Citizen Robots: Biopolitics, the Computer, and the Vietnam Period By Michael James Ryder (M.J. Ryder) Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Literature and Creative Writing Lancaster University October 2019 2 Abstract The Vietnam War coincided with an intense period of technological change in the US that marked a significant turning point in the relationship between the citizen and the state. While computer technology found new and deadly uses on the field of battle, it also found its way into people’s homes, giving the state the means through which to monitor and control subjects like never before. While Michel Foucault describes Vietnam as ‘the gates of our world’, this thesis argues that Vietnam stands rather as the gates of our biopolitical world – a period in which Foucault’s original concept of biopolitics is reborn in the computer age.1 To this end, this thesis examines some of the early impacts and implications of the computerized biopolitical state, and the robotized human subject. It offers an exploration of the ways in which biopolitical ideas can be used alongside science fiction texts to interrogate the cultural tendencies of the USA during the Vietnam War period, stretching from the start of the war in 1955 through to the war’s end in 1975 and the shadow cast in the years that follow. In doing so, it charts how human subjects are complicit in the means of their own oppression, and the ethical implications of the blurred distinction between the human and the machine. Thus, it calls for a new cybernetic form of biopolitical insight – a techno-biopolitics – that integrates the robotic with current understandings of the human, the non-human and the animal, and how they are used as a means of discursive control. 1 Michel Foucault, ‘Preface’, in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), pp. xi–xiv (p. xi). 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Brian Baker and Arthur Bradley, and all my friends and colleagues at Lancaster University and CCCU. In particular, special mention goes to Luke Davis, Claire Povah, and everyone in SBS and Marketing Communications, plus Gareth Stears and Iain McCracken at CCCU. I’d also like to thank friends and family for their ongoing friendship and support, in particular: Dan, Faye, Sean, Rowan, David and Thomas, plus Carolyn, Mum (Debbie), Dad (Dave), and my two sisters, Nicky and Kate. Finally, special mention should go to my Lancaster friends, Claire McGann and Danielle Girard, and my podcast co-host, Josh Hughes. This thesis is dedicated in memory of my grandparents Rose and Ernie Ryder, and Sheila and Tom Cramp. This research project was funded by the AHRC’s North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, 2016-2019. 4 Table of Contents ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ 4 TABLE OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. 6 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 7 A NEW WAY OF THINKING ....................................................................................................... 7 THEMES OF THE VIETNAM PERIOD ......................................................................................... 11 CRITICAL LANDSCAPE ........................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN ......................................................................................................... 41 THE GATES OF OUR WORLD ................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 1: THE COMPUTERIZED STATE ................................................................ 45 PRELUDE ............................................................................................................................... 45 THE COMPUTERIZED STATE ................................................................................................... 48 INTRODUCING MIKE .............................................................................................................. 51 SEGMENTARITY AND CONTROL ............................................................................................. 58 A QUESTION OF FREEDOM ...................................................................................................... 62 FREEDOM AND MYTHOLOGY ................................................................................................. 64 MICROFASCISM AND THE DISPOSSESSED .............................................................................. 68 JUDGEMENT AND DESIRE ....................................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER 2: AUTONOMY AND LANGUAGE CODES ................................................ 82 ATHSHE AND VIETNAM ......................................................................................................... 84 STRUCTURES OF POWER ........................................................................................................ 88 THE RESPONSIBLE SUBJECT ................................................................................................... 91 THE WAR MANAGERS ............................................................................................................ 95 THE PROBLEM OF AUTONOMY ............................................................................................... 99 A QUESTION OF GUILT ......................................................................................................... 103 LANGUAGE CODES ............................................................................................................... 108 ON STATEMENTS AND TRANSMISSION ................................................................................. 112 TRANSMISSION AND THE GIFT OF DEATH ............................................................................. 117 CHAPTER 3: SURVEILLANCE, COMMUNITY AND CONTROL ............................ 120 FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID ............................................................................ 125 SURVEILLANCE AND FEAR ................................................................................................... 130 THE HUMAN MACHINE ......................................................................................................... 140 THE TECHNOLOGY OF CONTROL .......................................................................................... 145 THE DEPTH MERCHANDISERS ............................................................................................... 151 SOCIAL SURVEILLANCE ....................................................................................................... 154 SYMPATHY AND FEAR ......................................................................................................... 158 IMMUNITY AND THE SURVEILLANCE STATE ......................................................................... 162 CHAPTER 4: FUTURE SOLDIERS ................................................................................. 166 THE UNENDING WAR ........................................................................................................... 168 VIOLENCE AND CONTROL .................................................................................................... 172 5 THE SOLDIER AS INSTRUMENT ............................................................................................. 174 THE SOLDIER AS SIGNATURE ............................................................................................... 181 OF FRIEND AND FOE ............................................................................................................. 185 A QUESTION OF RACE .......................................................................................................... 190 BEYOND THE HUMAN .......................................................................................................... 193 THE AI OVERLORDS ............................................................................................................ 198 CHAPTER 5: BEYOND VIETNAM ................................................................................. 205 INTRODUCING ENDER WIGGIN ............................................................................................ 207 SACRIFICE AND THE STATE .................................................................................................. 209 EXCEPTION AND CONSENT ................................................................................................... 215 THE TECHNOLOGY OF WAR .................................................................................................. 221 A QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY ......................................................................................... 231 THE HUMAN ALIBI ..............................................................................................................