities between heretofore oppositional aspects of human thought and experience. Long held, ridged ontological and semantic boundaries between such ideas as life/death, human/machine, real/simulated began to bleed together. No longer was there a definite relationship between the thing being signified and the picture-word used to signify it, and this slippery slope of semiotics has led to what Frederic Jameson describes as a state of schizophrenia. He writes that this new situation is a result of

...the proposition that meaning is not a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified, between the materiality of the language, between a word or a name, and its referent or concept .

Jameson goes on to say that this "linguistic malfunction" can be connected to the psyche of the schizophrenic in that there are two realisations which emerge, both of which are essential to understanding the postmodern condition .

The point to this discussion of the postmodern condition is that modern science fiction (including cyberpunk fiction) embraced this epistemological, semantic and ontological breakdown as easily as it embraced the technology that was used to produce it, the technology that it spoke of, and the technology that was used to distribute it. With this understanding of the cultural background which spawned modern science fiction, it would now be useful to turn to a discussion of the rise of cyberpunk fiction itself.

Part III: The Emergence of Cyberpunk Writers

"Live fast, die young, and leave a highly augmented corpse"
<-qtd. by Thomas Foster (1993)

By the early Eighties, SF writing had evolved. Being, on average, about 10-15 years younger than the New Wave, the new writers were thoroughly steeped in early technoculture: MTV, video games, and media-fuelled pop culture was part of their every day milieu. In his anthology Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Bruce Sterling (himself an accomplished writer in the genre) makes the point that cyberpunks were as much a part of the Eighties techno-ethic as were their writings. He writes:

The cyberpunks are perhaps the first SF generation to grow up not only within the literary tradition of science fiction but in a truly science-fictional world. For them, the techniques of classical "hard SF"-extrapolation, technological literacy- are not just literary tools but an aid to daily life. They are a means to understanding, and highly valued (p.ix).

With this idea in mind, then, it is possible to construct a working definition of cyberpunk. It must be recognized, however, that for as much cyberpunk produced, there are an equal number of literary critics that have their own specific definitions of what cyberpunk is. The following is intended to be a generalised definition of the main themes found.

Basically, there can be said to be four major aspects to cyberpunk literature, and while these four aspects may vary in the degree to which they are found in specific examples of cyberpunk, there is a general consensus among critics as to their presence.

First, the idea that cyberpunk was a movement grown out of what several critics identify as "punk sensibilities" (McCaffery, 1991: 205) or the culture of the street. Sterling makes the point that these writers were engaged in defining the aesthetic of their decade as a whole, "...a new kind of integration. The overlapping of worlds that were formerly separate: the realm of high tech, and the modern pop underground" (p. ix). He also stresses that cyberpunk writers were most interested in the implications of visceral technology, the interzones where the technology normally found in government and corporate labs is appropriated for street use. Sterling brings up a useful quote from William Gibson: in Neuromancer, the character of Case, a matrix cowboy, declares that "the street finds its own uses for things" (1986: xi).

Larry McCaffery adds to this idea as he compares the cyberpunk movement in literature to what was happening at the same time in the world of music. He compares punk music to cyberpunk writings:

The overall effect of cyberpunk within SF is analogous to what occurred within rock music in the mid-1970's when punk music rudely and crudely deconstructed nearly everyone's relationship to popular music...In the case of both punk and cyberpunk...[there was no] constricting attitude of conformity among ambitious writers and musicians...Truly imaginative artists hardly felt that they were now required to narrowly imitate, say, punk and cyberpunk's emphasis on sensationalised, S&M surface textures, its Benzedrine-rush pacings, or its paradoxically nonconformist stance (1991: 13).

Second, there is an overarching awareness of the persuasiveness of technology in cyberpunk fiction. No longer relegated to what Sterling calls the "ivory tower", these new writers were ultimately concerned with he integration/invasion of technology into every day life and into the human body itself. Thomas Foster agrees. He writes:

The cyberpunk understanding of technology as "pervasive" and "utterly intimate," as "under our skin" if not "inside our minds," informs its representation of media technologies and computer interfaces just as much as its representations of mechanical prostheses, surgical alterations, and genetic engineering (1993, p.2).

This view is also supported by Sterling, who lists what he sees as the central themes found in most, if not all, cyberpunk writings: "...body invasion, prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration...mind invasion: brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, neurochemistry-techniques radically redefining the nature of humanity, the nature of the self" (1986 p.xi).

Third, along with the actual literary themes of integration of technology into the human body comes the question of how the human body is viewed in light of this integration. This new view of the human condition must somehow change how we view the body itself. As was mentioned above, the writers of classical SF tended to see the human body as essentially untouched by science, while the cyberpunks see a "social situation...in which all subjects signify for others, in which all bodies function as signifying surfaces" (Foster, 1993 p. 2) and

...technology no longer plays a dialectical role as the Other of humanity; instead, that otherness exists within the "human", thereby denaturalising assumptions about the relation between the body and cultural identity, especially gender and racial identities. Cyberpunk science fiction would therefore represent a cultural site were the construction of such identities and the whole apparatus of subject-constitution could be interrogated (Foster, 1993, p. 14).

It should be emphasised that this collapse of the barriers between human and machine is not treated with horror, as it would be in the realm of hard, or mainstream SF, however, but with a sort of curious pleasure in the creation of a wholly new set of situations and opportunities for interaction. On this point Tom Maddox agrees. He writes that cyberpunk treats technology neither as technophobic, nor as technophiliac and points out that "...cyberpunk did not so much embrace [an understanding of] technology as go along for the ride" (Maddox, 1982: 43).

Finally, with its tendency to embrace the new cultural implications inherent in the fusion of human bodies and technology, there arose new implications for signification. Thomas Foster suggests that cyberpunk "...presumes and offers a concrete representation of Beuadrillard's postmodern 'pornography of information and communication...of functions and objects in their legibility, availability, regulation, forced signification, capacity to perform [and] connection'" (1993, p. 2). What Foster and Beaudrillard are suggesting is that this collapse of reliable signifiers leads to a social situation in which there is no single, reliable method of viewing anything. All signifiers lose meaning and are therefore recuperated by various social groups that give them meaning all their own. This, Foster suggests, inevitably leads to a social situation in which "all subjects signify for others" resulting in "social fragmentation or balkanisation" (1993, p.2).

Part IV: Criticisms of Cyberpunk

Not everyone agrees with this definition of cyberpunk, however. In order to give the reader a well-rounded view of the issues surrounding this much critiqued sub-genre, the following section will bring to light four main problems with the term that have been identified by various critics.

The first criticism of the term and definition of cyberpunk comes, oddly enough, from the cyberpunks themselves. The writers of the early- to mid-Eighties that have been come to be identified as members of the cyberpunk movement: Cadigan, Gibson, Sterling, John Shirley and Rudy Rucker to name a few, had no intention of giving their writings a label. Unlike writers of the "Beat" generation, for example, they did not see themselves as a group of artists united through some shared sense of purpose. Rather, these writers were writing the science fiction that they were simply because that is how they experienced technology-because it was the only way that they knew how . Tom Maddox makes the point that the term cyberpunk was exploited to the fullest of its marketing potential in the months that followed the release of William Gibson's Neuromancer and the announcement that it had won the triple crown of SF literary awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K. Dick. Maddox goes on to point out that the actual term cyberpunk was coined not by a writer that existed in that literary circle, but rather by a critic by the name of Gardener Dozois. From the appearance of the word, a media circus ensued:

Cyberpunk became talismanic: within the SF ghetto, some applauded, some booed, some cashed in, some even denied that the word referred to anything; and some applauded or booed or denied that cyberpunk existed and cashed in at the same time-the quintessentially postmodern response, some might say...Literary cyberpunk had become more than Gibson, and cyberpunk itself had become more than literature and film. In fact, the label has been applied variously, promiscuously, often cheaply and stupidly. Kids with modems and the urge to commit computer crime became known as "cyberpunks"...so did urban hipsters who wore black, read Mondo 2000, listened to "industrial" pop, and generally subscribed to techno-fetishism (p.44).

This point brings up a second, and more sombre criticism about cyberpunk literature. Randy Schroeder finds a problem with referring to the symbiosis of human and machine, known as cybernetics (a major theme in cyberpunk writing), and the literary theory behind postmoderninsm. He writes that the reality of cybernetics and the distinct duality of man and machine cannot be found in postmodernist thought as the two ideas are mutually exclusive. He writes:

[T]he interzone of postmodernism and cybernetics is a problematic one...[c]ybernetics is reductionist; postmodernisms are not. Cybernetics affirms some kind of objectionist reality; postmodernism questions it. Cybernetics is fundamentally about binaries; postmoderninsms are fundamentally about the collapse of binaries. Cybernetics is about construction; postmodernisms are about deconstruction (1994, p. 330).

The third criticism raised about cyberpunk lies in that of narrative technique. Novels such as Gibson's Cyberspace Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), and movies such as Riddley Scott's Blade Runner recuperate the dark, "hard-boiled" style of writers such as Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Critics argued that such techniques could not rightly be considered to be revolutionary, but rather that they were reactionary, and that this was a negative label to have attached to one's work. Of this situation McCaffery notes that many critics saw this use of narrative technique as "...exhibiting [cyberpunk's] superficiality and collective failure of imagination" (1991), but then goes on to make the point that this sort of criticism ignored the true beauty of cyberpunk fiction: its ability to refresh old narratives my juxtaposing their style with new situations and semiotic configurations. He applauds "cyberpunk's postmodernist spirit of free play (jouissance) and collaboration, its delight in creating cut-ups and collages (a la Burroughs) in which familiar objects and motifs are placed in startling, unfamiliar contexts" (1991 p.15).

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