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Deconstructing the Time Machine (La Déconstruction De La Machine Du Temps) Author(S): Veronica Hollinger Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol

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SF-TH Inc Deconstructing the Time Machine (La déconstruction de la machine du temps) Author(s): Veronica Hollinger Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, Critical Approaches to Science Fiction: Retrospects & Prospects (Jul., 1987), pp. 201-221 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239816 . Accessed: 28/08/2014 12:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIMEMACHINE 201 Veronica Hollinger Deconstructingthe Time Machine' Time is, of all modesof existence,most obsequious to the imagination.... SamuelJohnson The idea of time travelhas for manyyears exercised the ingenuitynot only of SF writers,but of scientistsand philosophers as well; neitherthe equationsof quantumphysics nor the rulesof logic have manageddefinitively to proveor to disprove the possibilitythat this most paradoxicalof SF concepts may some day be realized.'The purposeof this presentessay is to examinesome aspects of time travel within the frameworkof Derrideandeconstruction, since, as I hope to demonstrate,the time-travelstory always achieves a deconstructionof certain received ideas about the natureand structureof time. It may be thatdeconstructive activity of some kind is characteristicof all SF, in which case this present applicationof post-structuralistcritical theory may serve to suggest new approachesto other SF motifs. The final two sections of this essay focus in detail upon H.G. Wells's The Time Machine(1895), the novellawhich first appliedtechnology to time traveland which remains the most influential time-travel story ever written. Anticipatingpost-structuralist strategies by a good many years, The Time Machineaccomplishes its own ironic deconstructionof Victorianscientific positivism,couched in the very languageof the system which it sets out to undermine.And this, as I will discuss below, is the very essence of the deconstructiveenterprise. 1. Time travel is a sign without a referent, a linguistic construction originatingin the metaphoricalspatialization of temporality.As MarkRose observes, "the visualizationof time as a line generatedthe idea of time travel"(p. 108). To write abouttime travel,therefore, is necessarilyto have performeda kind of reading,to have interpretedtime in orderto structureit as the "space"through which a travellercan undertakea journey. As lin- guistic construction,time travel is never "true,"but its very status as pure sign gives rise to one of its most valuablefunctions within the SF genre:the time-travelstory provides literary metaphors of our ideasabout the natureof time; it is a means of working out the logical (and the not-so-logical) implicationsof our interpretationsof this most nebulousaspect of human experience. As in all SF, the relationshipin time-travelstories between narrative event and empirical reality can be characterizedas either analogical or extrapolative.The analogicaltendency is exhibited,for example, in James This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 202 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 14 (1987) Tiptree,Jr's "Houston, Houston, Do YouRead?" (1976), in whichtime travel is used both to literalize Tiptree'scritique of contemporarysexual chau- vinism and to demystify the signifying coercivenessof concepts such as "feminine"and "masculine."Her fictionalfuture is relativelydiscontinuous with contemporaryreality. At the other end of the spectrum,a novel like Gregory Benford's Timescape (1980) emphasizes the interrelationships amongpresent, past, and futurein very direct ways, concernedas it is with the short-termeffects of recentecological carelessness.No matterwhat the reigningtendency of a particularstory, however,time travelis itself always metaphorical,the result of a "false"condensation of time with space.3The Time Machine, for example, offers itself as a propheticwarning of the declineof the humanrace andthis "devolution"is the apparentlydirect result of the class divisiveness of Wells's contemporary social situation. Nevertheless,the "scientific"rationale for the temporaljourney which makes possible this warningis developed solely throughspatial metaphors.The Time Traveller'scentral contentionis that "thereis no differencebetween Time and any of the threedimensions of Spaceexcept that our consciousness movesalong it"(TTM 1:5). It is indicativeof the changesthat have occurred in scientificand philo- sophical "discursiveformations" (to borrowa term from Michel Foucault) thatSF no longerdefines itself solely as an extrapolativegenre. This is due in large part to the comprehensiverealization that reality is constitutedby language;that the languagefrom withinwhich we speakconstantly mediates betweenthe self and experiehceof reality.Ferdinand de Saussure'sinsight into the arbitrarynature of the bond betweensign and referent,his conclu- sion that"every means of expressionused in society is based,in principle,on collective behaviouror-what amountsto the same thing-on convention" (p. 68), indicatesboth the contingencyand indeterminacyof these linguistic mediations.We are led to the unavoidableconclusion that experience of realityis alwaysalready interpretation, since "withoutlanguage, thought is a vague, unchartednebula [a happilyfortuitous SF metaphor].There are no pre-existingideas, andnothing is distinctbefore the appearanceof language" (Saussure:112). Like other literary metaphors,a time-travelstory is a metaphoronce removed,a metaphorof a metaphorwhich may or may not have any direct relationshipwith objective reality, since that reality is screenedfrom direct apprehensionby the very languagethrough which we speak of it. Languagespeaks of time in spatialmetaphors and producesthe conceptof travelin time.4 Rose suggests that the metaphoricaltendency in contemporarySF far outweighsits predictiveintent. In his initialdistinction between fantasy and SF, he discussesanalogy and extrapolation in the followingterms: it maybe useful...toconceive the opposition between fantasy and science fic- tion in terms of RomanJakobson's distinction between metaphor and metonymyas poles of literarybehavior. The changedworlds of fantasyare presentedas literarysubstitutions for reality;they are relatedto the empir- ical worldparadigmatically or metaphorically....Thechanged worlds of sci- ence fiction,however, are presented as logicalextensions of reality;they are This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIME MACHINE 203 relatedto the empiricalworld syntagmaticallyor metonymically.This is whatis meantwhen sciencefiction is calledan extrapolativeform. (Rose: 2l-22)- Recognizingthat "bothprinciples are at workin science fiction as in all dis- course"(p. 22), Rose neverthelessnotes a shift in emphasisfrom metonymy to metaphor in more recent SF, which has resulted in "a radical reinterpretationof the genre"(p. 16). We may concludefrom this that time travel is not the anomaly it might at first appearto be, since its overtly metaphoricalfunction is now the rule of the genre, ratherthan the exception. DarkoSuvin (pp. 222-42) has suggestedThe TimeMachine as a "structural model"for SF; in the presentcontext, it offers itself as a linguisticparadigm as well.7 Suvinhas definedSF as a genre "whosemain formal device is an imagi- native frameworkalternative to the author'sempirical environment" (p. 8). Fromthis perspective,time travelis "a meansof realitydisplacement" (p. 71) similar to space travel, in that it functionsto introducethe readerinto the alternativeframework of the SF text as an "extensionand exaggerationof some facet of our experience into [sic] another setting" (Lindsay: 126). Extendingbeyond such generic displacement,however, time travel also achievesa displacementspecific to itself, and this is its subversionof certain traditionalapproaches to the questionof time. This holds true whetherthe stories in which it appearsoffer themselvesto the readeras metaphorical commentaries,as exercisesin extrapolation,or as blendsof both. It will be useful at this point (for criticaltheory can be as much a force for defamiliarizationas SF itself)8to continuethis discussionof the partic- ularnature and functionof time travelfrom withinthe contextof Derridean deconstruction.Jacques Derrida's (anti)philosophical strategies are so named becausethey recognizethe impossibilityof effectingany completeor perma- nentbreakdown of the conventionalizedmodes of thoughtfrom withinwhich we interprethuman reality. Derrida cautions that it is not a questionof 'rejecting'these notions; they are necessary,and, at leastat present,nothing is conceivablefor us withoutthem. It is a questionat firstof demonstratingthe systematicand historical solidarity of theconcepts and gesturesof thoughtthat one oftenbelieves to be innocentlyseparated.
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