Multiplicity, Desire, and Gender in Delany’S Triton
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VARIABLES OF THE HUMAN: THEORETICAL UTOPIANISMS AND HETEROTOPIAN SCIENCE FICTIONS Gerald Alva Miller A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Gregory Flaxman Linda Wagner-Martin Tyler Curtain María DeGuzmán Priscilla Wald © 2010 Gerald Alva Miller, Jr. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Gerald Alva Miller “Variables of the Human: Theoretical Utopianisms and Heterotopian Science Fictions” (Under the direction of Gregory Flaxman) My dissertation examines a diverse array of contemporary science fiction texts to explore the genre’s immanent relation to critical theory and to stage science fiction as its own form of theoretical work. In general, critics have argued that science fiction functions as a privileged genre for critical theory because its estranging settings engage the reader in a dialectical thought process by encouraging comparisons between the real world and a textual one. But, recently, science fiction novelists such as William Gibson have eschewed estranging settings and instead written novels set in a contemporary milieu. Existing theories of the genre cannot accommodate such a transformation in the genre’s basic structure. Thus, my project provides an account of the emergent relation between science fiction and critical theory that does not exclude such recent examples of the genre and that demonstrates how different sci-fi texts generate particular avenues of critical inquiry. Each of the critical enterprises that I explore in this dissertation (gender theory, psychoanalysis, postmodern theory, and memory’s relation to film) represents a unique theorization of the human, its boundaries, and our theoretical attempts to understand it. My project comprises four major underlying goals. First, it reconceptualizes science fiction according to a methodology that does not exclude recent mutations in the genre. Secondly, it depicts the manner in which science fiction should be considered a significant genre for literary and critical theory by elucidating how it functions as its own iii form of theoretical endeavor. Thirdly, it exhibits a new way of performing critical theory through the lens of literature; that is, it creates new possibilities for critical labor by demonstrating the radical kind of theoretical work that becomes possible only by means of genre structures. Finally, my dissertation illustrates why science fiction serves as one of the most compelling meditations upon the nature of the human and the all too human need to ascribe discrete values to that term. Indeed, my project argues that all critical theory—like all science fiction—essentially concerns the definition of the human and the attempts to theorize other states such as the non-human and the posthuman. Therefore, my project intervenes in a variety of critical discourses while simultaneously commenting upon the nature of critical theory itself. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the almost four years of writing this project from its initial conception during my doctoral exams through its outlining, development, and completion, I have been lucky to have the support and input of a large number of generous and influential individuals. First of all, I must express my sincere gratitude to Gregg Flaxman who has offered his tireless advice as my mentor for seven years now and who has guided me both with tough love and kind words throughout the realization of this project. Secondly, I must thank all the other professors who have provided me with support, guidance, and input over the years. In particular, Linda Wagner-Martin, Tyler Curtain, María DeGuzmán, and Priscilla Wald have been kind enough to read drafts of this project and offer advice from the initial prospectus stage all the way through the defense. In addition, I want to thank all of my friends and colleagues at the University of North Carolina who helped created a friendly and intellectual environment. I would like to especially thank my friends Nathaniel Cadle and Henry Veggian who read and offered advice on various chapters from this project. I would also like to thank my high school English teachers, Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Harris, who helped start me on this long and arduous journey. Additionally, I would like to thank my undergraduate professors and advisors, particularly Helen Locke and LaRue Love Sloan, who helped prepare me for my graduate school career. Finally, I want to thank my family for all their love and support over the years. My father (Jerry Miller), my mother (Debbie Miller), and my sisters (Michelle Miller and Miranda Johnson) have never lost faith in my lengthy and strange educational v career. Above all else, I must sincerely express the debt of gratitude that I owe to my wife, Leigh, who has stood by me throughout the entire creation of this project without ever wavering in her emotional support. Without her as my best friend and partner, this project would not have been possible. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. THE HETEROTOPIAN GENRE: SCIENCE FICTION AS CRITICAL THEORY..................................................................................1 Towards a Theory of a Genre......................................................................3 Realism versus Estrangement......................................................................8 Utopia versus Heterotopia..........................................................................11 Anatomy of the Human: The Utopics of Narrative and The Theoretics of Science Fiction.......................................................16 Defining the Variables or, What Constitutes the Human?.........................13 Conclusion: Onwards to the Heterotopian!................................................22 Notes..........................................................................................................29 II. TYPING THE FORM OF THE SUBJECT: MULTIPLICITY, DESIRE, AND GENDER IN DELANY’S TRITON.................................33 Recognizable Performances: Intelligible Subjects and the Doing of Gender............................................................................38 Utopian Resignifications: Radical Inclusivity and the Undoing of Gender........................................................................45 Know Your Type: Behavioral Identifications and the Reappropriation of the Margins....................................................50 To Be is to Do, To Describe is to Control: Normativity in the Absence of Gender…………………………………..55 In the Absence of Gender, In the Absence of Lack: Desire in the Society of Universal Recognition.........................................62 vii Conclusion: Dwelling in the No-Place of Gender.....................................71 Notes..........................................................................................................74 III. “TO SHIFT TO A HIGHER STRUCTURE”: DESIRE, DISEMBODIMENT, AND EVOLUTION IN THE ANIME OF OTOMO, OSHII, AND ANNO...............................81 Apocalyptic Mutations and Transcendent Disembodiment: Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira...........................................................................85 The Global Net of Consciousness: Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell...........................................................94 The Complementation of the Human Soul: Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion.....................................................................105 Conclu sion: And Must We Always Lack?...............................................115 Notes........................................................................................................119 IV. THE EVERSION OF THE VIRTUAL: POSTMODERNITY, CONTROL SOCIETIES, AND WILLIAM GIBSON’S SCIENCE FICTIONS OF THE PRESENT............................................124 The Present as Science Fiction: September 11th and the Ascendancy of Postmodernity...........................126 Patterns of the Postmodern: The Computerization of Society and the Subject....................................133 The Digitized Aesthetic: The Façade of Freedom in the Control Society.......................................140 Virtual Identities: Self-Fashioning in the Web of Control.......................147 Conclusion: Annotating the Global: The Eversion of Cyberspace in William Gibson’s Spook Country............................................................156 Notes........................................................................................................161 V. DOCUMENTARY SCIENCE FICTION: REALISM AND MEMORY IN THE TIME TRAVEL FILMS OF CHRIS MARKER AND SHANE CARRUTH......................................................................168 viii Still-Lifes of the Future: La Jetée and Science Fictions of Reali s m. .......172 The Forking Paths of Time: The Multiplicity of the Self in Shane Carruth’s Primer...........................................................................189 Conclusion: The World as Spectacle.......................................................206 Notes........................................................................................................208 VI. THE HUMAN EQUATION: COMPUTERIZED AND TRANSCENDENT SUBJECTIVITY IN KUBRICK AND CLARKE’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY......................................216 The Pre-Human: The Birth of Technolog y a nd the Will to Power..........218 The Human: Desire, Technology, Control...............................................228