The prosthetic self technology and human experience in contemporary speculative fiction

articulate the convergence of technology and human experience, at a time of unabated technological change and the infiltration of new technologies into the most intimate spheres of life.

1

Introduction: Prosthetic Transformation and Speculative Visions

In November 2000, Sony released a print advertisement for their product, the

‘Memory Stick,’ a digital storage medium that records information as digital data and enables the transference of this digital information from one electronic accessory to another The image used to advertise the product centres on the back of a man’s head, which signifies the chamber of human memory The Sony memory device is inserted into the middle of the head as an electronic substitution for the organic Across the top

of the image are the words ‘Imagine it.’

The image chosen to market the product is a striking example of a tendency in

contemporary culture, that is, a widespread use of elements from speculative fiction (SF)1 in everyday forms of expression These models and tropes now commonly permeate commercial art, popular film and television, indicating a normalization of

SF modes for understanding our highly technological present The Sony

advertisement is an example of how SF is no longer simply a formula for a literary genre but in fact a pertinent mode of awareness, a mode that SF scholar Istvan

Csicsery-Ronay, Jr calls ‘science-fictionality’, which ‘frames and tests experience as

if they were aspects of a work of science fiction’ (Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Seven Beauties

2) This progressive view suggests that SF has given us an apt language with which to

1 The term ‘speculative fiction’ is term that arose in the 1960s to articulate a broadening aesthetic domain of science fiction, which, at the time was saddled by arguments about the defining limits of the genre (Luckhurst 147-148) My preference for this term indicates my view of a constantly-evolving form of the genre, acknowledging the shifting stylistics and genre-blending that continues to occur; however, I use the term more or less interchangeably with ‘science fiction.’

articulate the convergence of technology and human experience, at a time of unabated technological change and the infiltration of new technologies into the most intimate spheres of life

From this example of commercial art we can see how SF is able to frame the very abstract idea that technology preserves fallible human memory, and allows for a more efficient retrieval and transfer of the information obscurely embedded in the human mind SF’s system of signs allows us to map out and make concrete unseen or

abstruse relations While the ad’s non-mimetic image of technological enhancement represents a discontinuity with our actual experience, it is not completely

inconceivable as it extrapolates from current human-machine interfaces, and

exemplifies SF’s rootedness in empirical reality As I will elaborate on later, SF, unlike other non-naturalistic modes like fantasy or Symbolism, tends to reposition its signs and symbols as objects and occurrences of the material world, thus giving us materialist rather than metaphysical accounts of human experience (see Suvin,

Metamorphoses 80; Roberts 15)

Of specific interest to my discussion is the way Sony’s image delineates man’s

relationship with technology The digital stick is represented as prosthesis, a

mnemonic device that attaches to the head and augments the individual’s memory This image communicates a particular idea about Man’s relationship with technology: aspects of the human being once thought confined to the domain of the organic are now being replaced by technology This implies the externalization and enhancement

of biological processes through technology, which supplements Man’s natural

abilities and allows him to engage in more complex endeavours At the same time,

this supplementation has fundamentally changed Man, transforming the way his body essentially functions, creating an opening or rupture into which the technology may enter I am interested in this double movement of prostheticization, the simultaneous exteriorization of the human and interiorizing of technology, the simultaneous

extension and absence of self brought about by our increasingly intimate interactions with technology, and the consequences of this on humanity

The inspiration for this dissertation comes from a recognition that this

technologically-enabled extension and absence is as a contemporary condition of postindustrial human subjectivity Cultural discourse today articulates that the

contemporary world is being shaped by an increasing interactivity with various forms

of technology, and that our personal and social lives are now characterized by

technological substitution From corporeal substitutions, such as limb replacements and cosmetic implants, to virtual substitutions, such as intelligent machines taking over administration in large corporations and the increasing number of virtual social platforms that are replacing face-to-face interactions, contemporary society has reached a point of significant dependence upon the machine, and we are virtually unable to function in basic ways without computers or even our telephones So while technological innovation is meant to extend our abilities, and help us to reach farther with all our senses, we have also become more dependent on technology, adapting to its presence to the extent that removing these technologies from our lives would completely disorient or incapacitate us As such we have allowed our tools to replace our more authentic responses to the world and each other Our everyday lives, the way we experience the world, and even our identities and subjectivities have been irrevocably transformed by technology The dual movement of prostheticization, the

transfer between human and technology, is not then confined to actual prosthetic limbs and devices, but can be observed in broader human-technology contexts I am interested in the occurrence of prostheticization in SF, a genre primarily concerned with the impact of science and technology on humanity In this dissertation, I analyse representations of prostheticization in contemporary SF works, and explore what writers suggest about the ways human subjectivity has been altered by the various technological substitutions available to us in our contemporary world Looking at a wide range of SF texts from within and outside the Anglo-American sphere, I attend

to the diverse ways prostheticization can be represented, given the elasticity of the word ‘prosthesis,’ as I will show

The intensification of technological substitution in this current era has important implications for notions of what it signifies to be human In the past, the human has to

a large degree been regarded as an autonomous and rational being, separate from the world of objects, and master of his tools This is an idea that we inherit from the Enlightenment, which marked the rise of modern empirical science, particularly from philosopher Rene Descartes It is a belief that continues to underprop our

understandings of self, particularly in the West However, there is a discernible sense that our very intimate relationships with new technologies2 are destabilizing this The

‘prosthetic self’ that is the title of this dissertation indicates a new subjectivity

recognized in this present moment by the writers of my chosen texts It is a self that can no longer be regarded as separate from its technological objects, a self that is, in

various and complex ways, bound up with these objects, a binding or imbrication that

has radical consequences for the subject’s sense of self and understanding of his or

2 I use the phrase ‘new technology’ to refer to recent advancements in information and communication technologies, biotechnology, genetic engineering, nanotechnologies, and other digital technologies

her place in the world This new subjectivity3 moves further away from the Cartesian model of self And in order to discern how far it diverges from the Cartesian self it is worth discussing key shifts in understandings of subjectivity, in relation to the world

of objects, as proposed by key theorists

Descartes’ (1631) conception of the subject can be summed up by his famous

formulation Cogito ergo sum ‘I think therefore I am.’ For Descartes, the subject is

the ‘thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions,’ a conscious self that is the source of all

experience and knowledge (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy 30) He identifies consciousness with the ‘mind, a soul (animus), an intellect, a reason’

(Descartes, Philosophical Writings 69) Here, the conscious processes of rational and

reflective thought, as opposed to other sensations, are privileged and indubitable Indeed, the modern tradition of Western thought since has privileged the rational processes of analysis and observation in the search for objective truth For later Enlightenment thinkers, reason becomes the necessary quality distinguishing human from non-human (Mansfield 15) Further, Descartes writes that the subject is ‘a thinking and unextended thing,’ who possesses a body that is ‘an extended and unthinking thing,’ such that the self or ‘soul’ is ‘entirely and absolutely distinct from

[the] body, and can exist without it’ (Descartes, Discourse on Method 156) For

Descartes then, and for later Enlightenment thinkers, the subject is an immutable, contained, interior essence that is independent of its body and of the objects around it

self-in the world

3 ‘Subjectivity,’ etymologically, means to be ‘placed (or even thrown) under’ and therefore indicates a sense of self that is inevitably linked to something outside of it, be it a concept or other subjects and society in general It thus reflects the idea that the self is not a separate, distinct entity (Mansfield 3)

Immanuel Kant (1781) developed his own version of the conscious self For Kant, subjectivity would be impossible without the reality of objects, which induce thought and experience These thoughts or mental representations of the world merge with our sense of self, ‘unite[d]… in one self-consciousness’ (Kant 154), and thus connect us with things (Mansfield 19) Kant therefore moves to an understanding of subjectivity

in terms of subject-object relations However, he argues that our knowledge of objects

is not real but ideal The human being can only know of the appearances or

representations of things, and not have direct access to the things themselves, which maintains the division between subject and object Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1807) radicalizes this view, attempting to historically ground it by dealing with the actual experience of first-personal awareness Hegel suggests that consciousness

‘possesses two moments: that of knowledge, and that of objectivity which is the negative with regard to this knowledge When the spirit [or mind] develops itself in this element of consciousness and displays its moments, this opposition occurs at each particular moment, and they all therefore appear as faces of consciousness The science of this path is the science of the experience had by consciousness’ (Hegel 96) For Hegel, consciousness is always consciousness of an object, and all objects are objects for consciousness The subject’s consciousness reflects what it encounters in the world but in doing so it therefore reflects an objective reality, which itself is the product of subjective activity Subjective consciousness is thus a reciprocal activity between the individual and the material world that the individual builds around itself

In this way, the self-governing, rational subject is inseparable from objective reality necessarily bound to the cultural-historical world in which he or she lives (Redding,

"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel") Hegel rejects Kant’s claim that reality is

unknowable arguing that everything has an intelligible structure that human reason

can apprehend, and that everything is knowable through this underlying structure (Lavine 209)

Edmund Husserl (1900/ 1901) proceeds from Hegel’s effort to delineate the structure

of first-person experience (Thomson 197), establishing phenomenology as a

philosophical movement Phenomenology is, literally, the study of ‘phenomena,’ or,

more specifically, the study of the appearance of things, or how things manifest themselves in our experience (rather than what), as experienced from the first-person

perspective Phenomenology studies how consciousness is constituted in order to receive these phenomena (Smith, D.W, "Phenomenology").4 Husserl accepts the Cartesian premise of the thinking and knowing subject, and builds upon it, adding that

it is only through one’s participation with the world that one becomes aware of and understands oneself In other words, the subject’s consciousness is ‘intentional,’ that

is, it is always directed towards something, or ‘about’ something, that is external to its own existence These are the objects of our consciousness (Husserl 89) For Husserl, the body is the centre of experience, and determines how we encounter the material world, and thus an essential part of all knowing However, while Husserl offers an alternative to mind-body dualism, the transcendental turn in his philosophy—

‘bracketing’ the question of whether the material world around us actually exists, and reflecting only on the structure of one’s own conscious experience—arguably

reinforces an abstract conception of subjectivity that is independent of the world (Smith, D.W, "Phenomenology") The idea of the self as separate from the rest of the world is an idea that is important to the humanist and liberal traditions Both

4 The term ‘phenomenology’ is first used by Hegel in his text Phenomenology of Mind (1807)

originally titled “The Science of the Experience of Consciousness,” signaling a focus on the experience

of first-personal awareness But Husserl is the first philosopher to call himself a ‘phenomenologist,’ and is the founder of its philosophical movement, reinitiating Hegel’s effort to delineate the structure of first-person experience (Thomson 197)

humanism and liberalism are based on the assumption that the human being has dominion over the world around it, able to know and therefore to control it (Kate Soper 14-15)5 This has given rise to a notion of the individual as being separate from the wider community

A number of philosophers, working within the phenomenological tradition, later challenged this bracketing of the question of being, giving the phenomenological account an ontological rather than an epistemological interpretation Notably, Martin Heidegger (1927), a student of Husserl, rejects the idea that the subject reflects on experience by bracketing the world, and asserts that the subject’s primordial

experience is, rather, ‘being there’ in the world Heidegger uses the term Dasein—

literally ‘being there’ in German—to indicate a new conception of self that cannot be

considered except as immersed in the world (West 109) Heidegger sees Dasein and

the world as a unified phenomenon We are first and foremost engaged with the material world, instead of spectators or knowers of the world, and so our objects function as a means of engaging rather than as things to be looked at or analysed For Heidegger phenomenology is a matter of ‘fundamental ontology’ (Heidegger 34)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) takes this concept of subjectivity further by

specifically addressing the question of the body, asserting that consciousness is the embodied awareness of the primordial experience Merleau-Ponty radically reassesses the Cartesian division between inner conscious experience and the external domain of objects, arguing that consciousness can only occur in the context of perception that is always already in bodily terms, and that, equally, consciousness or cognition of the

5 This idea of human domination over nature has continued to be an ascendant belief, present in the Enlightenment faith in reason and in contemporary science’s projects of ‘social engineering’ (Kate Soper 14-15)

world pervades the body (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 231) Merleau-Ponty explores bodies as knowing subjects always already entangled in a

world of meaning, such that ‘the distinction between subject and object is blurred in [the] body’ (Merleau-Ponty “The Philosopher and His Shadow” 167.) Emmanuel Levinas (1961), who takes a phenomenological approach to ethics, affirms this unity between the self and the body, insisting that the body is not separate from the subject like an external object but in fact ‘closer and more familiar to us that the rest of the world, and controls our psychological life, our temperament, and our activities’ and so

‘all dualism between the self and the body must disappear’ (Levinas, “Reflections” 68) For Levinas, the subject is necessarily chained to materiality (he talks about history and other kinds of materiality, of which the body is the primary example), and interacts with the world around it and, by extension, with others Levinas argues that this embodied experience of self ensures that the individual is situated in the broader context of concrete reality, and ethically binds the subject to the other (Levinas,

Totality 230)

The intersection between embodiment and subjectivity has also been explored

considerably in feminist theory and gender theory Theorists like Simone De Beauvoir (1949), Elisabeth Grosz (1994), and Rosi Braidotti (1994) draw from the above

phenomenological theories of embodiment to put forward theories of feminism that stress the complex materiality of bodies that exist in relations of power, and which affirm women’s differences and specificities Grosz, for instance, insists on ‘the irreducible specificity of women's bodies, the bodies of all women, independent of class, race and history’ and argues that biological materialities make sexed identities

possible, although female subjective experience varies with historical and social contexts (Grosz 207)

Other feminist theorists draw on Michel Foucault’s post-structuralist understandings

of subjectivity, which provide a different understanding of embodied subjectivity Instead of examining the phenomenological experiences of embodied subjectivity (such as kinesthesis and empathy), Foucault considers how historical and social discourse shapes the body-subject This can refer to the fact that we understand and experience our bodies by way of culturally constructed representations It also refers

to how our experience is shaped materially, through social norms and practices

(Oksala 119-120) Foucault introduces the concept of biopower to describe how the

social regulation and manipulation of bodies produces historically specific types of

subjectivity within that body (Foucault, History of Sexuality 139) Biopower inscribes

the limits of normal and culturally intelligible experience, producing a hegemonic discursive order This discursive order influences non-discursive practices and creates material changes Social control occurs at the level of material bodies and so

subjectivity is materially constituted, implying that there is no separation between

body and subject (Foucault, Power 97)

Following Foucault, feminist theorists such as Joan Scott (1988) and Judith Butler (1990, 1993) argue that women’s experiences are always already discursively

constituted and that appealing to an ‘authentic’ female experience that exceeds

discourse only serves to reify an image of femininity that has oppressed women by binding women to nature Judith Butler instead understands gender as a ‘relation

among socially constituted subjects in specifiable contexts’ (Butler, Gender Trouble

15) and suggests that there is ‘no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results’ (25) That is to say, gender is constructed through one’s repetitive

performance of gender She argues that these performances affect the person in corporeal ways such that even biological sex is not a ‘bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but… a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies’ an ‘ideal construct forcibly materialized through time’

(Butler, Bodies 2-3) and that there is no distinction between the material and

discursive body

We can see that from Heidegger onwards (Heidegger’s work is a huge influence on later views about subjectivity [Mansfield, 22]), there is a pervasive recognition that the Enlightenment model of self, the understanding that we live in world that is separate from us, is inadequate This recognition is more acute today when our entanglement with technology has become a defining issue Today, it seems more than ever, technology is remapping the limits of the human being Not only are technologies reshaping our ‘external’ bodies, but they are also transforming what is

‘inside’ (how we remember, how we perceive the world, our ethnic and sexual identities for instance) such that the boundaries between inside and outside, mind and body are completely dissolved

The writers of my chosen texts recognize that human identity and subjectivity are always in question when we consider technology They examine how technologies that have emerged in recent years—from genetic engineering to human enhancement technologies to various cybernetic and information-communication technologies—

impact not just our bodies but the way we receive the world, our consciousness of things, and therefore our subjectivities These writers offer models of subjectivity that are constituted by the interplay between mind, body and the external world, and

reflect on the various ways technology has become embodied by users, extensions of

the human body They highlight an emerging understanding that technology is not simply passive, an understanding held by Heidegger (1977),6 but rather, it possesses a kind of ‘intentionality’ or agency, as suggested by some of the later philosophers, a quality previously only accorded to the human being As such, technologies can mediate or interact with our consciousness of the world, and even interpret the world for us More than this, these writers assert an ontological shift: the human being and technology (in the broadest sense of the word, including technical objects as well as artificial, discursive entities) are co-constitutive to the extent that various aspects of the ‘human’ and the ‘technological’ are displaced or replaced by the other within a framework of interaction, feedback and production This is a view of subjectivity in which the human being is re-conceptualized as de-centred, heterogeneous,

simultaneously dependent and autonomous, and whose understanding of self is

continuously shifting The writers use the SF trope of prosthesis to explore how different aspects of human experience (embodiment, memory and our relationships with others) are transformed by this interplay, and thus can be seen as engaging with a range of theories of subjectivity and embodiment, as I will demonstrate

6 Heidegger draws attention to how technology constricts our experience of things, and transforms how

we see nature and other human This technological ‘enframing’ (Ge-stell) reveals the world as only raw material for technical operations, what Heidegger describes as a ‘standing-reserve.’ This denies man from ‘enter[ing] into a more original revealing…to experience the call of a more primal truth,’

ultimately reducing the human being (Heidegger, Question Concerning Technology 28) However, for Heidegger technological domination is still the imposition of human domination through technology, a

‘technological exercise of his will’ (Heidegger, Poetry Language and Thought 114) In this sense Heidegger maintains the ontological distinction between humans and non-human technological entities, the former being active and the latter, passive

Speculative fiction is a powerful form of cultural expression that brings into focus our relationship with technology, and can, in its unique ways, provide us with important insights into issues of prostheticization One of the defining characteristics of SF is its fundamental attentiveness to how technology transforms societies and everyday lives

SF writings reflect the hopes and anxieties about technology that permeate modern societies Examining a diverse range of depictions of prostheticization in a selection

of contemporary SF texts, I aim to throw light on some of these hopes and anxieties felt in the present phase of this postindustrial era These fictions have been chosen for their sustained engagement with the issues surrounding the various ways being

‘human’ is modified by the range of phenomena constituted under the broad idea of prostheticization They were selected specifically because their prosthetic objects and

processes are what Darko Suvin calls nova, which means ‘new things’ or fictional

innovations that diverge from ‘reality,’ and not simply mimetic reproductions of

reality These nova (the singular is novum), crucial to all SF, are often plausible

projections of present trends, or invented impossibilities rationalized into the world of

the text, and often a combination of both (Suvin, Metamorphoses 63-84) These

divergences estrange the reader from reality, and by working through the

discontinuities between the fictional world and his or her reality, the reader gains fresh insights about the world (I comment more on this in chapter two) In analysing

these prosthetic nova, my focus will be on drawing out the historical-logical, ethical

and symbolic meanings suggested by the discontinuities so as to come to new

understandings about our present technological existence

Defining ‘prosthesis’

A discussion of what ‘prosthesis’ entails is crucial at this point as it helps to draw out these complex issues of human-technological convergence Defining ‘prosthesis’ is a task complicated by the fact that our understanding of this phenomenon continues to

evolve The Oxford English Dictionary states that the etymology of the word

‘prosthesis’ is rooted in the idea of ‘addition,’ and was first introduced into the

English language in 1553 to indicate, in the rhetorical sense, ‘the addition of a

syllable to the beginning of a word’ (“Prosthesis”) David Wills writes that the idea of disruption in relation to ‘prosthesis’ only appeared with the advent of print technology and the ‘technologization of knowledge’ when the continuity of the word was

perceived to be broken (222)7 The word ‘prosthesis’ was subsequently adopted into the medical vernacular, appearing in the French language in 1695, and then in English

in 1704, and first published in John Kersey’s revision of Phillip’s Dictionary, which

ascribed to it the idea of the ‘replacement of a missing part of the body with an

artificial one’ (Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, as qtd in Wills 218) This idea is

itself based on a ‘mechanical conception of the body that was to be systematised by

Descartes in the next century’ (Tajiri 10) The OED also notes that it was in 1900 that

the more general idea of ‘artificial replacement for a part of the body’ came into use

in medical contexts (“Prosthesis”) Once again, I want to highlight the doubled nature

of the prosthesis From these definitions we can see that ‘prosthesis’ simultaneously indicates an addition to the original as well as an ‘absence’ in the ‘original.’ The prosthetic leg, for example, is an addition to a leg-less body, it augments the body in a way that it increases or restores mobility Yet as a substitute, it replaces what has been lost It indicates an absence in the body while at the same time compensating for it The same goes for other prosthetic enhancements that do not compensate for

7 David Wills explains that this is the moment when ‘the human hand is superseded by the machine in the service of truth’ raising questions about authenticity, transcription and translation (221)

impairment, such as the cyborg implants of performance artist Stelarc,8 endowing one with additional capacities not originally present in the human body These two

examples fit into a conventional understanding of prosthesis, in that they concur with

a medical model focused on the literal replacements of parts of the physical body with artificial devices that attach permanently, or for a substantial period, to the body However, what constitutes literal replacement continues to change as medical science today continues to find new facets of the human being to intervene upon With the advent of genetic and nano-technologies, artificial substitution takes place at the molecular level, involving processes that we cannot see nor are we likely to

completely understand Moreover, it is argued that other technologies, such as

computers and data networks and even simpler tools like walking sticks and

eyeglasses, also fundamentally transform the body in similar ways, without perpetual physical attachment to the body I describe these tools as virtual prosthetics These items are the subject of more contentious claims about prostheticization, which have come up against criticisms about the overly figural and thus watered-down use of the word ‘prosthesis’ in cultural discourse (see Jain, 1999; Sobchack, 2006, for example) However, there are assertions that these technologies do actually physically alter the body even though these changes aren’t so easily measured or seen (see Carr 2010, for example)

In order to produce a definition that accommodates our still-evolving understanding

of ‘prosthesis’ it is necessary to distil the essential processes of ‘prosthesis.’ To do this I look to conventional medical prostheses, devices that physically replace parts of the body, in order to illustrate the basic workings of the prosthetic device I will state

8 The Cypriot-Australian performance artist, Stelarc, has amplified his body with various prosthetics such as a third hand, a prosthetic head, and an extra ear on his arm, in order to explore alternative and involuntary interfaces with technology (Lustig)

here that one criterion for text selection is that representations of prostheticization involve actual corporeal transformations occurring as a result of technological

substitution, no matter how much or how little these technological substitutions resemble what is conventionally recognized as prosthesis This restriction prevents the potential dilution of ideas that might come with selecting texts based on too loose a definition of ‘prosthesis,’ yet also accommodates the elasticity of the concept, as well

as the creative re-imagining of ‘prosthesis’ in emergent SF It is therefore important to note that the circumstances and discussions surrounding virtual prostheticization are very relevant to my discussion, and I will later argue that SF writing is a non-mimetic mode that often re-imagines these virtual prosthetic relationships as actual bodily prosthetic supplementation I will elaborate on this in the next chapter

The prosthetic limb is a fascinating object with critics commenting on its ‘semiotic ambiguity’ (Cartwright and Goldfarb 149) If we look at the prosthetic leg, for

example, we understand that it is an object of mass production, modelled upon an

‘average’ that materializes and perpetuates a certain ‘norm,’ forcing the subject to adapt to it (Jain 42-43) The subject must change the way he walks, which, in the process, alters the way he functions physically and the way his muscles develop and body aligns At the same time, the pain and discomfort felt may be accommodated, normalized, and over time the subject may begin to see his prosthesis as not just an external object, but as subject Interestingly, amputees testify that their artificial prostheses are ‘animated’ by the ‘phantom limbs’ they replace, and envisage their prosthesis as both ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (Fisher 31-32) We can see how the

prosthesis involves simultaneous outward and inward movements, which I

highlighted earlier

On the one hand, there is the exteriorization of human ability, because a

once-biological function is now performed by an external, non-organic technology There is also an internal transformation of the human body that takes place as a result of this—

one might say the body interiorizes the technological replacement This is because the

body goes through a process of adaptation and assimilation, both physical and

psychological, through which the technology becomes an essential part of the body’s functioning. The prosthesis, perceived as taking on qualities of the human subject, can also be seen as adapting to the body Added to this is the fact that the prosthesis is

an object that is shaped within a specific cultural context that imbues it with

properties or principles particular to that context Subjectivity then becomes

enmeshed with the principles embedded in the prosthesis, whether this is a particular standard of beauty, a lifestyle ethos, or even a concept of human evolution (I will discuss this again, in greater detail, in chapter two) As the individual shapes his body

in accordance to these ideological codes, he alters his experience of life, and the prosthesis becomes ‘integral to the subject’s sense of identity or self’ (Fisher 26) The reciprocal shaping of human and prosthesis implies that the distinctions between subject and object become obscured The boundaries of the subject are porous

Prostheticization can therefore be defined as a technological intervention (rather than simply an object) characterized by the following essential processes: displacement, and the simultaneous outward and inward movements that constitute this

displacement; rupture in the (unified) human being resulting from this displacement; the paradoxical extension and making absent of the human; and the transference between two unlike bodies, the human being and the technological other, this

transference having corporeal impact What arises from these processes is the

troubling (or perhaps disintegration) of the distinctions between ‘subject’ and ‘object,’

‘organic’ and ‘non-organic.’ It is perhaps not surprising then that today, with the proliferation of prosthetic technology and the broadening of the types of prosthetic interventions that can occur, that we are experiencing an increasing sense of inner fragmentation Any assumptions of a self-governing, ‘natural’ self are giving way to

an understanding that, at least in theoretical terms, the human subject can be shaped

by or reconstituted by the union with prosthetic technologies The self is recognized

as existing in a ‘ghostly space,’ a state that acknowledges that ‘the whole never was anywhere… because the parts were always already detachable, replaceable’ (Wills 12, 15) The ‘integrated, fused, reciprocal and parasitic’ relationship we have with our prosthesis (Smith and Morra, “Introduction” 5) paradoxically implies that we are as much free agents as we are functionaries of the medium, constituted by ‘both [its] physical and the auratic properties’ (Jain 32), dismantling any presumptions of unique interiority and individual agency.9 Our prosthetic relationships with our tools leads

9 Jacques Derrida’s idea of the supplément serves as a natural analogue to “prosthesis.” Writers David

Wills (1995), Will Fisher (2006) and Yoshiki Tajiri (2007) have all called upon the Derridean

supplément to explain the workings of the material prosthesis Referencing Derrida’s Monolingualism

of the Other; or the Prosthesis of Origin (1996), Tajiri notes that Derrida himself uses the word

‘prosthesis’ to indicate the supplément, here, the linguistic ‘supplement of origin’ necessitated by the origin’s ‘constitutive lack’ (7) According to Derrida, a supplément is conventionally understood to be

an auxiliary to what is ‘original.’ It is thus thought to be non-essential and only adding to what was

originally present Writing in the context of language and in response to the logocentrism of Western

thought, Derrida argued that writing is often considered the non-required external supplément to the

presence of speech Logocentrism, noted by Derrida to regulate language and philosophy (Powell 33), asserts that speech is the true conduit of thought (the signified), and that writing, as representation of speech, is merely a signifier of another signifier Speech is therefore considered to be ‘presence’ while writing is considered as if it were the ‘absence’ of the original utterance as speech However, Derrida

explains that despite its status as mere ancillary, the supplément functions in a thorough and ambiguous

way On the one hand, it extends the natural Yet in doing this it also indicates that the original is

lacking Derrida writes that the supplément ‘adds only to replace… its place is assigned in the structure

by the mark of an emptiness’ (Of Grammatology 145) While writing is considered mere derivative, a

substitute for speech that draws meaning from speech, without writing thought cannot be expressed or made known In addition to this, writing is capable of influencing thought in a way that replaces or

displaces the sovereignty of the original idea This implies that the supplément is necessary, and that meaning is contingent on the supplément, which upsets the implicit hierarchy in the subject/ object

opposition that prevails in Western thought

not only to questions about identity and subjectivity, but also to questions about the soundness of an evolutionary model built on a basically unchallenged notion of

modernity In the next section, I argue that SF is an important way of discussing these complex encounters with increasingly intimate technology

Speculative fiction and the prosthesis: the evolution of an SF icon

SF is a genre centrally concerned with the impact of scientific theory and

technological practice upon the social and the individual dimensions of human

experience, and it is an important discourse that directly participates in contemporary

cultural discussions about the impact of technology In his recent book, The Seven

Beauties of Science Fiction, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr considers SF, and

science-fictionality, to be characterised by ‘a pair of gaps.’ The first lies between ‘the

conceivability of [imagined] future transformations’ and ‘the possibility of their actualization,’ and the second lies between ‘the immanent possibility… of those transformations’ and ‘reflection about their possible ethical, social, and spiritual consequences.’ These gaps are the ‘black box in which technoscientific conceptions… are transformed into the rational recognition of their possible realization and

implications’ (3) In this way contemporary concerns about the impact of science and technology on society can be played out on an imaginary platform, in alternative or fantastic spaces that are governed by the logic of cause-and-effect and a common understanding of the material world As I have mentioned, this makes SF distinct from other forms of the fantastic, as it is rooted in empirical reality, adhering for the most part to the limits of realistic writing, and commenting on the actual conditions of the time in which it is written

The prosthesis as a speculative construction is an established SF icon,10 appearing at the time of the genre’s emergence and recurring as the genre has developed It is recognized, at the most basic level, as a symbol of how scientific and technological advancement is changing the human being Over the years, and in different contexts, the different nuances SF writers ascribe to this icon reflect the changing attitudes towards secular progress and human-technological interaction In order to assess the distinct qualities of contemporary visions of SF prosthetics, it is useful to look at older iterations of the icon A brief survey of science-fictional prosthetics over the years will help to establish a sense of how this icon has evolved over time

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) has been considered

by some critics as SF’s ur-text, the ‘first real science fiction novel’ (Aldiss 12) It is a novel that presents readers with early concerns regarding the impact of technology

and science on humanity Frankenstein was written on the cusp of the industrial

revolution, reflecting scientific inquiry that had settled its gaze on the human body, regarding it as a machine, to be disassembled and reassembled The monster is a striking image of life reconstructed from various materials, including limbs taken from cadavers, given life by a scientist using recently developed electric technology That the monster is a grotesque assemblage of prosthetic limbs indicates a deep fear and remorse about the human transgression of the boundary between humanity and divinity, the perceived heinousness of which is projected onto the created monster However, the monster is also a complex being, strikingly eloquent and sympathetic,

10 Critic Gary K Wolfe first used the term SF ‘icon’ in his book The Known and the Unknown: The

Iconography of Science Fiction (1979), in which he argued that certain recurrent icons (he focuses on

the robot, the alien, the spaceship, the city and the wasteland) are the most dependable gauge of a text’s affiliation to the SF genre

thereby complicating the question of what it means for a human to give life to its creation The prosthetic monster in Shelley’s tale can be seen as a means through which the disastrous implications of unbridled scientific and technological

advancement, and the fine line between progress and destruction can be explored Although the novel does not strictly deal with artificial prosthetic devices, the

constructedness of the human-like monster provides a paradigm for exploring

questions of subjectivity and identity as they appertain to scientific invention and the blurring of boundary between ‘human’ and ‘machine,’ associated with prosthetics

A short time later, American writer Edgar Allan Poe published a short story called

The Man That Was Used Up (1839) Poe presents readers with a satire, which centres

on a General with a reputation of exceeding physical perfection, who is also regarded

as having a strange ‘rectangular precision,’ an odd and unsavoury characteristic that isolates him from the rest of society At the end of the tale the narrator discovers the disconcerting fact that the General’s body, severely damaged in war, has essentially been replaced by numerous prostheses Without the guise of his devices the General is revealed as a travesty, with no natural form or autonomy, a mere ‘bundle’ with a

‘funn[y] little voice.’ He is, literally, a man replaced by technology, and it is a process that has depersonalized him The context of Poe’s story is a ‘wonderfully inventive age,’ reflecting the considerable technological entrepreneurship occurring in America

at that time Poe speculates on the intrusion of mechanical invention into private spaces through the figure of a man whose body has been replaced with artificial parts His loss of identity and autonomy is concealed by the mask of technological majesty, revealing anxieties about the effacement of humanity in this ‘rapid march of

mechanical invention.’ Along with Shelley’s text, Poe’s story exemplifies how earlier

writers, influenced by Romanticism and its concern with man’s self-destructiveness, use speculative representations of prosthetics to create frightening visions of

technology (see Willis 106-108)

These frightening visions can be contrasted to the more clearly optimistic

representations found in modern SF texts published in the early half of the twentieth century, particularly those written during the Golden Age of SF in America These Golden Age conceptions share a distinct tendency: they celebrate the incredible

augmentation of natural human ability through technological innovation The

Clockwork Man (1923), by E.V Odle, is a good example of this Odle’s tale explores

the power and potential of technology-aided human evolution At the centre of the tale is a man with a mechanical device implanted into his head, which enables him to move through time and space with enhanced speed and strength The text was written during a time of enormous expansion in technology, when existing systems (like railroads and telegraph systems) extended their reach and crucial new systems (such

as electric networks) emerged Not only does the text manifest the radical shifts in the perception of time and space that occurred with these technological developments, it also demonstrates a mapping of human evolution onto technoscientific progress The text reflects a discourse of civilization and history that is built upon progressive, technologized modernity, a riposte to pronouncements of mechanical dehumanization The prosthesis signals how the merging of man and machine can move man beyond his biological limits Examples of other texts that adopt similar ideas are L.A

Eshbach's "The Time Conqueror" (1932) and C L Moore’s “No Woman Born” (1944) While these texts do question technology’s threat to human identity and

autonomy, on the whole the vision of technology-aided evolution is presented

favourably

In the later half of the twentieth century, the theme of improving or enhancing the

body through technology continues in Anglo-American SF Anne McCaffrey’s The

Ship Who Sang (1961), for instance, depicts severely handicapped children who are

enabled and empowered through prostheticization Martin Caidin’s Cyborg (1972), the inspiration for television’s very popular The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-1978),

similarly offers the reconstruction of a shattered body through the substitution of mechanical limbs that magnificently augment ability These visions are reflective of the discourses surrounding technology during this time, which include Marshall McLuhan’s conception of technologies as ‘extensions of man’ that open mankind up

to ‘ecstatic new experiences, but also to as well as to traumatic invasion’ (Luckhurst,

Science Fiction 142) The name of Caidin’s novel alerts us to a new idea that emerges

in SF in the 1960s: the conquest of outer space Manfred E Clynes and Nathan S Kline officially coined the word ‘cyborg’ in 1960 to describe how man may be

‘amalgamated with machine’ so as to ‘survive the adverse conditions of space travel’ (Cornea 276) The word reveals a mechanistic view of the human founded on Norbert Weiner’s (1948) discipline of cybernetics, which regards all animals, machines and human beings in like manner, as ‘information processors’ (Hayles, as qtd in Cornea

276) Cyborg reiterates and develops these principles, illustrating the rationalized

understanding of embodiment that underlies dreams of human-technological

co-evolution Science-fictional prosthetics, such as those in Frederik Pohl's Man Plus (1976) and Barrington J Bayley's The Garments of Caean (1976), provide men with

the capabilities of inhabiting and conquering outer space, reflecting the space race of

that era that culminated in the Apollo landing on the moon in 1969, the ‘apotheosis of

Golden Age SF dreams’ (Luckhurst, Science Fiction 143) A grand narrative of

science is delivered with the cyborg, and it is one that has been sustained in many recent and popular images of the cyborg, namely, that by incorporating technology man will be able command the universe

This very brief look at notable examples of the SF prosthesis, from the early twentieth century to the 1970s, is by no means exhaustive However, we can surmise that the shape of SF prosthetics, and the kinds of responses these representations evoke from readers, are influenced by changes in society and developments in techno-scientific thought, registering the evolution of human subjectivity in a continually changing, technologically-permeated modern society They are objects that reveal the concerns

of their specific historical moment They are marked by history but also act to change history by diagnosing present technological practices, warning readers about the possible ramifications, and mapping alternative futures If I were to generalize, I would say that by and large, in the mainstream modern works of SF listed above, the conception of technology is neutral: technology can help alleviate hardship and

prolong life, but its misapplication, which originates in human weakness, can cause

harm and oppress people In other words, technology is perceived as not inherently

‘bad’ or ‘good’ but used to these ends by human beings

This dissertation seeks to establish the concerns of SF writers of this present historical moment and to assess if the prevailing attitudes towards technology today are distinct

from earlier eras In The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science

Fiction (1979), Gary K Wolfe argues that SF iconography evolves in meaning over

time, returning to familiar icons in order to renew or deconstruct them They provide the writer with ‘a structural pivot’ that allows a response to central philosophical positions inherent in SF, including the principal idea (pertinent to the period of

Wolfe’s study) that ‘problems can be overcome by the rational application of science

and technology’ (Samuelson)

The present moment can be described as the age of ‘artificial immanence,’ in which

‘every value that previous cultures considered transcendental or naturally given is at

least theoretically capable of artificial replication or simulation’ (Csicsey-Ronay, Jr.,

“SF of Theory”) We have entered the postindustrial phase (estimated to have begun around 1980 and continuing to the present), which has been marked by major socio-economic and technological shifts Firstly, there have been considerable

advancements in technology The development of ‘intellectual technology,’ or

technology based upon mathematics and linguistics, and which uses ‘algorithms… programming… models and simulations’ (D Bell 116-117), denotes a clear

movement away from mechanical-industrial contexts In this era, the computer has become the new dominant technology The computer, along with other information and communication technologies, has profoundly transformed the way we work and communicate with each other, with virtual interactions taking the place of physical encounters There is an acute sense that our technologies have become dematerialized,

a feeling reinforced by the biotechnological advancements made in this era Medical interventions now occur at the level of the gene, invisible to us, and thoroughly

transform possibilities for our well-being These developments have radically

broadened the scope of what we can consider to be prosthetic intervention Jean Baudrillard (1994) has argued that the gene is ‘the prosthesis par excellence’ because

it allows for the ‘indefinite extension of th[e] body by the body itself’ making it

possible for organs to be replaced by their own ‘double,’ their own clone (98,

emphasis in original) This new understanding of prostheticization is echoed in various ways by a number of later cultural thinkers (see Irma van der Ploeg, 2001; Lennard Davis, 2006, for example) who acknowledge that developments in genetic engineering have broadened the definition of prosthetic intervention This has

profound implications for the human The unique individual becomes, theoretically, replaceable, displanted by a series of endlessly reproducible copies of itself In

addition to this, the categories of gender, class, race, sexuality and age, believed to inhere in the individual, may now be externally manipulated

New technologies have helped to precipitate late capitalism, or what Fredric Jameson has referred to as postmodern culture.11 This refers to a new phase of capitalist

development characterized by deregulated markets and the unobstructed flow of capital across borders According to Jameson, the rhythms of consumption and

technological mediation in the postmodern era ruptures our sense of history, bringing about the fragmentation of experience and discontinuous identities, and producing the

‘schizophrenic’ subject (Jameson, Postmodernism 6; see also Jameson, “On Diva”

116, 118) SF, particularly cyberpunk, has been considered perfectly suited for

communicating these radical ontological shifts (see Jameson, Postmodernism 419;

McHale 150; Bukatman 6)

11 It may be argued that late capitalism, and the increasing importance of transnational processes, has resulted from a number of transformations beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century One of these is the transformation associated with new information technologies Technologies such as the computer and data networks have profoundly changed capital and labour relations, leading for example

to the ‘mercantilization of knowledge’ (Lyotard 5) These new technologies have helped to forge new markets and to establish global economic networks These economic changes have in turn led to

cultural transformations (Jameson, Postmodernism xx-xxi)

Looking at SF from the 1980s, we can see that these changes have been registered and explored by SF writers through their depictions of prosthetics While the prosthesis of earlier texts tended towards the external and the expansive (from remarkable new limbs and augmented strength and speed, to expanded human capacity and the

conquest of outer space), the prosthetics of postindustrial SF focus inwards, and implode invisibly into the body and mind This dematerialization of the prosthesis is

evident in William Gibson’s seminal work Neuromancer (1984) The prosthetic

technologies readers are introduced to here include cranial jacks and Sim/Stim, which allow individuals to ‘jack’ ones nervous system directly into cyberspace and mentally travel through the virtual domain while corporeal bodies remain status quo, producing

a fragmented self It is not physical power that is augmented, but consciousness, now

opened up to completely new virtual domains In his introduction to Mirrorshades (1986), Bruce Sterling argues that ‘cyberpunk’ novels such as Neuromancer reflect

the ‘deeply radical… disturbing, upsetting and revolutionary’ advances of science and technology, the ‘pervasive, utterly intimate’ technologies that find their way ‘under

our skin’ and ‘inside our minds’ (xii-xiii) In Neuromancer, these intimate

technologies allow characters to transcend the prison of their flesh Gibson’s novel has proven to be hugely influential, helping to thrust cyberpunk into the foreground of

SF, and changing the field significantly With Neuromancer, tropes such as the

computer cowboy and brain-altering prosthetics have become staple features of the genre (Levy 153)

The dematerialization of prosthetic technologies is also seen in Bruce Sterling’s

Schismatrix (1985), a novel that demonstrates how advancements in biotechnology

are transforming our understanding of medical intervention Sterling imagines a future

in which humanity has evolved in two distinct ways The Mechanists modify their bodies through external prostheses and computer programming The Shapers alter their bodies through gene manipulation, fully exploiting their physical potential through gene selection The warring between the Mechanists and the Shapers in

Schismatrix seems to symbolize a movement away from an earlier, more

straightforward opposition of human and machine The novel appears to embrace the extraordinary possibilities these new technologies offer humanity, and to endorse the idea that technology can help us transcend the limitations of the body

These two novels express ambiguities about technology In Schismatrix there are

ambiguities about whether our increasing dependence on technology, and human evolution through technology, actually leaves human beings weaker than before In

Neuromancer, questions arise regarding the extent to which technology dehumanizes

us, while opening the door to exhilarating new worlds However, I would argue that both novels maintain an ultimately favourable attitude towards new technologies that had, at the time of writing, just been introduced into society Gibson imbues

technology with a romantic mythos Technology is no longer neutral but inherently transformative and autonomous, and its stunning geometries and freedoms are starkly

contrasted to the decadent and decaying world of ‘meat.’ Similarly, in Schismatrix

technology has liberated humanity from the restrictions of the mortal body, and of life

on Earth, indicating faith in linear progress and its human-technological evolutionary paradigm In both novels, the privileges of the liberal human subject are expanded through technology, which allows the subject to transcend embodiment and achieve immortality This is a transhumanist view that is committed to ‘the enhancement of

human intellectual, physical, and emotional capabilities, the elimination of disease and unnecessary suffering, and the dramatic extension of life span’ through

technology (Garreau 231-232) This model of human evolution through science and technology originates in Enlightenment and humanist beliefs about human

perfectibility, agency and reason (Bostrom, “History of Transhumanist Thought” 2).12

For me, novels published in the 1990s and later continue discussions about the impact

of these new ‘immaterial’ technologies but reflect an adjustment of attitudes and a deepened awareness of how new technologies are actually impacting humanity, which distinguishes them from the novels of the 1980s and of earlier eras.13 These

contemporary novels challenge and demystify earlier notions expressed by Gibson and Sterling, and respond to a perceived failure of new technologies to improve the state of humanity and to liberate mankind from the constraints of the world In fact, this current era seems to be one of the most violent times in history For a world increasingly committed to scientific progress and reason, our weapons have only become more destructive, ‘terrorism’ has become widespread, and our modern

‘civilized’ societies continue to participate in open and covert acts of oppression and brutality I believe that SF writings from the 1990s to the present are responses to the continuation and intensification of violence that occurs today, and focus particularly

12 Max More, in his essay “TRANSHUMANISM: Toward a Futurist Philosophy” (1990), introduces the term ‘transhumanism,’ defining it as ‘a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations

by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values’ (10) Chris Hables Gray (1995) adds that this involves the co-evolution between organic and mechanical bodies made possible through advanced technologies such as cybernetic systems

13 Several critics have highlighted this distinction between earlier and later postindustrial SF Roger Luckhurst (2005), who describes SF from the 1990s and later as distinct from novels published in the 1980s because they respond to the ‘intensification and global extension of technological modernity’ occurring at that later time He observes that writers in the 1990s tend to write not with new forms of

SF, but rather ‘with ones lifted from the genre’s venerable past’ (221) Paul Kincaid (2009) has

distinguished SF published after 1992 by their distinct responses to shifts in context including global terrorism, proliferating discourses of posthumanism and the spread of digital culture (174-176)

on the role of technology in this

The authors of my selected texts use visions of prostheticization to explore the

complex human-technology connections of this contemporary era These writers do not simply explore the different facets of humanity through the human being’s use of technology, an approach that reinforces the fundamental autonomy of man and

therefore the liberal humanist paradigm Rather, they explore how man shapes his

tools and is, at the same time, shaped by his tools Technology is therefore no longer

apprehended as being neutral, but able to determine human behaviour, social contexts, values and norms These writers ask questions about the nature of technology’s

autonomy, and the extent to which technology influences economic, political and social structures They understand that prostheticity is not about simple replacement

or substitution, and they focus, instead, on the simultaneous, bi-directional, constitutive transference between human beings and technology These contemporary texts differ from earlier literature of this postindustrial era because they explore how this human-technological co-evolution is changing our conceptions of the liberal humanist subject

inter-My main thesis is that the SF prosthesis makes visible abstract or obscure ideas related to our prosthetic relationship with various technologies In my chosen

contemporary works of SF, prostheticization (whether a technological object, process

or aesthetic effect) registers the arrival of the posthuman subject, a subject that is

decentred by these intimate connections with technology, thereby invalidating

humanist understandings of subjectivity that come from the Enlightenment In these texts, prostheticization is, firstly, an experience of rupture in one’s sense of self The

extension or augmentation of human ability through rational techniques involves an irrecoverable, and often painful, loss of an ‘original,’ elusive human experience of the world Second, the prosthesis dramatizes the paradoxical co-occurrence of increased rationality and the repetition and proliferation of violence in a highly technological postindustrial world The prosthesis represents the desire to liberate the self through technoscience and rational means However, in these texts the authority of rationalism

is undermined, its schemes revealed as ending in brutality and oppression Third, the prosthesis also represents an encounter with difference, and is a means of exploring the extent to which social and ideological structures accommodate or appropriate difference

Review of recent criticism

In this next section I will review the main strands of criticism that deal with

representations of human-technological substitutions in SF novels published in the postindustrial era, and thereafter position my research within the field of scholarship

Over the last few decades much of the critical writing on the genre has focused on reading SF texts as forms of postmodernism, with critics viewing SF as ‘a major symptom of the postmodern condition’ as well as ‘a body of privileged allegories, the dream book of the age’ (Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., “Science Fiction and Postmodernism”) For instance, Frederic Jameson (2005) reads SF as the ‘geopolitical Imaginary’

illustrating the ‘inner networks of global communication and information’ (384), and Damien Broderick (1995) sees SF as a ‘pre-eminent mode’ capable of capturing the postmodern epoch (41) As I mentioned earlier, cyberpunk is often considered

especially well suited for delineating the fragmentation of the human subject within

these information networks

Related to this is another strand of criticism, specifically concerned with the question

of how contemporary subjectivities, and genders in particular, are impacted by the technological and social conditions of late-capitalism For instance, Anne Balsamo (1996), Claudia Springer (1996), and Carlen Lavigne (2013) have looked at how new technologies have impacted understandings of identity, and how SF encodes current understandings about gender All three critics read SF as a cultural practice of

constructing the gendered body Balsamo reads SF writing from a feminist standpoint alongside other cultural texts, to examine how the female body is constructed against the normative male body, arguing that the disappearance of the body in discourses of cyberculture is often involved with reinstating gender boundaries Like Balsamo, Springer sees cyberpunk as an apt location for issues of body-machine interactions, arguing that, while some writers reflect the new postmodern order, others recycle cyberpunk conventions that maintain patriarchal ideologies Lavigne looks at how female cyberpunk writers in the 1990s have modified the genre in order to

accommodate feminist ideas

Another strand of relevant criticism focuses on how SF as a mode has been used to subvert the traditional notions of self For example, Sherryl Vint (2007) discusses how major advances in computer and medical technologies force us to question the idea of the ‘natural’ humanist subject, and examines a range of SF narratives that engage in this critique Focusing on cyberpunk as a ‘much-vaunted break from earlier traditions of science fiction,’ Thomas Foster (2005) asserts that it is an important articulation of posthumanism, ‘attempt[ing] to intervene in and diversify what

posthumanism can mean’ (xi, xiii) Also examining changing subjectivities in the

postindustrial context of human-machine integration is Scott Bukatman’s Terminal

Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (1993) Bukatman

focuses on the mediation of the subject by electronic technologies, with particular attention to the spectacle of the image and the terminal realms of cyberspace

Bukatman considers a broad range of SF novels from the 1960s-1980s, alongside other cultural forms such as film and art, and suggests that SF enables new

perspectives on changing subjectivities in an age of intense electronic mediation, mapping out experiences that are otherwise difficult to articulate

Veronica Hollinger, in her overview of SF criticism, comments that ‘the late 1980s and early 1990s were remarkable for the intensity of interest generated by cyberpunk Both the professional and academic communities engaged in contentious debates

about the nature of this soi-disant "new" breed of SF, while many

theoretically-oriented critics saw in cyberpunk, whether for good or ill, the ‘apotheosis of

postmodernism’ (Hollinger, “Contemporary Trends”) Indeed, in the abovementioned critical writings, one notes that cyberpunk seems a favoured subgenre for discussing technoculture in the postindustrial era

From this review, one can discern a lack of critical attention to the prosthesis and the complex processes it entails Although the prosthesis and the figure of the cyborg has been a key feature of SF iconography, prostheticization itself—the act of substitution and the inter-constitutive transference that takes place—is not often a focal point of

SF criticism In addition to this, there is a large amount of criticism that privileges cyberpunk writing This perhaps delimits analysis of human-technological fusion to,

mostly, 1980s novels written within earlier postmodern contexts, and also to certain rigid conventions within which the prosthesis as an established trope in cyberpunk exists I want to examine how other kinds of SF writing examine the proliferating kinds of human-technology fusion, especially in light of the fact that promises of cyber-liberation have recently been tempered by the realities of global neo-liberal capitalism It is for this reason that I have chosen a broad range of contemporary texts, all chosen for their sustained engagement with processes of prostheticization, as well

as for their varied understandings of what this convergence entails within this new terrain of expanded global capitalism Not being bound to the conventions of a

particular subgenre will I believe give us a broader sense of changing attitudes

towards technology today

Apart from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), which is read as a challenge to

early cyberpunk, the other texts I have selected consider forms of prostheticization that take place outside of computer-based networks and demonstrate variations on the

question of technological substitution In the novels Blindsight (2006) by Peter Watts and River Of Gods (2004) by Ian McDonald, for example, extrapolations of existing

medical prosthetics explore how artificial enhancements shift the boundaries of

‘normal’ and ‘disabled.’ Christopher Priest’s The Separation (2002) engages with the

idea of prosthetic memory from the historical frame of alternative pasts, playing at the boundaries of SF to offer us an avant-garde vision of prosthesis variant to popular

cyborg depictions Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s Hard-boiled Wonderland and

the End of the World (1985) also examines the idea of prosthetic memory and the

consequential rupture in subjectivity, an idea Murakami poetically demonstrates through parallel storylines that move readers between the ‘real’ world and

dreamscape Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Indian writer Priya

Chabria’s Generation 14 (2008) are texts that have been chosen because they centre

on the clone-subject, here read (following Baudrillard) as a prosthetic self that is a

replaceable copy of the (original) self and an ‘operational configuration’ (Baudrillard,

Symbolic Exchange 57, emphasis in original) Both of these writers are non

SF-writers, however, they both employ the SF frame to make visible otherwise ineffable states of subjectivity experienced in this posthuman era In addition to this, I have also

included narratives in which writers explore prostheticization as an aesthetic feeling, rather than as a novum to be cognitively validated Analysing Snow Crash, and texts

by the French writer Jean-Claude Dunyach, and Djiboutian writer Abdourahman Waberi, I consider alternative ways ideas associated with prostheticization can be imaginatively rendered in SF, and in doing so, reflect on ways the genre might evolve The inclusion of novels from writers outside of the dominant Anglo-American context

is a conscious attempt to evaluate the pervasiveness of the idea of prostheticization across different cultures, and to provide contrastive, culturally unique visions that can give us a deeper awareness of how technology impacts subjectivity in present times

To make such claims, it is necessary to think about how we might approach such diverse representations of prostheticity In chapter two, I trace the modern material history of the prosthesis, and examine the relationship between the prosthesis as a cultural artefact and the prosthesis as an SF sign I highlight a key idea of this

dissertation, which is that the SF sign is a ‘split’ sign, rooted in the ‘real’ but also diverging from it, before broadly outlining my approach to reading these selected texts

In chapter three, I look at how the ‘split’ sign of the SF prosthesis can evoke familiar ideas associated with body norms, while at the same time suggesting more unfamiliar associations, in order to explore the relationship between technology, capitalism and disability Examining novels by Peter Watts and Ian McDonald, I demonstrate how the SF representations of the prosthesis can challenge and stretch our assumptions about the human body, highlighting the complex ways in which technoscience has extended the structures and processes of capitalism into the private psychological and corporeal spaces of the individual In chapter four, I argue that the SF prosthesis is a means of articulating the unseen psychological trauma associated with

mnemotechnics, or, artificial reconstructions of history I compare how Christopher Priest and Haruki Murakami, writers from different cultural backgrounds, use SF to evoke the sense of absence and pain experienced when mnemotechnics interfere with one’s own consciousness of the past I demonstrate how their speculative visions, in different ways, call attention to the manner in which technology both aids human memory but also detracts from it, often producing violent transformations of identity

In chapter five, I look at the clone figure as a prosthetic being, a symbol of how advanced technological processes are radically destabilizing our understanding of

‘human.’ Analysing novels by Kazuo Ishiguro and Priya Chabria, I argue that the SF clone is a means of challenging the ethical frames of reference that continue to

influence human action Again, I compare writers from different cultural contexts, and consider the diverse ways writers are using the mode of SF to articulate concerns related to the convergence of technology and human experience today Chapter six constitutes a slight shift in direction Here, I consider SF as a space where the senses and emotions related to various kinds of prostheticization can be experienced

aesthetically Focusing on Victor Shklovsky’s concept of ostranenie, I compare the

fictions of Neal Stephenson, Jean-Claude Dunyach and Abdourahman Waberi, and show how SF writers are offering alternative ways of expressing the complex human-technological transformations, and renewing the possibilities of the genre

These diverse depictions of prostheticization demonstrate a clear sense of mankind’s fundamentally prosthetic nature: we are so deeply entangled in various technological networks that we can no longer be perceived as completely separate from our tools The range of writers analysed in this dissertation exemplify the ways that SF can offer stimulating ways of bringing to light the complex experience of prostheticity in contemporary times

2

The Prosthesis as SF Sign

Before we begin analysing representations of prosthetics in my selected works of

contemporary SF, we need to address the question of how to read these fictional

entities We need to first ask what the nature of the SF sign is

The science-fictional object or entity is a sign that is brought into fictional existence through semiotic means In other words, it generates certain explicit and implicit meanings that establish the fictional world on several levels Firstly, it can indicate ties to a specific genre As I have indicated in chapter one, the prosthesis as a science-fictional icon is a recognized, recurring object in SF writings, and is explicitly linked

to notions of progress and the human-technology evolution It is also features

prominently in the SF subgenre cyberpunk, here almost invariably connected to notions of immortality and expanded consciousness through digital life The SF object can also help to define the fictional world in contrast to other genres For instance, we can expect the science fictional prosthesis to be cognitively validated in some way, unlike objects in fantasy fictions, which we might expect to be imbued with magical

by critics as a ‘literal description of the present’ (Hollinger & Gordon, “Introduction” 2) However, if we return to the basic understanding of SF, as seminally established

by Darko Suvin (1979) and developed by others, SF is a mode of fiction that is rooted

in reality, and corresponds to our cognitive understanding of what is ‘real,’ but is at the same time necessarily ‘estranged’ from reality If we apply this understanding to the science-fictional prosthesis, we can say that these fictional objects correspond to reality, that is, they have some likeness to prosthetic objects that exist in reality and are described in a plausible or ‘realistic’ way We know that real-life prosthetic

objects are products of science and technology, which are culture-bound Prostheses are moulded within a specific culture, in accordance with that culture’s particular needs and values, and carry denotative and connotative meanings that bind it to that culture The SF prosthesis, therefore, deriving from the actual, is rooted in cognition

in the broadest sense of the word, and also signifies links to specific historical, social

or geographical situations

However, the SF prosthesis also necessarily diverges from these actual objects It is

an imaginary product of extrapolation or speculations about the ‘real,’ to an extent significant enough that it constitutes an explicit break from our world The degree of this divergence affects how readers interpret the SF icon For example, if there are historical-logical reasons justifying how the ‘present’ has developed into the imagined

future world, the reader will likely understand the SF novum as extrapolation, a future

occurrence based on the continuation of certain existing trends The more keenly the fictional world departs from the writer’s reality, the more likely it is for readers to anticipate that the SF objects possess non-historical, otherworldly qualities The greater this divergence the closer the work is to fantasy (Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., “Seven

Beauties”; Chu 7) This gives rise to more metaphorical and symbolic interpretations (I will comment more on this later) This also points to the fact that SF, as writer and

critic Samuel Delaney has theorized, is just as much about strategies of reading (Silent

Interviews 27-28, 31) This fundamental openness to alterity also has implications for

prosthesis as a genre convention, on the one hand evoking specific and familiar genre meanings, but also responding to and subverting generic meaning

In any case, we can recognize that an analysis of science-fictional prostheses, which are what I call ‘split’ signs, must begin with an understanding of the historical

conditions of the development of real-life prosthetic technology In the next section, I will outline a brief history of what I call ‘conventional’ prosthetics (artificial limbs and other devices that actually replace body parts) drawing out the particular

historical, political and cultural meanings that ground these objects to reality

However, I’ve mentioned that prostheticity—the simultaneous exteriorization of human attributes and internalization of the technological—is not limited to

conventional prosthetics Tools and technologies like walking sticks, eyeglasses, cars and computers can all be considered to change the ‘natural’ way we function

biologically or socially, and therefore can be argued to be ‘prosthetic’ in some way In fact, any technology can be argued to initiate a prosthetic relationship with the human And the popularity of ‘prosthesis’ in cultural theory, used as a metaphor to describe relationship our relationship with technology in general, seems to attest to this (see Jain 32)

My concern is not whether a technology can be justified as ‘prosthetic.’ Rather, I am interested in the complex processes surrounding what SF authors themselves have