Mars Trilogoy Post, pt. 2

Well, I've been listening to the second half as an audio book, so I don't have page numbers to reference. One thing that I want to say before beginning a close reading of a specific passage is that I was not completely off when I claimed that the first 100 were moving towards communism. Apparently, the people back on earth had that view of them also - living as a community with a very limited economy, working towards the common good of all the people on Mars, which they thought would happen by cutting their connections with UNOMA and Earth.

This exchange between John Boone and Hiroko presents an interesting problem when discussing the whether the people of Mars are becoming posthuman - in one sense they have already discarded "humanity" in favor of "Martianity." But, this is a way of examining what it means to be human, a social being.

"What gave you the right to do all these things without our permission?" John asked. "To make our children without asking us-to run away and hide in the first place-why? Why?"

Hiroko returned his gaze calmly. "We have a vision of what life on Mars can be. We could see it wasn't going to go that way. We have been proved right by what has happened since. So we thought we would establish our own life-"

and later

"You're needed every day!" John said flatly. "That's how social life works. You've made a mistake, Hiroko."

What we get from this passage is the development of a sort of eugenic practice in which Hiroko and her cohort has created her own life through science. While this is not exaclty what posthuman theorists see as posthumanity, the process that Hiroko used to nuture those chilren connects to Katherine Hayle's assertion that we have always been posthuman, in the sense that we have always used tools to navigate the world. Here, Hiroko is using the scientific tools that she has at her disposal to create life. Since the children are still created through slicing two genetic codes (female and male), they would still be considered "human." Those children, as John informs Hiroko, still need to interact with other human beings since, as Kenneth Burke tells us, humans require interaction with other humans. In the sense that the people on Mars cannot live without their tools, they are all posthuman, according to Halyes, but this is contrasted with the descriptions of robots and thier uses on Mars, specifically in constructing the elevator.

As Robinson writes from Frank's perspective, "offloading the elevator cars and getting the stuff on trains. Robots were supposed to do it, but it was surprising how much labor remained in the process for human muscle. Heavy-equipment operators, robot programmers, machine repairmen, waldo dwarves, construction workers." These robots would not even be considered "posthuman" beings because they lack consciousness. As Bostrom and Marovec have explained, the move towards posthumanity requires that there is a mixture between the human body and the technological body, and to some extent, a cybernetic being that develops a level of consciousness that is equivalent or exceeds human consciousness. Since all of the people on Mars retain their consciousness, which is altered by their existence on Mars, they still do not constitute posthumans beyond what we and they already are before reaching Mars.

Marred Mars

Over an email, Elisa explained that my presentation on (post)human would still be next week and told me that the presentation would fit in well with the question of whether the characters we see become (post)human. Well, in part, they have always been more than human. [In fact, K. Hayles has convinced me, rather easily, that we have always been (post)human.] Still, this is not the time for this conversation. Rather, I want set up one part of the population's (post)humanity as a point of departure for the rest of this post - specifically, social construction and its resistance to "reality."

Jameson explains, through Marx, that "Behind the theory of social construction...lies praxis and human production itself, which makes a mockery of realism's staged mystery stories, its fictive astonishment at encountering the 'resistance' of a reality it has itself cooked up in another avatar" (400). The key word, for Red Mars, is "praxis" (practice). After the "First Hundred" arrive at Mars, the continue the practices they have learned during their time on Mars. Frank, however, continues to attempt to break away from the governmental structures that others continue to advocate - claiming sections of land for each "country." Instead, he suggest that these new arrivals (to Mars) start something new, practice a mockery of the "realism" they have been indoctrinated to on Earth. In a very structured way, Jameson's use of Marx is very appropriate for my reading of Frank because what Frank calls for is a communist Mars, where these "First Hundred" live as a community of reciprocity, always working towards the common good. Still, Frank is torn between two physical worlds. As we approach the middle of Red Mars, our narrator kindly informs us that "Frank had managed to keep his position as the American department head no through three administrations, even though it was a cabinet post - a remarkable feat, even without considering his distance from Washington. And so he was now overseeing the introduction of investment by the American-based transnationals, a responsibility that made him manic with overwork and puffed up with power..." (278). Even while Frank attempts "to inspire people on the planet to figure out a way to forget history, to build a functioning society. To create a scientific system designed for Mars, designed to their specifications, fair and just and rational and all those good things" (283), he remains irrevocably a member of the history he attempts to shirk. This point is not lost on Jameson: "The Mars Trilogy then experimentally extends the lives of its viewers and participants in order to make them coeval with their own history, at the same time that it projects an original collectivity..." (396).

John Boone, who we will lose later (to an "accident" that Frank orchestrates out of jealousy for Maya), is stuck in a similar situation. He has asked Maya to marry him (which she sidesteps by laughing it off and saying "something like that" when John continues to push the question), but he also feels "the thisness of the moment [on Mars, not marriage] like a rock in his hand, and it felt as if his entire life had been lived only to get him to this moment" (293). Marriage is also a construction of the "realism" that Jameson describes. If we look to psychology and to Freud as a philosopher (and now we have come full circle this semester :)) "human" nature does not include marriage (a religious practice that seeks to retain an element of "purity" between two people). Psychology, as well as our cultural artifacts, tells us that men have an instinctual desire to "mate" (I use this word purposefully - for animalistic connotation) with as many partners as possible. And yet, John feels that Mars, a place where these cultural artifacts are not present, is where he was meant to be. In other words, he continues to carry parts of the old modes (morals, appropriateness) of being while feeling that the location where those modes arose are no longer cultural is the place he feels he was meant to be.

Still, we get this from most the main character. They are living in two different worlds, one intellectual and the other physical. Managing these two worlds while creating something new seems to be what both John and Frank advocate, but they rely on their perceptions of the past to move them to those locations. There is animosity there also, which revolves around nationality (Russian/American), and Maya, despite the similar goals that both have - creating a new way living and coexisting on Mars. Why is this? Accoding to Hayles, because they have always been posthuman, and according to Latour (We Have Never Been Modern) we have always been hybrids (non-modern). While you may be having a gut reaction to this and saying "this doesn't make me posthuman," "human," for Hayles refers to a purity (also present in Modernism) that has never existed. The ways that Frank and John are (post)human (among the other characts) serve as exemplars of demonstrating the lack of purity within "humanity." We have always-already been hybrids. We have always existed with tools and used those tools to navigate our ways of being in the world. In relation to last week's discussion, this is the problem that Heidegger faces when he looks for the essential, primordial character of Dasien (which I have defined elsewhere). In beginning, he writes that we cannot concieve of Being without the conception of the world and how we manage ourselves in/with-the-world. From the development of the first external tool to manage this being, for Hayles, we became (post)human. As for what is post(post)human, take a look at some of the robotics work by Moravec and Bostrom - advocates for technological implants, like those you find in THE BORG from Star Trek (this is for you Randy).

For Those Interested

All, this is a preliminary post to keep a record of something that I thought was interesting. At least interesting to those of us who are reading and working with theories of posthumanity and what it means to be human. So, for those of you who are:



http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/16/japans-hrp-4c-fashion-model-robot-unveiled-already-harassed/


and




http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/04/cb2-baby-robot-developing-social-skills/

Project 2

Elisa,

I just wanted to let you know that I would like to do a remix video for the second project. Specifically, I plan to use the Matrix, A.I., Minority Report, Hackers, Bladerunner and maybe some other movies for a project exploring the way that "humanity" and "posthumanity" (cyborgs, robots, etc...) are presented in each and how that lines up with some of the theoretical perspectives of "posthuman" perspectives and thought. I have a preliminary outline and I've been doing research for the presentation in two weeks. I hope that I can use this for the second paper and that I can use the video in the posthuman presentation. Last night, I finished the 5 Summaries/annotated biblio and I'll turn that in tonight. I plan to pull a bit from this for the second paper, the presentation, and the final paper. I know that this seems like I am trying to work in the same area a lot, but I just want to learn about posthumanity - I'm having a difficult time understanding exactly how it is different from what is already being done, even after doing this research. If you could let me know if this is okay with you, I would appreciate it. Thanks.


Sergio

P.S. Below is the post I wrote for this week's readings - this is not the post for tonight's class.

The Human-esque Condition - Dwelling as the Basic Character of Being

Heidegger is a transient 'cat' (I've been listening to some Louis Armstrong lately, and the jazz "cat" is stuck in my head - I know this is a Sammy Davis Jr. thing, but it is still there - I'm dwelling in my jazz locale). :)

So let's start with Heidegger, then move to Garrard and see how this all ties in with A Door Into Ocean (Slonczewski = Slo from here on).

In "Building Dwelling Thinking," Heidegger begins by redefining our understandings of what it means to dwell, build and how this affects our thinking (yet again). I'm reading through my copy of Basic Writings, which is marked up a bit, and I'm not sure what I was thinking (pun intended) when I first read this article. On page 348, he associates "dwelling" with 'the ends' and building with 'the means.' Later, he claims (seemingly obvious) that "we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers" (350). What does he mean? Well, a human beings existences precedes the building of buildings (architecturally). In other words, to be alive is to dwell within a space which is not separate from our dwelling (what he calls being-in-the-world). [Later, this will be an interesting way to look into ADIO.] Moving on, taking our space with us, our essential Being (capitalized in translation), our dwelling develops from how we interact in the world and with the other "mortals" in the world - in Being and Time, he also claims that to say that we exist by any other means than our existence in the world does not help us to understand what Being is. Fast-forward our dwelling with Heidegger - "Building and thinking are, each in its own way, inescapable for dwelling so long as each busies itself with its own affairs in separation, instead of listening to the other.... They are able to listen if both belong to dwelling, if they remain within their limits and realize that the one as much as the other comes from the workshop of long experience and incessant practice" (362). Put more simply (as far as I understand), our experiences in the world (our dwellings) cannot be separated from the spaces that we shape or from how we think when we exist/experience (in) those spaces.

Next, we have Garrard. First, he use a different Heidegger. There is one section that I want to pull from - I think the most concise purpose of this essay. Garrard set out to argue that "'Dwelling' is not a transient state; rather, it implies the long term imbricating of humans in a landscape of memory, ancestry and death, life and work" (108). While this is not contrary to Heidegger's claims, he does go on to argue against Heidegger's "On the Origin of the Work of Art," basing the argument on Heidegger's Nazi affiliation and support of the political party (ad hominem, anyone). I understand that Heidegger's Nazi affiliation is uncool (I think it's a permanent scar on his record), but this argument implies that all of Heidegger's work should hold no valididty because he was a Nazi. In addition, Garrard doesn't even mention the "Building Dwelling Thinking" article. I'm not sure how you can write an essay on Dwelling and not see this article. Anyway, moving beyond this research problem. I think that, based on the Heidegger we read, Heidegger would agree with Garrard's claim that "dwelling" is not a transient state - remember, H say it is "the basic character of Being" (362; original emphasis). This may come out as a personal attack, but Garrard's lack of reference to this H article suggests Garrard does not want to be associated with Heidegger's thought. Garrard's claim that "dwelling is not a transient state" seems to echo H's claim that dwelling is "the basic character of Being." Hmm... Despite G's argument against H, the two claims line up really well. So how does this apply to A Door Into Ocean? [This title reminds me of Heilien's A Door Into Summer, which I really enjoyed when I read it about 13 years ago.]

Shora, the moon/planet is the place where our main characters (Merwen, Spinel, Lystra, Realgar, etc.) dwell. The natives of Shora have apparently evolved from "catfish" (5) and have webbed hands and feet. There is a large portion of the novel (dispersed throughout) devoted to the question of what is "human," which the population of Valedon don't think applies to the inhabitants of Shora. Throughout the novel, the characters (the Sharers and Valans) keep asking the question of "what is human?" The Valans, living on land (on Valedon) do not think the Sharers are human because of thier bodies. The Shares do not think the Valans are huma because of thier focus on war. Let's take a look at some passages close to the end: "Humans are animals, with animal needs." "Humans are that, and more. Humans are aware of the universe, and self-aware." And later, Slo writes, through Merwen, "If we kill, we lose out will to chose, our shared protection of Shora, our ability to shape life. Our humanity would slip away, beyond ever your own" (354; to Realgar). Both of these races consider themselves "human" and according to Heidegger, they are both right: They are both beings for whom their being is an issue (Dasien; mortals). Slo writes earlier: "Who would believe that any creature could willfully force the door of a mind? That was to violate the very soul of a human, never mind one's physical shell. It was to deny Shora Herself, for ever soul is a part of Shora" (256). I don't know much (read: anything) about Slo's other work, but this section seems to parallel Heidegger's and Garrard's claims that dwelling in a space cannot be understood as separate, but must be understood jointly. Additionally, this excerpt returns us to the old debate of what is human: the Descartean cogito ergo sum and the physical body. What Slo and Heidegger suggest is that this dichotomy is a false understanding of what it means to be "human"; rather, to understand "human," the body and the mind cannot be separated from each other. Kathrine Hayles, among others, suggest that what the "post" of posthuman is not a limit to free will but "there is no a priori way to identify a self-will that can be clearly distinguished from an other-will" (4). What Heidegger tells us, and what Slo suggests, is that there is never an a priori way to distinguish the two forms of wills. Rather, we are always in the world (mind and body) and our wills are always identified in (and define by) the time that we exist. Choice seems to be defining characteristic of humanity, according to Slo and H. But our choices are always dictated by our dwellings in the world and the time that exist within. Have we always been posthuman? In Hayles terms, our a priori self-will is what makes us human. Yet, this self-will is never a priori - we are nutured in a time and builing (a world that has existed before us). This nurturing, as we see with the Valans and the Sharers, is a sort of programming we receive from being-in-the-world. There is more to "humanity" than this self-will. For Slo, humanity seems to be that which makes choices with the available means (building) towards our ends (dwelling) and not depriving other humans the same choices - which could be what posthuman means: having control of other human life.

24 March 2009

Second Paper Due: April 3rd

5 Summaries: April 10th
___________________

Neuromancer - "New Romance"? - From Elisa

PostHuman works: A.I. , Minority Report, Star Trek (Data; the Borg), The Matrix (what happens in the matrix to Neo, affects his body outside of the matrix)

the action takes place in the "brain case" not in the "screen case" - through the trodes he has in his head.
- it is Case's imagination
-

Whenever i hear the word Zion, as in NEUROMANCER, I hearken back to Sublime's cover of Bob Marley's "Rivers of Babylon." The lyrics read: "For the wicked, carry us away/ Captivity require from us a song/ How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?"

[Note: "In Rastafarian terms, the title 'King Alpha' refers to Emperor Haile Selassie (identified with the Almighty God Jah Rastafari), and is often used in conjunction with the name 'Queen Omega' referring to the Emperor's consort Empress Woizero Menen Asfaw." - Link]

My focus in this post will be on (post)humanism, cyberpunk, cyborgs and, in part, Neuromancer, possibly with an anarchic perspective, but fully human nonetheless. I find it interesting, however, that I will be talking about technology and the integration of technology to the human body using technology. This seems like a meta-post. There is something highly unsettling about engaging with this machine as I write about how machines are not human. Still, engaging with machines does not necessarily mean that it changes my body or my un/consciousness. I already see the ways in which this post can be addressed - "You're hypocrite." Alas... using the machine is not the same as being machine. Additionally, having a part of me machine does not make me all machine. However, for Case, that is not necessarily the case (no pun intended).

[meta-comment: A short detour in writing this post...for Heidegger, Dinner, and Hair Cutting.]

Let's start with Davidson's article: "Riviera's Golem, Haraway's Cyborg." She writes of Case: "Case is from the beginning strictly a technician, a whiz at learning codes of operating systems.... The machines Case operates perform the work that until recently would be performed by the specular, discursive imagination" (189). What does this mean? Well, Davidson claims that it means "While Case is spectacularly adept at what he does, his very adeptness is hardly dependent on a discursive ability to create in the old artistic way; it is entirely dependent on his sense of timing, his ability to execute the correct code at the correct time" (189). What does "the old artistic way" mean? I'm not entirely sure. In a way, Case is dependent on that discursive ability to create in that artistic way. It is a different environment and a different culture, but that does not indicate an overturning of those traditional ways of discourse. If his discursive ability lies in his ability to manipulate and (re)present a part of the code for a new meaning, isn't that part of the old artistic way. From Egyptian times, artists took parts of their environment and presented them in a new way, but always in a familiar context. Isn't that what Case is doing with the code (discourse language) and the operating system (context/environment)? It seems quite odd to make this claim without looking towards the analogous connections. In this view, Case engages in the political elements that develops a society, a society within the matrix. Ansleme Bellagarrigue, in his article "Manifesto of Anarchy" (published in 1850), writes: "Society is the inevitable consequence of the forced aggregation of individuals and the collective interest is, as a providential and fatal deduction of private interests." (Please allow some slack here - I understand that writing a manifesto about why there should be no government rule is a political and governmental proposition.) If we look at Case through Bellagarrigues lens, Case may be an anarchist in the sense that he is working against the social order for a new order that underscores the social order in favor of a less intrusive order, which is not an organized order - more like the order of Shevek's society. Perhaps Case is an anarchist. But he is all cyborg (I'm not sure if we were supposed to get the image of Neo and Trinity, from the Matrix movies, here or if this was something different - this was a very visual book with, in my opinion, little coherence in what the world looks like, either from Gibson's view or from my own reader-response perspective). Anyway, as Haraway defines "cyborg," Case is a cyborg. He has a human body, but he is also partly machine. His discursive abilities with the machine suggests that he is a part of a society with the machines and the matrix. It's like being an academic - the better you understand a discourse, the more you become a part of that community (i.e., the Burkean Parlor metaphor). In other words, Case, instead of being-in-the-world, is a being that is in-the-machine/with-the-machine.

In some discourse communities, Case would be seen as a posthuman (see Kathrine Hayles). Benjamin Fair, in "Stepping Razor in Orbit," suggests that Case transforms into a posthumanist paradigm because he "sheds the humanist ideal of disembodiment in favor of a posthumanist affirmation of embodiment" (93). Language, discourse escapes Fair. He uses Hayles term "posthuman" to describe this transformation, but what does (post)human mean? Well, according to the literature (theory literature, not Neuromancer), being posthuman means a change in bodily appearance by way of accepted and sought-after alterations, mainly technological, but not always. (Post)human seems to build on the move towards (post)moderninsm, (post)structuralism, (post)criticism, etc. But there is a schism here. Each of the latter terms are theoretical. "Human" is not theoretical, it is corporeal, but it is much more than the body. Case maintains his body, but he enters the discourse of the machine. This seems much more like a place where the word "cyborg" would be more appropriate. Additionally, a person with a mechanical body, but an undeterminate consciousness (as in The Sheep Look Up's Hoppy Harrington) is also cyborgian. The division seems to be far less clear than Hayles makes it and Fair echoes. Fair continues to say that "Once Case realizes his body is a data system and accepts his intimate connection with it, he finds alternate means for identity" (101). If Case was (post)human, a machine-being, why would he need to identify and what would he need to identify with? Genuinely, I have no idea and I can't claim to have an idea - my body and mind are so interlinked that I don't know what it's like. Still, to assume "human" means the body is to devalue the other parts of humanity that makes us who we are, such as love, empathy, sympathy, anger, frustration, compassion, etc. and modes of thinking that are not prescribed by an operating system (if we can assume that our operating systems of "appropriateness" and such are not coded into our environment - that does not mean it would not be anarchic, but it is not a requirement of the environment). If we are (post)human, what are we? If we look at the theory of evolution, have we ever refered to "human" as (post)ape? Not to my knowledge. Those are apes; We are humans. So, we are humans; they are what? Case is human with a new discourse community. He has a human body, but a dog without a tale is no less a dog, as a dog with no tale and an electonic collar is not a (post)dog. Perhaps Case can be seen as "superhuman" ("an entity with intelligence or abilities exceeding normal human standards" - thanks wiki), but I suggest a more (re)presentative term to avoid the connotations of the "super": HyperHuman - to build on the technological terms "hypermedia" and "hypertext."

Ok, well, let's finish this up: Latham's review of the Cyberpunk = Gibson = Neuromance book was interesting and what caught my eye was towards the end: "The explosion of information in electronic culture, which amounts to an epochal challenge to the capacities of human memory, has generated two sorts of 'digital narratives': the 'postmnemotechnic'... and the 'antimnemotechnic'" (271), with a focus on memory. Case does not fit into either category. He still has human memory, but engages with the machine. It is not synthetic and it is not skeptical of memory "altogether."

Finally, McCaffery's article on Cyberpunk. First, as a person who was/is a part of a punk scene, I don't like this term, but I'll deal with it. Anway, the question that McCaffery suggest at the base of cyberpunk (and to a more specifc level in punk - the individual): "In a sense, all cyberpunk asks the same questions - "What's it mean to be human in today's world? What's stayed the same and what's changed? And what does all this suggest about the future we will in habit?" (8). Let me suggest an answer similar to Louis Armstrong's response to the question "what is jazz?": If you have to ask, you'll never know.