Movement SF and the Picaresque Robert Glen Wilson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2014 You Can't Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque Robert Glen Wilson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wilson, Robert Glen, "You Can't Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 2337. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2337 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. You Can’t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque You Can’t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English By Robert G. Wilson Campbellsville University Bachelor of Arts in English and History, 1999 Western Kentucky University Master of Arts in American Literature, 2002 May 2014 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ______________________________________ Dr. M. Keith Booker Dissertation Director ______________________________________ ____________________________________ Dr. Robert Cochran Dr. William A. Quinn Committee Member Committee Member ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson’s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the “technological sublime.” This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction 1 II. Part 1: (Re)Defining Spaces: Mapping Movement SF 29 "Watch Out, the World's Behind You": Looking Back at Cyberpunk 29 Polishing Bones: Cyberpunk Mythologies 32 Embodiment and Cyberpunk 34 Affect and Cyberpunk 39 Narrative and Cyberpunk 41 Politics and Cyberpunk 43 You Can't Get There from Here 49 Consoling Cowboys 49 Cyberpunk: The Clone Wares 55 Shadowrun and the Apotheosis of Technosleaze 59 The Movement 68 Casing the Premises 71 Premise: Energetic, High-Information Prose 72 Premise: Technological Change and Boundary Dissolution 77 Premise: Honest Engagement with 80s Presents and Futures 83 Premise: Margins, Hinterlands, and Zones 87 Gentlemen Losers 89 Parallel Evolution: A Movement by Any Other Name . 90 Rewiring Technology 108 Technology and Human Identity 108 The Singularity 109 Rewiring Boundaries 110 Margins and Hinterlands 110 The Status-Quo 111 Rewiring Prose 112 Literary Pretense and Crammed Prose 112 The Walkabout Movement 117 III. Part 2: Evolving Spaces: Mapping the Evolution of Movement Picaresque 129 Worldview 139 Unintelligent Design: Disorder and the Picaresque Narrative 139 Disorder in the Court (and Church, Hospital, etc.): Miller's Tally of Disorder-Enhancing Motifs 150 Law and Order 150 The Quack Doctor 154 The Corrupt Cleric 158 Visions of Paradise 161 The Madness Scene 167 Distinguishing Features of the Mode 168 Autobiographic Asphyxiation: The Picaresque Point of View 169 Practicing the Sisyphean Rhythm Method: Picaresque Episodic Narratives 183 Social Lubrication: The Picaro's Panoramic View 192 Picaro Peep Shows: (Peanut) Galleries of Human Types 203 Copping a Cognitive Feel: Picaros and Empath(eor)y of Mind 204 Conversations Apropos of Nothing 208 Transmetropolitan and the Picaresque Haibun 212 Preferring Rough Trade: Picaros and the Underworld 218 Pulling Out Early: The Picaro-Landscape Relationship 222 The Picaresque and the Environmental Sublime 227 Parodic Prophylaxis: Picaresque Social Criticism 232 Self-Love: Parody and Picaresque Self-Referentiality 242 Going Rogue: Defining the Picaro 248 Motifs Old and Motifs New 257 Unusual Birth or Childhood 258 Ejection 261 The Grotesque or Horrible Incident 263 The Trick 265 Role Playing and the Protean Form 274 Motifs Unique to Movement SF Picaresques 280 The Navigator 280 The Master of Arcane, Forbidden, Outsider Knowledge/Skills 288 The Fragmented Identity and the Saturated Self 291 Letting Go of Ideology: Picaros and Picaras as Tabula Rasa 293 Just-In-Time Adaptation/Flexibility 298 Worlds Gone Stale 304 Scripted, Prescribed-Pattern Spaces 312 Lighting Out for the Territories 315 IV. Part 3: Violating Spaces: Homogenized Worlds and Tactics of Marginalization 319 The Oppression of Place 323 No Quitsies: The Bound(ary)less Space(s) of Globalization 323 The Pre-Packaged Tourist 325 Mallrats in (Hyper)Space 329 Standardized People: Fordism and the Scripted Worker/Society 335 Standardized Places: Modernist/Post-Modernist Architectural Philosophy 342 The Age of Moral Machines (for "Living") 344 Arcologies of the Future 349 Standardized Encounters: McDisneyization and the Scripted Experience 354 Scripted Journeys/Scripted Souls 356 Scripted Encounters/Scripted Selves 360 The Tactics of Marginalization 368 Unnatural Defections: Being "Out of Place" 373 Abnormalizing Space: Spatial Transgressions 378 Walking the City and Parkour 378 Working the Edge 388 Unspeakable Love Amongst the Ruins: Transgressive Tourism and Urban Exploration 390 Picaro Banzai: Transgressive Adventures Across the 4th Dimension 402 Shopping on the Edge: Transgressive Economics 407 Becoming Out of Place: Transgressive Behaviors 413 Looking Out of Place 414 Speaking Out of Place 420 Thinking Back to the Center 427 Social Diseases: Picaros and Picaras as Carriers of a Culture's Ills 429 Angel Station: Consolidating Your Multiphrenia 439 Transmetropolitan: Branding Your Consumers 444 Road Cures: Social Remedies for Social Diseases 459 Angel Station: Loving the Alien 464 Transmetropolitan: Interiorem Vox Populi 469 V. Works Cited 479 1 INTRODUCTION Now she walks through her sunken dream to the seat with the clearest view and she's hooked to the silver screen But the film is a saddening bore for she's lived it ten times or more She could spit in the eyes of fools as they ask her to focus on . -David Bowie, “Life on Mars” (1971) I got to feeling like a machine, and that's no way to feel. -John Shaft, Shaft (1971) I walked to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel – white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange. -Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) As many critics have suggested, one of the most problematic aspects of the pervasive technological and media-driven cultures in which we live is that we often feel powerless, as if our intentionality, our agency, is being undermined. This may be the result of advertising industries reducing us to the passive role of consumer; it may be the result of entertainment industry stereotypes dictating how we conceive of our selves; it may simply be the feeling of 2 insignificance that comes from living in an economy vast beyond our capacity to understand. Whatever the sources, we are losing the sense that we have the capacity to act, and our television, our films, and our literature reflect quite faithfully our collective sense that our very intentionality is being eroded by complex, enigmatic forces. Within the first forty pages of one of Pynchon’s postmodern masterpieces, the picaresque-in-spirit Vineland, the reader is presented with an image of stunning suicidal stupidity: After work, unable to sleep, the Corvairs liked to go out and play motorhead valley