Cyborg Man and Neuromancer compared, results in viewing Case as a transcedent led to such a state by Molly - a inherently transcedent being:
"Political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point"(Cyb. Man)
One october night ...past... fissure authority...[case] saw three figures....the third figure...was himself (352)
The McCaffery reading conjures up the following questions:
He states that cyberpunk addresses what the philosophical, moral, and cultural issues are. In looking to neuromancer through this lense the following seem to be the issues addressed:
centralized control and surveillance, sexual boundaries (what is it to be a man or a woman?),body alteration- motivations/methods, the divide b/n humans and technology, free choice, the definition of what it means to be human, assimilation, information obsession/mediation, definition of experience - sensoral / physical - real or imagined, the authority of subjectivity vs objectivity, The definition of what "real" is, coding practices / categorization / topoi - their role in an information saturated environment.
Reverence of the natural - lifecycles/creation, classism, What does it mean to "live" through others - is it legitimate? What does it mean to think through others? - it's implications - this hits close to home - theory the study of other thinkers - thinking in their terms - intellectual property
Could we look at Molly as a theory? A frame of how to look at the information we are faced with?
What is the origin of truth within the matrix? This question leads to...
Maria Alcof, a stand point feminist, and her take on a hermenuetical approach to truth via gadamer/heidegger:
Alcoff discusses "understanding," a result of truth, as being able to be found in the process of interpreting or rather in the moment of interpretation, that takes into account the inter-relatedness of history, politics, temporal, and spacial aspects of the observer and that which is being obeserved. She essentially talks about "truth" in terms of an "event" that occurs as a result of taking into consideration the social horizon (gadamer reference here)of the observer and that which the observer seeks to understand. With this in mind we can look to pg 318 of Neruromancer at the following statement - "...said it was like an event. An' it was our horizon. Event horizon, he called it"
The former quotation refers to an elusive place...we can call it grounding...that linda and case are in pursuit of. It seems that the neuromancer has no problem in accessing this place and in fact one can look at the closing sequence - in which case transcends - as occuring in this elusive place.
Concannon and Gibson - take a run for the border
Where are the borders of the matrix? aside from those who can access it and those who cannot? Beyond the "eastern seaboard fission authority?"
These questions turn to issues of the limit of information - as a society we have not acknowledged the alpha/omega (beginning/end of information - how does one delineate such?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Tiptree / Sheldon- T/ruth is in the system
Tiptree Sheldon manipulates the relationship between man and woman, man and science, woman and other, and woman and science. Perhaps she does this for the reasons Jameson discusses in Chapter 8: the impossibility of comprehending that which is unknown. If this is so, she uses this trope of "unknowabiliity" to show the inability of man in contrast to the ability of woman. I assert this because, in Tiptree/Sheldon short stories man's perspective is often restricted to and wholly influenced by a "closed" prescriptive paradigm that relies on religion or on traditional male stereotypical behaviour and the thought patterns that support such behaviour. In contraposition to man's perspective is woman's "open" descriptive paradigm.
This is most explicitly seen in "houston, houston" and the "women men don't see". In Houston Houston the crew of the Sunbird all exemplify different yet related systems of belief. All three are grounded in science however are varied beyond that central sytstem of belief. Bud holds a male-centric, woman as chattle and secondary viewpoint, Dave holds to Christian doctrine that imbues man with power while placing woman in servtitude, and Dr Lorimer, though not holding to any belief aside from science, does not understand life and civilization without a male-centric system in place. Close in resemblance is Don. His belief with regards to women, extrapolated from his observations of Ruth and her daughter, hold men as being naturally dominant and the purveyor of reason, safety, and the undeniable center of survival.
The antagonists of the men are woman who are self sufficient and have found ways to survive beyond the limits of the system of beliefs the men hold to. In addition, they have embraced potential of technology and in the case of "women men don't see" a completely foreign culture(that of the aliens) and with it their beliefs.
By Tiptree/Sheldon enacting a positive relationship between woman and belief systems aside or beyond those that the men function within, she also enacts an oppositional relationship between men and women so much so that both find the other - replaceable. This last fact is seen in Ruth and her daughter's opting to go away with aliens in lieu of staying with the men at the crash site, it is also seen in the woman of Gloria(and the civilization they repesent, in their reliance on cloning and their extermination of the men, given that they now had means to survive without them.
In an alternate way the same relationship between woman and man are played out in "girl plugged in", "screwfly", "love...", "Your Faces". In the first story man literaly embraces/ falls in love with science and technology and allows it to displace woman all together. In screwfly - religion is seen as annihilating the already delicate relationship between man and woman. In "love.." and "your faces.." alternate takes of reality displace the male/female relationship.
What is evident in all of the previously discussed work is the fact that the male/female relationship is not fixed as society proclaims it to be. It is in fact malleable, captive to those beliefs we choose to view as truth.
This last mention of truth is purposeful as Tiptree/Sheldon refers to it in "women men don't see" via Althea (Heidegerrian notion of truth?) the daughter of ruth - who is searching out her/society's missing T... Truth is in the system
This is most explicitly seen in "houston, houston" and the "women men don't see". In Houston Houston the crew of the Sunbird all exemplify different yet related systems of belief. All three are grounded in science however are varied beyond that central sytstem of belief. Bud holds a male-centric, woman as chattle and secondary viewpoint, Dave holds to Christian doctrine that imbues man with power while placing woman in servtitude, and Dr Lorimer, though not holding to any belief aside from science, does not understand life and civilization without a male-centric system in place. Close in resemblance is Don. His belief with regards to women, extrapolated from his observations of Ruth and her daughter, hold men as being naturally dominant and the purveyor of reason, safety, and the undeniable center of survival.
The antagonists of the men are woman who are self sufficient and have found ways to survive beyond the limits of the system of beliefs the men hold to. In addition, they have embraced potential of technology and in the case of "women men don't see" a completely foreign culture(that of the aliens) and with it their beliefs.
By Tiptree/Sheldon enacting a positive relationship between woman and belief systems aside or beyond those that the men function within, she also enacts an oppositional relationship between men and women so much so that both find the other - replaceable. This last fact is seen in Ruth and her daughter's opting to go away with aliens in lieu of staying with the men at the crash site, it is also seen in the woman of Gloria(and the civilization they repesent, in their reliance on cloning and their extermination of the men, given that they now had means to survive without them.
In an alternate way the same relationship between woman and man are played out in "girl plugged in", "screwfly", "love...", "Your Faces". In the first story man literaly embraces/ falls in love with science and technology and allows it to displace woman all together. In screwfly - religion is seen as annihilating the already delicate relationship between man and woman. In "love.." and "your faces.." alternate takes of reality displace the male/female relationship.
What is evident in all of the previously discussed work is the fact that the male/female relationship is not fixed as society proclaims it to be. It is in fact malleable, captive to those beliefs we choose to view as truth.
This last mention of truth is purposeful as Tiptree/Sheldon refers to it in "women men don't see" via Althea (Heidegerrian notion of truth?) the daughter of ruth - who is searching out her/society's missing T... Truth is in the system
Monday, February 23, 2009
a' dios mio! Shame on Piercy
This novel is about more than utopian visions and dystopian possbilities. It is about mental illness.
In being about mental illness Piercy takes upon herself a large endeavour of representing a mental illness and its mis/treatment accurately. Upon engaging this book, I had a reservation about fictional treatment (in the form of her text) being an appropriate medium for dealing with such a grossly misunderstood subject. And my concern in not unfounded given that at the time this book was produced there was a serious concern within the field of phychiatry about the diagnosis of schizophrenia. The following is an excerpt from the wiki regarding the matter:
"The diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia was the subject of a number of controversies which eventually led to the operational criteria used today. It became clear after the 1971 US-UK Diagnostic Study that schizophrenia was diagnosed to a far greater extent in America than in Europe.[208] This was partly due to looser diagnostic criteria in the US, which used the DSM-II manual, contrasting with Europe and its ICD-9. David Rosenhan's 1972 study, published in the journal Science under the title On being sane in insane places, concluded that the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the US was often subjective and unreliable.[209] These were some of the factors in leading to the revision not only of the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but the revision of the whole DSM manual, resulting in the publication of the DSM-III in 1980.[210] Since the 1970s more than 40 diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia have been proposed and evaluated.[33]"
I bring up this point because Piercy brings schizophrenia under critical investigation within this piece by bringing focus to temporality (through discussing the loss of chronological "real time" by hallucination or time travel..a'hem hallucination), physical disassociation from the environment, and paranoia. In addition, she interrogates and lashes out at the system of treatment in place for schizophrenics or mentally disturbed individuals.
Some argue that Piercy does the above to deconstruct societal taboos and uninformed views about schizophrenia and mental illness so as to open up dialogue about conditions often dismissed and misunderstood. I argue that Piercy is irresponsible in her treatement of mental illness in that by creating the time travel / schizophrenic dichotomy she actively works to sustain the misunderstanding of mental illness and succeeds only in a minimal sense the humanizing of Connie and the others within the Bellvue Ward. And perhaps Peircy was only looking to humanize those of society that have been dismissed due to psychological deviance; however, in doing so perhaps she should have realized the subversive potential of the utopian narrative in negating those characteristics of Connie, Sybil, etc that made them...recognizable as more than just another loon.
Booker was right in celebrating Piercy's book as making contributions to the dystopia/utopia tradition; however, he does not discuss at what cost such a text achieved it's standing. The aforementioned, I hope begins that dialogue
In being about mental illness Piercy takes upon herself a large endeavour of representing a mental illness and its mis/treatment accurately. Upon engaging this book, I had a reservation about fictional treatment (in the form of her text) being an appropriate medium for dealing with such a grossly misunderstood subject. And my concern in not unfounded given that at the time this book was produced there was a serious concern within the field of phychiatry about the diagnosis of schizophrenia. The following is an excerpt from the wiki regarding the matter:
"The diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia was the subject of a number of controversies which eventually led to the operational criteria used today. It became clear after the 1971 US-UK Diagnostic Study that schizophrenia was diagnosed to a far greater extent in America than in Europe.[208] This was partly due to looser diagnostic criteria in the US, which used the DSM-II manual, contrasting with Europe and its ICD-9. David Rosenhan's 1972 study, published in the journal Science under the title On being sane in insane places, concluded that the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the US was often subjective and unreliable.[209] These were some of the factors in leading to the revision not only of the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but the revision of the whole DSM manual, resulting in the publication of the DSM-III in 1980.[210] Since the 1970s more than 40 diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia have been proposed and evaluated.[33]"
I bring up this point because Piercy brings schizophrenia under critical investigation within this piece by bringing focus to temporality (through discussing the loss of chronological "real time" by hallucination or time travel..a'hem hallucination), physical disassociation from the environment, and paranoia. In addition, she interrogates and lashes out at the system of treatment in place for schizophrenics or mentally disturbed individuals.
Some argue that Piercy does the above to deconstruct societal taboos and uninformed views about schizophrenia and mental illness so as to open up dialogue about conditions often dismissed and misunderstood. I argue that Piercy is irresponsible in her treatement of mental illness in that by creating the time travel / schizophrenic dichotomy she actively works to sustain the misunderstanding of mental illness and succeeds only in a minimal sense the humanizing of Connie and the others within the Bellvue Ward. And perhaps Peircy was only looking to humanize those of society that have been dismissed due to psychological deviance; however, in doing so perhaps she should have realized the subversive potential of the utopian narrative in negating those characteristics of Connie, Sybil, etc that made them...recognizable as more than just another loon.
Booker was right in celebrating Piercy's book as making contributions to the dystopia/utopia tradition; however, he does not discuss at what cost such a text achieved it's standing. The aforementioned, I hope begins that dialogue
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