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The Holographic Self: Self-Representation and Logics of Digitality

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The Holographic Self: Self-Representation and Logics of Digitality THE HOLOGRAPHIC SELF: SELF-REPRESENTATION AND LOGICS OF DIGITALITY IN THREE CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES OF COSMOPOLITANISM NAVNEET ALANG A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, CANADA DECEMBER 2015 © NAVNEET ALANG, DECEMBER 2015 ii Abstract This dissertation is an examination of the holographic self in three contemporary novels of cosmopolitanism. The holographic self is a concept I present which expands upon the cyborg to foreground a self that operates in relation to a “hologram”—a public-facing digital self-representation—or operates in the logic of such. In this project, I deploy two models of the holographic self: one in which the hologram functions as an interface for fantasy to move toward an actualization of an ego-ideal; and another in which the amalgam of holograms or instantiations of self form a rhizomatic or constellational arrangement of subjectivity in which movement itself is prioritized. In each of the focal novels—Gautam Malkani's Londonstani; Hari Kunzru's Transmission; Teju Cole's Open City—the protagonist functions as a holographic self in a manner that expresses a desire for a post-positionality subjectivity, where traditional notions of bodily or singular identity itself are exceeded. In chapter one I argue that in Londonstani, protagonist Jas seeks to produce a culturally hybrid self in which the virtual is used as a tool of self- actualization, as it ultimately prioritizes the bodily self reconfigured by its holographic dimensions. I compare the novel to Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray to suggest that text has no similarly phenomenal ground for an “outsourced self.” In chapter two, I assert that in Transmission, Arjun also operates in relation to a hologram of self, but the text's desire for Arjun to exceed identity itself expresses a yearning for a non-bodily notion of selfhood that seeks to escape the policing of identity. I compare the novel to Brontë's Jane Eyre to argue that Jane's trajectory functions to manifest a set of inescapable material socio- iii ideological constraints that demand a particular conclusion. In chapter three, I examine William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and its explosion of taxonomy and signification in relation to digitality, and then argue that Open City manifests such ideas through a holographic self that desires escape from not just identity but consequence. I conclude by suggesting a potential harmony between the concept of the holographic self, digitality, and narratives of cosmopolitanism. iv Acknowledgements To my supervisor Thomas Loebel, for his infinite patience. His guidance, open- mindedness, and faith have made this project possible. To my committee members Ian Balfour and Marcus Boon, for their insightful critical input and direction. To Kathy Armstrong, Emma Posca, Rose Crawford, and all the admin staff of York English, mostly for putting up with my ceaseless questioning. To my peers and friends in the York Graduate English program for their camaraderie, collegiality, and their eagerness to have ‘just one more.” To Roxanne Duncan for believing I could be better. To Majero Bouman and Matthew Smith for their encouragement, commiseration, and countless conversations over wine—you two have made this thing worthwhile. To my family, Charanjit Alang, Sukhraj Alang, and Rajvir Alang, for their patience, unending generosity—and for finally pushing me to “get the sodding thing done.” v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: A SCATTERED, DISPERSED SELF ___________________________________1 A Hologram Instead of a Mirror ___________________________________9 Subjects Standing in Reserve as Objects _____________________________23 Actual Virtuality and the Ontological Virtual ________________________29 The (Already) Virtual Self _________________________________________39 I Think, Therefore I Self-Represent _________________________________43 The Epistemology of the Digital Virtual _____________________________54 The Holographic Quality of Digital Objects ______________________________ 54 The Holographic Quality of Digital Subjects _____________________________ 60 The Digital Virtual as a Persistent, Supra-subjective Discursive Space ________ 66 The Fantasy of the Digital Virtual __________________________________71 An Interface for the Supra-subjective? _______________________________75 Interface Effects, Not Just Interface Fantasy _________________________76 The Holographic Self _____________________________________________82 The Electronic, Flickering Beneath Fibres of Pulp _____________________83 CHAPTER ONE: IDENTITY AND SELFIE-REPRESENTATION ______________________________98 I Self-Present Therefore I am ______________________________________ 102 The Spectral Image of Self ________________________________________106 A Legitimately Fake Self __________________________________________111 The Offline Jekyll and Online Hyde _________________________________119 A Virtual Desi Self _______________________________________________127 The Corporeal Capital of Rudeboy Identity ___________________________135 Chat Like Your Avatar ___________________________________________138 CHAPTER TWO: STEPPING INTO THE MIRROR ______________________________________160 On the Virtual Put to Differing Ends _______________________________ 165 Tugging at a Metaphorical Collar _________________________________ 174 A Horizon of Possibility _________________________________________ 186 The Man Who (Eventually) Wasn't There __________________________ 198 Living in the Imagined Future ____________________________________ 207 A Coda of Code ________________________________________________ 214 vi CHAPTER THREE: THE FLICKERING SUBJECT OF MOVEMENT-VISION ___________________ 229 The Self that Bleeds Pixels ________________________________________233 Apophenia and Other Easily Made Mistakes _________________________246 The Natural Rhythm of Signification ________________________________249 A Sensitivity for Where the Sign Goes _______________________________253 Collapse and Conflation: A World of Indistinguishable Signs ____________255 The Footage-as-Father—or is it the other way around? ________________262 The Footage ____________________________________________________265 The Silent Subject and Speaking Art ________________________________269 Forget Referents: Textual Resolution in the Form of a Transcendent Signifier ___ 272 A City Altogether Too Open? ______________________________________279 Rhizomatic Temporality __________________________________________288 A Text of Internal Collapse ________________________________________291 A Psychogeography of Trauma ____________________________________294 Toward a Finally Object-Like Subject _______________________________303 An Object-ive Style For the Subject _________________________________307 The Holographic Subject as Flickering Movement _____________________322 CONCLUSION: THE HOLOGRAPHIC CYBORG _______________________________________327 ENDNOTES__________________________________________________________________ 375 WORKS CITED______________________________________________________________ 383 1 INTRODUCTION: A SCATTERED, DISPERSED SELF The conclusion of the 2013 film Oblivion sees saviour protagonist Jack Harper appearing to die—and then returning. The science fiction tale is, at least as these things go, relatively standard: an alien force destroys most of the life on Earth, and then, using a complex network of city-sized machines run by clone pairings—all of whom are unaware of each other or their true origin—carries out a mission of extracting energy from the planet while suppressing the remaining human population. All Jack and his partner Victoria have to do is to oversee operations until they return to the Tesseract, a base that hovers above Earth. Where the film deviates from the usual narrative, however, is that the Jack Harper clone whom the audience has come to know through the bulk of the film is, by the film’s end, “replaced” by another Jack Harper clone, indistinguishable save for a differing number. Jack Harper 49 may have died defeating the evil aliens, but Jack Harper 52 is not only present and alive at the film's end but, given the film’s closing shots, also seen as a romantic replacement for Julia, Jack Harper’s long-lost wife. In the way of so many narratives, it is a restoral of order, and in doing so an expression of both desire and ideology. Like Fortinbras’s entrance at the end of Hamlet or Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage in Pride and Prejudice, the substitution of one Jack Harper for another produces the desired resolution that “fixes” a state of disarray: not only are Earth’s remaining humans saved and the enemy defeated, but the sacrifice of Jack Harper 49 is mitigated by the arrival of what is completely “the perfect substitute.” It is a notion of identity and the subject that seems eminently of its time. Caught up in an ordinary tale of a hero’s triumph over impossible odds is the sense that “Jack Harper” is not so much a 2 person or a subject but a virtual identity: a collectivity or multiplicity of instantiations that are largely interchangeable. The “real” or “actual” Jack Harper remains both separate from individual ones, yet somehow simultaneously an amalgam or conglomeration of all of them. The abstract numbering that marks out the various Jack Harpers—49 versus 52—exists in relation to the Jack Harper that has no number, receding as “he” is into a virtual horizon of possibility.
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