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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110900 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications THE BRITISH LIBRARY BRITISH THESIS SERVICE COPYRIGHT Reproduction of this thesis, other than as permitted under the United Kingdom Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under specific agreement with the copyright holder, is prohibited. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. REPRODUCTION QUALITY NOTICE Th e quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the original thesis. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the highest quality of reproduction, some pages which contain small or poor printing may not reproduce well. Previously copyrighted material (journal articles, published texts etc.) is not reproduced. THIS THESIS HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FLATLINE CONSTRUCTS: GOTHIC MATERIALISM AND CYBERNETIC THEORY-FICTION Mark Fisher Presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Warwick July 1999 Numerous Originals in Colour Abstract FLATLINE CONSTRUCTS: GOTHIC MATERIALISM AND CYBERNETIC THEORY- FICTION Cyberpunk fiction has been called “the supreme literary expression, if not of postmodernism then of late capitalism itself.” (Jameson) This thesis aims to analyse and question this claim by rethinking cyberpunk Action, postmodernism and late capitalism in terms of three - interlocking - themes: cybernetics, the Gothic and fiction. It claims that while what has been called “postmodernism” has been preoccupied with cybernetic themes, cybernetics has been haunted by the Gothic. The Gothic has always enjoyed a peculiarly intimate relation with the fictional. Baudrillard's theories, meanwhile, suggest that, in a period dominated by (cybernetic) simulation, fiction has a new cultural role. By putting “theory” into dialogue with “fiction”, the thesis examines Baudrillard's suggestion that the era of cybernetics (what he calls “third order simulacra”) “puts an end to science fiction, but also to theory, as specific genres”. The version of the Gothic the thesis presents is one stripped of many of its conventional cultural associations; it is a material (and materialist) Gothic.The machinery for re-thinking the Gothic comes from Deleuze-Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Deriving not from the familiar literary sources (the so-called Gothic novels of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century) but from Wilhelm Worringer’s work on “barbarian art”, Deleuze-Guattari’s version of the Gothic departs from any reference to the supernatural. The crucial theme in Worringer, Deleuze-Guattari establish, is that of nonorganic continuum. Following Deleuze-Guattari’s lead, the thesis analyses key cyberpunk texts such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and William Gibson’s Neuromancer in terms of what it calls this “hypematuralist” theme. While these texts have often been analysed in terms of “postmodernism” and “cyberpunk,” they have rarely been discussed in terms of the Gothic. Here, though, it will be shown that these texts, and important precursors, such as Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition, are centrally concerned with the breakdown of the boundary between the animate and the inanimate. (A theme that cybernetics has also confronted). The thesis aims to demonstrate that, in its fixation upon catatonic trance, bodies that do not end at the skin, and agency-without-subjectivity, cyberpunk or “imploded science fiction” converges the Gothic with cybernetics on what, following Gibson, it calls the flatline. The fiatline has two important senses, referring to (1) a stale of “unlife” (or “undeath”) and (2) a condition of radical immanence. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which considers the flallinc under a different aspect. Chapter 1 concerns the flatlining of cybernetics and postmodernism; Chapter 2 deals with the fiatlining of the body, paying particular attention to the Deleuze-Guattari/Artaud concept of the Body without Organs; Chapter 3 focuses upon the flatlining of reproduction, opposing both sexual and mechanical reproduction to Deleuze-Guattari’s idea of (Gothic) propagation; Chapter 4 considers the flatlining of fiction itself in the context of (Baudrillard’s) hyperreality. 2 Contents Title page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 Notes on References 4 Introduction 6 1. Screens, Screams, Flatlines: Cybernetics, Postmodernism and the Gothic 17 How an Android Must Feel 17 Cybernetics, Postmodernism, Fiction 27 Flatlines 35 Constructs 45 Second Naturalism 49 2. Body Image Fading Down Corridors of Television Sky: the Media Landscape and the Schizophrenic Implosion of Subjectivity f»(> The Body Without Image 60 The Body without Organs and Intensive Quantities 61 Intensive Voyages and Cyberspace 64 The Mediatized Body 67 Jumping Out of our Skin 70 From Narcissism to Schizophrenia 73 Stimulating the Gothic Body: Videodrome X1 Tactile Power 85 The Atrocity Exhibition 95 Atroci-TV 102 C alastrophe M anagement 1 (16 Beyond the Pleasures of the Organs 107 3. Xerox and Xenogenesis: Mechanical Reproduction and Gothic Propagation 110 Let Me Tell You About My Mother 111 The Simulacrum’s Revenge 117 Samuel Butler and Surplus Value of Code 124 Nuptials Against Nature: Sorcery and Propagation 134 The Wasp Factory: Neuromancer 140 Capitalism and Isophrcnia: Ashpool 142 Wintcrmutation: Neuromancer as Sorcerous Narrative 146 4. Black Mirror: Hypernaturalism, Hyperreality and Hyperfiction 152 Never Mind Metaphor 153 Borges Doesn’t Make it into Cyberspace 155 Hyperreality and Postmodernist Fiction 162 S(x:ial Science/ Social Science Fiction (How the True World Became a Simulation) 170 The Decline of the Shadow (or, the End of the Marvelous) 175 Machinism and Animism (or, Gremlins in the Hyperreal) 182 Capitalism as Toy Story: Hyperfiction, Strange Loops and Rhizomes 190 A Closing Parable: Hyperfiction and In the Mouth of Madness 196 Conclusion . 202 Bibliography 206 3 Notes on References Abbreviations - as listed below - are used for frequently referenced texts. To avoid cluttering the text with dates, and to enable the reader to easily identify texts cited, other references are given in footnotes. The full reference for each text is given both in the bibliography and when first cited in the thesis. Subsequent references are given in the shortened form of author and title, c.g. Jameson, Geopolitical Aesthetic AE - Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, London: Flamingo/ HarperCollins, 1993 - n denotes annotations made by Ballard AO - Dcleuzc-Guattari, Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, London: Athlone Press, 1984 C - Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Cambridge, Massachussctts: M.I.T. Press, 1961 CZ - Gibson, Count Zero, London: Grafton, 1987 EC - Baudrillard, ‘The Ecstasy of Communication”, in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster, Port Townsend: Washington Bay Press, 1983 ETH - Spinoza, The Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation o f the Intellect, Selected Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackctt Publishing Company, 1992 F - Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, London and New York: Methuen, 1981 GGi - Wiener, God and Golem inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, London: Chapman and Hall, 1964 HUHB - Wiener, The Human Use o f Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, London: Free Association Books, 1989 MLO - Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, London: Grafton, 1995 N - Gibson, Neuromancer, London: Grafton, 1987 PCLLC - Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso: London and New York, 1991 PF - McHalc, Postmodernist Fiction, New York: Methuen, 1987 PFL - Penguin Freud Library; volume numbers as indicated in the text S - Baudrillard, Seduction, trans. Brian Singer, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990 SED - Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant, London/ Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi: Sage publications, 1993 SS - Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994 4 TP - Deleuze-Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone Press, 1988 Notes on quotations To avoid confusion, square brackets have been used where an excision has been made in a quotation. Wherever dots appear in the text without square brackets, they are originally present in the text quoted. 5 INTRODUCTION Isn’t it strange the way the wind makes inanimate objects move? Doesn't it look odd when things which usually just lie there lifeless suddenly start fluttering. Don’t you agree? I remember once looking out onto an empty square, watching huge scraps of paper whirling angrily round and round, chasing one another as if each had sworn to kill the others: and I couldn’t feel the wind at all since I was standing in the lee of a house. A moment later they seemed to have calmed down, but then once again
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