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The Children of Uranium: Warhol, Weaponry and the Evolution of Postmodern American Identity

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The Children of Uranium: Warhol, Weaponry and the Evolution of Postmodern American Identity Body of Glass: Cybernetic Bodies and the Mirrored Self Warren Donald Steele Department of English Literature University of Glasgow Presented in submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November, 2007 Copyright: Warren Donald Steele, November, 2007 2 For my wife, who made it possible 3 Abstract This thesis examines the ontology of the cyborg body and the politics inherent to cultural manifestations of that image, and focuses on the links between glass and human-machine integration, while tracing the dangerous political affinities that emerge when such links are exposed. In the first chapter, the cyborg’s persistent construction as a cultural Black Box is uncovered using the theories of Bruno Latour and W. Ross Ashby. It examines why the temptation to explore the cyborg solely through close readings of contemporary incarnations leads only to confusion and misreading. The second chapter builds on the work of the first by placing the cyborg within its proper historical context, and provides a detailed examination of the period in which the cyborg was not only named, but also transformed into a physical possibility with an existent political agenda. It then investigates the phallogocentricity, hyper-masculinity, and inherent racism of the cyborg body, and demonstrates how representations of human-machine integration reinforce the pre-existing racist, hetero-normative, patriarchal hegemony of the Cold War. The discussion then explores the issue of the emergent property in the cyborg body; specifically, the figure’s persistent construction as a ‘body of glass.’ It demonstrates how cyborgs are not only associated with objects like the mirror, but also how that figure is tied to visual motifs such as the double or doppelganger. Accordingly, the theories of Jacques Lacan are employed to elucidate the issues that arise when one of the most pervasive images in Western culture also doubles as a reflector. The final chapter seeks to expand upon the framework provided by Lacan, and examines the cyborg not as a mirror, but as a portal. Subsequently, this section challenges not only the cyborg’s current status as a posthuman figure, but also current theoretical assumptions which frame the cyborg as the point of transition from humanism to posthumanism. 4 Table of Contents Introduction The Children of Uranium: Warhol, Weaponry, and the Evolution of Postmodern American Identity 6 Part 1: Cyborgs in the Making 1: Explosive Propositions: Cyborgs, Sudden Death, and the Issue of Textual Examination 26 2: Mutual Orientation: Science, Cybernetics, and the Bodies of the Cold War 43 Part 2: Deciphering Cyborg Politics 3: A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Haraway, Alien, and the Politics of Popular Representation 83 Part 3: Bodies of Glass 4: Refracting Culture, Reflecting Selfhood: W. Ross Ashby and the Emergent Property 130 5: Body of Glas: Cyborgs, Subjectivity, and the Fallacy of the Posthuman 156 Illustrations 194 Bibliography 214 Filmography 255 Acknowledgements 260 5 Illustrations 1. Trinity Marker 194 2. Skin eruptions, Hiroshima mon amour (1959) 195 3. 2001: A Space Odessey (1968); Nagasaki Monument 196 4. Nuit et brouillard (1955) 197 5. Coca-Cola bottles, Hiroshima mon amour (1959); Green Coca-Cola Bottles 1962) 198 6. Andy Warhol, Brillo (1964) 199 7. Khrushchev and Nixon, “The Kitchen Debate” (1959) 199 8. Schwarzenegger’s entrance, T3: Rise of the Machines (2003) 200 9. Abstraction through C31, Dr. Strangelove (1964) 201 10. “Angel of Death,” Dr. Strangelove (1964) 201 11. Black Hands, Dr. Strangelove (1964), Metropolis (1926) 202 12. Moloch, Metropolis (1926) 203 13. Olympia prefigured, Metropolis (1926) 203 14. General Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove (1964) 204 15. General Buck Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove (1964) 204 16. Simulacra and Simulation, Dr. Strangelove (1964) 205 17. Ash rapes Ripley, Alien (1979) 206 18. Ripley in the closet, Alien (1979) 207 19. Kane’s “homosexual oral rape,” Alien (1979) 207 20. Amy Taubin’s “little-dick-with-teeth,” Alien (1979) 207 21. Ash, Alien (1979) 208 22. Major Kong’s prelude to ‘wargasm,’ Dr. Strangelove (1964) 208 23. R.F. Babcock, Join the Navy (1917) 209 24. Russell Crowe as the glass eating cyborg, Sid 6.7, Virtuosity (1995) 210 25. Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524) 210 26. Photograph of the Trinity Test taken 0.025 seconds after detonation 211 27. The Terminator emerges from the atomic blast, T2: Judgment Day (1991) 212 28. Terminator as mirror, T2: Judgment Day (1991) 212 29. Orpheus entering the mirror-pool, Orphée (1949) 213 30. Fetishtic eruptions, Total Recall (1990) 213 6 Introduction: The Children of Uranium: Warhol, Weaponry and the Evolution of Postmodern American Identity “After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding.” 1 0.1 Light In a secure section of the New Mexico desert stands an obelisk of black lava. At nearly 15 feet high, the item is paltry in comparison to any existing counterparts, whether ancient or modern, and does not loom over the surrounding countryside so much as scar it like an ugly pile of cobbled rocks (Figure 1). On a purely aesthetic level, the sheer awkwardness of the object is more than just apparent, it is blinding given the context in which it was built, because with a shape both cone-like and inelegant, the heap itself not only seems grossly incongruous when stacked against the alkali landscape, but also totally alien and inappropriate when considering the sterility and solemnity of the site itself. This is the Trinity marker, the epicenter of (what was) an irradiated wasteland, and the spot “WHERE THE WORLD’S FIRST NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS EXPLODED ON JULY 16, 1945.”2 Officially, the firing circuits closed at 05:29:45 that morning, causing an implosion so violent, and so visually brilliant, its reflection could be seen on the surface of the moon.3 Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Nobel Prize winning physicist entrenched at Los Alamos since the beginning of the project, watched the event from a position over 10 miles away. When describing the test almost 25 years later, Rabi would recall “an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. It was a vision…seen with more than just the eye. It was seen to last forever.”4 Rabi’s recollection is extraordinary as the image of perpetual whiteness not only marks a new beginning—one which unfortunately, is now associated with the cheap sentimentality of a so-called 1 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1994), p. 1. 2 The sign attached to the Trinity marker reads in all capitals: “TRINITY SITE: WHERE THE WORLD’S FIRST NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS EXPLODED ON JULY 16, 1945. ERECTED 1965, WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, J. FREDERICK THORNLIN, MAJOR GENERAL U.S. ARMY, COMMANDING.” 3 Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 670, 672. 4 Isidor Isaac Rabi, Science: The Center of Culture (New York: World Publishers, 1970), p. 138. 7 ‘second dawn’—but also a kind of obsolescence; a complete erasure of everything as Trinity transforms the world into a vision of emptiness without end.5 In many ways, this is the “landscape of snows”, the “dumb blankness” described by Melville, and embodied by his whale.6 This is the “colorless, all- color of atheism from which” everyone shrinks, because the sight is both terrifying and sublime, empty and yet “full of meaning”.7 In reality, the flash lasted for no longer than two seconds, and was replaced by a colossal roar accompanied by “great swirls of flame.”8 These swirls rose in a narrow column to a height of nearly 41,000 feet, the top of which mushroomed outward, covering the sky in a churning cloud of colour that was either “mint green,” “brilliant purple,” or “bright…spectral blue”.9 However, the image of a “lime green” sky would repeat itself yet again in the early 1960s when a massive Hydrogen bomb was detonated over the Pacific, in a spot near the Hawaiian Islands.10 Although considerably weaker than its successors, the heat generated by the blast in New Mexico was sufficient to scorch a pine board at 2,000 yards, while the energy produced in the centre was so enormous it not only vaporized the mass of steel girders upon which the device was placed, but also melted the earth at its base; fusing the surrounding sand into a huge plate of murky green glass.11 This glass, also known as Trinitite, is now almost gone. Today only fragments remain, sold as “Atomite” or “Alamogordo glass” to the rock collectors and bomb enthusiasts that scour eBay. The rest was bulldozed 5 Ferenc M. Szasz uses the image of a second sunrise to describe the effects of the Trinity Test, see; The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press). 6 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The White Whale (Boston: The Page Company, 1920), p. 186 7 Ibid. Indeed, “like [the] willful travelers in Lapland who [refused] to wear colored and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel[s]” un/lucky enough to survive Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also “[gazed themselves] blind at the monumental white shroud that [wrapped] all the prospect around [them].” 8 Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atom Bomb, p. 673. 9 David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), p. 227. A ballistics expert described the blast as “bright…blue” while Frank Oppenheimer maintains the resulting cloud appeared a “brilliant purple” (Rhodes, 673, 675).
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