Edited by

Jordan J. Copeland

The Projected and Prophetic

Critical Issues
Series Editors
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A Critical Issues research and publications project.

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The Cyber hub
Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture

2011

The Projected and Prophetic:

Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and
Science Fiction

Edited by

Jordan J. Copeland

Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom

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Table of Contents
Introduction
Jordan J. Copeland
Part I

Reconsidering Post-Human Concepts

John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy: A Users
Guide to Post-Humanity
Fbio Fernandes

Part II

Part III

vii

We walk amid crowds, ride, fly or fall with the hero:

Avatars and Posthumanism
Jenna Ng

13

Reading the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional

Media as Narrative
Jim Barrett

21

Issues of Immersion, Ethics and Identity

The Ethical Experience in Controversial Videogames
Daniel Riha

31

Making Science Fiction Personal: Videogames and

Inter-Affective Storytelling
Kevin Veale

41

Heterotopias of Genders in Digital Space: Gender

Representations in Facebook
Sophia Damianidou, Konstantina Vasiliki Iakovou and
Katerina Zygoura

49

Immersion and Surveillance in Virtual Worlds

George J. Stein

59

Technology, Community and Anthropology

Anthropological Reflections on Knowledge Interfaces:
Swarm, Wikinomics and Design
Micha Derda-Nowakowski

71

Intelligent Shoes, Smart Teeth and Lunch with a Cyborg:

Anthropological Reflections on the Change of
Communication Paradigms
Anna Maj

79

Part IV

Part V

Mission to Earth: Planetary Proprioception and the

Cyber-Sublime
Marc Barasch and Ksenia Fedorova

89

Avatar: A Tale of Indigenous Survival?

Dolores Miralles-Alberola

99

Science Fiction and the Literatures of Cyberspace

Loss of Connection: Science in Romanticism and Modern
Science Fiction
Susan Rose Nash

111

Human Identity in the World of Altered Carbon

Grzegorz Trbicki

119

The Mind Body Problem through Science Fiction:

Charles Stross and Richard Morgan in Philosophical
Review
Benjamin Manktelow

127

Human Magic, Fairy Technology and the Place of the

Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture
Anna Bugajska

135

The Future of Humanity in Film and Television

Enemy Metaphors and the Countdown for Mankind in
the American TV Series Space: Above and Beyond and
Battlestar Galactica
Petra Rehling

145

Quest for Closure: Re-Visioning Humanity in Battlestar

Galactica
Dagmara Zajc

153

Whos Your Saviour? The Changing Messiahs of

Contemporary Science Fiction Film and TV
Sofia Sj

161

Endgame: Mitchell and Webbs Remain Indoors Sketch

Series, Absurdist Comedy and the Collapse of Meaning
in Apocalypse Narratives
Ewan Kirkland

171

Introduction
Jordan J. Copeland
The chapters collected in this volume document the exchange and development
of ideas that comprised the 5th Global Conference on Visions of Humanity in
Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction, a Cyber Hub project hosted at
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom, in July 2010. The contributing
authors and editor have adopted as their charge the faithful reproduction of the
chapters as originally presented. Accordingly, the participants were requested to
submit their original presentation-length chapters, and to make only those edits
befitting the published format. Likewise, in view of these efforts, I have attempted
to keep my own editorial meddling to a minimum, and to limit my revisions to
those done in the service of clarity.
On the readers part, each individual piece, and the volume as a whole, might
be best approached as a snapshot of the presentations and conversations that took
place. So considered, the volume does an admirable job capturing and conveying
the themes characterizing the event, but, inevitably, like any snapshot, fails at
communicating in full the kinetic vigour and dialogical ethos of the conference.
While the project makes no claim to being the exclusive preserve of these qualities,
they have proven nonetheless to be the enduring hallmark of the events associated
with Inter-Disciplinary.Net. For many participants who have grown weary of
traditional academic conferences, these gatherings have proven a welcome
respite.
In many ways, the conference and present volume reflect their subject, which
has always been situated self-consciously and comfortably between the receding
boundaries that have traditionally served both to delineate various academic
disciplines and to distinguish real scholarship from popular discourse. Thus, as
evidenced in the chapters that follow, the conference benefited from the
participation of delegates who represented a variety of fields, methodologies, and
perspectives.
As in the past, the conference was driven by questions related to how
cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction can provide new insights into the
nature of what it is to be human and the understanding of what it means for human
beings to live in communities. The specific shape of the themes and questions that
arise each year are, of course, informed by recent currents, developments, and
events in the areas of cybercultures, cyberspace, and science fiction. Thus, it is not
surprising that a number of chapters presented at the conference were dedicated to
or included reflections on science-fiction television and film, as the year leading up
to the conference included the release of the blockbuster film Avatar and the series
finale of the wildly popular Battlestar Galactica.

viii

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________
In an effort to reflect the full range of themes that comprised the conference,
the nineteen chapters of this volume have been organised into five parts, as
follows:
Part I: Reconsidering Post-Human Concepts
Part II: Issues of Immersion, Ethics, and Identity
Part III: Technology, Community, and Anthropology
Part IV: Science Fiction and the Literatures of Cyberspace
Part V: The Future of Humanity in Film and Television
The first part of this collection includes three chapters that, taken together,
utilise literature, film and virtual worlds to examine post-human concepts. Fabio
Fernandes, in his chapter John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy: A Users Guide to
Post-Humanity, sets the stage for the question: What constitutes a normal body in
the twenty-first century? by considering the lines of debate surrounding paraathlete Oscar Pistorius request that he be allowed to participate in the Olympic
Games as a normal athlete, while still using his high-performance prosthetics.
The author then draws on the works of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault,
as well as the example of the character Jared Dirac, from John Scalzis trilogy Old
Mans War, in order to propose solutions to impasses which are now being created
by the advent of post-humanity.
In her chapter We Walk Amid Crowds, Ride, Fly or Fall with the Hero:
Avatars and Posthumanism, Jenna Ng examines three portrayals of the self in
terms of the Cartesian mind/body division, including representations from the films
Surrogates and Avatar, and the experiences of users controlling digital avatars in
Second Life. Drawing on her analyses, the author presents a posthumanism whose
identity of self remains very much tied to the body in varying degrees and ways of
relation.
Jim Barrett, whose chapter Reading the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional
Media as Narrative represents the final chapter of Part I, argues that virtual online
worlds are sites for the realization of narrative, in a form of reading that is
posthuman and performative. The author characterizes the in-world avatar as the
embodiment of an interpreting agent in the virtual world, and, based upon his
analysis of the cybernetic relationship that develops, argues that the body of the
avatar and the body of the person operating it are joined across the spaces of the
digital and the physical in the navigation of the virtual three-dimensional.
Part II includes four chapters, each of which considers significant questions
concerning identity, ethics, and/or security that arise with the development of
various immersive technologies and environments. Daniel Riha, in his chapter The
Ethical Experience in Controversial Videogames, focuses on the ethical
implications of controversial and morally questionable game content in singleplayer games with defined win conditions, as well as implementation issues of

Jordan J. Copeland

ix

__________________________________________________________________
unethical content in serious videogames. The author employs the work of Sicart to
evaluate the potential of virtue ethics, information ethics, and Sicarts own theory
of distributed responsibility for enhancing our ethical understanding of
videogames.
Continuing with the subject of videogames, Kevin Veale (Making Science
Fiction Personal Videogames and Inter-Affective Storytelling) argues that
games, such as System Shock 2, are capable of bringing science fiction into the
affective present. The author argues that the immersive, first-person structure of
these games promotes a sense of agency on the part of the player, which
overcomes the mediated, third-person perspective of the protagonists represented
in literature and film. The result, Veale contends, is that players have a more
personal connection to the consequences of their actions, and a more meaningful
investment in the relationships that are established with the characters they
encounter. In light of this, the chapter considers the possibilities for inter-affective
storytelling within videogames, which would not be possible outside of an
interactive context.
In their chapter Heterotopias of Genders in Digital Space: Gender
Representations in Facebook Sophia Damianidou, Konstantina Vasiliki Iakovou,
and Katerina Zygoura observe that in any society one can detect heterotopias, or
spaces that carry feminine or masculine identities, which belong simultaneously to
reality and illusion. The authors contend that this is today more evident due to the
intersections of both real and mental spaces in cyberspace. The chapter considers
the web as a space for observing the current social positions of women and men
respectively, and of the feminine and the masculine generally. However, as the
authors point out, this raises important questions. Among those identified in the
chapter are the following: By what means are both genders expressed and
revealed? What can one assume about the gender of someone by encountering
only his or her site? How does the possibility of being invisible and anonymous
affect the definition of the engendered space? And, finally, what is the interaction
between the physical space-time continuum and cyberspace under these
circumstances?
The final chapter of this section, Immersion and Surveillance in Virtual
Worlds, by George J. Stein, explores (1) the tensions between the emergence of
independent cybercultures through virtual worlds such as Second Life, (2) the
internal tensions between immersionists and augmentationists, and (3) the
already demonstrated interest by national intelligence and law enforcement
agencies in applying a system of surveillance in virtual worlds. Focusing primarily
on Second Life, the author argues that the original vision of building an
independent cyberculture or immersionist community, with its own laws and
society, is threatened by an augmentationist approach to this virtual world that
envisions it as more a platform for other real world activities that have a
considerably lower commitment to privacy and anonymity. The chapter argues that

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________
the most serious threat that develops from the augmentationist approach is the
surveillance by government agencies.
Part III includes four chapters that consider contemporary technologies and
popular science fiction in terms of both sociological and anthropological questions.
This section begins with Micha Derda Nowakowskis chapter Anthropological
Reflections on Knowledge Interfaces: Swarm, Wikinomics, and Design. In the
chapter, the author draws on Marshall McLuhans prophecy of cultural
transformation within the range of consciousness, to connect anthropological
reflections on knowledge interfaces with visions of humanity as represented in the
context of various aspects of cyberculture. The chapter considers cultural paradigm
shifts connected with the emergence of networked civilisation, knowledge
interfaces, user experiences, wikinomics and swarming.
Anna Maj (Intelligent Shoes, Smart Teeth and Lunch with a Cyborg:
Anthropological Reflections on the Change of Communication Paradigms)
addresses the change of communication paradigms caused by digital technologies,
especially networked, mobile and intelligent devices, assistive technologies,
supporting communication systems, prostheses and chips. Drawing from the fields
of media anthropology and cultural studies, the chapter considers questions raised
by cyberculture and cyborgisation. Maj proposes a new communication model to
enable descriptions of cognitive and interactional aspects of new situations of
cyborg communication (cyborg-to-cyborg, cyborg-to-objects and human-tocyborg), as well as situations of ubiquitous networked communication.
In their chapter Mission to Earth: Planetary Proprioception and the CyberSublime, Marc Barasch and Ksenia Fedorova examine the ways in which our
sense of the self and its relation to its surroundings is being increasingly reshaped
by telematic prostheses. The authors argue that Geotagging, Google Earth,
biomapping, telepresence, augmented reality, and distributed intelligence are
creating new locative sense-perceptions, unprecedented narratives, and new
feelings (and praxes) of agency-at-a-distance. Inspired by Roy Ascotts question
Is there love in the telematic embrace?, the authors articulate a range of related
questions, which set the stage for their identification and evaluation of potential
methods of enhancing connectivity and efficacy between a person and his/her
surroundings via mapping techniques, storytelling, and social and artistic projects
using telecommunication and locative media.
Dolores Miralles-Alberola (Avatar: A Tale of Indigenous Survival?) provides
the final chapter of this section. Her chapter explores the obvious connections
between worldwide indigenous peoples and the Navi, the humanoid inhabitants of
the satellite Pandora in the film Avatar. The authors identification of these
connections provides a foundation for further reflections on the present and future
implications of these connections for the representation of the indigenous persona
in mainstream culture, and on indigenous vindications of land, ecology,
sovereignty, survival, history and culture.

Jordan J. Copeland

xi

__________________________________________________________________
Part IV focuses on science fiction and literary approaches to cyberspace and
cyberculture. In the first chapter, Loss of Connection: Science in Romanticism
and Modern Science Fiction, Susan Rose Nash juxtaposes two competing
perceptions of science: the understanding of scientists as the saviours of the world,
who offer a method for solving the problems of humanity, and, conversely, the
dispositions of writers of Romantic-era fiction and modern science fiction, who
share a fear of the future that humanity could create using this method without
being checked by humane judgment. The author examines several works by
Nathanial Hawthorne and Ray Bradbury to flesh out and examine the tensions that
are identified within the chapter.
In his chapter Human Identity in the World of Altered Carbon, Grzegorz
Trbicki acknowledges that a number of ambitious subjects have been considered
within the genres of science fiction and cyberpunk (e.g. the changing idea of a
body in the era of cyberculture, various biotechnical advances and their impact on
life, death, human identity and individuality, etc.), but argues that Richard
Morgans Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is perhaps qualitatively unique in its moving
and convincing approach to these subjects.
Exploring the possible reasons for this, the author argues that Morgan manages
successfully to background daring technological advances against complex
psychological, social and economic issues, in a way that previous literary attempts
have not.
Benjamin Manktelows chapter The Mind Body Problem through Science
Fiction: Charles Stross and Richard Morgan in Philosophical Review, considers
the works of Charles Stross and Richard Morgan, focusing on the authors frequent
characterization of the brain as being the seat of the person, as well the prevalence
with which both authors include within their stories various technologies which
map, upload and transmit minds, by scanning brains and, therefore, people. The
chapter identifies and examines points of comparison and contrast between the
visions of humanity and the future each author presents, and argues that the works
of both Stross and Morgan are deserving of closer critical and philosophical
examination.
In her chapter Human Magic, Fairy Technology, and the Place of the
Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture, Anna Bugajska credits Eoin Colfers
Artemis Fowl with ushering in a new era of cyberculture. The author observes that
the work is so immersed in technology that while it may be intended for young
adults, the story proves hardly intelligible to a reader who lacks facility in its
specialized jargon. However, Bugajska traces the success of Colfers series in part
to the authors striking combination of supernatural and technical elements, which
forces us to take a new vantage point, one that no longer allows for the traditional
partition of the technical from the magical.
Part V of the book considers visions of humanity as these have been presented
in television and film. Petra Rehling (Enemy Metaphors and the Countdown for

xii

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________
Mankind in the American TV Series Space: Above and Beyond and Battlestar
Galactica) examines two televised, science-fiction dramas, which were developed
and aired in two historically proximate but culturally distinctive decades. The
author examines several important cultural, political, and scientific differences that
informed both the creative development and popular consumption of each show.
One shared theme that provides a foundation for the chapters analysis is that each
series presents humanitys struggle with an enemy that is both internal and
external. The author argues that in these confrontations a mirror is held up to
humanity, one which offers a surprising but telling reflection.
In the chapter Quest for Closure: Re-visioning Humanity in Battlestar
Galactica, Dagmara Zajc examines the numerous slips and loose ends that he
believes plague the narrative of the science-fiction show Battlestar Galactica.
According to the author, the storys unresolved mysteries, inconclusive episode
endings, and ultimately, lack of a coherent conclusion, can all be traced to the
series ambitious, but failed, attempt to confront the problem of the very survival
of the human race in a post-industrial or, even, post-humanistic era.
As Sofia Sj points out in her chapter Whos Your Saviour? The Changing
Messiahs of Contemporary Science Fiction Film and TV, religious studies and
theology can be counted among the many academic fields that have turned to
science fiction for a greater understanding of their respective disciplines. In her
own piece, the author considers the theme of the myth of a messiah, and argues
that modern science fiction clearly demonstrates that the myth remains alive and
well today in popular culture. The chapter contends, however, that the messiahs
presented in contemporary science fiction film and TV differ significantly from the
messiahs traditional characterization in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Following
an explication of these differences, Sj provides her own reflections on what these
representations suggest about the potential role of religion, spirituality, and the
messiah-myth in contemporary and future societies.
The chapter Endgame: Mitchell and Webbs Remain Indoors Sketch Series,
Absurdist Comedy, and the Collapse of Meaning in Apocalypse Narratives, by
Ewan Kirkland, represents the conclusion of both Part V and the volume as a
whole. The fact that the chapter considers several absurdist approaches to the
apocalypse is purely coincidental. According to the author, while the Remain
Indoors series displays the influence of dystopian science fiction, it can also be
related to absurdist theatre, and certain traditions in British comedy. Thus, the
chapter serves to identify and illuminate the series thematic and dispositional
connections to the work of Samuel Beckett and several examples from the British
comedic tradition, wherein one might trace the roots of the series association of
the end of civilisation with the end of meaning, the collapse of discourse, and the
fragmentation of collective and individual memory.

Part I
Reconsidering Post-Human Concepts

John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy: A Users Guide to PostHumanity

Fbio Fernandes
Abstract
How can one define what constitutes a normal body in the twenty-first century?
When an amputee runner like Oscar Pistorius, who uses high-performance
prosthetics, demands an upgrade from the status of para-athlete to be accepted as a
normal athlete for the Olympic Games, while being considered, paradoxically, as
more-than-human by others who believe such prosthetics provide him an unfair
edge over other athletes, the rules governing the way we have traditionally
understood our bodies necessarily change. Drawing on the thoughts on norms and
normality studied by Georges Canguilhem in The Normal and The Pathological, as
well as Michel Foucaults ideas concerning the need to treat the different grades
of humanity by different sets of rules, which he puts forward in The Birth of The
Clinic, this chapter uses the example of the character Jared Dirac, from John
Scalzis trilogy Old Mans War, and the reading of a science-fiction narrative as a
kind of users guide, in order to propose solutions to impasses which are now
being created by the advent of post-humanity.
Key Words: Post-Human, cyborg, prosthetics, normality, pathology.
*****
1. Whos Normal, Anyway?
Nicknamed Blade Runner and the fastest man without legs, by the press,
South African runner Oscar Pistorius holds the 100-, 200- and 400-metre world
records for double amputees in the Paralympic Games. Instead of legs, Pistorius
runs with Cheetah Flex-Foot, carbon-fiber, lower-transtibial members, made by the
Icelandic orthopedic company Ossur.
Journalist Josh McHugh, upon seing the hockey-stick-looking prostheses, said:
If you dont have a leg, having an Ossur is like a driving a BMW series M.
McHugh explains: The current Cheetahs look a little like the rear leg of a horse or
cat, extending straight down from the socket, cantilevering backward, and then
angling forward sharply. 1
On its website, Ossur defines itself as a non-invasive company, and a global
leader in developing, building, distributing, and selling of prosthetics. The
companys mission is to enhance mobility and make every effort to give to its
patients a life without limitations. 2
This life without limitations, to which Ossurs slogan refers, isnt seen the
same way by everyone. This perception is suggested in a question raised by Jer
Longman in a story for The New York Times; concerning Pistorius, the author asks:

John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy

__________________________________________________________________
is he disabled or too-abled? 3 In the article, Longman explains that Pistorius
wanted to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as the first amputee runner
ever to appear in the Olympics. However, Pistorius would face resistance from the
International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the organisation in
charge of all modalities of running, which argued that the technology of his
prosthesis could give him an unfair advantage over runners who use their naturalborn legs.
Despite the differences which appear obvious to the naked eye, the issue of
prosthesis versus natural-born legs is not so simple. A follow-up to the story
mentioned above raises more doubts than certainties for the reader:
Pistorius is forcing the sports world to rethink what it means to
be a disabled athlete. Is he so close to world-class that his
limitations, his prosthetic legs, represent a disadvantage? Or are
the Cheetahs an advantage, an artificial enhancement that makes
him faster than he would be if he had natural legs? After all,
improvements in human performance are normally limited by
biology and evolution. Not in Pistorius case. His legs are
constantly upgraded by a pit crew of Icelandic gearheads at one
of the worlds most sophisticated prosthetic manufacturing
facilities. 4
The words artificial enhancement and upgraded are the keywords in
understanding the gap between prosthetics and natural legs, as the natural-born legs
cannot be upgraded. McHugh closes his piece with a note of concern:
No one expects able-bodied runners to compete head-to-head
with wheelchair-bound marathoners. The wheels confer an
obvious speed advantage, and maybe Oscar Pistorius Cheetahs
do, too. So the real question is this: Do able-bodied athletes need
protection from him? 5
The description able-bodied is an expression commonly used in the English
language to describe normal-functioning bodies, but this requires that we ask:
What is normal? And what defines normality?
2. Future Post-Humanity: A Users Guide?
In my book A Construo do Imaginrio Cyber (FERNANDES, 2006), I study
the work of cyberpunk writer William Gibson to conclude that, without his
intervention in the cultural imaginary by means of the creation of the word
cyberspace and the whole hacker culture, among other things, cyberculture as we
know it wouldnt exist.

Fbio Fernandes

__________________________________________________________________
A similar thought is defended by Henry Jenkins in Cordwainer Smith Imagined
Convergence Culture (and Viral Media) in 1964. Jenkins analyses the work of a
Golden Age science fiction writer to explain how some of his stories seem to
anticipate notions like viral media. For Jenkins, science fiction writers dont
necessarily invent the future, but help shaping it; first, because they would give us
the necessary information to understand the present reality and anticipate probable
consequences of the choices we make as a society; second, because, by offering an
exquisitely painted image of a possible future, they would inspire scientists,
politicians, and decision-makers to remake reality. Science fiction, therefore,
would act as a users guide in the order of the real.
In terms of post-humanity, one of the most recent examples of a narrative that
could just as well work as a sort of users guide for 21st century readers is the Old
Mans War trilogy, by American writer John Scalzi. Composed of Old Mans War
(2005), The Ghost Brigades (2006) and The Last Colony (2007), this trilogy pays a
tribute to Frankenstein, putting its principal premise in a new, fresh perspective.
The story of Old Mans War begins approximately two-hundred years in our
future, in a time when humankind has reached a kind of post-scarcity condition;
and Earth has already colonized dozens of star systems through the Colonial Union
and its Colonial Defence Forces.
One of the reasons why Earth is more balanced is because of the exodus of
Third World inhabitants to those colonies. The First World, by decision of CU, was
assigned with the defence of the colonies.
The interesting thing is that the colonists may leave Earth when they wish, but
the first-worlders are only allowed to enlist when they are seventy-five years old.
They get an extreme rejuvenating therapy, which consists basically of having their
minds uploaded to a new body cloned from their own cells and grown until 25
years of age, and with green skin the result of chlorophyll laced to their DNA so
they can perform better through photosynthesis.
Thats what happens to the protagonist, John Perry. A widower with a son and
grown-up grandchildren, Perry doesnt want to wait for death on Earth. So he
enlists, and soon discovers that he will not only look younger, but will also be
faster, stronger and more resilient than he ever was in his former life. Aside from
the green skin, every soldier is pumped full of SmartBloodTM, which helps the
body to heal faster. And the BrainPal, a brain implant that augments intelligence
and connects people. Thus John Perry becomes a post-human.
Not everyone gets in on the joyride, however. The day before the therapy starts,
Perrys bunk companion dies of a heart attack. The medics who take out the body
make a comment that Perry understands as being offensive:
A last-minute volunteer for the Ghost Brigades, the other
Colonial said. I shot a hard stare at him. I thought a joke at this
moment was in terribly bad taste. 6

John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy

__________________________________________________________________
But this comment is far from being simply a bad joke. The Ghost Brigades
really exist - although this name is unofficial and indeed a deprecating one. Special
Forces (the true name of the Brigades) are the cream of the crop of the CDF, both
well-liked and feared by everyone, because they are created literally from dead
people.
However, while the principle is basically the same: to create life where there is
none, the procedure is not as macabre as in Frankenstein. Physically, the soldiers
of Special Forces are exactly the same as the rest of the rejuvenated recruits.
Nevertheless, there is one single (and fundamental) difference: they are entirely
created from DNA of dead individuals, laced to the genome of one or more alien
races.
The main character of The Ghost Brigades is a newborn soldier named Jared
Dirac. In his second day of life (and first of training in the Special Forces), after a
petty fight with a mate, Jared receives from his immediate superior a task: to read
Frankenstein. Like Mary Shelleys monster, Dirac also reads fast, only much faster
than him. He downloads the book with the help of his BrainPal and reads it in eight
minutes. He understands why he was assigned this book:
He and all the members of the 8th - all of the Special Forces
soldiers - were the spiritual descendants of the pathetic creature
Victor Frankenstein had assembled from the bodies of the dead
and then jolted into life. (...) The allusions between the monster
and the Special Forces were all too obvious. 7
So, in an obvious mirroring of Shelleys story, Jared reads to better understand
who he is - and the speed of the entire process is also a mirror (but an inverted one)
of the langue dure (comparatively) of the learning process of Frankensteins
monster using the books that he finds in the shack of the old blind man De Lacey,
books that shaped his gothic, romantic Weltanschauung.
Still using the symbolism of the mirror, Jared, who is a kind of new
Frankenstein monster (and representative of a new species of clones made from
the dead, maybe a fourth kind of human), is not content only with reading Mary
Shelleys book, and thus downloads every single movie version of Frankenstein,
plus every possible narrative that includes robots, androids, replicants, etc.; and
filled with curiosity, he researches the literary ancestry of Frankenstein and learns
of the Golem myth, among many other stories featuring homunculus and
mechanical automata.
Driven by this new knowledge of himself, by means of the time-honoured
tradition of science fiction, Jared repudiates the tragic view of Frankensteins
monster in favour of another, more technical, pragmatic Weltanschauung (or a
programmatic one, since he and his companions were already born with several

Fbio Fernandes

__________________________________________________________________
programmed functions in their brains notwithstanding their auxiliary BrainPals,
downloading all the time concepts and third-part experiences so they can learn
their way through the galaxy).
3. Post-Able Bodies?
The creation of these Ghost Brigades is the science-fiction equivalent of the
model analysed by Michel Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic. In this text, Foucault
investigates the invention of the hospital as a therapeutic instrument, something
that only starts to happen in the 18th Century. Foucault also states that this
transformation of the clinic/hospital into an instrument of therapy happened not by
the search of a positive action from the hospital upon the disease or the patient, but
by the annulment of the negative effects of the hospital (for instance, the great
amount of deaths by infection). He also observes that this transformation starts in
the military hospitals, because:
(...) economic rules and regulations became more and more hard
in the mercantile system, and also because the price of men
became higher and higher. It is by then that the formation of the
subject, his capability, and his skills start having a price for
society. 8
Foucault cites the example of the Army, which, upon the invention of the rifle
(fusil, in the French original, hence the fusiliers, infantry soldiers who knew how to
shoot with this kind of gun) in the end of the 17th Century, becomes more
technical and expensive:
In order to learn how to use a fusil it will be necessary exercises,
manoeuvres, training. Thats how the price of a soldier will
surpass the price of a simple workforce and the cost of the Army
will become an important budgetary issue in every country.
When you form a soldier, you cannot let him die. If he should
die, he must die as a soldier, in the battlefield, not of a disease. 9
In the universe created by Scalzi, the price of the soldiers is so high that they
become much too valuable to be wasted, even after death; so, their DNA is sort of
recycled, coming back to life in the body of other, able-bodied beings. Who, in
opposition to Frankensteins monster, are not only accepted by their creators (even
though they are feared for their supposed inhumanity), but are also trained,
encouraged to fight, and (if they survive their mandatory ten-year enlistment
period) rewarded with the possibility of living for the rest of their lives in a human
colony.

John Scalzis Old Mans War Trilogy

__________________________________________________________________
According to Georges Canguilhem in The Normal and the Pathological, each
individual determines her/his own norms upon choosing her/his exercise models. If
the norm for the long-distance runner is not the same for the sprinter, if each and
every one of us change her/his own norms, according to age and her/his previous
norms, 10 then the norms for the post-human organism cannot be the same norms
for the human organism because of its changes, be they cosmetic or genetic ones.
4. Conclusion: A Body Too Able or Not?
Further events in Oscar Pistoriuss life offer us the answer to the question posed
by McHugh in the beginning of this chapter. After a great deal of insistence,
Pistorius got the IOC to take back its irrevocable decision and allowed his
participation in the pre-competitions to qualify to the Beijing Olympic Games.
However, in July 18th 2008, the British newspaper The Guardian published the
news: Pistorius didnt make it. His 46.25 seconds mark in the 400-metre relay was
slower than the minimum Olympic mark of 45.55 seconds. Pistorius was
disappointed, but it wasnt such an unexpected result: he had spent most of 2007
fighting in the courts for the right to compete in Beijing, which hadnt allowed him
enough time to train.
The result only seems to prove what Pistorius himself had said earlier:
according to the scientists he had consulted, there was no advantage in the use of
prosthetics over natural-born legs. Bodies with prosthesis, judging by the
experience of the South-African runner, are not necessarily better than the able
bodies mentioned by the journalist.
In The Normal and The Pathological, Georges Canguilhem notices that:
To define the abnormality from the standpoint of the social
inadaptation is to accept more or less the idea theta the individual
must bow down to the manners of a given society, and, thus, to
adapt her/himself to it as she/he would to a reality that it would
be, at the same time, something good. 11
Canguilhem does not agree with the reasoning, reminding us that it belongs to
the 19th Century, a time which saw an antagonistic relationship between man and
environment, of challenge between an organic form and an adverse
environment. 12 Opposing himself to this approach, which he called mechanistic,
Canguilhem argues that, if we consider the relationship of organism-environment
as a consequence of a truly biological activity,
as the search of a situation in which the living being, instead of
suffering influences, collect those influences and the qualities
that correspond to its demands, then the means in which the
living beings are immersed have its boundaries defined by them.

Fbio Fernandes

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In this sense, the organism is not just thrown into an environment
in which it must folds, but, on the contrary, it structures its
environment at the same time it develops its organic capacities. 13
Canguilhem concludes his reasoning, explaining that the norms for an old man
would be considered deficiencies of the same man as a youngster. In those
reflections, written between 1963 and 1966, he recalls that, in his 1943 original
essay, he called normativity the biological capacity of questioning the usual norms
upon critical situation, and he proposed to measure health by the gravity of the
organic crises surpassed by the creation of a new physiological order. 14
The most famous user of the Ossur prosthetic members was trying to get just
that in his fight to get out of the Paralympic Games and start participating in the
Olympic Games, the games for able-bodied athletes. Oscar Pistorius wanted to
change his own norms for amputee-rendered-unable in order to run in the same
conditions of the so-called normal athletes.
The post-human condition, thus, constantly questions the limits of a supposed
normativity. From the standpoint of the normal, the post-human is always
critical: post-human is always pathological. To be post-human is to live in a
constant state of change.

Notes
1

J. McHugh, Blade Runner, Wired Magazine, Issue 15.03 - March 2007, Date of
viewing March 30th 2010. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/ blade.html.
2
A Life without Limitations, Ossur, website. Date of viewing August 16th 2008,
http://www.ossur.com/pages/3642.
3
J. Longman, An Amputee Sprinter: Is He Disabled or Too-Abled?, The New
York Times, May 15th 2007, Date of viewing October 20th 2009, http://www.ny
times.com/2007/05/15/sports/othersports/15runner.html.
4
McHugh, op. cit.
5
McHugh, op. cit.
6
J. Scalzi, Old Mans War, Tor Books, New York, 2005, p. 52.
7
J. Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades, Tor Books, New York, 2006, pp. 93-94.
8
M. Foucault, Microfsica do Poder, (Organizao, Introduo e Reviso Tcnica
de Roberto Machado) Edies Graal, Rio de Janeiro, 1988, p. 104. All quotations
from this text have been translated by the author for the purposes of this chapter.
9
Foucault, op. cit., p. 104.
10
G. Canguilhem, O Normal e o Patolgico, Forense Universitria, Rio de Janeiro,
2006, p. 245. All quotations from this text have been translated by the author for
the purposes of this chapter.
11
Canguilhem, op. cit., p. 244.
12
Canguilhem, op. cit., p. 244.

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13
14

Canguilhem, op. cit., p. 245.

Canguilhem, op. cit.

Bibliography
Canguilhem, G., O Normal e o Patolgico. Forense Universitria, Rio de Janeiro,
2006.
Fernandes, F., A Construo do Imaginrio Cyber William Gibson, Criador da
Cibercultura. Editora Anhembi Morumbi, So Paulo, 2006.
, A Construo do Imaginrio Ciborgue. PhD Thesis. Pontifcia Universidade
Catlica de So Paulo, So Paulo, 2008.
Foucault, M., Microfsica do Poder. (Organizao, Introduo e Reviso Tcnica
de Roberto Machado.) Edies Graal, Rio de Janeiro, 1988.
Jenkins, H., Cordwainer Smith Imagined Convergence Culture (and Viral Media)
in 1964. Available at http://henryjenkins.org/2009/10/cordwainer_smith_imag
ined_conv.html, Accessed October 26th 2009.
Longman, J., An Amputee Sprinter: Is He Disabled or Too-Abled?. The New
York Times. May 15th 2007. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/
sports/othersports/15runner.html, Accessed October 20th 2009.
McHugh, J., Blade Runner. Wired Magazine. March 2007. Available at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/blade.html. Accessed on August 25th
2008.
Scalzi, J., Old Mans War. Tor Books, New York, 2005.
, The Ghost Brigades. Tor Books, New York, 2006.
, The Last Colony. Tor Books, New York, 2007.
Shelley, M., Frankenstein. Ediouro, Rio de Janeiro, 2001.
Fibio Fernandes received his PhD in Communication and Semiotics from
Pontifcia Universidade Catlica de So Paulo, where he teaches at the courses of
Digital Games and Digital Media. A science fiction writer and translator, he is the
author of A Construo do Imaginrio Cyber (2006), Wild Mood Swings (2008),

Fbio Fernandes

11

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Os Dias da Peste (2009) and several short stories published in the US, the UK,
Brasil, New Zealand, Portugal, and Romania. He blogs at Post-Weird Thoughts
(http://verbeat.org/blogs/pwt/), Fantasy Book Critic (http://fantasybookcritic.
blogspot.com/) and Tor.com (http://www.tor.com). He is currently writing his first
novel in English.

We walk amid crowds, ride, fly or fall with the hero: Avatars
and Posthumanism
Jenna Ng
Abstract
This essay examines three portrayals of the self in terms of the Cartesian
mind/body division. These presentations are from: (i) Surrogates; (ii) Avatar; and
(iii) the experiences of a user controlling a digital avatar in Second Life. Through
these analyses, the essay presents a posthumanism whose identity of self remains
very much tied to the body in varying degrees and ways of relation. The
interrogation of posthuman identity is thus a more nuanced strategy of slippage
between real and digital worlds, where the body is not abandoned in favour of
unlimited thought but is instead translated as alternative bodily experiences of
sensuality, haecceity and perception.
Key Words: Posthuman, avatar, digital, science fiction film, self, body,
perception.
*****
1. Introduction
The separation of mind from body provokes conflicting responses. On one
hand, the mind-body dualism causes anxiety and pessimism, where the integrity of
the human being is irredeemably compromised and questions of its identity as a
choate idea become unanswerable. Yet, on the other hand, the vision of dividing
mind from body also offers a utopia, peddled on promises of escape and freedom
from the corporeal encumbrances of the body and the prison represented by its
limitations. As William Gibson describes in relation to the character Case in his
1984 novel, Neuromancer: For Case, whod lived in the bodiless exultation of
cyberspace, it was the Fall The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his
own flesh. 1 To Gregory Little, the mind/body divide is a salvation myth, whereby
the body, in all its physical attributes, is abandoned in favour of a technologized
completeness: Convinced that to be embodied is lack, we desire escape from the
particulars of the body and move out via myths of wholeness toward technologized
commodification. 2
In this vision, the posthuman is data, a consciousness to be housed elsewhere, if
at all, while the physical body is fragmented, de-centred and abandoned. In this
essay, I show how the films Surrogates and Avatar, as well as the digital avatar
from Second life, present an alternative vision of posthumanisma future human
whose mind is not divorced from body but, rather, relate to each other through
re-articulated experiences of embodiment. The identity of the posthuman self is
thus not one simply balanced between the persistence and erasure of the physical

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body, but instead appeals to an alternative subjectivity by re-thinking our notions
of the physical and of bodily awareness.
2. All Bodies Left Behind: Surrogates
The people in the film Surrogates walk around in surrogate bodiesmetal
shells textured with human skin and filled with wires and memory chipswhile
their flesh bodies are left behind at home, plugged into electrodes controlling the
surrogates. The self becomes a consignable entity, something fluid enough to
occupy the surrogate body but also transferred back to the flesh body once the
surrogate is parked (by walking into and settling itself inside a life-size box
enclosure at home). In this set-up, there are no crimes, as surrogate bodies cannot
be harmed; nor is there discrimination, as one may choose a surrogate body with
any physical characteristics. Thus, society is ostensibly a better place.
However, the film qualifies this vision. A key sub-plot shows Tom Greer
(Bruce Willis) in a strained marriage with his wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike), as
they grieve the loss of their only child. A significant indication of this unhappiness
is Maggies insistence on using her surrogate body. Her lack of engagement both
with her feelings and with Greer is thus demonstrated by her seeking protection
behind the metal shell of her surrogate; her distance and alienation from her
husband is shown as much by her disinterested answers to him as by her refusal to
interact with him in her real body. At the end of the film, Greer and Maggie are
forced to return to their non-surrogate bodies as the computer controlling all
surrogate bodies breaks down. Only at this point do Greer and Maggie finally
embrace, the imperfections of their flesh bodiesaging, wrinkled, saggingbared
like the truth of their emotions.
This division between flesh and surrogate bodies thus signifies the draining of
vitality from the human-person. The films message is clear: the self leaves behind
its flesh body at the expense of certain truths about its emotions, desires, happiness
and ability to love, and one had to return to that body to regain those aspects of the
self. Humanity lies in the physical body itself, where the body is the ground of
being and the base of human feelings and desires. Subjectivity cannot be
transferred or parked inside another entity; cognition is not a computer file to be
transmitted across electrodes. To be human is to be in the flesh, so to speak. The
body cannot be left behind.
3. We awake when we sleep: Avatar
In Avatar, the flesh body is similarly abandoned while the self occupies an
alien one (in this case, literally so). It is the year 2154, and humans are mining a
mineral called unobtanium on the planet Pandora which hosts, among others,
humanoid creatures called the Navi. In a bid to win hearts and minds, human
scientists develop technology by which they can transfer their consciousness from
human to Navi bodies, so that they not only look and move like the Navi but,

Jenna Ng

15

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more importantly, possess all the functionalities of Navi physicality, the most
significant being the ability to breathe Pandoras air which is toxic to humans.
When the avatar body sleeps, the self returns to the human body, still plugged in a
cocoon pod back at the research base, while the avatar body out in Pandora
remains unconscious.
The film follows the adventures of protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington)
who is paralysed from the waist down. As one of the humans occupying a Navi
avatar body, he is able to leave behind his paralysed human body, a deliberate
abandonment which turns out to be significant throughout the film. Firstly, it is an
important plot device: he agrees to spy on the Navi for Colonel Quaritch (Stephen
Lang) based on the Colonels promise to him that he would be rewarded: You get
me what I need; I make sure that when you rotate home you get your legs back,
your real legs. Secondly, it ratchets up the tension of the film. The more Sully, in
his alien body, integrates with the Navi, the more complicated the transference of
self between real and avatar bodies becomes, climaxing with his delay in returning
to his avatar, which is lying unconscious amidst the carnage of the humans attack
on Hometree while Neytiri frantically tries to shake him awake. Thirdly, it
provides irony in the Navi wordsI see youintoned often in the film. I see
you functions as a greeting, but also proclaims truth or insightI see you for
who/what you areand ironic in Sullys case as he is not, at least until the end of
the film, seen in his truthful form, i.e. in his paralysed human body. Finally, the
film ends with a close-up shot of Jake opening his eyesyet another reference to
seeingas he re-awakens, or is re-born, into a Navi body.
The mind/body division is thus significant in Avatar not only as an effective
plot device, but also as a vision of hope: the future human is seen as a
consciousness which can escape the limitations of the flesh body, abandoned like a
shed skin, and start anew in a healthy one. Unlike Surrogates, where the truth of
living resides in the flesh body, in Avatar the transfer of the self across different
bodies instead provides new experiences and facilitates new functionalities. These
include, as mentioned, not only the Navi bodys ability to breathe Pandoras air,
but also its animal agility and physical particularities such as pointed ears, blue
skin and a tail to connect to each other and other creatures. The future human in
Avatar is thus a self which is transferred to a new physical form, and in the process
partakes in a wider ecology which provides the body with new experiences. The
issue in this case, then, is to rethink subjectivity and the mind and body relation,
rather than its dualism. Jean-Francois Lyotard writes of the analogous connection
between thought and body:
Thought makes lavish use of analogy. its analogising power
[brings] into play the spontaneous analogical field of the
perceiving body, educating Cezannes eye, Debussys ear, to see
and hear givables, nuances, timbres 3

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To that extent, the Navi avatar is not simply a case of separating mind and
body, but of reconsidering these analogies between thought and body, re-educating
our eye and ear to see and hear.
4. Extended Embodied Awareness: The Second Life Avatar
Using the Second Life (SL) avatar, I argue that the digital avatar presents yet
another relation of the body to the self by shifting the groundwork of physical
response from exteroperception to the inside-ness of the bodyresponses of the
gut, of deep somatic responses, and appeals to perceptual cues. This is achieved in
three ways.
Firstly, the use of cameras in SL focusing on the avatar entrenches in the user
somatic experiences derived from the avatars acts and movements. Cameras in SL
provide visual information for the user and span a range of identification with or
distinct from the avatars perspective. The default camera position is behind-theshoulder (so the user looks over the avatars shoulder); the camera can also orbit
around the avatar, be tilted up or down, or panned from one side to the other. These
camera positions reinforce to varying degrees the users separate identity from the
avatar (for example, by orbiting 360-degrees around the avatar so that the user
comes face-to-face with her).
However, the camera in SL also provides a point-of-view (POV) shot which
combines the look of the camera with that of the avatar. 4 In POV, the camera
literally dives into the head of the avatar, so that the visual information conveyed
to the user is exactly that which is seen by the avatar. Alexander Galloway
describes the POV as if the camera eye were the same as the character I. 5 The
users look is now effectively merged with the avatars look, resulting in a
convergence of visual information between the two. Yet, this convergence of
vision results in a profoundly physical experience, for vision also accumulates
bodily being. According to William Gibson, optical information is connected to
our sensorium as movements of field of view:
are not simply motions but deletions and accretions of optical
structure the world is revealed and concealed as the head
moves Whatever goes out of sight as the head turns right comes
into sight as the head turns left; whatever goes out of sight as the
head is lifted comes into sight as the head is lowered. 6
By participating so intimately with the visual field of the avatar in the POV, the
user effectively taps into her own bodily experiences, thus relating the self to an
accumulation of projected physical experiences. When the avatar flies, the user,
being used to gravitational force, experiences a sensation of lightness. Falling into
water provokes a deeply somatic response, a lurch inside, because, as a terrestrial
creature, the user is more familiar with being on firm ground. By marrying the

Jenna Ng

17

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visual information of the avatar and the user, the camera POV of SL thus creates a
kinesthetic connection by building on the bodily momentum of the avatar and
soliciting the flesh of the user. The avatar becomes a transmedial depository of
tactility, senses that are beckoned from and located through visual information.
Secondly, avatars relate the self and the body in terms of physical awareness.
Avatars demonstrate bodily awareness in their behaviour: they apologise when
they bump into another avatar; they do not walk between two avatars having a
conversation. Claims by avatars of assaults by other avatars 7 do not cause real
physical harm, but are significant in that they demonstrate a certain sense of
awareness derived from the body, specifically in terms of personal space, social
etiquette, spatial awareness and bodily integrity, all of which transcribes into
corporeality of sufficient reality to be violated.
Bodily awareness can also be sensed via perceptual cues. Stephen Prince argues
that referentially fictional computer-generated imagery correlate to the perceptual
cues of our bodily responses in our real-world experiences. 8 Hence, the
referentially fictional dinosaurs of Jurassic Park maintain their sense of realism by
corresponding to the viewers real-world experiences of three-dimensional space,
reflections, surface texture, movements, bone and joint rotations, light, colour and
sound. SL avatars possess the same perceptual correspondences from real-life
social and physical environments. In SL conferences, avatars sit on chairs facing
the speaker, maintain respectful distances, and give allowances for personal spaces.
Avatars physical attributes also match physical cues: their arms move in tandem
when they walk or run, as do their hair when they jump. When avatars fly, their
hair and clothes flap in the wind and there are sounds of wind. Their arms pinwheel
when they fall. Avatars thus exist in SL as a nested environment of cues intricately
combined between real-life physical and digital experiences. These cues not only
anchor the avatar inside Cartesian space and perceptual reality, but also provide a
bridge of bodily awareness between physical and computer-generated
environments.
Finally, digital avatars relate self and the body in terms of time. Avatars and
users co-opt the same time-spacethey share every concrete, live, present instant.
Adopting Henri Bergsons reading of time, every present instant is sensory-motor,
because the present exists between and simultaneously with the past and the future,
which corresponds respectively with sensation and action:
The immediate past, in so far as it is perceived, is sensation, since
every sensation translates a very long succession of elementary
vibrations; and the immediate future, in so far as it is being
determined, is action or movement. My present, then, is both
sensation and movement. My present is, in its essence, sensorymotor. 9

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In other words, time is in the bodycomprising sensations which make up my
past and movements which determine my future. In the same way, Sheets-Johnston
argues that time is experienced and conceptualised through our body. Every bodily
motion involves a temporal quality; the temporality of marching, for example, is
different from skipping, which, in turn, is different from tip-toeing. Time is not
only in the body, but also understood through it. 10
Hence, if time can be understood via the body as both motion and sensation,
then sharing time with our avatars across digital space is also extending to them the
sensory-motor of our lived present instants. My sensations and movements in my
past and my present thus expand out to the avatar, giving them a sense of
physicality which they gain through time.
5. Conclusion
I have described three versions of the posthuman as envisioned via the
mind/body divide: one in which the truth of the human state resides in the body;
one in which the self is transferable between different bodies; and one in which the
self relates to the body through appealing to different somatic physical responses.
The mission of this chapter is not to judge each version, but to lay them out for
further discussion. The relationship of the body to the self is complex, emergent
and fluid. At stake are not only our concepts of the body and the embodied
experience, but the fundamental question of our identity as human beings.

Notes
1

W. Gibson, Neuromancer, HarperCollins, London, 1995, p. 6.

G. Little, A Manifesto for Avatars, Intertexts, Special Issue: Webs of Discourse:
The Intertextuality of Science Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1999, p. 7.
3
J.-F. Lyotard, Can Thought Go on without a Body?, The Inhuman: Reflections
on Time, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 22-23.
4
Paul Willemen analyses the four visual axes in cinema: the cameras look, the
audiences look, the intradiegetic look between characters, and the look at the
camera. See P. Willemen, Letter to John, The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader
in Sexuality, Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 171-183.
5
A. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis, 2006, p. 27.
6
W. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1979, p. 115.
7
For example, an article in an Australian newspaper reports that a female gamer
claimed to be sexually assaulted while inhabiting the PlayStation 3s social space,
Home. According to the report, the harasser followed the womans avatar and used
the crouch emote to position his avatar near her backside. G. Tito, Female
Gamer Sexually Assaulted While Playing PS3, at http://www.escapistmagazine.
2

Jenna Ng

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com/news/view/97538-Female-Gamer-Sexually-Assaulted-While-Playing-PS3.
Likewise, Julian Dibbell recounts an assault that happened between avatars in the
MUD world of LambdaMOO: J. Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil
Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards and a Cast of Dozens Turned a
Database into a Society, Reading Digital Culture, D. Trend (ed), Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford, pp. 119-213.
8
S. Prince, True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images and Film Theory, Film
Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3, Spring 1996, pp. 27-37.
9
H. Bergson, Matter and Memory, Zone Books, 1990, pp. 176-177. Emphasis
added.
10
M. Sheets-Johnston, The Primacy of Movement, John Benjamins, Amsterdam,
1999.

Bibliography
Bergson, H., Matter and Memory. Zone Books, 1990.
Dibbell, J., A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster
Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society.
Reading Digital Culture. Trend, D. (ed), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.
Galloway, A., Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis, 2006.
Gibson, W., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1979.
Gibson, W., Neuromancer. HarperCollins, London, 1995.
Little, G., A Manifesto for Avatars. Intertexts. Special Issue: Webs of Discourse:
The Intertextuality of Science Studies. Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1999.
Lyotard, J.-F., Can Thought Go on without a Body?. The Inhuman: Reflections
on Time. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992.
Prince, S., True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images and Film Theory. Film
Quarterly. Vol. 49, No. 3, Spring 1996, pp. 27-37.
Tito, G., Female Gamer Sexually Assaulted While Playing PS3. at:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97538-Female-Gamer-SexuallyAssaulted-While-Playing-PS3.

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Sheets-Johnston, M., The Primacy of Movement. John Benjamins, Amsterdam,
1999.
Willemen, P., Letter to John. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality.
Routledge, London, 1992.
Jenna Ng, Umea University, Sweden.

Reading with the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional Media

as Narrative
Jim Barrett
Abstract
This chapter argues that virtual online worlds are sites for the realization of
narrative, in a form of reading that is posthuman and performative. The in-world
avatar is the embodiment of an interpreting agent in the virtual world. Such devices
accomplish a number of functions in terms of narrative realisation. The avatar
contributes to the realisation of narrative through the navigation of the spatial
attributes, the setting up of perspective in terms of Point of View (POV) in the
reading, and as a character agent in the narrative architecture of the virtual world.
Such characteristics are in the cybernetic relationship between the virtual world as
a text, and the responses that can be made to it in reception. Architecture becomes
the grammar of reading in the virtual world, with design and code, copyright and
address directing narrative. The body of the avatar and the body of the person
operating it are joined across the spaces of the digital and the physical in the
navigation of the virtual three-dimensional.
Key Words: Virtual worlds, narrative, spatial, navigation, posthuman, cybernetic,
embodiment, avatars, cyberculture, reading.
*****
1. Introduction
The slightly built and ill-dressed figure makes his way over the narrow bridge
towards the small stupa at the base of the frozen mountain. From some distant
point the voice of a lone monk can be heard chanting the Om mani padme hum
mantra. The figure performs a prostration, the first of many as he makes his way
towards the top of the mountain. He bows and falls flat to the ground with arms
outstretched, then, dragging his legs up under his body, he raises himself up again
only to then repeat it all over again and again. 1
I am the figure in that landscape. I have been him for six years. I am an avatar
in the virtual online world of Second Life. How I understand the virtual spaces
though which I navigate as an avatar depends upon a form of reading that extends
beyond the symbolic registers of language and into the simulative properties of
three-dimensional digital environments. In the simulative environment of Second
Life and other virtual online worlds, it is objects, spaces, bodies, and places that are
interpreted alongside languages. The avatar contributes to this posthuman
realisation of narrative through the navigation of spatial attributes, the setting up of
perspective in terms of Point of View (POV) in reading, and as character agents in
the narrative architecture of the virtual world. 2

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2. Terms and Conditions
The embodied agent in virtual worlds creates tensions between
phenomenological and hermeneutical conceptions of meaning. 3 Building on the
work of Haraway (1991), Aarseth (1997), Hayles (1999), and Jenkins (2003), this
chapter argues for the posthuman credentials of virtual worlds, as media that is
read performatively. Donna Haraways The Cyborg Manifesto is a relevant
commentary on the social relations engendered by cybernetic technologies.
Haraway recognises that a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine
and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. 4 This
chapter describes the avatar as a key element in the hybrid relationship of machine
and organism that is the virtual online world. Espen Aarseths Cybertext:
Perspectives on Ergodic Literature addresses the textual possibilities for the hybrid
of machine and organism. In this relationship the text itself cannot be subsumed
by either side of the triangle and remains at the interstice, refusing to be reduced to
either a linguistic, historic, or material phenomenon, while depending on all
three. 5 Such a three-sided system raises question about the nature of reading in
relation to such texts. N. Katherine Hayles discusses embodiment in relation to the
avatar in interactive and spatial digital texts in How We Became Posthuman, where
questions about presence and absence do not yield much leverage in this situation,
for the avatar both is and is not present, just as the user both is and is not inside the
screen. Instead, the focus shifts to questions about pattern and randomness. What
transformations govern the connections between user and avatar? 6 The avatar is
the nomadic point where transformations of the user into the virtual world are
experienced as the shared agency of embodied identity.
The narrative architecture of online three-dimensional worlds governs the
connections between what Hayles terms a user and his or her avatar. The concept
of narrative architecture is the constituents of the text, which must be negotiated,
interpreted and responded to in reading, play and navigation. 7 This architecture
both enables and constrains responses to online virtual worlds and includes
language in combination with cultural artefacts, social elements and designed
spaces. These structures address the reader and demand responses according to
particular cultural, social and literary contexts. Narrative architecture addresses
readers with features that rely upon a story unfolding simultaneously with the
manipulation, navigation and exploration of the digital space, as an authored
environment. In narrative architecture spatial stories can evoke pre-existing
narrative associations, they can provide a staging ground where narrative events
are enacted; they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or
they provide resources for emergent narratives. 8 The role of the avatar in the
enactment of narrative events involves a balance between the immediacy of
simulation and the recounting that is traditionally associated with narrative.

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3. The Avatar as Agent
In a three-dimensional virtual space the avatar is an embodied representation of
its owner. Embodiment for an avatar exists in the sense of occupying time and
space. Digital theorist and artist Mark Stephen Meadows has described an avatar as
an interactive, social representation of an Internet user. 9 Neal Stephenson uses
the word avatar in his 1992 novel Snow Crash for the audiovisual bodies that
people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse, or the virtual
simulation of the human form in the metaverse, a fictional virtual-reality
application on the Internet. 10 Kai-Mikael J-Aro classifies avatars from a
functional perspective as those objects, which potentially are in the high agency
end of the spectrum, since the property of agency can change over the course of a
session. 11 In each of these three contexts, the avatar is the anchor for a personality
in a virtual world. The relationship between the avatar and the person(ality) that
animates it is guided by what determines agency in the virtual environment.
Avatars, like everything in a virtual online environment, are constructed from
computer language code. How an avatar is able to move, what sounds it makes,
how it communicates and physically interacts with other avatars, and what it looks
like are all enabled by the code from which it is composed. However, in regards to
the point/s of reception for the human participants in three-dimensional worlds, it
is the Graphic User Interface (GUI) that presents options regarding how the avatar
can behave. The visual and spatial attributes of the GUI are what the person behind
the avatar responds to in interacting with the virtual world space. These attributes
include such simulative and symbolic characteristics as the space between a door (a
place of entry) and a sofa (resting or meeting place) and the physical dimensions of
the avatar. The avatar is the line of difference between the person controlling and
the visual and spatial attributes of the virtual world. Interpreting the virtual world is
performed from the perspectives and abilities of the avatar. The avatar as such a
line of difference is determined by the agency granted to it as part of the narrative
architecture.
Agency is granted to avatars in virtual world reception within the structures of
simulative representations. Sexuality, violence, family, domesticity, socializing,
work, art, and learning, for example, are some of the cultural and social systems
that are enacted out by avatars in online virtual worlds. The avatar is the embodied
agent working within these structures that allows for particular forms of expression
while not allowing for others. It was not until The Sims 3 (2009) that same sex
marriage was permitted in the game. The Sims Online adopted the same protocol
and allows for gay marriage, but does not permit children from the relationship. In
contrast, the representation of gendered pairs in Second Life is not restricted to
binary forms. Male avatars can take on the physical appearances of pregnancy, as
well as adopt children. The representation of child avatars in virtual worlds for
sexual simulation has recently been made a criminal offence in Germany, and
while the coding of virtual worlds such as Second Life allows for this practice, it

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contradicts the terms of service. 12 Dual gender in a single avatar and even
interspecies relationships between avatars are possible in Second Life. In regards to
work and economy, it is possible to earn money by working as an avatar in virtual
worlds such as Second Life and Planet Calypso. In many online virtual worlds
social relationships are common, and the concept of virtual adultery is a
contentious one. 13 Groups of avatars construct families in Second Life, with
members being given titles such as father, mother, brother and sister. Finally,
learning with virtual online worlds is an established area, with universities,
colleges and schools from around the world using virtual worlds for teaching.
Research has found that many of the roles traditionally associated with the figure
of the teacher, such as an authority in the classroom and as gatekeeper in regards to
knowledge, is compromised by the more horizontal communicative structures of
virtual worlds. 14
By responding to the choices granted to avatars through narrative architecture
in virtual worlds, readings of them as texts can be performed. The movements
through the narrative architecture of virtual worlds suggest particular readings of
discursive systems such as sexuality, violence, family, domesticity, socializing,
work, art, and learning. In these explorations the navigation takes on meaning, or
as Jenny Sundn argues, what if computing gaming experiences are not primarily
about narratives or the game-specific, but about moving through the game world?
To become through navigation. 15 The social simulations, such as marriage and
family, which are acted out by avatars in the virtual worlds, are products of the
narrative architecture of each. The prefaces such as the Terms of Service and End
User License Agreement (EULA), attempt to control responses to the narrative
architecture of the virtual world. The design of the world itself, in its material
configuration, is this narrative architecture. The third element of narrative
architecture that is meaningful in relation to the avatar is the interpellation that
hails the avatars human person(ality) and anticipates the possible responses that
can be made to the virtual world. Design and code, copyright, and address, thereby
direct possible narrative outcomes in virtual worlds. Within narrative architecture,
the agency granted to avatars in virtual online worlds has consequences for the
embodied subject in physical space.
4. Point of View
Narrative architecture in relation to the avatar and reading is best illustrated by
the point of view that the avatar instantiates. In the majority of online virtual
worlds, there are multiple visual perspectives available in relation to the avatar.
Third person, first person, and a so-called God-view are the most commonly used
visual perspectives in relation to the avatar. Third person is usually from a raised
position above the avatars shoulders from behind. First person is the visual
perspective the avatar has based on the visual configuration of the human eyes. In
first person, what the avatar sees, to a perspective of about ninety degrees, is what

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the person attached to the avatar sees. The God-view is the omniscient perspective
over the virtual world, usually from far above. Each of these perspectives grants its
own set of relations to the virtual world as a text that is both interpreted and
experienced.
Enacting narrative events in virtual worlds from a first-person perspective
places the avatar in the centre of the action and restricts the visual field to an
immediate temporal space. Actors can enter and leave the field of vision in a
relatively short amount of time. Events and actions related to those actors and the
avatar witnessing them are compressed according to the linear format afforded by
the restricted dimensions of the field of vision, which often has a corresponding
audio field. One can analogise the first-person perspective in virtual worlds as a
window looking out over a busy street. When pedestrians pass by the window, the
person sitting behind it can see, as well as possibly hear, them for the short
duration it takes to pass by. If the window were larger, then the figures moving
across it would take more time to do so. In the god-view perspective of virtual
worlds, the window is much larger; consequently, more actors and events can be
linked together in much longer chains and, as a result, have a greater potential to
follow simultaneously multiple narrative pathways. In the case of first-person
perspective, fewer narrative events can be linked together than in the God-view
perspective, but the speed with which events occur can make for particularly
intense interactions with the virtual world space. The most famous example of this
intensity, in terms of rapid time and space changes within the first-person
perspective, is the first-person shooter genre of computer games. Games such as
Call of Duty, Counterstrike, Quake and Doom are intense mediations in the speed
and continuity provided by the first-person perspective in virtual environments. It
is the reading of these spaces, as narrative architectures that is very much
influenced by the perspective adopted by the avatar. The line between the space of
the virtual environment and the player of the game is sealed in the avatar as the
cybernetic embodiment of the person.
5. Conclusions
In the navigation and manipulation of the virtual space and the enacting of
narrative events, the reading of virtual worlds has points in common with the
narrative traditions of pilgrimage, megalithic sculpture, and place-bound religious
rituals. When my avatar circumambulates a Tibetan stupa in Second Life, it is as an
embodied agent in a three-dimensional space. The same reverence for the sacrality
of the stupa can be observed in both the virtual and physical spaces it occupies. It
is in this sense that the reading of virtual worlds has much in common with premodern narrative forms. The perspectives and design of such mega-structures as
Borobudur in Java, Indonesia places the visitor to the site in a narrative relationship
with the figures from the life of the Buddha. The architecture of the space creates

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this connection. The costumes and rituals of pilgrimage operate in a similar
fashion, by creating embodied agents within narrative, and often sacred, spaces.
Locating the individual subject in the narratives of a virtual online world is not
a one-dimensional situation. Rather, narrative realised through the navigation of
virtual worlds is a balancing act between the hermeneutics of interpretation and the
phenomenology of experience. In reading the virtual world, a person is both in the
virtual space and operating the computer in a cybernetic relationship. In the virtual
world, a person can have a presence, a reputation, an identity, and even a life. The
concept of the Self in this telematic network is an area that raises further questions.
In the virtual space, a person can evoke and participate in the sacred, get married,
and even start a family. Of course none of these activities are presently seen as
real, but they do have consequences in time and space, and, in this sense, they
can be regarded as posthuman forms of embodiment.

Notes
1

For a visual recounting of this sequence go to http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=9g-kYvK3P-Q.
2
The posthuman in this context is concerned both with the technological
augmentation of the human and the state of distributed embodiment that can be
attained with that technology.
3
By phenomenological I mean the basis for any evaluation of virtual worlds lies
with the virtual worlds objects, their components and how they are experienced.
Hermeneutics is the focus on the sign-like attributes of texts and in this particular
case, textual environments.
4
D. Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism
in the Late Twentieth Century, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature, Routledge, New York, 1991, p. 149.
5
E. Aarseth, Cybertexts: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, John Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 1997 p. 55.
6
K. Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature and Informatics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999, p. 27.
7
See H. Jenkins, Game Design as Narrative Architecture, First Person: New
Media as Story, Performance, and Game, N. Wardrip-Fruin and P. Harrigan (eds),
MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 118.
8
Jenkins 2004, p. 123.
9
M.S. Meadows, I Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second
Life, New Riders Press, Berkeley, 2008, p. 13.
10
N. Stephenson, Snow Crash, Bantam Dell Press, New York, 1992, p. 32.
11
M. J-Aro, Reconsidering the Avatar: From User Mirror to Interaction Locus,
PhD Thesis, Kungliga Tekniska Hgskolan, Stockholm Sweden, 2004, p. 23.

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12

http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/05/10/accusationsregarding-child-pornography-in-second-life, Accessed 27 May 2010.

13
The BBC Television program Wonderland documentary entitled Virtual
Adultery and Cyberspace Love (2008) follows the lives of two married couples
and their extra-marital relationships in Second Life. See http://www.guba.com/
watch/3000122615/Virtual-Adultery-and-Cyberspace-Love, Accessed 23 May
2010.
14
See M. Deutschmann and L. Panichi, Instructional Design, Teacher Practice and
Learner Autonomy, Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life, J.
Molka-Danielsen and M. Deutschmann (eds), Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim,
2009, p. 34.
15
J. Sundn, Digital Geographies: From Storyspace to Storied Spaces,
Geographies of Communication: The Spatial Turn in Media Studies, J. Falkheimer
and A. Jansson (eds), Nordicom, Gteberg, 2006, p. 291.

Bibliography
Aarseth, E., Cybertexts: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. John Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 1997.
Deutschmann, M. and Panichi, L., Instructional Design, Teacher Practice and
Learner Autonomy. Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life.
Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim, 2009.
Haraway, D., A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism
in the Late Twentieth Century. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature. Routledge, New York, 1991.
Hayles, K., How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature
and Informatics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999.
J-Aro, M., Reconsidering the Avatar: From User Mirror to Interaction Locus.
PhD Thesis. (Kungliga Tekniska Hgskolan. Stockholm Sweden, 2004).
Jenkins, Henry. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. First Person: New
Media as Story, Performance and Game. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004.
Linden, R., Accusations Regarding Child Pornography in Second Life. (Blog
Entry). Second Life Blog 2007. http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features
/blog/2007/05/10/accusation-regarding-child-pornography-in-secondlife. Accessed
28th May 2010.

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Reading with the Body

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Meadows, M.S., I Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life.
New Riders Press, Berkeley, 2008.
OBrien, F., Wonderland: Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love. (Online Video)
BBC Two Television. London 2008. http://www.guba.com/watch/3000122615/
Virtual-Adultery-and-Cyberspace-Love. Accessed 27th May 2010.
Stephenson, N., Snow Crash. Bantam Dell Press, New York, 1992.
Sundn, J., Digital Geographies: From Storyspace to Storied Spaces.
Geographies of Communication: The Spatial Turn in Media Studies. Nordicom,
Gteberg, 2006.
Jim Barrett is a final stage PhD candidate and a research assistant with dual
affiliation between the Department of Language Studies and HUMlab, a digital
humanities lab at Ume University, Sweden.

Part II
Issues of Immersion, Ethics and Identity

The Ethical Experience in Controversial Videogames

Daniel Riha
Abstract
This chapter considers several approaches to players ethical experiences of serious
content in advanced video games. For Sicart, the ethics of videogames is the result
of the relations among three ethical elements, creating the distributed network of
responsibilities: a designed object, a player and an experience or process, and the
gameplay. Although Sicarts approach to the distributed network of responsibilities
is mainly theoretical, it is potentially a very useful tool for the ethical analysis of
todays advanced videogame titles. The author identifies the application of this
approach as the most relevant option for any researcher attempting both to
deconstruct and to analyse the ethical structures and problems found in the latest
videogames. The chapter focuses on the ethical implications of unethical game
content in single-player games with defined win conditions, as well as
implementation issues of unethical content in serious videogames.
Key Words: Videogames, videogame ethics, serious videogames, videogame
controversy, videogame agency.
*****
1. Introduction
The vast majority of the latest research on ethical issues of videogames deals
with the effects of violent videogames on the players. The results of this empirical
research have gained extensive attention from mass media and have become
influential in swaying public opinion against a number of successful videogame
titles. Although this research has varied in methodology, none of the latest studies
have proven a direct link between controversial videogames and ethically
disruptive behaviours in the real lives of players. In the 2008 study Grand Theft
Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games, 1 researchers
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson refute the proposition that an increase in
violent behaviours is caused by violent videogames. Previous research, such as
Jonathan Freedmans (2001) study that reviewed majority of media-violence
research published in English, declares that:
This body of research is not only extremely limited in terms of
the number of relevant studies, but also suffers from many
methodological problems. Insufficient attention has been paid to
choosing games that are as similar as possible except for the
presence of violence; virtually no attention has been paid to
eliminating or at least minimizing experimenter demand; and the

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measures of aggression are either remote from aggression or of
questionable value. 2
Interestingly, the increasing success of graphically advanced videogames
published since the 1990s is in surprising contradiction to the decreasing numbers
in violent crime among both juveniles and adults in the USA. 3
However, this chapter is not intended to contribute to the discussion and
research on relationships between real crimes and controversial videogames.
Rather, the focus of this chapter is on the ethical implications of unethical game
content in single-player games and the question of advisability to simulate
unethical actions with special respect to serious games.
2. Ethical Understanding of Videogames
In his seminal work 4, Sicart analyses these issues from the perspectives of both
Virtue Ethics (VE) and Information Ethics (IE), and introduces the concept of
Distributed Responsibility. Sicart argues that the VE approach, which links
videogames including with unethical content with the development of vices and
unethical behaviours, lacks an understanding of the inner workings and nature of
videogames:
The VE analysis that permeates the public understanding of this
issue does not take into account that players are specific bodysubjects capable of applying ludic phronesis, nor that games not
only foster their own virtues, but that they also have ethical
values of their own, that have to be understood within the
perspective of the game as a moral object.
A player is seeing the simulation of violent acts within a
gameworld not with her ethics as a human being outside the
game, but with the ethics of the game player. Unless the player
interprets her actions as contradictory with stronger ethical
values from her self outside of the game, in which case the
subjectivization process is broken and there is not a playersubject experiencing a game The virtuous behavior of a game
player is that behavior which shows an understanding not of the
best strategies and actions to win the game, but to ensure a
satisfactory game experience. 5
So the players may take part in unethical videogame scenes because, for the
player-subject, these only have meaning within the game. The violent simulations
are only meaningful to the player as challenges in the videogame itself. Sicart

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redeploys increased responsibility on the player as a moral being who encounters
and experiences this unethical content:
Could there be a transfer of values? In the mature, ethical being,
both as a player and outside the game, that would not happen
the process of ludic phronesis and its evaluation by the external
subject avoid in principle the transfer of values, within the given
condition of moral maturity. 6
Videogames containing unethical scenes should only be experienced by
ludically matured players. Here the adjustment of the pertinent videogame content
rating system gains increased importance. Many of these systems have been
introduced in the last decade, such as the Entertainment Software Rating Board
(ESRB) rating system in the United States, as well as the PEGI rating system in
Europe.
Following Sicart, VE is adequate when dealing with the ethics of computer
games mostly from a player perspective, but Information Ethics 7 is better suited for
the analysis of most of the elements that make videogames ethically relevant
experiences. IE identifies the need for operation within different informational
perspectives by working with concepts of Level of Abstraction (LoA) and Gradient
of Abstraction (GoA). Sicart sets the relevant videogame LoAs as including:
1. The game system as informational environment: the game as
a designed infosphere,
2. The player as informational being,
3. The player as an informational being related to and
determined by other informational beings in the infosphere,
4. The player as a homo poieticus: how the player creates the
values of the infosphere. 8
According to Sicart, understanding the ethical balance of the videogame, and
how the informational relations between the agents and patients of the infosphere
shape the ethics of the game, requires using the concepts of LoA and GoA
mentioned above, because they show relevant aspects of the informational
complexity of videogames as infospheres:
An unethical action, in the case of games, would be any action,
including system design, which modifies the informational
structure of the infosphere creating an imbalance in the

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experience of the system, and unwanted informational
asymmetries. An informational asymmetry, in the context of
computer games, is a situation in which one or more agents have
an influence on the infosphere that is either not contemplated or
is seen as illegal by the rules of the game. 9
Although, in relation to the ethical implications of unethical game content,
increased responsibility might be redeployed to the player, and game designers also
play a role, due to the Distributed Responsibility concept introduced by Sicart:
In a computer game understood as an informational system,
every informational being that plays a role in the infosphere has a
shared role in the ethical value of that infosphere.
The task of the ethics of computer games is, then, to identify the
distributed network of responsibilities relevant to a specific
ethical issue, determine the structural relations in terms of
responsibility of that structure, and suggest solutions for the
ethical problems found. 10
Sicart proposes that from the VE point of view, the design of the videogame
should promote the progress of the players virtues; otherwise we might recognize
such a product as an unethical game. From Sicarts and the IE perspectives then,
wrong videogame design must be identified as unethical because it will generate
unwanted entropy in the system and so be harmful to the players.
Sicart concludes his analysis with a proposition for a fair ethical experience in
videogames:
An ethical game experience is one in which the player, a skinsubject that takes place in the game system, can interact with the
game system as a moral agent; an experience that allows for the
players ethical behavior, interpretation and, in the best possible
case, contribution to the value-system of the game experience.
Computer games can and ought to use their language and
simulational capacities to create interesting experiences that
make their users reflect upon their being, culture and society. 11
Sicarts approach to the distributed network of responsibilities is mainly
theoretical but it seems to be a potentially very useful tool for the ethical analysis
of todays advanced videogame titles. The author proposes the application of this
approach as the most actual and relevant option for any researcher trying to

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35

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deconstruct ethical structure and propose treatment for the ethical problems found
in the latest advanced videogames.
3. Implementation of the Unethical Content in Serious Videogames
For single-player games with a defined win condition, the successful closed
ethical game design operates with two types of designs, which Sicart calls
subtracting ethics (SE) and mirroring ethics designs (MED):
Subtracting ethics designs an ethical experience, but leaves the
ethical reasoning to the players, thus respecting their presence as
moral agents in the networked ethical system of computer games.
A mirror ethical design closes down the ethical options of the
player in the game, forcing her to experience what the designers
wanted her to experience. The gameworld and occasionally the
gameplay acts as a mirror of the ethical experience the player has
to go through in order to play the game, reflecting and reacting to
that experience. 12
Serious and documentary videogames attempt to implement political or social
ideas into their design. For example, in the videogames September 12th or JFK
Reloaded (JFKR) designers try to develop interaction scenarios with ethical
meaning. Here, MED has become an appropriate design method. We might include
in this list other controversial commercial videogame titles designed under mirror
ethical design, such as Manhunt or RapeLay.
According to Sicart, MED offers space for development of political and
satirical games, where if players are open to playing and at the same time to
reflecting on the activities in the game, then the players would not be given
information they would experience the political ethical dilemmas, because they
are ethical agents. 13 So, for Sicart, unethical content then must be implemented
only as meaningful: The use of unethical content has to be justifiable within the
ethical nature of the game experience, either as a way of creating meaningful
challenges, or as a tool for conveying an agenda. 14
Unethical simulation within serious and documentary videogames might have a
similar role; Raessens suggests that, in documentary games like JFKR:
players enact experiences of rupture that separated the past and
present in a traumatic way. These experiences are paradoxical in
a sublime way in the sense that they, as experiences that
transcend the individual level, involve and unite both the loss and
pain of the trauma and, at the same time, the satisfaction of

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overcoming these feelings in terms of precognitive historical
insights. 15
For Poremba, an alternate reading of JFKR could be that players are not
roleplaying Oswald at all, in the fantasy sense, but instead, by engaging the
historical record, the game places the player in a role similar to that of a forensic
investigator. 16 Poremba doesnt identify JFKR as a strong assassin simulator, but
an interesting engagement with forensic documents. She proposes this technique to
be involved in engaging with lesser known archives. Another surplus might
represent the implementation of relatively fixed historical facts in a game structure
that would offer the possibility of handling them as multiform truths.
Poremba calls for a critical reading of JFKR that should foreground the way
formal structures can be used to frame certain kinds of actuality, and in the end,
can also be used to critique such structures and worldviews. 17
The ludologist and serious videogame designer Gonzalo Frasca discusses the
controversial issue of the development of an imaginary humanist game about the
Holocaust. This type of game would probably be too controversial for videogame
designers to develop, because such a videogame would likely be perceived by the
public as even more unacceptable than, for example, a neo-nazi imaginary
videogame.
But Frasca even tries to speculate about an imaginary Holocaust videogame
based on videogame design rules:
Basically, it would simulate a character that is a prisoner in a
concentration camp. Through his eyes but also through his
actions, we will try to make the player feel and think about life in
such an extreme condition. As designers, we will be particularly
interested in creating an environment for exploring such concepts
as moral, hate, solidarity, suffering, and justice. 18
He proposes that such a videogame would be highly criticized mainly for the
following reasons:
Firstly, it would free the player from moral responsibilities. Since
the game could be restarted at wish, the player would not have to
face the consequences of his actions. the environment could
become a simulator for sadists.
Secondly, if we applied the win-lose binary logic the Holocaust
would become a secondary issue, an obstacle to overcome.
the player would be able to jump from life to death back and

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forth. Therefore, those concepts would loose their ethical,
historical and social value. 19
As a result, Frasca rejects the possibility of implementing a game logic to
simulate tragic events. As a solution for such a serious videogame design he
proposes to develop a gaming system that would allow for designing single user
games with irreversible actions. He calls it a one-session game of narration
(OSGON). With features of irreversibility, limited time to finish the game, and
limited options to analyse such a ephemeral game, OSGONs might then become a
good strategy even for the development of such serious videogames.
4. Conclusion
Unethical simulation within serious and documentary videogames might have a
different role than in popular commercial videogames. Especially in the case of
truthful historical representations/simulations design or in serious videogames, the
usage of unethical content might seem to be unavoidable. As a writer of
documentary games, the author finds the research questions related to the
implementation of unethical content of crucial importance.

Notes
1

L. Kutner and C. Olson, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about
Violent Video Games and What Parents can Do, Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 272.
2
J.L. Freedman, Evaluating the Research on Violent Video Games, Retrieved on
16 May 2010, http://www.isfe-eu.org/tzr/scripts/downloader2.php? Filename
=T003/F0013/24/53/f87cc810f411c4a0623a382758665ec3&mime=text/plain&orig
inalname=Evaluating_the_Research_on_Violent_Video_Games.htm.
3
Interscience Publishers, Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than
Increase Violence?, ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/
05/080514213432.htm, Retrieved May 18, 2010 or U.S. Crime Statistics available
at, http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR.asp.
4
M. Sicart, Computer Games, Players, Ethics, PhD Thesis, IT University of
Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006, p. 293.
5
Ibid., p. 239.
6
Ibid., p. 240.
7
In Floridi and Sanders words, IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the
concept of data entity rather than life (Floridi and Sanders, 2004, p. 3). The
infosphere might be seen as an ecological environment of informational agents,
patients, and their mutual relations. Cited in M. Sicart.
8
Sicart, p. 214.
9
Ibid., p. 214.
10
Ibid., p. 220.

38

The Ethical Experience in Controversial Videogames

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11

Ibid., p. 229.
Ibid., p. 266.
13
Ibid., p. 205.
14
Ibid., p. 243.
15
J. Raessens, Reality Play: Documentary Computer Games beyond Fact and
Fiction. Popular Communication, Vol. 4, 2006, p. 222.
16
C. Poremba, Frames and Simulated Documents: Indexicality in Documentary
Videogames, Shinyspinning Online, p. 13, Retrieved on 10 May 2010,
http://www.shinyspinning.com/jfk_paper_cporemba.pdf.
17
C. Poremba, p. 15.
18
G. Frasca, Ephemeral Games: Is it Barbaric to Design Videogames after
Auschwitz?, Ludology Online, p. 5, Retrieved 10 May 2010, http://www.ludology.
org/articles/ephemeralFRASCA.pdf.
19
Ibid., p. 6.
12

Bibliography
Frasca, G., Ephemeral Games: Is it Barbaric to Design Videogames after
Auschwitz?. Ludology Online. Retrieved 10 September 2009. http://www.ludol
ogy.org/articles/ephemeralFRASCA.pdf.
Freedman, J.L., Evaluating the Research on Violent Video Games. Retrieved on 16
May 2010. Available at: http://www.isfe-eu.org/tzr/scripts/downloader2.php?
filename=t003/f0013/24/53/f87cc810f411c4a0623a382758665ec3&mime=text/pla
inoriginalname=Evaluating_the_Research_on_Violent_Video_Games.htm.
Fullerton, T., Documentary Games: Putting the Player in the Path of History.
Playing the Past: Nostalgia in Videogames and Electronic Literature. Whalen, Z.
and Taylor, L. (eds), Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 2008.
Huesmann, L.R., The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and
Research. Journal of Adolescent Health. Vol. 41, Iss. 6, 2007.
Interscience Publishers, Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than
Increase Violence? ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 18, 2010 at: http://www.science
daily.com/releases/2008/05/080514213432.htm.
Kutner, L. and Olson, C., Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about
Violent Video Games and What Parents can Do. Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Daniel Riha

39

__________________________________________________________________
Poremba, C., Frames and Simulated Documents: Indexicality in Documentary
Videogames. Shinyspinning Online. Retrieved on 10 September 2009. http://www.
shinyspinning.com/jfk_paper_cporemba.pdf.
Raessens, J., Reality Play: Documentary Computer Games beyond Fact and
Fiction. Popular Communication. Vol. 4, 2006, pp. 213-224.
Riha, D., Game Design Technology as a Tool for Research and Education in
Cultural History. Humanity in Cybernetic Environments. Riha, D. (ed), InterDisciplinary Press, Oxford, UK, 2009.
Sicart, M., Computer Games, Players, Ethics. PhD Thesis, IT University of
Copenhagen, 2006.
Waddington, D., Locating the Wrongness in Ultra-Violent Video Games. Ethics
and Information Technology. Vol. 9(2), 2007, pp. 121-128.
Williams, D. and Skoric, M., Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in
an Online Game. Communication Monographs. Vol. 22(2), 2005, pp. 217-233.
Woods, S., Playing with an Other: Ethics in the Magic Circle. Cybertext
Yearbook 2007: Ludology. 2007.

Ludography
Frasca, G., September 12th. Newsgaming.org. Online Flash Game. Available from
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm, 2006.
Frasca, G., Madrid. Newsgaming.org. Online Flash Game. Available from
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/madrid/index.html, 2008.
, JFK Reloaded. Traffic Software, PC, 2004.
, Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. Monochrom, PC, 2005.
, Under Siege. Afkar Media, PC, 2005.
Daniel Riha, Ph.D. Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles
University in Prague, Czech Republic. His research includes issues on Serious
Games, Interactive Documentary Production and Multi-user Virtual Environments

40

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Design. He is as well an award winning artist - Kunst am Bau (Art on
Construction) International Art Competition, Constance, Germany.

Making Science Fiction Personal: Videogames and

Inter-Affective Storytelling
Kevin Veale
Abstract
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large,
videogame texts are structured so that there is none of the mediation presented by
the protagonists of books or films; instead, the relationships which the player forms
matter to them because they are personal. The agency provided to game players
means that they have a direct relationship to the consequences of their actions,
which give science fiction videogames impact at a personal level. In System
Shock 2, the player is confronted with body-horror. Enemies yell for the player to
hide or run away, even as those enemies cannot prevent their bodies from
attacking, after being taken over by alien worms. System Shock 2 then makes the
body-horror personal by creating situations where the player questions her/his own
humanity, due to cybernetic modification. The game asks the player, What do you
do? How does that feel? The affective experience of videogame texts is distinct
from that of other forms of media because the questions are directed to the players
themselves, rather than to a character with whom they identify. Since videogames
are distinguished by the players experience of the text, tools from phenomenology
can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with
fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and
transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an
individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The
investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player
and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the games story. The impact
of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience
presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible
outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes
the affective connection personal.
Key Words: Affect, immersion, responsibility.
*****
1. How Mediation Shapes Experience
The texts which mediate the stories with which we engage are not neutral to our
experiences of them. The processes each medium requires of us in order to
negotiate the texts help to shape the way we perceive the story. As an example,
House of Leaves 1 is a novel which presents a sequence where there are a small
handful of words to a page, and as events become more tense the number of words
gets smaller and smaller: readers physically turn the pages faster and faster the

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fewer words there are to read, increasing the apparent pace of the story, and this is
folded into their affective experience of the text.
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present as part of the way
we engage with their textual structure, because they offer players a direct feeling of
responsibility for how the problems of alternative worlds are negotiated. The
responsibility provided to the players of videogames is part of a distinctive
affective experience which sets games apart from other methods of textual
storytelling, and means that the person playing the game has a different experience
of the text than someone watching a film or even watching the game being played.
Phenomenology provides a useful toolset for analysing the experience of
engaging with a text, and thus the extent to which the textual structure modifies
that experience. Videogames provide the person playing them with agency, which
Janet Murray defines as the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see
the results of our decisions and choices. 2 One of the consequences of player
agency is the feeling of responsibility for the decisions the player has made, which
makes the experience of games a personal one: when players of a game achieve
something, they achieve it rather than reading or watching someone they are
intended to sympathise with achieve it.
Videogames thus present a different way of engaging with the speculative
questions and issues presented by science fiction texts, by making players
personally responsible for the outcomes they choose; they are immersive in ways
in which other media forms are not, which results in a different affective tenor for
the experience.
2. Affect and Immersion
The difficulty in comparing different subjective experiences lies in the extent
to which experience is non-cognitive and happens, in some ways, where we are not
watching. Or, to put it another way: to be self-consciously aware of what you are
feeling as you are feeling it is to alter the experience, precisely because you are
making a conscious effort to do so. Affect is the term used to distinguish the noncognitive component of subjective experience from the emotions, which we are
more cognitively aware of and which thus present fewer obstacles to critical
discussion: it is possible to specifically name an emotion and pin it down, whereas
the affective tenor of an experience is by definition harder to label. 3
Affect functions through an economy of cathexis, whereby an individual
becomes invested in something, regardless of what that something may be.
Affective investment occurs within a Heideggerian world-of-concern, which Lars
Nyre defines as a space shaped by human engagement, rather than an objective
space. 4 Nyre argues that an objective space is everything present within an
environment, such as all of the furniture and fittings within a lecture theatre,
whereas a world-of-concern is grounded in contextual relevance. In the context of
a seminar, a world-of-concern would involve the speaker, the audience and the

Kevin Veale

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subject at hand while the majority of the room fittings would remain irrelevant or
uninvolved.
In the context of a videogame, the player is invested in experiencing the game
as a lived space with its own chain of sensible cause-and-effect relationships, and
in engaging with the characters within the world-of-concern as legitimate entities
in their own right. The importance of this investment is such that Laurie N. Taylor
argues for two distinctive forms of immersion based on different subsets of player
engagement. Diegetic immersion is where one can become lost in a good book,
remaining unaware of the creation and relation of the elements within the text. 5
In comparison, Taylor also offers situated immersion, which is where the player is
acting within the digital environment. Situated immersion describes the successful
world-of-concern established when engaging with videogame texts: the world-ofconcern is contextual, and what is affectively relevant to the players experience
(and thus what they are invested in) is acting within the diegetic space of the game
world, rather than upon it. When situated immersion has been achieved, the person
playing the game or exploring the digital environment is no longer policing the
dividing line of the virtual, and is invested in being perceptually inside the diegesis
of the game text.
3. Coherence and Responsibility
Stephen Poole uses the term incoherence to describe situations where an action
undertaken within the diegetic space of the game environment does not have the
consequences which would be expected if the same action were taken in the real
world; such incoherence is an impediment to situated immersion. 6 The action can
be as simple as your movement knocking a piece of stone into a river; if the stone
sinks with a splash, this is a consequence that fits the contextual world-of-concern
as a zone of legitimate cause and effect. On the other hand, if the stone sits
unmoving on the surface of the water, this will emphasise the mediated nature of
the world-of-concern and arguably damage the investment the player has in the
notion that they are occupying a legitimate space.
Situations with structural coherence introduce the feeling of responsibility into
the experience, which itself reinforces situated immersion: the reason for this is
that if you make a choice, then you are responsible for the consequences of that
choice. When a decision has a sensible outcome, the player is aware that their next
decision will have a legitimate consequence, and this awareness becomes enfolded
into the experience of decision-making. This feedback loop reinforces the
contextual world-of-concern, and constructs the diegetic environment of the game
world as a lived space where there are consistent rules, producing a logic of causeand-effect. Responsibility is affectively powerful because within the contextual
world-of-concern, being and feeling responsible for other characters is a significant
component of forming relationships with them that matter to you. Structural
incoherence makes it less likely that the player will feel responsibility within the

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contextual world-of-concern, because the rules of cause and effect are shown to be
inconsistent and determined by something outside the players control.
System Shock 2 7 presents a good example of what a significant impact
responsibility (and a lack of incoherence) within a sci-fi world-of-concern can have
for the players experience of the text. System Shock 2 is set within an experimental
space ship which has been taken over by alien forces far from home. The game
provides a detailed three-dimensional sound-scape for the diegetic environment, in
which you can typically hear enemies before seeing them. The key to situated
immersion lies in the fact that the reverse is also true, which provides concrete
consequences to any actions the player takes in exploring the environment. The
result of this sound-scape for the experience of the text is that every action is taken
in the certain knowledge that you are being hunted. In turn, this knowledge leads to
two generalised responses within the world-of-concern, each informing two
different styles of play, possessed of their own affective register. If the player
runs through the diegetic environment with their guns blazing, the noise will attract
enemies from across the level; the dread fuelled by this style of play arises from
the uncertainty of whether the player will run out of ammunition before they run
out of enemies, within a context of constant threat. The alternative is to use stealth,
and thus minimise the amount of noise produced in exploring the diegetic
environment within the world-of-concern; the tension in this approach is drawn
from the ongoing attempts to avoid detection and slip past the opposition, and
bursts of frenetic conflict when those attempts fail. Both approaches are entirely
appropriate for the science fiction/horror genre of System Shock 2, but the
experiences are affectively distinct.
4. The Experience of Affectively-Unmediated Science Fiction
Videogames present contextual worlds-of-concern which the player actively
invests in, and the economies of cathexis and immersion at work mean that the
person playing the game has a fundamentally different experience of the text than
someone else who is watching the same game being played: someone who is an
audience to game play has no agency, and no responsibility for how events unfold.
There is less affective mediation inherent to the experience of videogame texts than
would otherwise be provided by a protagonist within textual prose or filmic
diegesis: feeling a character feeling is different than feeling yourself being. It is
the player who responds affectively to the awareness of being hunted within the
diegesis of System Shock 2, not the character he/she occupies, and not the
protagonist of a novel or film whom the audience is expected to sympathise with.
Mass Effect 8 is an example of a game which demonstrates how significant a
difference in feeling can be. The game misses an opportunity to confront the player
with a genuinely alien social context by associating the humanoid with the safe and
familiar. Two alien races are relevant within the context of Mass Effects world-ofconcern, in which humanity is a newcomer to a society of pre-established star-

Kevin Veale

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travelling species. Firstly, there are the Asari, a race of diplomats, socialites and
concubines with a great deal of economic and social influence on the society of the
game; they resemble blue humanoid women with tentacles for hair, and are capable
of mating with any species. It is possible to have a romantic and sexual relationship
with an Asari character as part of playing the game. Secondly, there are the Rachni,
which are remorseless insect-like soldiers believed to be extinct, and which all of
the other races of Mass Effects diegesis are terrified of. Imagine how different the
experience would be if the lore behind the two races were kept the same, but the
visual design were swapped: the Asari would be socialites and concubines who
resemble giant insects, and the Rachni would be remorseless soldiers who look
very similar to us. Doing so would confront the player with a contextual world-ofconcern which would feel very different and raises the possibility players would
have to ask themselves how they felt about a romantic and/or sexual relationship
with a giant insect, as opposed to a blue woman. The game (not unreasonably
perhaps) went with the more marketable, but decidedly less alien and discomfiting
option. Even the minor difference of having the Asari designed as a race of blue
men rather than women would have a detectable shift in the feel of the experience;
presenting what we understand as potentially lesbian relationships within the
world-of-concern was apparently a less threatening way of marking the Asari as
different than potentially gay relationships would have been.
Fallout 3 9 presents players with the moral responsibility of choosing between
different levels of suffering. The series of games is set in a nuclear post-apocalypse
setting where human society has largely been destroyed, leaving a vast divide
between the technologically advanced descendents of the inhabitants of gigantic
vaults, and everyone who has been surviving outside. One particular moral
responsibility which Fallout 3 hands the player lies in valuing life: an expanding
oasis has formed in the irradiated wastelands around an apparently immortal
mutated man conjoined to a tree, who is suffering and wishes to die. The situation
is complicated by the fact that players of earlier games in the Fallout series will
have encountered the character, Harold, across more than a century of in-game
history, and thus have invested in him as a legitimate entity within the contextual
world-of-concern. Killing Harold would destroy the oasis which shelters other
survivors, driving them out into the wilds; leaving the oasis intact requires
sacrificing Harold to an eternity of misery. There is also the possibility of
deliberately accelerating the growth of the tree he is conjoined to, which will
spread the oasis but increase his pain. The game sets up a situation in which no
matter what the player chooses, suffering will result, and they will be personally
responsible. The question is, what do you do? Kill your friend, or doom a growing
settlement? An interesting point is that there are players who are motivated to hunt
down a fourth alternative, presenting an affective tone of defiance to their
experience: none of the options are good enough, so they will find a better way.

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A moral dilemma about the role and value of artificial life confronts the player
in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, 10 a game set many millennia before
George Lucas original series. A woman named Elise asks the player for aid in
locating her missing droid, which she believes has been stolen, but the situation is
not as simple as it seems. Elises husband has died, leaving her grieving and unable
to move on, to the point where she has transferred her feelings to an unhealthy
attachment to the droid her husband had built to take care of the family. The droid
has run away into the desert in an attempt to destroy itself, on the grounds that it
had tried to reason with its mistress and failed, and that this was the best thing it
could do to help her heal. The droid asks you to destroy it and to tell Elise that it is
gone, so that she might eventually gain closure. Alternatively, you can order the
droid back to the household, where Elise will continue to fall apart and be unable
to move on. There is also a third option: You tell the droid that once you have
destroyed it, you will lie to Elise, persuading her that the droid is out in the desert
somewhere, and she should keep looking for it condemning her to an unending
misery, and taunting the droid with the fact it wanted to die before you finally
murder it. What is interesting about this dilemma is the extent to which players
who deliberately seek to create evil characters can remain deeply uncomfortable
with this option, because of the responsibility they hold for spreading misery for its
own sadistic sake. 11 The fact that you can feel bad for being cruel to a robot
underlines how affectively important having responsibility within an experience
can be: games can present a very different feeling of relating to artificial life than
what is presented by watching Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation or WallE emote.
5. Conclusion
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. They are personal
experiences because of the agency provided to the player, which means they feel
responsible for the outcomes of the choices they make through the course of
negotiating the text. This allows videogames to present players with dilemmas and
issues within a science fiction context in a way which would not be possible in
other media forms, because the outcome is experienced as immediate and hence
felt differently. The lack of affective mediation allows videogames to present
science fiction experiences in a distinctive and memorable fashion, because of the
ways in which players engage with, and relate to, videogame texts.

Notes
1

M.Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, New York, Pantheon Books, 2000.

J. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace,
Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1998, p. 126.

Kevin Veale

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3

M. Kavka, Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters, Basingstoke

and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 30-31.
4
L. Nyre, What Happens When I Turn On the TV Set? The Media and
Phenomenology, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2007, p. 26, http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/pdf/
WPCC-VolFour-NoTwo-Lars_Nyre.pdf.
5
L.N. Taylor, Videogames: Perspective, Point-of-View and Immersion, University
of Florida, Gainesville, 2002, p. 12, http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE1000166/taylor_
l.pdf.
6
S. Poole, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, New
York, Arcade Publishing, 2000, p. 95.
7
K. Levine, System Shock 2, Looking Glass Studios, 1999.
8
C. Hudson, Mass Effect, BioWare, 2007.
9
E. Pagliarulo, Fallout 3, Bethesda Softworks, 2008.
10
D. Falkner, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare, 2003.
11
J. Walker, Bastard of the Old Republic, RockPaperShotgun.com, 2009,
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/04/26/bastard-o-the-old-republic-part-3/.

Bibliography
Danielewski, M.Z., House of Leaves. Pantheon Press, New York, 2000.
Falkner, D., Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare, 2003.
Hudson, C., Mass Effect. BioWare, 2007.
Kavka, M., Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters. Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2008.
Levine, K., System Shock 2. Looking Glass Studios, 1999.
Murray, J., Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT
Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1998.
Nyre, L., What Happens When I Turn On the TV Set? The Media and
Phenomenology. Vol. 4, No. 2, 2007. http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/pdf/WPCCVolFour-NoTwo-Lars_Nyre.pdf.
Pagliarulo, E., Fallout 3. Bethesda Softworks, 2008.
Poole, S., Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. Arcade
Publishing, New York, 2000.

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Taylor, L.N., Videogames: Perspective, Point-of-View and Immersion. University
of Florida, Gainesville, 2002. http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE1000166/taylor_l.pdf.
Walker, J., Bastard of the Old Republic. RockPaperShotgun.com. 2009.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/04/26/bastard-of-the-old-republic-part-3/.
Kevin Veale is a PhD student in the Film, Television and Media Studies
department of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His current work
focuses on how the processes of engaging with different textual structures shape
the experience of storytelling in different media forms.

Heterotopias of Genders in Digital Space: Gender

Representations in Facebook
Sophia Damianidou, Konstantina Vasiliki Iakovou
and Katerina Zygoura
Abstract
This chapter considers the combination of cyber and physical identities of human
beings. Over time, the scientific community has attempted to find the gender traces
in space and their relationship in between. The connection between space and
gender creates an interactive scientific field. Constantly, this field is converted
through social, political and cultural processes giving new spatial models. In each
society we can detect heterotopias, namely spaces that carry feminine or
masculine identities. Heterotopias belong simultaneously to reality and illusion.
Nowadays, this is clearer due to the direct contact of both real and mental space in
cyberspace. In digital space, there is an aspect of socializing. Generally, somebody
can observe that cyberspace is a more abstract space, containing all the
characteristics of physical space in an abstract way as well. So, it is possible to
identify signs of gender heterotopias in this space. In the socializing web platforms
one shows his/her character more or less sincerely, so we come across individuals
that have only profiles, and we have a partial image of their personality. In blogs,
groups, and social networks, discussions take place that may contain gender
stereotypes. To be more exact, one can observe that the current social position of a
woman or a man, and generally of the feminine and the masculine, appears clearly
on the web. However, this raises important questions: By what means are both
genders expressed and revealed? What can one assume about the gender of
someone by only visiting his or her site? How does the possibility of being
invisible and anonymous affect the definition of the engendered space? And,
finally, what is the interaction between the physical space-time continuum and
cyberspace under these circumstances? These questions appear in many aspects of
contemporary living.
Key Words: Gender representation, cyberspace, architecture, social networking,
heterotopias, Facebook, stereotypes.
*****
Woman is the opposite, the other of man: she is non-man,
defective man assigned a chiefly negative value in relation to the
male first principle. But equally man is what he is only by virtue
of ceaselessly shutting out this other or opposite, defining
himself in antithesis to it, and his whole identity is therefore
caught up and put at risk in the very gesture by which he seeks to

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assert his unique, autonomous existence. Woman is not just
another in the sense of something beyond his ken, but another
intimately related to him as the image of what he is not, and
therefore as an essential reminder of what he is. 1
1. Heterotopias of Gender and Space
This chapter focuses on gender representations in Facebook, as an example of
digital space, and has as its starting point the term heterotopia, 2 introduced by
Foucault. 3 This term describes both the dipole female male and the dipole
physical digital space. Heterotopias are created through various dipoles. The
definition of one poles identity can lead to the construction of identity for the
other. In our attempts to describe ourselves, we can use various identifiers: human
beings, women, daughters, students, unemployed, etc. Our intention is to define me
or us, the female, the woman. Thus, the other becomes the male, the masculine.
The contemporary digital revolution has created new forms of space. According
to Derrick de Kerckhove, 4 there is a system consisting of three spaces: the physical
space, the mental space, and the space of networks. 5
The networked space can be the new field of activity for the new kind
architecture that arises, the architecture of connectivity. Its alphabet is the dyadic
system, its structure is textual and it consists of cyberspace, virtual reality and
digital architectural environments.
Agger defines cyberspace as a mass of social relationships. 6 This mass
functions as a meeting point of the self with the community, of the personal with
the public, and of consciousness with social identity. It is a new kind of public
space, within which certain features are always accessible to everybody.
Simultaneously, however, there is a space related completely to a subject who
creates a totally personalized identity. In other words, it is, at the same time, both a
public and a private space. When public and private spaces intertwine, the
boundaries between the subject and the world are liquefied.
Cyberspace is a space structured by data. If it is identified as the extension of
physical and mental space, then it has a subjective character. The new space that
results is related to the experiences and personality of the user. In particular,
descriptions of computer spaces commonly use words from architectural
vocabulary. Words like cyber-space, sites, windows, home-page, and wall
are not only used every day in digital communication, but also gain new meanings.
According to Tentokali, 7 gender is a social construction. In every society there
is a set of arrangements by which sex is transformed to gender. 8 These
arrangements are imparted from one generation to another through socialization,
producing gender-based behaviours. Through the process of gender construction,
stereotypes for each gender are created.
Architecture is a hybrid of arts and sciences, and is influenced by current
artistic and ideological movements. The arrangements mentioned above are

Damianidou,Vasiliki Iakovou and Zygoura

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reflected also in the spatial organization of a society. Beliefs such as: men build
and women inhabit; men belong in the public sphere, women in the private; and
that both the gentle and violent versions of nature are attributed to women, while
civilization (as the triumph over nature), is attributed to men; are most times
automatic mechanisms of thought and perception. Similarly, and within the same
framework, the truth of the spatial association of the sexes has been constructed.
As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her book The Second Sex, Representation of
the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own
point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. 9 Space is yet another
social product, its representation and organization made through architecture. This
space is masculine; it doesnt by itself define the relations, but prohibits, excludes,
frightens, and enforces our fears, projecting and causing the silence. 10 The spatial
needs throughout the history of architecture were defined by male needs. For
example, the Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci, and the houses of
Modernism (e.g. the Modulor of Le Corbusier), which were designed and
constructed according to the male bodys ergonomic characteristics. Even the city
itself is not a neutral human construction, but encloses the notion of gender. The
historical social oppositions that appear create prohibitions that are projected in
space. Consequently, even architecture is infused with gender differences.
2. Gender and Cyberspace
In cyberspace, representations of gender are directly linked with those of
identity. Whether cyberspace features a virtual extension of physical space, or,
instead, represents an entirely new and autonomous space free of physical
restrictions, is open to question. Similarly, the question arises whether, internet
users reveal their real, physical, identity; and, if so, to what extent? Facts like
partial representations, pseudonyms, fake identities or multiple profiles show two
main tensions: the maintenance of anonymity and the disaggregation of identities. 11
In cyberspace, the identity is less socially constructed than in physical space.
The flexibility of self-presentation provides network users the freedom to
experiment with different aspects of behaviour and identity. Ones construction of
an identity that potentially includes a gender other than ones own, the
appropriation of the other, is considered acceptable in the virtual environment.
Gender is disembodied containing a strictly social meaning. A woman who is able
to behave like a man, and vice versa, is allowed in the virtual environment to
possess legally those presented identities. In cyberspace, the preference for
gender switching, over, say, simply adopting an identity with a neutral gender,
enhances the entrenched idea that gender is an essential basis of communication,
even online.
The anonymity, denial, or false specification of gender are not only issues that
thrive in the ianomorphic 12 character of the chaotic digital system, but may reflect
also a critical view of gender construction in our society.

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Historically, women have had a problematic relationship with technology, as
they did not participate as energetically in its creation. Thus, women often feel
insecure in their understanding and use of current technologies. So, due to
socialization, the feminine gender abstained from the technological progress, and
still does. Digital space, the most rapidly developing contemporary technology,
contains all of the above stereotypes, not only in its structure and development, but
also in its reflection of social and gender discriminations that occur in physical
space.
Specifically, even today, women continue to deal with impediments in their
relationship with new technologies. With the success of women in the workplace,
modern society was forced to accept new roles for women. However, there
remained no provision for the proper means of freeing women of their traditional
roles as good mothers and loyal housewives. Having to balance the demand of
multiple roles and responsibilities, the modern woman has neither enough time, nor
enough temper to become familiar with new, digital environments. Moreover, she
is often discouraged from active participation in cyberspace, as she, given her
gender, considers herself more vulnerable to possible harassment, or, even,
involuntary involvement in the traffic of pornography.
These new environments are based primarily on written communication, which
can reveal a number of clues to somebodys identity. According to Herring, women
and men have recognizably different styles when posting to the Internet, contrary
to the claim that computer-mediated communication neutralizes distinctions of
gender. Also, women and men have different ethics of communication - that is,
they value different kinds of online interactions as appropriate and desirable.
3. Gender Representation on Facebook
A Facebook site, while still socially constructed, is a more dynamically
changed space than the physical. Both the creation of the structure and its diffluent
limits rely on users social relationships and connections. This is why network
architects promote the notion of friendship as the most valuable priority of this
new world. One of basic aims is to attract and gain more friends, as this virtual
popularity enhances both the users status and power. The reasons for social
networking are directly connected with the space that these sites create. As the
main function of Facebook is the communication of the users with old friends and
familiars, it mirrors the relations of the real, physical world.
Owing to Facebooks fluid structure, the relevant studies can express only a
provisional, rather than permanent, view. However, according to researchers,
globally, the participation of females in Facebook is continuously increasing,
representing 57% of the sites active population. Moreover, women on Facebook
tend to have more friends and participate more actively in sharing. In Greece,
there are still more male than female users, but there is a continued increase in
female profiles. So, it is undeniable that there is a general tendency toward a

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dominant female presence in social networking spaces. This could be explained
using several stereotypical ideas concerning the off-line communication between
men and women. The issue that is highly controversial, however, is whether such
explanations are accurate and/or sufficient.
Traditionally, women are thought to be the more socially sensitive than men,
dedicating more time and feelings to their relationships; while men, by contrast, are
commonly thought to be more logical and political, concerning themselves only
with their careers and personal success. According to this perspective, this is
demonstrated in the more active participation of men on the work-oriented, socialnetworking site LinkedIn; while women remain more active on the discussionbased Facebook. In the same vein, some assert that women feel closer to social
media, and believe it promotes a more feminine form of communication, namely
expressions of positive and supportive feelings. Here, however, it is important to
point out that this perspective fails to address whether the more feminine mode of
communication in these sites partially reduces the male presence in Facebook, or
whether this limited male participation allows women this mode of
communication. Finally, there are many who believe that this differentiation
conforms to the widely held, but not scientifically proven, argument that women
have a greater need to communicate, that they are more analytical and use a larger
number of words per day.
One of the most significant differences between the administration of female
and male profiles is that women appear more hesitant to mention certain
characteristics and information (e.g. sexual orientation, personal address, and
mobile phone number). According to a research held by Pew Internet & American
Life, even younger women are more aware of possible bullying, harassment, or
violation of their privacy through the internet. By partially protecting their privacy
in cyberspace, women continue to support their attributed dominance in the private
space of the home. However, as women more often prefer to have an open profile
and to upload photos than do men, one can observe a contradiction what is
mentioned above. Furthermore, women tend to adapt more easily a kind of
liberated persona, open to a number of challenges and provocations. This
observation could undermine the stereotype of females as characteristically
maintaining a controlled personal image.
A post-feminist woman balances the undertaking of tasks in fields traditionally
dominated by men, without losing her position as an object of desire. The right
use of femininity can lead to success and the augmentation of a womans status.
Women are often keener on friendly sexism that presents women as weaker and
pure, and that encourages their protection. This disposition of exploitation of a
sexist-produced image of a woman is reflected in their profile administration on
Facebook. Many women present themselves as friendly, cute, and not so serious,
characteristics that do not threaten the typically serious man. Even her choice of
activities and favourite movies and TV series reveals a tendency toward more

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feminine matters. The need of women to present themselves as attractive is more
obvious in the photographs they publish. According to research done by Aegean
University, these photos are often mannerist displays of femininity, provocative, or
cartoon images. The association of the childish with the feminine is very
common in these profiles. Moreover, women often produce a mysterious persona
that waits to be uncovered by a user with admirable capabilities, such as quick
writing and the use of humour.
According to Megan Kellys research, there are also other differences in the
online behaviour of women. Women feel uncomfortable with their image and want
to update it more often than do men. When questioned why they have deactivated
their Facebook account, 50% admitted that it was due to an over occupation with
their profile, while only 20% of men offered this response. While this seemingly
indicates that women are more obsessed with Facebook, it also serves as evidence
of a more conscious use of the site.
The stereotypical beliefs that enter and modulate the realm of Facebook are
demonstrated in the profiles of men as well. Such stereotypes would include: that
men are interested only in women, sports and cars; and that they associate
sentimentality with femininity, assigning greater value instead to physical strength.
4. Conclusion
The representations of gender in cyberspace are not likely to overcome the
stereotypes of physical space. While this new and undiscovered space may have
not yet freed its inhabitants from the myths supporting gender discrimination, it
offers new possibilities for redefining gender. Cyberspace is a world unto itself,
touching the conventional world at every point but remaining entirely distinct from
it.
One can trace these stereotypes in all aspects of digital space, whether
cyberspace, virtual reality, or video games. In the majority of video games, these
discriminations like female participation and appearance of characters are more
obvious. The structure of each kind of digital space can suggest the behaviour of a
user, the degree and the way the feminine or the masculine gender is expressed.
Analysing how women and men participate in social networking site, it is
assumed that there is a reductive tension of the digital gendered chasm. As a result,
the increasing feminine presentation in new technologies can lead to the emergence
and promotion of woman matters and also lead to a more fruitful conversation to
equality.
Finally, the speculation of the representation of a gendered identity in such a
new and in progress space remains open.
As far as our two pairs of heterotopic dipoles male-female, physical spacecyberspace are concerned, we close with the rest of Eagletons phrase that was left
incomplete in our introduction:

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Man therefore needs this other even as he spurns it, is
constrained to give a positive identity to what he regards as nothing. Not only is his own being parasitically dependent upon the
woman, and upon the act of excluding and subordinating her, but
one reason why such exclusion is necessary is because she may
not be quite so other after all. Perhaps she stands as a sign of
something in man himself which he needs to repress, expel
beyond his own being, relegate to a securely alien region beyond
his own definitive limits. Perhaps what is outside is also
somehow inside, what is alien also intimate - so that man needs
to police the absolute frontier between the two realms as
vigilantly as he does just because it may always be transgressed,
has always been transgressed already, and is much less absolute
than it appears.

Notes
1

T. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 1983. In 2008, the book republished by University

of Minnesota Press in Minneapolis
2
The term heterotopia etymologically derives from the greek words
(hetero - other) and (topos place).
3
M. Foucault, Des espaces autres, 1984.
4
D. de Kerckhove, The Architecture of Intelligence, Switzerland, 2001.
5
These three spaces are the realm within the connected architecture acts. By the
term connective architecture or architecture of connectivity, Kerckhove implies a
new kind of architecture that takes into consideration the interconnections of
physical, mental and networked space.
6
Agger, 2004.
7
V. Tentokali, ,
(eds), 1991.
8
Sex-Gender System, Rubin, 1975.
9
S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Vintage Books, NYC, 1989.
10
The womens fears.
11
Fraser and Duta (2008) introduce the terms of 3-D approach; disaggregation of
identities, democratization of status, diffusion of power.
12
The word ianomorphic derives from the Roman god Ianos (a deity with two
faces). It implies the multiplicity of identities.

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Sophia Damianidou, Konstantina Vasiliki Iakovou and Katerina Zygoura are
students of the Architecture Department in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
(Greece). They are currently engaged with their diploma research thesis.

Immersion and Surveillance in Virtual Worlds

George J. Stein
Abstract
This chapter explores the tension between the emergence of independent
cybercultures through Virtual Worlds such as Second Life, the internal tensions
between immersionists and augmentationists, and the already demonstrated
interest by national intelligence and law enforcement agencies in applying a system
of surveillance in Virtual Worlds.
Key Words: Virtual worlds, Second Life,
augmentationists, privacy, anonymity, terrorism.

surveillance, immersionists,

*****
1. Introduction
Using the well-known Second Life as illustration, I argue that the original
vision of building a country or community with its own laws and society, the socalled immersionist community, is threatened by an augmentationist approach
to this virtual world by those who see SL as more a platform for other real
world (RL) activities such as continuing education, commercial activities,
conferences, etc. all of which have a considerably lower commitment to privacy
and anonymity. The more serious challenge to emerging virtual world
cybercultures is surveillance by government agencies.
It is appropriate that a conference on visions of humanity in cyberculture,
cyberspace and science fiction is being held in Oxford as, in a sense, this all began
when J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings inspired the invention of the role-playing
game Dungeons & Dragons. 1 Since 1974, thousands of players were introduced
into a game system defined by (a) an alternative universe with alternative rules
of behavior, (b) the need to develop a fictional persona or character (ultimately
becoming what we know as an avatar), and (c) the requirement or opportunity for
collective behaviour among the players. These three characteristics continue to
inform most emerging virtual worlds.
With the development of computers, it became possible to expand the circles of
D&D players from the college dorm to a world-wide universe of players who
communicated in the old-fashioned text only manner. These early Internet-based
and text-constrained chat room communities of D&D and other games were
known as Multiple User Dungeons (or Domains). 2
Today, computing power, graphics capability, and the evolution of the Internet
support what are known as Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or
MMORPG. 3 Currently well over twelve million people participated in WOW and
revenues for the commercial developers, operators and owners of this and other

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Immersion and Surveillance in Virtual Worlds

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cyber-based virtual worlds exceeded a billion dollars. Ones personal character or
persona from D&D days is now called an avatar in MMORPG virtual worlds.
In essence, there are a lot of people living in two worlds. The most important
developments in post adventure/fantasy gaming are best seen in the virtual
cyberspace world known as Second Life. 4 Unlike WoW, the residents of Second
Life create not only their avatars but create, own and develop the virtual world.
There are currently over 18 million registered residents with about 50-80
thousand people in-world at any one time.
Technically, Second Life and other newly developing virtual worlds are known
as a metaverse as they seek to be fully-immersive, avatar-driven, and permit the
players to duplicate (almost) any activities of the real world. Most of the
metaverse systems are self-identified as inspired by Neal Stephensons 1992
science fiction novel, Snowcrash, which explores emerging computer technologies
permitting people to live in two-worlds and the implications of actions in virtual
reality affecting real world events. 5 It is this later point that ultimately will
concern public authorities do avatar social, behavioural and cultural norms
developed in-world affect real-world or physical-world behaviours?
The metaverse concept has moved well-beyond gaming and is currently
emerging as the cutting-edge issue in the exploitation of cyberspace. The reader is
strongly encouraged to review briefly the various aspects of metaverse
development discussed in the Metaverse Roadmap Project. 6 Likewise, wellestablished research universities (e.g., MIT) and think-tanks (e.g., Xerox PARC)
have initiated projects examining the issues of two-world cyberspace
developments. Dozens of American and international universities have opened
campuses in Second Life for recruiting and actual conduct of distance learning.
The professors avatar, played of course by the professor himself, interacts directly
with the student avatars from around the world. Naturally, real-world corporations
have moved into these virtual worlds to place advertising, test products, etc. 7
Whether and how government, military or intelligence agencies might participate
in these virtual worlds is the key question of privacy and surveillance. One must
assume that in-world universities and companies believe that experiences in the
virtual world will translate into actions in the real-world. Will the State make the
same assumption?
2. Interest by the State
In the emerging virtual social worlds like Second Life, the problem is
potentially more serious. Issues of real-world government regulation and
intervention in virtual reality are highlighted by the decision (July 2007) by the
owners of Second Life (Linden Labs) to suspend in-world gambling as Lindendollars can easily be converted back into real-world currencies. Linden Labs has
also begun to exercise greater oversight of the various in-world banks after a
number of irregularities caused the collapse of several banks and the loss of virtual

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assets. E-Bay, the world-wide auction site, has attempted to stop the on-line sale of
virtual world assets to control gold farming (an annoyance) and potential money
laundering (a crime).
It is perhaps appropriate that the original governmental interest in virtual
worlds, especially Second Life, came from the UK Revenue and Customs seeking
to tax in-world financial transactions. The London Times reported that Revenue &
Customs was using the computer program Xenon to scan Second Life and other
VW worlds like Entropia to detect tax cheats. The Revenue spokesman noted our
primary target lies with traders who are running a business in Second Life. 8
Precisely how, or even if, the authorities can link a SL avatar with their real world
identity is not clear, especially as SLs server farm in located in the United States.
Nevertheless, the taxman cometh as similar hearings before the US Congress
discussing money laundering in VW were also held during August 2009.
Follow the money leads from tax cheats to terrorists in VW. It is probably not
accidental that computer security firms like Symantec began raising the alarm that
terrorists could use VW to transfer funds and launder money.
To facilitate this, a criminal enterprise could open several
thousand MMOG accounts. Each account could be used to trade
with other players in the purchase or sale on in-game assets, the
funds from which would ultimately be withdrawnSince
thousands of accounts may engage in millions of transactions,
each with small profits or losses, it would be difficult to trace the
true source of the funds when they are withdrawn. 9
While the idea of getting several thousand al-Qaida terrorists siphoned off
from terror attack planning to wander around WoW or Second Life seems, in fact, a
brilliant counter-terror tactic, it is the unknown of VW that permit such fantastic
paranoia.
German authorities brought a case against Linden Labs for permitting virtual
child pornography. In the USA, the Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft vs. Free
Speech Coalition seems to have ruled that as virtual pornography does not involve
real people, it is protected speech. 10 Whether this frankly ambiguous precedent
will apply in the EU, or even continue to stand in the USA, remains to be seen. As
other virtual worlds permit unregulated exchange of money between their virtual
world (e.g., Entropia Universe) and the real world, various European banking
authorities are concerned with both criminal and terrorist money laundering. In
essence, if its a crime in the real-world, someone is probably attempting to hide
the activity in cyber-based virtual reality worlds. 11
While European regulators and police concentrate on crimes, the relevance of
virtual worlds for international politics is not being ignored. The Beijing Municipal
Governments Cyber Recreation Development Corporation has partnered with

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the Swedish Mindarks Entropia Universe for a project to develop a Chinese virtual
world capable of supporting seven million residents simultaneously for the
conduct of business. 12 Other Chinese companies like HiPiHi seek to develop
methods that permit their avatars to move freely between the various virtual
worlds. Recognizing the growing political and security aspects of virtual worlds,
China has recently banned all foreign investment in Chinese virtual worlds. China
will operate in cyberspace and virtual space.
3. Terrorism
The issue of terrorist use of conventional cyberspace for propaganda is wellknown and, hopefully, effectively addressed. Rather, it is the perception or fear that
there is a potential for effective use of virtual worlds like Second Life, Entropia
and others for communication of terrorist ideology, direct recruitment, fundraising,
covert funds transfer and, most importantly, distributed training that draws the
attention of intelligence agencies. According to the Washington Post, the US
governments Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) report
on virtual worlds argues that the unique characteristics of virtual worlds have
made them into seedbeds for transnational threats. 13
The Congressionally mandated Data Mining Report of 2008 by the Office of
the (USA) Director of National Intelligence notes that Reynard is a seedling effort
to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in
virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the
Intelligence Community.
The cultural and behavioural norms of virtual worlds are
generally unstudied. Therefore Reynard will seek to identify the
emerging social, behavioural and cultural norms in virtual worlds
and gaming environments. The project would then apply the
lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically
detecting suspicious behaviour and actions in the virtual world. If
it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its
scope to a full project. 14
However, in the January 2009 Report, the ODNI notes that Reynard continues
as a seedling effort within IARPA however, the focus of the effort has
changed[and]is currently exploring the feasibility of understanding and
characterizing behaviour in virtual worlds by leveraging expertise in the social
science research community. 15 Clearly then, study of the internal social,
behavioural and cultural norms of virtual worlds has already caught the attention
of intelligence agencies at the highest levels.
This is, understandably a very contentious issue. An earlier discussion appeared
in a Counterterrorism blog and a wide ranging follow-up. 16 More significantly, a

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writer for The Australian interviewed various Australian law enforcement and
security authorities on the use of Second Life and other virtual worlds by terrorists
for actual training. 17 The article provoked an explosion of derisive commentary
from Second Life bloggers with a typical observation being terrorists drink coffee
too, should we monitor coffee shops? 18 It is perhaps unfair to say that SL residents
do not see a problem with people up-loading streaming video on bomb making or
rehearsing real-world activities in Second Life. Rather if anyone is actually
monitoring SL say monitoring radical Muslims or the local imam in Second
Lifes mosque, the Islamic world is certainly aware already of US government
interest.
4. Privacy
In reality there is no ultimate privacy in Second Life or other virtual worlds.
The owner of the world, in this case Linden Labs, is able to monitor, record and
store all in-world activities and, again, notes in their Terms of Service (TOS) that
they are prepared to respond to requests for resident information from lawful
authorities. The issue is less anonymous privacy than what residents tend to call
pseudonymous privacy: the expectation that the distinction between their realworld and in-world identities is preserved and that their in-world privacy vis--vis
other residents is maintained to the degree that they themselves choose. Some
residents, however, try to spy on others (q.v. Mission Spy software) and, of
course, other residents have developed in-world software to foil such spying (q.v.
MystiTool & hippoSecure). Thus, while Group (open) Chat and visible
actions can be monitored and recorded covertly, to date there is no evidence that
any in-world means has been developed to eavesdrop on Individual (person-toperson) Messages (IM). Whether such capability exists within the law
enforcement or intelligence communities to capture and record in-world IM is a
matter of speculation. There is, likewise, no in-world means to link an individual
avatar to their real-world identity beyond what an individual avatar may choose to
reveal. Again whether such capability exists within the law enforcement or
intelligence communities is a matter of speculation but, logically, monitoring a
bunch of avatars without being to establish their real world identities would seem
pointless.
Currently, then, interest in goings-on in virtual worlds are focused on the fear
that terrorists might be hiding in Second Life to communicate secretly, plan and
rehearse. Future surveillance will be based on a more nuanced understanding of the
epistemology of virtual worlds. Briefly, the rules of the game in a virtual world
without rules of the game become a new set of rules that can/ may/will translate
into the real world. If, say, it were observed (as technically easily done) that
immersionist SL residents Brendan, Clancy, Connor, Finbar and Seamus were
building a community/island based on radical republican principles and began
discussing regicide, would not MI-5 employ techniques within Second Life to

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discover the real world identity of these residents? Bluntly, neither we nor SL
residents know.
On the one hand, and ironically, the increasing success of Linden Labs to
market Second Life for augmentation use by corporation business meetings and
collaboration, universities for distance learning, and government agencies (e.g.,
NASA) for public relations decreases the overall concern for privacy. After all,
anonymous students or fellow university researchers defeats the purpose of inworld presence. Authoritys old chestnut if youre not doing anything wrong you
have nothing to fear can seem acceptable to those who are essentially tourists. On
the other hand, the pioneers of Second Life, the immersionists, who are in-world
as part of an experiment to build relationships and communities difficult or perhaps
impossible in the physical/real-world have been consistently most insistent on
maintaining pseudonymous privacy.
Residents engaged in various role-playing communities maintain the strongest
commitment to privacy, rarely putting any 1st Life information in their in-world
profile. They are in-world literally for a second-life or second-chance to explore
and build social, behavioural and cultural norms that, indeed, may represent a
revolt against or secession from the real-world. They are in-world because they
may, in fact, want to be different.
5. The Unresolved Tension
Finally, Second Life, like any real-world or even other virtual world society
rests on the substantive communication and understanding among its members. In
the philosopher Eric Voegelins terms, this is no mere external structure of
relationships; it is a cosmion-- a universe illuminated with meaning from within
by the human beings who continuously create and bear it as the mode and
condition of their self-realization. 19 Whether an increasingly augmentationist inworld population will begin to regard those who choose pseudonymous identities
as hiding something (and thus, to be avoided) or whether a perception that
pseudonymous residents represent an ethical secession from real norms and the
creation of communities potentially antithetical to proper law and behaviour
drawing, then, increased surveillance by law enforcement or intelligence agencies,
the effect will be the same. The development of a creative cyberculture through
virtual worlds, illuminated with meaning from within by the human beings who
continuously create and bear it as the mode and condition of their self-realization,
will have been effectively killed.

Notes
1

Wikipedia, Dungeons & Dragons, 19.08.2010, http://en.wikipedia.prg/wiki/

Dungeons_%26_Dragons.

George J. Stein

65

__________________________________________________________________
2

Wikipedia, MUD (Multiple User Dungeon), 19.08.2010, http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/MUDs.
3
Wikipedia, MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game),
19.08.2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG.
4
Wikipedia, Second Life, 19.08.2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life.
The companys commercial website is: http://secondlife.com.
5
N. Stephenson, Snow Crash, Bantam Dell, New York, 1992. For a sense of the
impact of the book, see the 500+ online reviews at Amazon.com: For a sense of the
impact
of
the
novel,
see
the
500+
on-line
reviews
at:
http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Bantam-Spectra-Book/dp/0553380958/ref
=pd_bbs_1/002-0401700-4479257?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186326203&sr=8-1.
6
Acceleration Studies Foundation, Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D
Web, 19.08.2010, http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/index.html.
7
MIT Media Lab, Hacking Second Life, 19.08.2010, http://www.media.
mit.edu/resenv/second_life_iap_2007_workshop/.
8
D. Budworth, Taxman Gets Tough on Virtual World Earnings, The Times
Online, 26.08.2007.
9
Symantec Warns against Virtual Worlds Money Laundering and other Threats,
Virtual World News, 18.09.2007, http://www.virtualworldnews.com/2007/09/
symantec-warns-.html.
10
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 535 U.S. 234 (2002); 198 F3d 1083,
affirmed. The argument that virtual child pornography whets pedophiles appetites
and encourages them to engage in illegal conduct is unavailing because the mere
tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for
banning it, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 566, absent some showing of a direct
connection between the speech and imminent illegal conduct, see, e.g.,
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, (per curiam).
11
N. Monroe, Technology Regulating Fantasy, National Journal, 30.06.2007.
12
Marketwire, Entropia Universe Enters China to Create the Largest Virtual
World Ever, 30.05.2007, http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/EntropiaUniverse-Enters-China-to-Create-the-Largest-Virtual-World-Ever-737761.htm
19.08.2010.
13
R. OHarrow, Spies Battleground Turns Virtual: Intelligence Officials See #-D
Online Worlds as Havens for Criminals, Washington Post, 06.02.2008, p. D01.
14
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Data Mining Report, 15.02.2008,
p. 5, http://www.dni.gov/reports/data_mining_report_feb08.pdf.
15
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Data Mining Report, 2009, p. 7,
http://www.dni.gov/electronic_reading_room/ODNI_Data_Mining_Report_10.pdf.
16
A. Cochran, MetaTerror: The Potential Uses of MMORPGs by Terrorists,
Counterterrorism Blog, 01.03.2007, http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/
print/metaterror_the_potential_use_o.php. And A. Cochran, Part II of

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MetaTerror: The Potential Uses of MMORPGs by Terrorists, Counterterrorism
Blog, 12/03.2007, http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/print/part_ii_of_meta
terror_the_pote.php, 19.08.2010.
17
N. OBrien, Virtual Terrorists, The Australian, 31.06.2007, http://www.the
australian.com.au/news/features/virtual-terrorists/story-e6frg6z6-1111114072291.
18
T. Burke, More Dots! Cried the Terrorist, Terra Nova, 19.08.2010;
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/08/more-dots-cried.html; G. Dvorsky,
Second Lifes In-World Terrorism and the Struggle for Digital Rights, Sentient
Development, 03.01.2007, http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/03/secondlifes-in-world-terrorism-and.html; M. Wagner, Terrorism in Second Life? Give
Me a Break, Information Week, 31.07.2007; http://www.informationweek.
com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/terrorism_in_se.html;jsessionid=LSJBYC2TG3L
RFQE1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN, 19.08.2010.
19
E. Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1952, p. 27.

Bibliography
Acceleration Studies Foundation, Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D Web.
Viewed on 19 August 2010, http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/index.html.
Au, W.J., The Making of Second Life. Harper-Collins, New York, 2008.
Bainbridge, W.S. (ed), Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual.
Springer-Verlag, London, 2010.
Balkin, J.M. and Noveck, B.S. (eds), The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual
Worlds. New York University Press, New York, 2006.
Biegel, S., Beyond Our Control: Confronting the Limits of our Legal System in
Cyberspace. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001.
Boellstorff, T., Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the
Virtually Human. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2008.
Budworth, D., Taxman Gets Tough on Virtual World Earnings,. The Times
Online. 26 August 2007.
Burke, T., More Dots! Cried the Terrorist. Terra Nova. 01 August 2007, Viewed
19 August 2010, http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/08/more-dotscried.html.

George J. Stein

67

__________________________________________________________________
Cochran, A., MetaTerror: The Potential Uses of MMORPGs by Terrorists.
Counterterrorism Blog. 01 March 2007, Viewed 19 August 2010,
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/print/metaterror_the_potential_use_o.php.
Cochran, A., Part II of MetaTerror: The Potential Uses of MMORPGs by
Terrorists. Counterterrorism Blog. 12 March 2007, Viewed 19 August 2010,
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/print/part_ii_of_metaterror_the_pote.php.
Dvorsky, G., Second Lifes In-World Terrorism and the Struggle for Digital
Rights. Sentient Development. 03 January 2007, Viewed 19 August 2010,
http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/03/second-lifes-in-world-terrorismand.html.
Hayles, N.K., How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature and Informatics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1999.
Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School, ASHCROFT V.
FREE SPEECH COALITION (00-795) 535 U.S. 234 (2002). Viewed 19 August
2010, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZO.html.
Meadows, M.S., I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second
Life. New Riders, Berkeley, CA, 2008.
MIT Media Lab, Hacking Second Life. 2007, Viewed on 19 August 2010,
http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/second_life_iap_2007_workshop/.
Monroe, N., Technology Regulating Fantasy. National Journal. 30.06.2007.
Mosco, V., The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace. The MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2005.
OBrien, N., Virtual Terrorists. The Australian. 31 June 2007, http://www.the
australian.com.au/news/features/virtual-terrorists/story-e6frg6z6-1111114072291.
OHarrow, R., Spies Battleground Turns Virtual: Intelligence Officials See 3-D
Online Worlds as Havens for Criminals. Washington Post. 06.02. 2008.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Data Mining Report. 15 February
2008, p. 5, http://www.dni.gov/reports/data_mining_report_feb08.pdf.

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__________________________________________________________________
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Data Mining Report. 2009, p. 7,
http://www.dni.gov/electronic_reading_room/ODNI_Data_Mining_Report_10.pdf.
Stephenson, N., Snow Crash. Bantam Dell, New York, 1992.
Turkle, S., Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon &
Schuster, New York, 1995.
Voegelin, E., The New Science of Politics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1952, p.27.
Waggoner, Z., My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games.
McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2009.
Wagner, M., Terrorism in Second Life? Give Me a Break. Information Week. 31
July 2007, Viewed 19 August 2010, http://www.informationweek.com/
blog/main/archives/2007/07/terrorism_in_se.html;jsessionid=LSJBYC2TG3LRFQ
E1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN.
George J. Stein is the Director of the Cyberspace and Info-Ops Study Centre at
the USAF Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, USA. His interest in virtual
worlds is focused on e-education and the implications for national security of the
interaction between synthetic (virtual) and physical (real-world) environments.
The views expressed or implied in this chapter are solely those of the author and
do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the Department of
Defense or the United States Government.

Part III
Technology, Community and Anthropology

Anthropological Reflections on Knowledge Interfaces:

Swarm, Wikinomics and Design
Micha Derda-Nowakowski
Abstract
Anthropological reflections on knowledge interfaces are connected here with the
visions of humanity in the context of various aspects of cyberculture. The main
reflection stems from Marshall McLuhans prophecy of cultural transformation
within the range of consciousness. The chapter discusses the issues of cultural
paradigm shifts connected with the emergence of networked civilisation,
knowledge interfaces, user experience, wikinomics and swarming. The author
reflects on the problem of design as the most important tool for changing
consciousness into environment, redefining social relations and the human
condition.
Key Words: Webanthropology, interface, design, media literacy, HCI, user
experience, wikinomics, swarming, knowledge, communication, information
literacy.
*****
1. Narcissus Mirror and Cyberhumanity
Traces leading to the contemporary imagination of designers of increasingly
tactile and haptic interfaces originate from the belief that it is necessary to imitate
and extend our sensory experience. The practice of creating interfaces (which have
a utilitarian aspect and are not in principle works of art) is all about appropriately
designing this experience. For statistical purposes, it is necessary to: establish the
pattern of the interaction, put it in the framework of the standard deviations, situate
the human being within the calculated ergonomics of behaviour, and draw this
model together with as much of the anthropological background as can be
reconstructed. This sort of approach is distinctly less sublime than concepts
referring to the mystery of numbers, such as the Vitruvian Man, whom Leonardo
da Vinci made into an almost cosmological model. Equally missing here is the zest
characteristic of the modernist ideas of the ergonomic world, scrupulously
calculated in Le Modulor by Le Corbussier, 1 in keeping with the best ideas of
Bauhaus.
Following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau in the 19th century, one may
be cautious of the technocratic reality and come to see it as a certain form of
captivity. This captivity is brought about by replacing the natural solutions with
technology that ensures a peculiar sort of safety (clearly obliging in its own right).
But lo! Men have become the tools of their tools, Thoreau called from the depths
of nature. 2 These days, there is a fashionable trend to come back to low-tech

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methods of producing lifes necessities. Low-tech philosophy goes hand in hand
with uncontaminated foodstuffs (slow food), do-it-yourself philosophy, and anticorporation acts of protest against user-friendly, MacDonaldized products and
services.
Anti-technocratic thinking seems to spare the space of digital interfaces,
much as this area is full of oddities and tribal wars over the only true simplicity and
transparency of technology. These days, it is very difficult to remain an off-line,
sovereign Mennonite, in much the same way as there are basically no
communication technologies without electricity. Today the face of humanity is
reflected in the Narcissus mirror of interfaces.
2. Knowledge Interfaces and CyberSavoir-vivre
Nowadays, it is considered good manners to know how to operate machines.
However, it is not only a question of proper upbringing, but also an appropriate
social status within the new type of information society stratification. The tendency
to abandon writing in favour of new methods of transferring information has also
been observed. New ways of reading (unrelated to literacy in a direct way) are not
more primitive than the traditional reading technique and may become an art of
understanding the world involving the use of not only computer interfaces but also
new types of perceptive sensitivity. It is to be noted that we are not talking about a
metaphor of reading (as used by Umberto Eco) or a departure from writing in
favour of secondary orality, whose presence in the media has been noticed by
Walter J. Ong. 3
The contemporary (transitory) homo sapiens is a being dependent on
information. It accepts and processes far more information during a single lifetime
than several generations of its ancestors taken together. It seems that today the
species possesses a far more extensive knowledge of the world than its
representatives did in the recent past. This state of affairs must have its
anthropological consequences.
There seems to be no need for the sort of change in human biology that posthumanists advocate. The problem of processing the excess of information is
inherent in both nature and culture. Information noise is necessary for the proper
development of each system, including social and biological systems. It is a better
idea to customise the transmitter so that the content is more orderly. Lack of
relevance cannot directly lead to the radical gesture of breaking off with the
biological humanity. Communicational relevance is, in fact, a term belonging to
the area of aesthetics rather than human-computer relations. In recent years,
humanity has spent much effort constructing new interfaces.
There are technologies that are able to process the abundance of data quite well
and provide a customized set of information. This information can reach the
recipient through an RSS channel or through a customized interface of a networked
service where the content user installs a suitable set of useful widgets.

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Personalising the communication channel can be done anonymously and does not
directly infringe the sphere of privacy by tracing preference and tastes of the user.
The Net protects humanity against the hegemony of writing and restores the
traditional order, in this case, the order of secondary orality space of culture. It also
saves writing, however, creating new ways of recording and interpreting texts of
culture in the form of different types of information literacy, but also interactions
themselves that result from handling interfaces. The Net is not only a new memory,
necessary to transfer information, but also a space of new knowledge, extension of
consciousness as an environment. 4
3. Cyberculture as Disease
Seeing the Net as a rubbish heap is an ahistorical way of thinking, in
accordance with the pedagogic utopia, cultivated by the critics of the new media,
who see it mainly as the source of misinformation, sometimes even a retreat from
the path of progress. The ahistorical character of this way of thinking, however,
should be set against facts.
Extensive research into illiteracy was only started after WW II by UNESCO.
The researchers categorized and rationalized the inability to write, read and count
as a plague, on equal footing with contagious and parasitic diseases, but also with
addictions (including, recently, addiction to the Internet).
The research into illiteracy has been carried on for over 60 years now and has
presented us with a historical picture of change in the familiarity with writing as an
extension of memory and printing as an interface of official knowledge. However,
we have virtually no global testimonies that refer to the extent of knowledge of the
world as a cultural capital, with the obvious exception of the officially approved
curricula. True, there are ethnographic, anthropological, or court records, but they
are not a reliable source of recordable knowledge, contaminated as they often are
with the language whose aim is to adjust individual judgments to the needs of
power and law.
Ethnographic transcription of a registered spoken statement is a rather
troublesome task, too, as it has to be done on a one-to-one scale. Rather than
faithfully reproduce the recording, researchers who carry out transcription tasks
often find themselves building structures compliant with linguistic patterns they
have acquired in the process of socialization, education and language
improvement. Such cognitive layers and models of correctness can sometimes
considerably interrupt the process of transferring the oral into the written, while the
technical character of writing reveals its rules in opposition to principles of speech.
The Net presents the speech as computer-mediated without the need of such
transcription of everydayness. From a certain point of view this might be a
problem, but this is yet another dimension of the departure from the Gutenberg
Galaxy to McLuhan Galaxy that we have to understand.

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It is addiction to the Internet that can be the real problem, also constituting a
certain psychological barrier to cyborgisation. In the old days, the only parameters
researched were the reading levels of the population: nobody ever dreamt of a
reading addiction that should be treated. A person afflicted with the reading
disease was simply seen as an eccentric, anti-social bookworm, or a great scientist
and erudite. The measure we use to conceptualise the Net is unfair, for nobody has
ever thought of adding addictive reading to the lists of the World Health
Organisation, 5 even if it went beyond the norms of healthy living and a balanced
development of an individual. Technophilia has become a sort of disease, while
bibliophilia will forever remain a virtue.
4. Consciousness as an Environment
Apart from the simple ability to deal with interfaces, acquired from early years,
today the different educational and cognitive mechanisms that form information
literacy are being informally incorporated into the catalogue of cultural
competences. These competences go beyond the ability to read and write and
include the capacity to understand the code of images, infographics and multimedia
narratives in the form of games and interactive animations. Cognitive procedures
no longer consist in decoding the hidden meaning of allegories or symbols in the
mimetic world of art and other forms of knowledge and memory. These days, they
refer both to the body and the mind, which take part in the cognitive process
mediated by media.
Understanding visuality, thus conceived, refers to methods of surfing the Net
and handling interfaces, which is more than just functionalizing and rationalizing
visual messages or putting codes in order. The aim is to create an inter-culturally
understandable code of visual references, compliant with the rules of digital
ergonomics (or usability) and using the graphical user interface. We do not need
any contemporary Cesare Ripa 6 to read this sort of meanings. It is not any new
iconology that would allow us to understand narrative and symbolic meanings
hidden by texts of culture. Neither is it any of the known forms of hermeneutics.
The problem is that while the new information literacy (also understood as the
ability to handle digital interfaces of knowledge) has grown out of the old analogue
visual literacy, it nevertheless calls for an entirely different set of sender-recipient
skills. Neglected and unpractised, these skills will never afford the user as many
possibilities as are offered by print and linear reading of a text.
Codes of visual communication, similarly to hypertext, hypermedia and
interaction, have to be learned functionally, in much the same way as humanity has
learned how to write or print as an extension of the senses and how to use the book
as an interface of knowledge. Consequently, one can be media-illiterate and not
suffer from secondary illiteracy. Unfortunately, one can also be an excellent
decoder of media meaning, but completely illiterate when it comes to writing.
Users need to know how to use new interfaces; and this is the challenge the

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educational establishment is facing today. The establishment tends to see the new
media as a threat to civilizational progress, a threat to privacy and identity,
psychological danger, risk of information addictions and lack of referentiality.
New areas of perception and knowledge are not discourse-less, as it is claimed
by those who announce that civilisation is retreating into a visual culture. Thus,
grieving over the fall of the culture of print (and the simultaneous fall of the West)
is groundless. New possibilities and cultural competences set a much higher
standard than what it takes to read a sort of biblia pauperum of our times.
Someone who is well-adjusted to machines should, for instance, be able to
touch-type (type without looking at their hands). Contemporary users should also
know the secrets of the enquiry syntax (so as not to be deceived by the simple
answers of the Google servers), know how to write a simple script (for instance, to
meet the requirements of living and rules of surviving in the virtual environment of
Second Life). They should also know how to deal with the excess of information
(for instance, by using suitable filters that block unsolicited content such as ads).
Another thing to know is how to modify the interface to make this most intimate
link with machines more useful.
5. Swarm, Wikinomics and Design
Users of the digital world who create content (even those who only
inadvertently copy and process data in the name of sharing ideology) simply have
to demonstrate a far broader knowledge of how to handle the reality around them
and their own habitat than their ancestors did. Compared to several previous
generations, these users need to have far more extensive cultural competences
when it comes to using instruments of memory and knowledge. It was easy to
handle books (in the form of a codex), newspaper, magazine, disk and cassette or
to make use of a TV remote control to use texts of culture. To be ritually different
from the network trolls (cyberspace barbarians), a truly cultured provider of user
generated content (but not as much as a digital shaman a geek) must believe in
the ideology of simplicity (as the lack of redundancy), usability, validity
(conformity with standards) and accessibility. 7 Of particular importance is that
access to data should be provided for people who cannot directly reach the content
expressed as an extension of the sense of sight or hearing. This worthy idea
sometimes turns into a true ideological war over cultural and ideological norms of
simplicity and compliance with (communication) standards. This war is
underpinned by usability as the central problem of anthropology of interfaces
within multidisciplinary research into human interaction with the computer. The
structure of the content must allow for it to be accessed not only as sentences of a
natural language that can be reproduced by machines (for instance, voice screen
readers), but also as a sort of conscious and planned information architecture.
Consequently, these cultural and technical competences are becoming norms of

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behaviour that also apply to rules formulated as a symbolic code of real
virtuality. 8
New models of communication, for example wikinomics 9 and swarming, 10
become increasingly important. These models are the anthropological base of
content and information channels creation, with special regard given to users acting
in new media environment. 11 Extremely important are social behaviours and the
role of community in creating new types of knowledge. Wikinomics, as the base of
knowledge construction, became a new indicator for the construction of economic
models. Concepts connected with wikinomics may be traced in 19th century,
European science. The fundaments are to be found in discourse of natural sciences
and in theory of evolution, as well as in biological models of society.
The model of swarm as a productive system of meanings creation is present in
contemporary design, organic programming, in the long tail, 12 and in relations
between the producers and the active users. The issues of wikinomics and swarm,
as cognitive models, are becoming more and more valuable in the field of robotics
and artificial intelligence. The webness of knowledge and the mode of interaction
with interface and social interactions are today among the most explored areas of
design, and will shape the future of humanity. Without question, it will provoke
new problems within the range of sociotechnics and cybersurveillance. The control
and creation of interactions of the individual and the group activities of wikinomic
types are today the objects of corporate and governmental interest. New media
design becomes a space of argument about the sovereignty of an individual, the
individuals role in society, and the meaning of freedom. The wikimodel of
society, and the swarm as a technological model, refer to the discourse of natural
sciences, using communication solutions present in animal communities.
Discoveries in natural sciences, and their implementation in design, ought to
redefine more and more the methods of the humanities and our understanding of
humankind.
Nowadays, cultural phenomena have to be determined by technology. In one of
his prophetic thoughts, Marshal McLuhan bluntly announced in the late 1960s: It
seems that our survival depends on extending consciousness as an environment. 13
These words do not refer solely to technocratic and, at the same time, posthumanist
projects of cyborgisation. Interference of culture and technology evolved into a
form of culture in which technology plays the role of nervous system.

Notes
1

Le Corbussier, Le Modulor. Essai sur une mesure harmonique lchelle

humaine applicable universellement larchitecture et la mcanique. Boulogne,
LArchitecture dAujourdhui, 1950.
2
H.D. Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Courier Dover Publications,
Mineola, 1995.

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77

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3

W.J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, New Accents,
T. Hawkes (ed), Methuen, New York, 1988.
4
E. McLuhan and F. Zingrone (eds), Essential McLuhan, Routledge 1997.
5
International Classification of Diseases (ICD). URL: http://www.who.int/
classifications/icd/en/, Accessed 14th June 2010.
6
C. Ripa, Iconologia overo Descrittione dell Imagini universali cavate
dallantichita et da altri luoghi Da Cesare Ripa Perugino. Opera non meno utile,
che necessaria Poeti, Pittori, & Scultori, per rappresentare le virt, vitij, affetti,
& passioni humane, Heredi di Gio, Gigliotti, Roma 1593.
7
A. Maj and M. Derda-Nowakowski, Anthropology of Accessibility: Further
Reflections on Perceptual Problems of Human-Computer Interactions, Emerging
Practices in Cyberculture and Social Networking, D. Riha and A. Maj (eds),
Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York, NY, 2010.
8
See M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age:
Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Cambridge (MA)/Oxford (UK), 1996.
9
D. Tapscott and A.D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything, Portfolio, USA, 2006.
10
See P.A. Gloor, Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage through
Collaborative Innovation Networks, Oxford University Press, 2006.
11
See D. Weinberger, When Things Arent what They Are, Hybrid: Living in
Paradox, G. Stocker and C. Schpf (eds), Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2005, pp. 76-78.
12
C. Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More,
Hyperion, New York, 2006.
13
McLuhan and Zingrone (eds), op. cit., p. 425.

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Minsky, M., The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence
and The Future of the Human Mind. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New YorkLondon-Toronto-Sydney, 2006.
Ong, W.J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word New Accents.
Methuen, New York, 1988.
Ripa, C., Iconologia overo Descrittione dell Imagini universali cavate
dallantichita et da altri luoghi Da Cesare Ripa Perugino. Opera non meno utile,
che necessaria Poeti, Pittori, & Scultori, per rappresentare le virt, vitij, affetti,
& passioni humane. Heredi di Gio. Gigliotti, Roma, 1593.
Tapscott, D., Grown Up Digital. How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.
London-Chicaco-San Francisco, McGraw Hill, 2009.
Tapscott, D. and Williams, A.D., Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything. Portfolio, USA, 2006.
Weinberger, D., When Things arent what They Are. Hybrid: Living in Paradox .
Stocker, G. and Schpf, C. (eds), Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2005.
Michal Derda-Nowakowski, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of
Electronic Media, University of Lodz. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of
ExMachina Academic Press. Interested in web anthropology, HCI, design,
information architecture, visual communication and typography; currently his
research and writing is devoted to the issue of accessibility and perception.

Intelligent Shoes, Smart Teeth and Lunch with a Cyborg:

Anthropological Reflections on the Change of
Communication Paradigms
Anna Maj
Abstract
The chapter analyses the change of communication paradigms caused by digital
technologies, especially networked, mobile and intelligent devices, assistive
technologies, supporting communication systems, prostheses and chips. The
important questions raised by cyberculture and cyborgisation are discussed and
shown here through examples within the context of media anthropology and
cultural studies. They concern the nature of biological and artificial intelligence,
the problems of perception and cognition in digital environment, ubiquitous and
instant interconnectedness, the question and consequences of the process of
merging of nature and technology, and the convergence of the real and the virtual
as well as its incorporation into acting body. The authors approach stems from
technological determinism but covers traditional anthropological analysis as well.
Examples used in the chapter are selected from the areas of biomedia, digital and
cyborg art, bioengineering, assistive technologies design, human-computer
interaction research and anthropological analysis of cybercommunities. The author
proposes a new communication model to enable description of cognitive and
interactional aspects of new situations of cyborg communication (cyborg-tocyborg, cyborg-to-objects and human-to-cyborg) as well as situations of ubiquitous
networked communication.
Key Words: Cyborgisation, cyberart, bioart, bioengineering, genetic manipulation,
humanisation of technology, nanotechnology, wearable computers, communication
paradigm shift, cyborg communication model.
*****
1. Introduction
It is possible nowadays to observe several paradigm shifts: in networked
communication, in understanding the human being and thinking self as well as in
art and technology, in conceptualizing the nature and the process of creation.
Thanks to nanotechnology, genetics and robotics, and due to various artistic and
scientific experiments the paradigm of communication has been changing as well
as human body, brain and its cognitive processes and thus the human identity.
Some of the most important changes for the future of human culture are to be
shown and interpreted in the following research on the basis of several scientific
experiments and works of cyberart.

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2. Upgrade Human Body
The year is 2050, and we are still here. [] In 2050 the Earth is
dominated by machines, robots if you like. Not one species like
humans, but machines with different forms, shapes and sizes,
depending on what each is doing. 1
Although this quote from Kevin Warwicks March of the Machines still
appears to be a narration typical for science-fiction genre or at least a dark
futuristic prophecy, its author successfully accelerates the progress of
cyborgisation of humanity. The commencing steps were taken almost two decades
ago when the first RFID chip was inserted into the researchers body in order to let
him communicate with the computer directly via his nervous system. After several
years of researches and successes in miniaturization a next generation microchip
was inserted into Warwicks arm as well as into his wifes one, so they became the
first cyber-family communicating directly nervous system-to-nervous system.
Although it may sound marvelous, it was rather far from telepathic understanding
of someones thoughts. Warwick suggests that this was a body-based subconscious
communication, similar to sending and receiving electrical signals between
transmitter and receiver in traditional communication models by Claude Shannon
& Warren Weaver or the one by Harold Lasswell. Researcher from the University
of Reading finds this results promising enough to promote the idea of upgrading
human brain by chipping technology. 2
It is necessary to mention that Warwick shares his ideas with numerous
futurists, engineers, cyberartists as well as with theoreticians and creators of new
technologies, as Marvin Minsky, Raymond Kurzweil or Howard Rheingold or
another cyborgs as Steve Mann or Stelarc. However, more important here is the
fact that a transhumanist trend is developed also with regard to various benefits for
disabled people who thanks to radical scientific experiments can now use
electronic prostheses, implants or wearable assistive devices. Steve Mann regards
these people to be cyborgs as well. Thus, the cyborgisation tends to be a massive
process which progresses discreetly however. Humanity increasingly incorporates
not only various chemical substances but also high technologies.
3. Lets Meet Edunia
While human beings become more and more technological and electronic, they
become also subjected to various efforts of bioengineering and genetic
experiments. nature transformed by technology results in the creation of multiple
hybrid forms. This is the case of Edunia, which is the first plantimal, the genetic
manipulation on the border between an animal (a human being - in this case the
artist) and a plant. 3 Although it looks just like a regular pink flower, Edunia is a
mixture of DNA of Eduardo Kac and petunia. The artist uses genetics to select a

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part of the DNA from his blood to modify the flower DNA so that it appears in red
color in the veins of the flower blossoms and thus signify the transition between
various species. The artist states that it is quite easy to feel that humans are close to
animals, especially to those who communicate in a visible way, like dogs or cats.
But it is hard to feel the feeling of community with species located far from
humans on the Darwinian tree of life. Giving his work the title Natural History of
the Enigma, Kac suggests that it is directly connected with the mystery of life and
that it serves to disclose general public the feeling of unity of the whole nature.
But taking a different perspective it is possible to regard this piece of art as
technological infiltration of the biological nature of life, as the act of violence, a
symbolic scientific rape of the flower being. This is not the first time when
Eduardo Kac promotes activity raising ethical questions. Since Time Capsule in
1997, which began his bio art history, and in which Kac experimented on his own
body, RFID microchip, webcast and TV transmission technologies, his artistic
approach has crossed the borders of nature and technology. Sometimes it provoked
protests of general public for being unethical as his GFP Bunny (2000), a creation
of a green fluorescent rabbit (named Alba) with the use of jellyfish gene. The goals
of such understood bio art, genetic art or transgenic art are explicitly shown in
artists manifesto GFP Bunny. 4
A similar manipulation of biological structure as well as the importance of
conducting the social discourse connected with cyberart is presented by Stelarc
who for several decades has been useing robotics, genetics, IT and medicine to
expand his body abilities like in Third Hand, Extra Ear or Ear on Arm. The last
experiment is located somewhere between Warwicks and Kacs ideas of
approaching the body with technology and science. Stelarc uses surgery and
genetics to obtain the results which could be called the bioengineering with
aesthetic background. The Ear on Arm project consists of several steps:
complicated process of the construction and growth of ear implant, its surgical
incorporation into artists arm, its wiring and connecting to microphone and
wireless communication with the Internet. Stelarc sketches the goals of his work as
sculpting the body architecture with the help of genetics, stem cells growth,
implantology and surgery.
All these experiments and artistic projects seem to cross the boundaries of the
unknown, the boundaries of species and kingdoms, the limits of biological
evolution and show the possibilities of changing the paradigms of biological body
structure by the use of different modes of manipulation: genetical,
nanotechnological, surgical or pharmaceutical. Thus, body is appearing to be
something else than it used to be. The humanity is bored with its form. This
corresponds with the development of plastic surgery and cyborgisation trend.

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4. Intelligent Shoes, Smart Teeth and Wearable Computing
The next shift is the changing identity of objects. As they become intelligent,
they start to control us. Although they fulfill HCI design principles being more
user-friendly, smaller and multifunctional, they are as well increasingly
independent and less visible. They are closer to us, transformative, hidden in
pockets, integrated with clothes, jewellery or quite soon - our bodies. Several
examples should describe best the progressing process.
The Martin Freys project Cabboots can be a perfect example of the technology
located on the border between an assistive technology and the technology of
control. Cabboots are shoes with integrated guidance system, which is placed in
the sole of the shoe and connected with the mobile device in the pocket. 5 The shoes
are designed for people with Alzheimer disease or with visual impairment. They
are programmable, so they can remember the way home or another route. The
shoes can see the obstacles thanks to the infrared detectors connected with small
motor modules which change the angulation of the sole of the shoe, enabling the
walking person to bypass the obstacle in a subconscious and safe way. But it is
possible to imagine the situation when somebody controls the device or hacks the
program. The shoes control the walking person, they see, decide, stimulate to walk,
show direction and do not allow making mistakes. It should not be forgotten as
well that such a subtle technology can be in certain situations dangerous (i.e.
letting blind person to cross the street on the red light). It is also dangerous as it
encourages the user to allow being controlled, it releases from responsibility and
thus from alertness.
There are also other questions that should be raised here. Nokia Morph is a
project of the future cellphone using nanotechnology - transformative materials
which are said to enable programming changeability of the form of the device.
According to Nokia such a phone will be easy to use and then change into a watch,
a credit card or a bracelet. 6 Some futuristic ideas go further - if a phone can be
everything, it can be as well an ear jewellery or even a tooth implant. The Audio
Tooth Implant project by students of the Royal College of Art in London, James
Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, presented on the summer exhibition in 2002, suggested
this technology is possible. 7 Young designers have shown a cellphone tooth
implant prototype and presented the idea of the device, speculating on possible
usages. The project was interpreted by multiple Internet sources as a real, until
several serious media reported it to be a fake one. 8 The project was in fact an
artistic manipulation which was supposed to raise a social dispute on the limits of
technology incorporation to the body. Although not really tempting so far, this kind
of technology and protechnological fashion can prevail within several years or
decades. Paradoxically, it is not far from Stelarcs aims of the project Ear on Arm. 9
This can be regarded as a radical exemplification of the idea of wearable
computing developed by Steve Mann and other designers-futurists. 10 Alois Ferscha
draws a straight line between Edward Thorps miniaturised computer from 1961

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(developed for cheating in casinos in Reno and Las Vegas), Steve Manns
wearable computer from 1981 (built in a rucksack for creating a first lifelog), and
contemporary usage of mobile phones by 3.2 billion people. 11 He suggests that
wearable computing is a design process which aims at creating technologies which
will be adapted to the needs of the users, not vice versa as in the case of universal
computers, to which people have to adapt. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine
such a technology without the side effects, as i.a. painful disconnect mentioned
years ago by Steve Mann. 12
5. Lunch with a Cyborg: Cyborg Communication Model
Probably the most important shift can be observed in the field of
communication paradigms. Cyborgs communicate differently than humans do. The
technologically reconstructed objects, animals or plants, too. And the
technologically reworked environment serves as a totally unprecedented arena for
communication activities. All these factors create the possibility to think about the
need of the actualisation of communication models. It should be mentioned here
that the first impulse for such modeling was the lunch which I had with Steve
Mann, Derrick de Kerckhove and several friends in chinese district of Toronto
during summer 2009. 13
There are of course several variable factors which should not be forgotten in
such modeling process. The first factor is a form of a cyborg, i.e. Steve Mann,
Kevin Warwick and Stelarc are cyborgs of different types, each of them
communicates differently. This should be taken into consideration for future
analysis. What is also important is the factor that, at least so-far, not everyone is a
cyborg - this means that the model should consider also the situation of mixed
communication (h - h+) between a biological person and a cyborg. A biological
person can also use media (phone, camera, photo camera, GPS, voice recorder etc.)
which would impact the communication act (h+o - h+o). The other issue is the
constant and sometimes almost invisible presence of technosphere and cultural
environment. The new mediatisation of life changes the communication situations
more and more often.
This fact has not been fully recognised by the communication studies
(communicology). Traditional models (h - h) of communication do not describe
cyborg communication which occures simultaneously on multiple levels. So far it
has occurred at least on six: [1] interpersonal communication with the interactor
(personal level), [2] internal communication with the technical supporting
system/part of the cyborg body, i.e. camera, computer, GPS, microchip (technical
level), [3] communication with the Web environment and information (data level),
[4] (inter)cultural level of communication (cultural level), [5] external
communication with the technosphere, public or shared, (technosphere level), [6]
communication with other objects (non-mediatised), (objects level).

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The important matter is the type of cyborg - Kevin Warwick communicates
using the chip in his forearm with the computer, objects or people. This means that
some actions as opening doors are done by the chip itself and that the part of
communication is purely electrical (felt as impulses). Steve Mann perceives the
world through the eye of a camera connected via the Web to the computer and
specific software which modifies the world image according to the choice and
comes back through the Web to the display in Steves glasses. This causes multiple
perceptual modes (i.e. X ray perception) and also - a span in a communication,
necessary for the visual signal to go to the private Steves technosphere, be
processed there and come back to his eye to be analysed by himself. Stelarc's case
is also different - his body becomes subjected to various actions of Internet users
and moves in the way they want or hears the words spoken by somebody accessing
the Web.
The technosphere is an important factor of cyborg communication and should
be described closer. New media appear to be everywhere nowadays. They
reconstruct the communication situations as well. It can be assumed that they have
three main functions: [1] they become the object of communication, [2] as well as
reproduction or recording machines, [3] and the independent actors of
communication.
But the cyborg communication (h+ - h+) is different. The technosphere is the
level of technology - devices, systems and networks. For cyborgs the technosphere
is not only outside but also inside the body. The technosphere for a cyborg is a
natural environment, it becomes similar to culture, which cannot be separated from
a person. For every cyborg the technology becomes a culture. But technosphere
can be also private, shared and public. Using a technical device creates a private
zone, sharing it (i.e. showing photos) can make it semipublic, while the public
level occurs when it is evident and common for every actor of communication.
Generally, it seems that the history of communication can be described as a
three step evolution: [1] h - h (human-to-human), [2] h +o - h+o (human+media
object - human + media object), [3] h+ - h+ (cyborg-to-cyborg), of course, with
regard to the fact that situations of mixed communication occur and not forgetting
about the fact that there is always a technosphere and a cultural level of
communication (language, gestures, culture, stereotypes, values etc.).
It should be remembered also that both, an interpersonal level of
communication as well as a traditional cultural level of communication (and all
problems connected with it) still exist in cyborg communication. On the other
hand, cyborg-to-cyborg communication can be regarded as a communication of
identities sharing the same culture, whereas human-to-cyborg communication can
be regarded as an intercultural communication. It should be also remembered that
the new communication situation, which has not been perceived by communication
theory, is also the communication with intelligent objects and environments,
another specific examples of a new intercultural communication.

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6. Conclusion
It seems that the most important paradigm shifts concern the definition of
human being, other organisms, as well as anthropogenic artifacts and
communication processes between them all. Maybe instead of arguing whether it is
good or bad for humankind, it would be better to quote, in the role of coda, Marvin
Minsky whose words actually in a way paradoxically correspond to Kevin
Warwicks cyborg prophecies quoted in the beginning. Minsky suggests that the
situation is not so evident, and - especially in this specific context - nothing is
really sure about the future. Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our
children. 14

Notes
1

K. Warwick, March of the Machines: The Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence,

University of Chicago Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2004, p. 21.
2
K. Warwick, I, Cyborg. Illinois, 2004. See also Infonomia, Cyborg Life: Kevin
Warwick, 14th April 2008, Video published on YouTube, http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=RB_l7SY_ngI, Viewed 20 April 2008.
3
E. Kac, Natural History of the Enigma. See also H. Leopoldseder, C. Schoepf and
G. Stocker, Prix Arts Electronica: CyberArts 2009, Linz, 2009, pp. 104-109.
4
E Kac, GFP Bunny, Kibla, Maribor 2000, pp. 101-131, Available at
http://ekac.org/gfpbunny.html#gfpbunnyanchor.
5
M. Frey, Cabboots, http://www.freymartin.de/en/projects/cabboots, Accessed 14
June 2010.
6
Buddesign, Nokia Morph Concept. 25 February 2008, Video published on
YouTube, Accessed 20 April 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXgTobCJHs&feature=fvw.
7
J. Auger and J. Loizeau, Audio Tooth Implant, http://www.augerloizeau.com/index.php?id=7, Accessed 14 June 2010.
8
T.V. Wilson, How Cell-Phone Implants Work, How Stuff Works, 1 April 2002,
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-implant.htm, Accessed 14 June
2010; Put Your Mobile Where Your Mouth Is, BBC News World Edition, 20 June
2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2055654.stm, Accessed 14 June 2010.
9
Stelarc, op. cit.
10
S. Mann, Humanistic Intelligence, Arts Electronica Facing the Future: A
Survey of Two Decades, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA)/London, 1999, pp. 420-427.
11
A. Ferscha, Wearable IT: How much Technology can Humankind Bear?,
Human Nature, Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2009, pp. 308-309.
12
Mann, op. cit., pp. 422-423.
13
Symbols used in the model are: h for human being, h+ for cyborg of any
form, o for object/medium (h+o means that it is used by a person, without h

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means that it is intelligent and independent), t for technosphere, c for cultural
background.
14
M. Minsky, Will Robots Inherit the Earth?, Scientific American, October 1994,
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html, Accessed 5 July
2010.

Bibliography
Auger, J. and Loizeau, J., Audio Tooth Implant.
loizeau.com/index.php?id=7. Accessed 14 June 2010.

http://www.auger-

Buddesign, Nokia Morph Concept. 25 February 2008. Video published on

YouTube. Accessed 20 April 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXgTobCJHs&feature=fvw.
Burton, M., Nanotopia/Future Farm. Human Nature: Arts Electronica 2009.
Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2009.
DAndrea, R., Dean, M. and Donovan, M., The Robotic Chair. Prix Arts
Electronica: Cyberarts 2006. Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2006.
Delvoye, W., Cloaca. Prix Arts Electronica: Cyberarts 2007. Hatje Cantz, Linz,
2007.
Ferscha, A., Wearable IT: How much Technology can Humankind Bear?. Human
Nature: Arts Electronica 2009. Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2009.
Frey, M., Cabboots. http://www.freymartin.de/en/projects/cabboots. Accessed 14
June 2010.
Infonomia, Cyborg Life: Kevin Warwick. 14 April 2008. Video published on
YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_l7SY_ngI. Accessed 20 April
2008.
Kac, E., GFP Bunny. http://ekac.org/gfpbunny.html#gfpbunnyanchor. Kibla,
Maribor, 2000.
Kac, E., Natural History of the Enigma (2003-2009). Prix Arts Electronica:
Cyberarts 2009. Hatje Cantz, Linz, 2009.

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Kaku, M. (dir), Visions of the Future: The Intelligence Revolution. BBC Series,
2007.
Mann, S., Humanistic Intelligence (1997). Arts Electronica Facing the Future: A
Survey of Two Decades. MIT Press, Cambridge (MA)/London, 1999.
Minsky, M., Will Robots Inherit the Earth?. Scientific American.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html. Accessed 5 July
2010.
Popp, J., Microflow. Prix Arts Electronica: Cyberarts 2008. Hatje Cantz, Linz,
2008.
Stelarc, The Ear on the Arm: Engineering Internet Organ. http://www.stelarc.va.
com.au/projects/earonarm/index.html. Accessed 14 June 2010.
Warwick, K., I, Cyborg. Illinois University Press, Illinois, 2004.
Warwick, K., March of the Machines: The Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence.
University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2004.
Wilson, T.V., How Cell-phone Implants Work. How Stuff Works.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-implant.htm. Accessed 14 June
2010.
Anna Maj, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Cultural
Communication, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. Interested in media
anthropology and theory of perception. Currently her research and writing is
connected with media education strategies and the impact of new technologies on
the brain and perception.

Mission to Earth: Planetary Proprioception and the

Cyber-Sublime
Marc Barasch and Ksenia Fedorova
Abstract
Our sense of the self and its relation to its surroundings is being increasingly
reshaped by telematic prostheses. Geotagging, Google Earth, biomapping,
telepresence, augmented reality (AR), and distributed intelligence are creating new
locative sense-perceptions, unprecedented narratives, and new feelings (and
praxes) of agency-at-a-distance. The chapter considers methods of enhancing
connectivity and efficacy between a person and his/her surroundings via mapping
techniques, storytelling, and social and artistic projects using telecommunication
and locative media. Roy Ascotts question Is there love in the telematic
embrace?(1990) underpins others: Is there engagement beyond entertainment?
How might the creative force of the imaginal be potentiated by new media
platforms to make measurable change in the world? Can locative media deepen our
sense of embeddedness, recreating those ancient reality-maps where selfhood was
co-extensive with community and Nature, perhaps spurring us to address todays
urgent social and ecological challenges? Or will these media further abstract actual
relatedness, narrowing it to more quantifiable and qualifiable instrumental
operations?
Key Words: Proprioception, mapping, locative media, augmented reality,
prosthesis, environment, geo-tagging, virtual reality, imaginal, cyber-sublime.
*****
1. Mapping Meaning: Where is the World, Where Are You?
Our quotidian sense of selfthe real-time I is formed through constant
cognitive and autonomic mapping of the relationship between various parts of the
body (proprioception), and the bodys surroundings (exteroception). It is moulded
as well by culturally determined assumptions about the spacethe distance
between self and other, and self and environment. From Bachelard and Lefevre to
Derrida and Foucault, the issues of space its mental and social construction and
representation converge on principles of connectivity and heterogeneity.
Its an old philosophical question: Where is the world located? Weve gone
from truncated, planar medieval maps squeezed between You Are Here and
Here Lie Dragons to their Mercator and Dymaxion successors, to lunar explorers
iconic images of the Big Blue Marble (There We Are!), to Google Earths
malleable mapplets (well omit post-Einsteinian nonlocality, where nothing is
anywhere).

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No matter how accurate it is, the map is not the territory. A map is inherently a
connecting point between the subjective and objective realms, between the real and
the abstract. With everyone now digitally empowered to be a new cartographer,
Deleuze and Guattaris strategy of releasing of the territory from its previous
mappings (deterritorialization) and placing new meanings on it
(reterritorialization) 1 becomes particularly relevant.
Writing about interactive media, Jeremy Hight stresses: To read a place is no
longer about placing a singular narrative upon it, triggered from a map, nor is this
notion of reading only to have a singular, unalterable experience or
interpretation 2 Instead, we can now embed multiple readings at GPS
coordinates that augment our collective understanding. New mappings are taking
closer notice of ecologies, cultures, migrations, indigenous meta-realities, the
Umwelt beneath the visible surface configurations. But will they help us develop a
needed sense of personal and collective agency?
Technologys radical acceleration and diffusion of communication creates an
ever-greater virtualization and immaterialization in our relationship to our natural
surroundings (the core of the famous critique by Paul Virilio, 3 among others). Is
our feeling for the environment attenuated, its speculative and fantasy aspects
weakened, when Earth is transmuted into Google Earth, marvellously overlaid with
ever more finely granulated data- points? Or does this ever more perfect digital
simulacrum help us experience our identity within a global body with greater
ontological certainty? Our geolocated position and that of other people and objects
becomes a foundational element in an interactive neural net resembling the
emergence of an autopoietic living system.
2. The Global Body and the Proprioceptive Self
As tropes like global brain and global body become unavoidable, it is
relevant to note the recent evolution of medico-scientific views of the body: rather
than the corporation of organs and organelles mapped since the time of Galen, the
body is now revealed as a web of real-time, omnidirectional communication.
Psychoneuroimmunology has shown that cells and organs constantly twitter
information back and forth via neuropeptides and their receptors, and that these
receptors show up on every cell from gut to brain. (It is the paradigm suggested by
ancient Hindu depictions of the human body studded with eyes: the anatomy as
panopticon.)
Analgously, James Lovelocks Gaia Hypothesis suggests the Earth, too, is a
kind of aggregate life- form, 4 with members of the biosphere constituting receptors
that adjust dynamically to maintain an environment within their own range of lifesupport (a homeostasis being drastically stressed by the effluence of human
industry).
Technological innovation is creating a type of receptor system. 5 There are 3.1
billion mobile phones disseminated worldwide (and the stock will not only grow

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but be upgraded by models with greater intelligence and connectivity). There is
now intensive R&D on smart dust (early researchers coinage was smart
matter), a hypothetical wireless network of tiny microelectromechanical sensors
(MEMS) that can detect light, temperature, or vibration, etc. Plans calls for
scattering MEMS in the environment for uses by the military, security,
geophysical, and ecological monitoring communities. This will create different
levels of planetary proprio-/extero-perception, even a swarm-like distributed
intelligence. 6
The most advanced real-time imaging of our planetthe Google Earth
Observation (GEO)is now focused on monitoring of the worlds forests. A highperformance satellite imagery-processing engine in the online Google cloud
aggregates all of the Earths raw satellite imagery data and can with mind-boggling
speed analyze deforestation processes; illegal logging can not only be quickly
detected, but its precise locations dispatched to local law enforcement authorities
and potentially halted.
In mapping, as in other domains, knowledge is power. Googles efforts might
be regarded in the tradition of H.G. Wells sci-fi classic, The Shape of Things to
Come, where rational-technologist Airmen act as relatively benign planetary
managers (they might as well have Dont Be Evil as part of their insignia). On
the other hand, once the bad guy in James Camerons Avatar has at his disposal a
complete 3-D map of the Home Tree, he is able to destroy it to exploit its trove of
unobtainium, shredding the human and ethnobotanical mapping layers into
cannon fodder.
The challenge becomes to embed (and extract) meaning and not just
information in these new maps of our surroundings. That stream of petabytes in the
cloud leaves out a subjective emotional depiction of space. The rational-objective
thrust, which comes to govern decisions of what information and interactions are
relevant, 7 can marginalize or omit truths of subjective vision.
3. The Imaginal as Augmented Reality
Satellite imagery is superior for global navigation and environmental
monitoring than medieval maps based on ignorance and fancy. But the growing
digital verisimilitude of mappings driven by utilitarian data acquisition also leaches
the world of its imaginal aspects.
Humans have always aspired to populate the world with their creative artefacts.
Art constitutes a vital platform for experimental (and experiential) freedom. It is
inherently an augmented reality, extending our perceptive abilities, inducing
empathy, and deepening our sensibilities. It fosters awareness of our multilayered
field of connection to the world and each other, of the fractal isomorphism of the
big picture and the telling detail.
In the case of new media, Christiane Paul, the new media curator at the
Whitney Museum, defines context awareness as physical (bound to a location);

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social (connected to human interactions); organizational and economic (attached to
structures of governance and systems of value).
We might cite various analogues pointing to the interoperability (in a manner of
speaking) of objective cartography and the social and subjective phenomenologies
of space and place. The songlines of the Australian Aborigines famously
integrate mythopoetic narratives of the landscape with startlingly accurate and
functional mappings. They fuse stories of the ancient acts of creator gods, songs,
images and ritual movement with vast tracts of landscape they must navigate. They
show how the world can be apprehended in its exteriority and interiority at the
same time, deriving and deploying a sophisticated empirical knowledge system,
while existing in an intersubjective state with their surroundings. They move, as it
were, through an augmented reality (AR).
Todays AR is not that far from this aboriginal superimposition (fusion, really)
of narrative and environment. Elements in an AR system include computer vision,
object recognition, and information (usually geotagged) about the users
surroundings, rendering it interactive in real time and digitally usable. (A new app
called Layar allows external developers to laminate new information onto reality
to see, for example, the architecture of the past superimposed over that of the
present. iPhone4 today adds a gyroscopic function to create an experience of
seamless integration).
Milgrams Reality-Virtuality Continuum, proposed in 1994, shades gradually
from the real environment to a pure virtual environment, with the space in between
consisting of Augmented Reality (more reliant on the real environment) and
Augmented Virtuality (nearer to a purely virtual environment).
This liminal in-between space is a reminder of Kants theory of the sublime.
Applied to digital practices, it describes the decentering, dislocation, and disruption
of conventional contexting cues, challenging the reliability of ordinary senses for
locating ones subjective and objective self. The experience of the sublime
enhances the feeling of potentia, evoking the presence of something not only aweinspiring, but uncanny, even frightening in its unpredictablity.
This classic aesthetic category can be also usefully compared to Henri Corbins
description of the Islamic concept he translates as the imaginal, 8 in which we are
no longer reduced to the dilemma of thought and extension[or] limited to the
empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two is
placed an intermediate world alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus
imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world
of the intellect This faculty is the imaginative power, the one we must avoid
confusing with the imagination that modern man identifies with fantasy and that,
according to him, produces only the imaginary.

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4. Making Connections through Locative Art
A certain cohort of consumers have retreated from the objectively-mapped real
world into gaming and social networking virtual worlds that feel ontologically
real. It is in these virtual realities that the individual and the collective creative
process can yet be imprinted on the world.
There is a discernable trend toward bringing a sense of participation and agency
into gaming (geocaching, for example), and some locative art practices do
conduce toward engagement with the real environment. Site-specific new- media
art uses locations in space as a canvas, and its spatio-temporal dimension creates
a dynamic emotional experience transcending veridical cartography.
Locative media art strategies, implemented via Internet or mobile phones,
include:
1) Facilitating personal effects on the impersonal built
environment:
For example, Masaki Fujihatas Light on the Net project,
which allows the user-visitor to turn on or off any of a bank
of 20-watt lights in the lobby of Gifu Softopia Center west of
Tokyo, Japan.
2) Embodiment with augmented reality or biomapping:
For example, Rafael Lozano-Hemmers Pulse Front, which
was a matrix of light over Torontos Harbourfront, made by
beams from twenty powerful robotic searchlights controlled
by a network of sensors measuring the heart rate of passersby; and Biomapping by Christian Nold (UK), which uses
galvanic skin response measurements --the kind used in lie
detector tests --to record anxiety and stress levels of
participants as they move through the city.
3) Mapping invisible characteristics of space, such as radio and
sound waves, as well as the very physical characteristics:
For example, Steve Symonss (UK) Aura, which is a
virtual sound environment accessed by walking through a
space equipped with GPS and digital compass. Individual
users can hear the location of other participants, and work
together to create sonic tapestries through their relative
movements. 9 Additional examples include E-Turns by Jens
Brand (DE), which creates direct sonic connections between
two arbitrary locations on Earth, as well as the experiments
by Martin Howse and his team, which mash-up
psychogeographics with earth science measurements (site

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forensics and geophysical archaeology), charting local and
global geophysical effects like electromagnetic phenomena
on peoples lives. 10
4) User-led social mapping:
For example, Britglyph(UK) created country-wide virtual
land art pieces, large patterns analgous to land glyphs like the
Cardiff Giant, but viewable only in virtual space. This
socially collaborative connect-the-dots relied on mobile
phones with cameras and network connectivity, online maps,
GPS and the connected community who make the whole
thing real by their actions. Different-but-related examples
are the urban computing done across multiple groups at
Intel Research and UC Berkeley; 11 and Hullabaloo (2007),
which dynamically generates new urban sonic experiences
that reflect the verve of people in transit. (Here each person
contributes a unique, personal sound to this place-based
ringtone mix using a phone app.) The thrust of most pieces of
this type is to build connections within the communities via
developing diverse relations to local urban environments.
5) Environmentally oriented projects:
Some, like The Tele-Garden, by Ken Goldberg and Joseph
Santaromman (growing plants at a distance), make allusions
to natural feedback loops. The witty S.W.A.M.P by
Douglas Easterly and Matt Kenyon automates the distant
watering of a Home Depot-purchased plant by keying it to
the companys Dow Jones stock price.
The uniqueness of most of these pieces is that the artwork exists in that strange
liminal space that we have created between the internet and the physical universe.
In the case of pieces incorporating telepresence, the remote user has a sensory
experience that also interfaces with an actual distant physical action whose results
can be observed (and sometimes, adjusted) via a feedback loop.
Locative media and telematics projects aim to enhance both the experience of
ones physical surroundings as well as the social dimension. This latter can be seen
in Blast Theory, where people in different locations follow each other in both
reality and virtual reality by transmitting their coordinates. This has the effect of
developing trust between dislocated people in a mediated universe. The immediacy
of this connection, facilitated by such new art practices, tends to be not alienating
and atrophying as some gaming tends to be, but enlivening.

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5. Mission to Earth
Can interactive social-artistic processes, by connecting one point of here-andnow to a bigger reality, help us observe, reconceive, and eventually affect the
structures of our environment? How might social art Joseph Beuys, conceptual
art progenitor and co-founder of the German Green Party, coined the term social
sculptureincorporate telematic and locative media art, psycho-geophysical
performances, and other forms of aesthetic interventionism?
As with any tool, the new telematic prostheses can be used to heal or to harm.
In telesurgery, a surgeon moves a joystick to control a robot scalpel to cut into a
distant patients delicate flesh across a continent. At a military base in Ohio, a
soldier-technician detects the movement of human figures limned in infrared on a
real-time aerial surveillance image, twitches a joystick at his videogame-like
console, and sends a Hellfire missile into a mud-brick house in Waziristan.
How can new media technologies help us not only to apply measurements and
develop new forms of multisensory engagement, but achieve the level of agency
that can affect actual transformation? One project, developed by the charity Green
World Campaign (www.greenworld.org), proposes to use interactive geolocation
to catalyze global treeplanting. Media facade installations planned for major cities
will enable people to use cell phone shortcode to fund the planting of trees on
degraded land, with stands of trees geo-tagged and displayed on a dynamic map.
The project also encourages global citizens to upload the geocoordinates of trees
they have planted and embellish them with their own media content, embedding
personal narratives of a green world into a growing forestation map. 12
Could a global brain, with cyber-mediated hands and feet, instantiate
verifiable alterations in the natural world? With civilization itself threatened by
environmental crisis, the conventional sense of where our own body begins and
leaves off is incomplete without an intimately felt sense of the world we inhabit.
Lacking this, the most technologically elaborate planet management will fall short.
We love what we can touch and that which touches us back. We care about people
and places whose narratives are vividly present to us. We act to protect what we
cherish, with any means available.
Could a cyber-enhanced collective self extend its proprioception to the very
skin of the Earth? Could we harness the transformative potential of the Web by
jacking into the planet itself? New media technologies and collaborative social
sculpture introduce fresh imaginal dimensions to our relationship with the natural
(and human) environment, perhaps leading to a more tender and generative
embrace.

Notes
1

G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaux, trans. B. Massumi, University

of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

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2

J. Height, Writing within the Map, Viewed on 2 August 2010, http://www.neme.

org/main/1111/writing-within-the-map.
3
P. Virilio, Open Sky, trans. J. Rose, Verso, London, New York, 2003.
4
The eco-activist conference the BIoneerswhich often refers to the soils
pervasively interconnected mycelium mat as the Earths Internet has as its slogan
a statement redolent of natural cybernetics: Its all alive, its all intelligent, its all
connected.
5
There are nearly two billion cellphone users on Earth, who as they upgrade to
GPS- enabled smart phones will become neurons sending afferent and efferent
signals. Interactive devices are being embedded directly in the world, granting
connectivity and RFID-chip trackability to objects. A Hawaiian company in May,
2010 became the first to embed RFID chips in trees so investors can track the
growth of their hardwood loa investments.
6
It is speculated that more advanced nanobots will be able to move, communicate,
and work together; conduct molecular assembly; even replicate themselves (sci-fi
writers speculate on the emergent properties of swarming pseudo- intelligence; cf.
Stanislaw Lem, The Invincible, (1964) or Michael Chrichtons Prey (2002)
7
Compare to Deleuze and Guattaris rhizome theory of non-hierarchichal data
representation, characterized by heterogeneity, mutualism, and multiplicity, where,
as they put it, any point can be connected to anything other, and must be.
8
H. Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, Viewed on 3
May, 2010, http://hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm.
9
D. Hemment, Locative Arts, Viewed on 3 May, 2010, http://drewhemment.com/
2004/locative_arts.html.
10
http://www.1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html, Viewed on 4 June 2010.
11
http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/projects.htm, Viewed on 4 June 2010.
12
Beuys connected his famous 7000 Oaks project with the metamorphosis of the
social body in itself, bringing it into a new social order for the future.

Bibliography
Bachelard, G., The Poetics of Space. Beacon, 1994.
Bourriaud, N., Relational Aesthetics. Les Presse Du Reel, 1998.
Corbin, H., Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal. Viewed on 3
May, 2010, http://hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., A Thousand Plateaux. Trans. Massumi, B.,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

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Foucault, M., Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias. Viewed on 3 August 2010,
http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html.
Height, J., Writing within the Map. Viewed on
http://www.neme.org/main/1111/writing-within-the-map.

August

2010,

Hemment, D. (ed), Locative Media Special Issue. Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

Vol. 14, Iss. 3.
Locke, M., Are You In Love?. Camerawork: Journal of Photographic Arts. Vol.
30, No. 2, 2003, pp. 30-32.
Lovelock, J., Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2000.
Thayer, P., On Narrative, Abstract and Location: A Few Words on Location-Based
Data in Art. Viewed on 1 July 1 2010, http://pallit.lhi.is/~palli/NarAbsLoc.pdf.
Thompson, N. (ed), Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape,
Cartography and Urbanism. Millehouse Publishing, New York, 2009.
Virilio, P., Open Sky. Trans. Rose, J., Verso, London, New York. 2003.
Marc Barasch is the founder of the Green World Campaign, which fosters tree
planting in five countries (www.greenworld.org). He is the author of Remarkable
Recovery (1995), a biospsychosocial investigation of spontaneous remission;
Healing Dreams (2001), a phenomenology of numinous experience
(www.healingdreams.com); and The Compassionate Life (2005), a study of
empathy and altruism (www.compassionatelife.com) He was the writer-producer
of a 1992 environmental TV special for broadcaster Ted Turner that was shown to
over a billion people. He is developing interactive media projects with
collaborators in Europe and the U.S. to engage the public in regenerative
ecology. He is working on a new book on synchronicity.
Ksenia Fedorova is a lecturer at the department of Philosophy and the
department of Art History and Cultural Studies, the Ural State University
(Ekaterinburg, Russia) and a senior researcher and curator at the Ekaterinburg
branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts. She is currently working
on her PhD dissertation New Media Art and the Technological Sublime. The
sphere of her research interests includes philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, cultural

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studies, theory and history of contemporary and media art, philosophy of
technology, museology.

Avatar: A Tale of Indigenous Survival?

Dolores Miralles-Alberola
Abstract
This chapter explores the obvious connections between worldwide indigenous
peoples and the Navi, the humanoid inhabitants of the satellite Pandora in the film
Avatar (2009) directed by James Cameron. It also considers the present and future
implications of these connections on the representation of the indigenous persona
in mainstream culture, and on indigenous vindications of land, ecology,
sovereignty, survival, history and culture. Departing from a methodology that
prioritizes Native American scholars analysis on indigenous contemporary
narratives of the Americas and on depictions of indigenous peoples in mainstream
culture, and studying the compilation of several current articles and opinions from
a variety of forums from Native American intellectuals and activists after the
release of the film, I propose that this sci-fi film provides a symbolic liberation and
a metaphorical decolonization. Nevertheless, this chapter takes into account the
stereotypes appearing in the film, namely the good savage and the warrior princess
images, and the messianic mission of the outsider. The explicit message of Avatar
addresses current issues affecting not only indigenous survival worldwide such
as the plundering of their natural resources and the destruction of sacred land by
corporationsbut also affecting the human race in general. And I say explicit,
because there is no doubt the film seeks to send the message to as many people as
possible. In this case, the cinematographic language does not show any intention of
literary specificity; it does not have a subtle screenplay and leaves very little to
audience interpretation. Instead, it relies on an overwhelming use of 3D technology
and science-fiction semiotics. The anticipation created by the release of Avatar,
and the debate it has opened, along with the negative and positive responses from
diverse sectors of society highlight, once more, the influence of film, in general,
and science fiction, in particular, on popular culture.
Key Words: Avatar, indigenous transnational activism, liberation narratives.
*****
I say that tribal literatures are not some branch waiting to be
grafted onto the main trunk. Tribal literatures are the tree, the
oldest literatures in the Americas, the most American of
American literatures. We are the canon. 1
When concerning indigenous peoples, the history of narrative is full of
appropriations, Western literatures pretending to represent aboriginal traditions. In
this sense, Avatar is another white film about indigenous colonized peoples. It is

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beyond any doubt that this film is a Hollywood product made to reach the widest
possible audience, and it falls again into the same old appropriations and
misrepresentations by showing clich after clich about indigenous peoples in
mainstream culture, while making references to representations in other Hollywood
blockbusters. Among these representations are: the messianic 2 image of the white
soldier destined to be the best Indian 3(a reference, as many have pointed out, to
Dances With Wolves, 4 but also to Pocahontas, Dune, The Emerald Forest, At Play
in the Fields of the Lord and District 9); the representation of the warrior princess
that falls in love with the white man (e.g. Pocahontas and Malinche); and the
elimination of the main male characters, since the deaths of the chief and the young
warrior are required so that the white conqueror and the Indian princess may give
birth to the mixed-blood nation.
The representations of female and male roles in relation to the elimination of
the indigenous male for the sake of the creation of the mestizo nation are something
deeply rooted in places like Mexico, 5 with the foundational fiction being MalincheHernn Corts giving birth to the first mestizo, a story in which the woman is
seen as a traitor to her people, and is later abandoned by the man a theme likewise
rooted in the myth of la Llorona which has extended throughout Latin America.
Thus, in the film Avatar, the main indigenous male characters are eliminated for
the sake of the white mans leadership, who, in this case, goes native and stays.
Nevertheless, I was perplexed when, near the end of the film, the Navia
clear representation of indigenous peoples worldwidedefeat the humansa
scarcely-concealed representation of Western colonialismand make them leave
Pandora. My perplexity was due to the fact that although the film shows concern
for environmental and, to some extent, indigenous issues, wrapped in a New Age
out-of this world atmosphere, I was not expecting such a resolution. In the end,
white people lose, and there is no possibility of dialogue and reconciliation. Only
the ones who decide to go native may stay. The film neither concludes with a
happy ending for Western people, nor portrays any attempt at reconciliation. On
the contrary, the humans defeat is nonnegotiable. Considering the films adoption
of the previously mentioned representations, its ending is very strange.
Even in indigenous films, the cowboys always win. A paradigmatic instance
of this tendency is Smoke Signals (1998), the first commercially successful movie
written, directed, co-produced, and acted by Native Americans. In this film, there
is a representative scene where the protagonists Victor and Thomas, two young
Coeur dAlene, are traveling by bus to Arizona. They have a conversation in which
Victor enlightens Thomas on how to be a real Indian: First, () you have to look
like a warrior. () Second you got to look as if you have secrets. () And third
you got to know how to use your hair. Thomas takes his braids out of his hair at a
convenience store and when they go back to the bus their seats have been taken by
two tough-looking white men wearing sun glasses and cowboy hats. Putting his
own advice into practice, Victor looks mean and mysterious as he attempts to

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reclaim their seats. One of the cowboys, however, responds: Now, you listen up.
These are our seats now. And theres not a damn thing you can do about it. So why
dont you and Super Indian there find yourself someplace else to have a powwow,
okay? After taking seats on a bench near the bathroom, Thomas remarks: Jeez,
Victor, I guess your warrior look doesnt work every time. 6 Alexie solves the
situation with disarming humor, as Thomas and Victor improvise lyrics for a drum
song caricaturizing John Wayne, the actor who represents in fiction the toughest
cowboy of them all. 7 The song goes as follows:
Oh, John Waynes teeth, John Waynes teeth, hey, hey,
hey, hey, ye! Oh, John Waynes teeth, John Waynes teeth,
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, ye! Are they false, are they real?
Are they plastic, are they steel? Hey, hey, hey, hey, yeeeee! 8
All the passengers on the bus, including the two tough cowboys, have no choice
but to listen to the tribal song, and are thus confronted with voices they believed
extinguished long ago. Nevertheless, Native Americans have been erased from the
mainstream narratives of nineteenth-century nation building in the United States.
As pointed out by Lakota-Sioux scholar Elizabeth CookLynn, the degradation to
which establishment imagery has relegated indigenous peoples identity and
culture, has resulted in the creation of a stereotype of vanishing people, trapped
between two cultures. Such a stereotypepromoted by intellectuals and writers
since the nineteenth centuryhas excluded the Native element from the nation.
The consequence of this conscious exclusion is a declaration of Western
superiority in the process of nation building. As Cook-Lynn explains:
The strong literary argument in defense of the narrative voice of
the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Euro-American culturists
seeks to declare the indigene persona non grata and
imaginatively dominate the literary landscape. The result has
been, until now, an almost unchallenged vision of Americas
superiority over those whose ancient mythologies of the land, it
has been thought, might deform and transfigure the newcomer. 9
It was precisely during the nineteenth century, the moment of the formation of
American nationalism, when indigenous voices were silenced and forced to be seen
in the collective memory as objects, losing their identities as subjects. The
supposedly extinguished indigenous culture has become instituted in intellectual
thinking to such a degree that, according to Cook-Lynn, even many indigenous
intellectuals have accepted it. This is why it is necessary to deconstruct cultural
paradigms and build new imaginaries from a Native perspective.

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The aim of indigenous fiction, as Cook-Lynn argues in part three of her book,
Who Will Tell the Stories?, is for it to become a literature of liberation, which
she defines as containing the use of nationalistic/tribal resistance. 10 However, the
author explains, [t]he unfortunate truth is that there are few significant works
being produced today by the currently popular American Indian fiction writers
which examine the meaningfulness of indigenous or tribal sovereignty in the
twentyfirst century. And she points out that even important indigenous writers,
such as Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor, seem to leave American Indian tribal
peoples in this country stateless, politically inept, and utterly without nationalistic
alternatives. 11 It is a condition sine qua non that Native American literature needs
to provide imaginary solutions to decolonization and propose nationalistic
schemas, beyond a prescriptive nationalism associated with Eurocentric models of
nation-states. Works of fiction must contain what Cook-Lynn interprets as the
political reality of the imagination. 12 In her analysis Cook-Lynn proposes that
imagination is an essential part of nationalism, since imagination is the source of
history. 13 So, nationalism must be contained in literature, a point the author
explains thusly:
In this current movement of critical thought away from
Europeanism, native traditionalists are telling scholars it is time
to abandon the idea that without pope or emperor nationhood has
never been achieved, that, on the contrary, national affiliations
are a part of the urgency of contemporary thought and writing for
American Indians, whose own national histories have never been
appropriately defined in reality-based, historical contexts. It is
the challenge of modern thinkers and critics to find out what
these nativist ideals mean in terms of the function of literature. 14
Cook-Lynn prompts indigenous intellectuals and writers to seek selfdetermination, which disappeared from the political and philosophical arena
without even being born. Accordingly, the need for sovereign affiliation is urgent
for Native intelligentsia, because national stories have never been properly
contextualized in reality. There is nothing more connected to the land than Native
tradition, which emphasizes the sacredness of land by prioritizing a connectedness
with both nature and the community. Therefore, if nation is defined in terms of
place, nothing is more nationalistic than Native tradition, where [e]ven language is
rooted to a specific place. 15
Thus, returning to the film, while Avatar is a futuristic tale, it nonetheless poses
intriguing questions about the past: what if a confederacy of indigenous peoples
had expelled the Western colonizers from the Americas? What if Christopher
Columbus had been invited to leave the territory? What if the Ghost Dance
Religion had reached its purpose of making the white man disappear from

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America? What if the confederacy led by the North-American indigenous leader
Tecumseh had been successful? All these questions revolve around historical
landmarks and make reference to attempts of resistance against colonialism.
It might be a mere coincidence, but this is a strategy used by Native-American
storytellers as a way to rewrite history and disarm the arguments that EuroAmerica has put forward to justify the colonization of the continent, portraying it
as the result of a fair war between masculine armies. Kimberly M. Blaeser
summarizes this strategy as follows: By a deft twist of the popular vision of
history, they [the writers] submerge their readers in the what ifs of historical
interpretation: What if the actions of history were reversed? 16 In Gerald Vizenors
novel Harold of Orange, when one of the characters is asked about his opinion of
the Bering Strait migration theory, the character responds: Which way across the
Bering Strait? Christopher Columbus is a Mayan who civilizes Europe in
Vizenors The Heirs of Columbus. Carter Revard has his protagonists claim
England in Report to the Nation: Clamming Europe. 17 Alexies short story
Imagining the Reservation begins as follows: () Didnt you know Jesus Christ
was a Spokane Indian? Imagine Columbus landed in 1492 and some tribe or
another drowned him in the ocean. Would Lester FallsApart be shoplifting in the 711? 18 By means of such satiric visions of history, Native American writers suggest
that any particular order of experience can be arbitrary and subjective.
Some indigenous scholars, such as Paula Gunn-Allen and DArcy McNickle,
claim that most indigenous tribes were pacific, something that they relate to the
matrilineal structure of the tribes. According to Paula Gunn-Allen this is one of the
stereotypes Western society uses to justify its expansion. The creation of such an
image legitimizes the occupation of Native land, by affirming that genocide was a
fair war between virile armies, where victory perpetuated the power of the winners.
As she states, it is another strategy of official history. The image of the warrior
represented only a small percentage of Native American population during the
invasion, but this image of the real Indian took over the image of the real people
in the collective imagination. 19
Nevertheless, we can take its message, not as a violent one, but as a metaphor
that calls for and supports a transnational indigenous confederacy of resistance to
what is happening presently with multinational gold mining companies in
Guatemala, oil exploitation in the Amazon and Nigeria, logging and mining
companies in the Penans lands in Borneo, and many other examples of the
plundering of indigenous natural resources and the destruction of sacred land by
corporations.
As demonstrated in a number of current articles and the opinions expressed by
indigenous intellectuals, activists and communities in a variety of forums, the
overwhelming success of the film has helped to give visibility to their claims.
Individual indigenous groups, along with activist organizations are saying they feel
depicted by the Navi when they tell the world Hey, this is about us, we are

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them this is not a fantasy, oil companies are stealing our sacred lands, our way
of life, our dignity. 20
In conclusion, I believe Avatar and the debate this film is fostering work in two
ways. Firstly, by retelling history and compensating injustice with imagination, it is
helping to spread a new representation of indigenous peoples in mainstream
culture, but also providing an imaginary liberation for indigenous peoples
themselves. In spite of being a story about the past, about the possibilities of an
altered history, it has an influence upon the present and future representations of
tribal people. Secondly, the film is helping to give visibility to individual groups,
but also to global indigenous organizations, who are claiming their rights in
peaceful ways. In the online publication Survival, Stephen Corry sums up the
situation with these words: One of the best ways of protecting our worlds natural
heritage is surprisingly simple; it is to secure the land rights of tribal peoples. 21
Finally, to the question: is Avatar a tale of indigenous survival?, the answer is,
probably not in its conception, but it has been and still is in its aftermath in
mainstream culture. However, as spectators, we must look first at the narratives
produced inside the indigenous community, since such narratives are the authentic
tree.

Notes
1

C.S. Womack, Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, University of

Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998, pp. 6-7.
2
G. Boucher, Interview with James Cameron: Yes, Avatar is Dances With Wolves
in Space... Sorta, Los Angeles Times, 14 August 2009, Viewed on 10 March 2010,
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/08/james-cameron-the-new-trek
-rocks-but-transformers-is-gimcrackery.html.
3
T.M. Clapper, The Great White Male Messiah Complex in James Camerons
Avatar, Associated Content, 20 January 2010, Viewed on 20 March 2010,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2604397/the_great_white_male_messiah
_complex.html?cat=40.
4
Boucher, op. cit.
5
G.S. Estrada, The Macho Body as Social Malinche, Velvet Barrios: Popular
Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities (New Directions in Latino American Cultures),
Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2003, pp. 41-62.
6
S. Alexie, Writer. Smoke Signals. Dir. C. Eyre. Cast: A. Beach, E. Adams, I.
Bedard, Miramax Home Entertainment, 1998.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
E. Cook-Lynn, Why I Cant Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays. University
of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996, p. 64.
10
Ibid., p. 85.

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11

Ibid.
L.M. Silko, Almanac of the Dead. Penguin, New York, New York, 1991.
13
Cook-Lynn, op. cit., p. 91.
14
Ibid., pp. 86-87.
15
Ibid., p. 88.
16
K.M. Blaeser, The New Frontier of Native American Literature: Dis-Arming
History with Tribal Humor, Genre, Vol. 25.4, 1992, p. 360.
17
Ibid., pp. 360-362.
18
S. Alexie, Imagining the Reservation, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven, Harper Perennial, New York, 1993, p. 149.
19
P.G. Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992, pp. 209-221.
20
The following are online sources that show, in some way, the identification of
some indigenous struggles worldwide with Avatar: S. Corry, Avatar is Real Say
Tribal People, Survival, 25 January 2010, Viewed on 20 February 2010,
http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5466; S. Corry, Tribal People Appeal
to James Cameron, Survival, 8 February 2010. http://www.survivalinter
national.org/news/5529; S. Escrcega, Avatar: An Indigenous Story? Reflections
on the Conversations that Indigenous Peoples Had with James Cameron,
Facebook, 28 April 2010, Viewed on 29 April 2010, http://www.facebook.com/#!/
note.php?note_id=410629049746; J. Hance, The Real Avatar Story: Indigenous
People Fight to Save their Forest Homes from Corporate Exploitation,
Mongabay.com, 22 December 2009, Viewed on 2 April 2010, http://news.mogan
bay.com/2009/1222 hance_avatar.htlm; J. Lee, Avatar Activism: James Cameron
Joins Indigenous Struggles Worldwide, The Indypendent, 26 April 2010, Viewed
on 1 May 2010, http://www.indypendent.org/2010/04/26/avatar-activism/; M. Lo,
Actress Sigourney Weaver Joins Dozens of Indigenous Leaders from Around the
World Who are Participants of the UN Permanent Forum, Facebook, 26 April
2010, Viewed on 28 April 2010, http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_
id=396726809384&id=702175310; B. Powless, Avatar and the True Defenders of
the Land, rabble.ca: News for the True Defenders of the Land, 14 January 2010,
Viewed on 7 April 2010, http://rabble.ca/news/2010/01/avatar-and-true-defendersland; J. Smith, Movie Review: Avatar and Real World Struggles, Grand Institute
for Information Democracy, 27 December 2009, Viewed on 5 January 2010,
http://grid.org/2009/12/27/movie-review-avatar-and-real-world-struggles/; S. Tree,
Blockbuster Avatar Translates Ongoing Plight of Worlds Native? People,
Vernon County Broadcaster, 4 March 2010, Viewed on 10 May 2010,
http://www.vernonbroadcaster.com/articles/2010/03/03/opinion/storyop; J. Utset,
El argumento de Avatar centra la atencin del Foro de Indgenas de la ONU,
elcomerciodigital.com. 24 April 2010, Viewed on 10 May 2010, http://www.
12

106

Avatar

__________________________________________________________________
elcomerciodigital.com/agencias/20100424/mas-actualidad/internacional/argument
-avatar-centra-atencion foro_201004240833.html.
21
Corry, Avatar is Real, op. cit.

Bibliography
Alexie, S., The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Harper Perennial, New
York, 1993.
Allen, P.G., The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions. Beacon Press, Boston, 1992.
Blaeser, K.M., The New Frontier of Native American Literature: Dis-Arming
History with Tribal Humor. Genre. Vol. 25.4, 1992.
Boucher, G., Interview with James Cameron: Yes, Avatar is Dances With Wolves
in Space... Sorta. Los Angeles Times. 14 August 2009, Viewed on 10 March 2010.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/08/james-cameron-thenew-trekrocks-but-transformers-is-gimcrackery.html.
Clapper, T.M., The Great White Male Messiah Complex in James Camerons
Avatar. Associated Content. 20 January 2010, Viewed on 20 March 2010,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2604397/the_great_white_male_messiah
_complex.html?cat=40.
Cook-Lynn, E., Why I Cant Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays. University
of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996.
Corry, S., Avatar Is Real Say Tribal People. Survival. 25 January 2010, Viewed
on 20 February 2010, http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5466.
, Tribal People Appeal to James Cameron. Survival. 8 February 2010. 20
February 2010. http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5529.
Escrcega, S., Avatar: An Indigenous Story? Reflections on the Conversations
that Indigenous Peoples Had with James Cameron. Facebook. 28 April 2010,
Viewed on 29 April 2010. http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=
410629049746.

Dolores Miralles-Alberola

107

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Estrada, G.S. The Macho Body as Social Malinche. Velvet Barrios: Popular
Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities (New Directions in Latino American Cultures).
Gaspar de Alba, A. (ed), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2003.
Hance, J., The Real Avatar Story: Indigenous People Fight to Save their Forest
Homes from Corporate Exploitation. Mongabay.com. 22 December 2009, Viewed
on 2 April 2010. http://news.moganbay.com/2009/1222 hance_avatar.htlm.
Lee, J., Avatar Activism: James Cameron Joins Indigenous Struggles Worldwide.
The Indypendent. 26 April 2010, Viewed on 1 May 2010. http://www.indypendent.
org/2010/04/26/avatar-activism/.
Lo, M., Actress Sigourney Weaver Joins Dozens of Indigenous Leaders from
Around the World Who are Participants of the UN Permanent Forum. Facebook.
26 April 2010, Viewed on 28 April 2010. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?
note_id=396726809384&id=702175310.
Newitz, A., When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar? Io9. 18
December 2009, Viewed on 7 April 2010. http://io9.com/5422666/when-willwhite-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar?skyline=true&s=x.
Powless, B., Avatar and the True Defenders of the Land. rabble.ca: News for the
True Defenders of the Land. 14 January 2010, Viewed on 7 April 2010.
http://rabble.ca/news/2010/01/avatar-and-true-defenders-land.
Rogers, I.H., Avatar: The Most Racist Movie of All Time. The Progressive
Corner. 27 April 2010, Viewed on May 2 2010. http://progressivecorner.word
press.com/.
Silko, L.M., Almanac of the Dead. Penguin, New York, 1992.
Smith, J., Movie Review: Avatar and Real World Struggles. Grand Institute for
Information Democracy. 27 December 2009, Viewed on 5 January 2010.
http://griid.org/2009/12/27/movie-review-avatar-and-real-world-struggles/.
Tree, S., Blockbuster Avatar Translates On-Going Plight of Worlds Native
People. Vernon County Broadcaster. 4 March 2010, Viewed on 10 May 2010.
http://www.vernonbroadcaster.com/articles/2010/03/03/opinion/01storyop.txt .

108

Avatar

__________________________________________________________________
Utset, J., El argumento de Avatar centra la atencin del Foro de Indgenas de la
ONU. elcomerciodigital.com. 24 April 2010, Viewed on 10 May 2010.
http://www.elcomerciodigital.com/agencias/20100424/mas-actualidad/internacion
al/argumento-avatar-centra-atencion-foro_201004240833.html.
Dolores Miralles-Alberola PhD in Spanish with a DE in Native American Studies
(UCDavis). She works for the Department of International Relations at the
University of Alicante, Spain. Her current field of research has to do with
indigenous film and representations of Native peoples in film.

Part IV
Science Fiction and the Literatures of Cyberspace

Loss of Connection: Science in Romanticism and Modern

Science Fiction
Susan Rose Nash
Abstract
Science has been presented as a method of solving the problems humanity faces;
and scientists have been lauded as the saviours of the world. However, writers of
Romantic-era fiction and of modern science fiction share a fear of the future that
humanity could create using science unchecked by humane judgment. Nathaniel
Hawthorne explores the power of science in the hands of humanity. Hawthornes
Rappaccinis Daughter and The Birth-mark show science entering the domestic
sphere, with scientists as a father and a husband, both stories ending in tragedy.
Dedication to scientific experimentation creates separation between these men and
their humanity. This attitude continued in modern science fiction. In the twentiethcentury science influences the general public with little thought of the
consequences. Society changes because of science. Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit
451 shows the same lack of humanity that Hawthorne demonstrates in his
scientists, but on a societal scale. The Montags accept science and technology
because it has always been present in their lives. For both Hawthorne and
Bradbury, a world guided by science results in families being destroyed, society
failing, and violence being considered inconsequential. The human drive to control
and destroy creates a direct link between the Romantic period and modern science
fiction.
Key Words: Romantic, Science Fiction, Hawthorne, Bradbury, Isolation.
*****
The focus of humans lives guides the relationships they gain, the goals they
attempt, and the impact they have on the world. For the Romantics and many
modern science fiction writers, science serves as both a distraction from and a
distortion of a positive focus for a persons life. In the early days of science, it
seemed the only people who were affected by science were those who were
dedicated to scientific exploration and the people around them. As science grew to
affect average people, the distractions and distortions also grew. Both the
Romantic writer Nathaniel Hawthorne and the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury
explore the ways lives can be lost as a consequence of science.
Nathaniel Hawthornes The Birth-Mark explores the loss of two lives:
Georgiana and her scientist husband, Aylmer. Aylmer washes away the furnacesmoke, [] the stain of acids from his fingers, and [persuades] a beautiful woman
to become his wife. 1 Aylmer appreciates her beauty, but after the marriage it
becomes clear that he desires her for other reasons. Rather than creating a life with

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his wife, Aylmer becomes obsessed with proving his faith in mans ultimate
control over nature. 2 Aylmers scientific interests bring destruction to the union
of reverence and love, [causing it to yield] to cold, clinical detachment. 3 Aylmer
sees Georgiana as his chance to improve upon the best [woman] that the earth
could offer, thus proving himself superior to Nature. 4 If Aylmer could remove this
mark, then he would have created the perfect wife.
This attitude toward science steals the joy from Aylmer and Georgianas lives.
Aylmers obsession with the mark infects and controls Georgiana to the point that
she would sacrifice her life to gain his scientific goal. 5 Aylmer takes Georgiana
under his control by imprisoning her in his laboratory. He gains power over her by
isolating her from humanity and Nature, even separating her from the sun. 6
Aylmer divides his laboratory into two areas, an apartment for Georgiana and a
conventional laboratory, stark and plain. Georgianas room is beautiful, but a
prison nonetheless. By taking complete possession of Georgiana, he steals her
humanity and uses her as a tool. Aylmer begins to experiment upon Georgiana
without informing her. 7 Even when he learns that the mark goes to the depths of
Georgianas being, he does not stop. 8 Aylmer proves his lack of love and respect
for Georgiana when he is willing, at best, to change her nature and, at worst, to kill
her. His scientific goals mean more to him than his relationship; his actions
[reveal] that his ambition is stronger than his love. 9
To further explore the ramifications of the scientific goal of controlling Nature,
Hawthorne creates another scientist, Rappaccini. Rappaccini could have a full life.
He does not have a wife, but he has a beautiful daughter, Beatrice. Like Aylmer,
Rappaccini proves willing to sacrifice someone he should love for scientific
achievement. Rappaccini ignores all other values in his quest for knowledge and
power. 10
Using scientific control, Rappaccini cultivates a garden on poison. Hawthorne
describes Rappaccini as a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly looking man. 11 His
experiments have destroyed his own health, but his work on his child shows the
depth of his obsession and depravity. Rappaccini raises his daughter on the poisons
he has used in his garden. While Rappaccinis continuous abuses of his child have
not harmed her physically, she has no place in humanity. Hawthorne identifies
Beatrice as a possession in the very title of the story. Beatrice has no independence
separate from her father.
Rappaccini has trapped Beatrice in his laboratory as effectively as Aylmer
trapped Georgiana. Rather than a decorated holding cell, Beatrices father has
named himself, God of an unnatural Paradise, his garden a perverted Eden. 12
Rappaccini holds control over every part of Beatrices life. She cannot touch any
living thing without his approval. 13 He allows Giovanni to enter the garden and
become a companion to Beatrice. 14 However, had he not seen their union as
scientifically desirable, Beatrice would have remained in isolation. 15

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Rappaccinis absolute devotion to science has so completely cost him his
humanity that he cannot see that he harmed his daughter. When Beatrice asks why
her father would do this, he does not understand her emotions. He asks, Dost thou
deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts, against which no power nor
strength could avail an enemy. 16 Rappaccini asks Beatrice if she would rather be
an average woman, without power; he cannot see that by giving her this gift, by
not respecting her as an individual, he has made her an object.
Beatrice correctly points out that rather than saving her from evil, her father
has force fed it to her. 17 He brags that his science [ has] so wrought [] that
[Giovanni] now stands apart from common men, as [] does [Beatrice], daughter
of [his] pride and triumph, [stand apart] from ordinary women. 18 When Beatrice
fully realizes the depth of her fathers evil, she chooses to die rather than remain
under his power. She sees that the poison of science fills her father with no room
for anything else. With her fathers inability to love and Giovannis rejection,
Beatrice decides that death provides the only escape from enforced isolation.
Sciences impact on Beatrices life goes beyond her fathers betrayal. The three
men in her life, Rappaccini, Baglioni, and Giovanni, are all men of science. None
of the men take Beatrices well being into account. Rappaccini sees Beatrice as an
opportunity, as an inhuman tool to use. Baglioni, a scientist that believes he exists
in Rappaccinis shadow, seeks an opportunity to destroy his rival. Giovanni sees
Beatrice from a distance and wants her as his own. He only seeks to gain
possession of her.
While Giovanni claims to be a victim, warnings surround Beatrice and her
father. Giovanni continuously ignores the dangers he observes around Beatrice: the
dead insects, the dead lizard, the wilted flowers, and the mark left by her touch. All
of these signs register in Giovannis mind, but he easily ignores them for the prize
of Beatrice.
Hawthorne parallels the warning signs that surround the sciences of the mid
19th century. He sees and writes about the destruction of the home and community
through the creation of the woodstove in Fire-Worship. 19 Hawthorne believes
that, because of the ease and convenience gained with scientific progress, most
people will accept this change without concern. He accurately predicts that the
potential dangers of science will be ignored by all but a few, until the
consequences become real and irrevocable. Humanity and Giovanni refuse to see
the dangers in their choices, because doing so would require the loss of their prizes.
More than a hundred years later, few writers still speculate about the dangers of
technology. Industrial pollution, war on a global scale, and the use of atomic
bombs have demonstrated the destruction born of science. Instead, many sciencefiction writers now consider the results of societys dependence on science.
Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 considers a world caught in sciences
conveniences to the point of indolence. Bradbury creates a world where anything

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that breeds difficulty is erased. The products of science that essentially control this
world cause these societal attitudes.
Science, in the form of technology, has created a barrier between humanity and
Nature. Guy Montag describes his home as the chamber of a tomb world. 20 They
hear only the radio seashells in both of their ears and barely communicate with
each other. 21 The parlour walls consume anyone who sits in front of them. No one
but the odd ducks, interact with the world. 22 The distractions provided by science
allow a cocoon of numbness to surround people, stealing their humanity.
Guy Montag begins as a model citizen of this dead world. Montags work as a
fireman allows him to act without thinking; and Mildred, his wife, makes no
demands of him. Science allows him to sleepwalk through his life. Society believes
that its highest goal is to be happy, and that happy means unaware and
unchallenged. 23 Once Montag truly observes the world around him, he realizes,
Nobody listens any more. [He] cant talk to the walls because theyre yelling at
[him]. [He] cant talk to [his] wife; she listens to the walls, leaving him to live in
complete isolation in a crowded city. 24
Clarisse McClellan immediately captures Montags interest. He sees the
differences between her and the others around him. Clarisse serves as a
metaphorical mirror to begin reflecting truths that Montag otherwise would not
see. 25 Montag sees something shining and alive [and] quite wonderful in her. 26
He sees in her face [] a soft and constant light [.] [N]ot the hysterical light of
electricity [.] But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of
the candle. 27 Bradburys connection between the candle and Clarisse shows the
lack of sciences influence in her life.
The vitality and energy in Clarisse contrast with the emptiness that fills
Mildred. Mildred has the seashell radios in her ears constantly; the parlour walls
that she refers to as her family fill her whole world, she rarely speaks to anyone,
and then she says nothing of consequence. Bradbury says Mildred [feels] no rain,
[] no shadow, [] and her eyes [are] all glass. 28 She attempts to kill herself, she
forgets Clarisses death, and she turns her husband over to the firemen.
Emptiness in Montags world has become so common that death has no
consequence. The impersonal operator of the machine sent to drain Mildred of
the drugs, claims that suicide happens so frequently that [they] get these cases
nine or ten a night. 29 According to Jack Zipes, witnessing this allows Montag to
see the manner in which technology is being used [] to deaden the senses while
keeping people alive as machines. 30 Montag eventually realizes that life has little
value when [n]obody knows anyone. 31
Every aspect of human life shows the influence of science. Interactive
television has replaced the traditional family. Mildred and Guy have no children.
Mildreds friend, Mrs. Bowles, has children, but they play no part in her life.
Doctors pulled her children from her body rather than her having to feel their birth;
and she plunk[s] the children in school nine days out of ten, and on the tenth she

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heave[s] them into the parlor and turn[s] the switch. 32 She knows that her
children would just as soon kick as kiss [her]. 33 Once again, science has taught
society to ignore difficulties and accept that families are hollow and loveless,
suicide is commonplace, violence is endemic on the streets and in broadcast
entertainment, and jet bombers circle ominously in the night. 34
The Hound tells the most about the relationship between civilization and
Nature. In the Hound, science has created a piece of technology that keeps people
numb and under control. The Hound and the people of the time have activities to
carry them through the day, but neither has a spark, a purpose. Humanity has sold
itself for peace, and ended up trapped in its gently humming, gently vibrating,
softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse. 35
Guy runs from the firemen and the Hound, but also from the society that
science and humanity created. Montag reconnects with Nature when crossing the
river. For the first time Montag is able to touch, to feel the world around him
fully aware of his entire body. 36 His connection to the physical world help[s]
heal the split between man and nature, which rational enlightenment and science
have brought about. 37 Crossing the river brings Montag into Clarisses world. 38
Bradbury shows that despite the overwhelming powers of state control through
mass media and technology, [Bradbury] has his hero Montag undergo a process of
rehumanization. 39
Sciences purpose was to create ease and peace, but only by escaping science
do any of these characters find peace. Science creates a distance, a destruction of
bonds between humans; focus becomes entirely external, causing a lack of selfknowledge. Rather than aiding humanity, the progression of scientific development
has allowed the isolation of the individual to deepen. Science locked Georgiana,
Beatrice, and Montag into lives separate from meaningful contact. Death and exile
provide a better world than those lives. By turning their backs on the worlds
science created, they escape the fate of becoming cogs in societys machine.

Notes
1

N. Hawthorne, The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches,

Literary Classics of the US, New York, 1996, p. 764.
2
Ibid., p. 764.
3
H.G. Fairbanks, The Lasting Loneliness of Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Study of the
Sources of Alienation in Modern Man, Magi Books, Albany, 1965, p. 105.
4
Hawthorne, op. cit., p. 780.
5
Ibid., p. 768.
6
Ibid., p. 770.
7
Ibid., p. 773.
8
Ibid., p. 773.

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9

T. Stoehr, Hawthornes Mad Scientist: Pseudoscience and Social Science in

Nineteenth-Century Life and Letters, Archon Book, Hamden, 1978, p. 118.
10
R. Harter Fogle, Hawthornes Fiction: The Light and the Dark, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1964, p. 92.
11
N. Hawthorne, Rappaccinis Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and
Sketches, Literary Classics of the US, New York, 1996, p. 978.
12
Fogle, op. cit., p. 99.
13
Hawthorne, p. 985.
14
Ibid., p. 988.
15
Ibid., p. 1004-05.
16
Ibid., p. 1005.
17
Ibid., p. 1005.
18
Ibid., p. 1004.
19
N. Hawthorne, Fire-Worship, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches,
Literary Classics of the US, New York, 1996.
20
R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Del Rey Books, New York, 1996, p. 11.
21
Bradbury, p. 18.
22
Ibid., p. 60.
23
Ibid., p. 59.
24
Ibid., p. 82.
25
R.O. McGiveron, To Build a Mirror Factory: The Mirror and Self-Examination
in Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, in Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical
Interpretations: Fahrenheit 451New Edition, Blooms Literary Criticism, New
York, 2008, p. 64.
26
Bradbury, p. 6.
27
Bradbury, p. 7.
28
Bradbury, p. 13.
29
Bradbury, p. 14-15.
30
J. Zipes, Mass Degradation of Humanity and Massive Contradictions in
Bradburys Vision of America in Fahrenheit 451, in Bloom (ed), op. cit., p. 6.
31
Bradbury, p. 16.
32
Ibid., p. 96.
33
Ibid., p. 96.
34
McGiveron, op. cit., p. 68.
35
Bradbury, p. 24.
36
Ibid., p. 145.
37
J.R. Eller and W.F. Touponce, The Simulacrum of Carnival: Fahrenheit 451,
in Bloom (ed), op. cit., p. 92.
38
Bradbury, p. 145.
39
Zipes, p. 10.

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Bibliography
Bradbury, R., Fahrenheit 451. Del Rey Books, New York, 1996.
Bloom, H. (ed), Blooms Modern Critical Interpretations: Fahrenheit 451 New
Edition. Blooms Literary Criticism, New York, 2008.
Fairbanks, H.G., The Lasting Loneliness of Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Study of the
Sources of Alienation in Modern Man. Magi Books, Albany, 1965.
Fogle, R.H. Hawthornes Fiction: The Light and the Dark. University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1964.
Hawthorne, N., Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Literary Classics of the
US, New York, 1996.
, Fire-Worship. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Literary Classics of
the US, New York, 1996.
. Rappaccinis Daughter. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Literary
Classics of the US, New York, 1996.
. The Birth-Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Literary Classics
of the US, New York, 1996.
Stoehr, T., Hawthornes Mad Scientist: Pseudoscience and Social Science in
Nineteenth-Century Life and Letters. Archon Book, Hamden, 1978.
Susan Rose Nash is a Masters student in the Literature department of Western
Kentucky University.

Human Identity in the World of Altered Carbon

Grzegorz Trbicki
Abstract
Subjects such as the changing idea of a body in the era of cyberculture, various
biotechnical advances and their impact on life, death, human identity and
individuality, as well as political and social consequences of electronic revolution
have long lain within the range of more ambitious science fiction and cyberpunk.
The American SF writer Richard Morgans recent Takeshi Kovacs trilogy
(Altered Carbon, 2002; Broken Angels, 2003; Woken Furies 2005) also seems to
elaborate on these problems. However, in comparison to many previous works of
the genres in question, Morgans extrapolation remains especially moving and
convincing. This is partly because his vision manages to successfully background
daring technological advances against complex psychological, social and economic
issues. An unobtrusive yet serious critique of contemporary corporate, social and
religious systems gives it an additional mundane perspective that is absent in many
similar texts. On the other hand, the core idea of the entire trilogy Morgans
concept of the digitalization of human consciousness and the subordination of the
whole motif to the social and economic contexts - provides a convenient pretext for
raising fundamental questions concerning humanity. This chapter will attempt to
analyze the most essential elements of Morgans vision with a special emphasis
placed on how the very concepts of human identity and individuality are put to the
test in the world of altered carbon.
Key Words: Cyberpunk, science fiction, posthumanism, biotechnical advances,
cyborgs, bodies in cyberculture, human identity.
*****
1. Borders of Humanity
Not surprisingly, cyberpunk 1 seems to be the genre that is particularly wellsuited for putting the very concept of humanity to the test. For the last 30 years, the
broadly understood cyberpunk, 2 both in literature and in film, has offered a whole
spectrum of impressing and strikingly gloomy visions of the futuristic/posthuman
world. 3 The very idea of cyberspace prompted the perennial dichotomy of the
virtual vs. the real, whereas such subjects as - the relationship between the human
and the machine or the advent of cyborgs, the impact of the biotechnological
advances on life, death and human identity, the changing idea of a body in the era
of cyberculture, and even deliberations on the possibility of the dis- or reembodiment of a human being - created a convenient pretext for moving into the
sphere of the ultimate questions concerning the very nature of humanity, its
limitations and its borders.

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Richard Morgans recent Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (Altered Carbon, 2002;
Broken Angels, 2003; Woken Furies, 2005) is a work of complex generic origin,
exhibiting elements of such diverse literary genres as the traditional space-opera or
the novel noir (much in the vein of Raymond Chandler and his numerous
followers). Cyberpunk, however, is central to the trilogys structure and message,
and the novels draw heavily (albeit unobtrusively) on the seminal work of the
genre, William Gibsons Neuromancer. While using extensively cyberpunks stock
motifs, Morgans vision remains at the same time especially convincing and
original. This is, in my opinion, due primarily to the fact that the trilogy
successfully manages to background classical cyberpunk conventions (daring
technological advances, cyborgization of human body, descriptions of the futuristic
underworld, etc.) against complex psychological, social and economic issues.
In this chapter, I will attempt to touch upon the most essential elements of
Morgans vision with a special emphasis laid on how the very concepts of human
identity and individuality are explored in the world of altered carbon.
2. The World of Altered Carbon
The plot of the first novel, Altered Carbon, takes place in the twenty-fifth
century. After the discovery of the ruins of an ancient, extra-terrestial civilisation
on Mars and other planets, humanity has managed to successfully implement alien
technology which, in turn, completely re-defined human life. The major
advancement is the digitalization of the human mind. All people are at birth
implanted with a cortical stack which stores all the persons experiences, thoughts,
feelings and memories in other words everything that we label as
consciousness. This revolutionary achievement is bound to alter dramatically our
views on life and death itself, but also, exert a tremendous influence on virtually all
spheres of life, including social and economic structure as well as religion.
Since cortical stacks can be very simply extracted and re-implanted in another
body, a sort of practical immortality has been gained. After death people are
usually re-sleeved into new, cloned or artificially created (and sometimes
genetically engineered or technologically/electronically enhanced) bodies. Thus,
there is a clear distinction between the ordinary death - the termination of a
particular body or a sleeve and the real death when the cortical stack itself has
been destroyed and the victims personality is not retrievable (although the rich and
the powerful, apart from their stacks, have sometimes additional back-ups of their
selves stored in safe data-banks which are updated regularly). Digitalization also
enables instant interstellar-travel only the mind of the traveller is momentarily
transferred via needle-cast into another world and downloaded into a body
available on spot.
The protagonist and the 1-st person narrator, Takeshi Kovacs, is an ex-member
of the Envoy Corps, the enforcement arm of the despotic UN Protectorate, which
rules Earth and its colonies with an iron fist []. 4 While envoys special training

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and various enhancements transform them into perfect long-distance warriors and
flawless investigators, they also make them psychotic. 5 Throughout the trilogy
Kovacs assumes numerous roles, including that of a mercenary, a criminal and a
private investigator; all of them enable him to move across huge vistas of space
and uncover the mechanisms that rule his universe.
Kovacs himself is presented as a man of sharp contrasts - an emphatic
psychopath, pragmatic sentimentalist, ruthless for his enemies but capable of
sympathy for the week, the defenceless and (especially) women; a relentless
pursuer of his own aims but at the same time a reflective and analytical observer of
the reality that surrounds him. He is also well aware of the ethical choices although
his moral code may be perceived as inconsistent and definitely differs from the
mainstream morality. The sophisticated narrator/protagonist of Morgans fiction
stands in contrast to mostly unreflective, morally indifferent, self-centered, and
often strictly subcultural hero of a typical cyberpunk novel (here Neuromancers
main character, Case could serve as an example). This is to a large extent owing to
the use of this narrator that complex economical, social, moral and psychological
issues can be introduced.
In contradistinction to many other cyberpunk novels (especially the seminal
Neuromancer to which as the archetypal cyberpunk text I refer on several
occasions) apart from the description of the futuristic underworld and picturesque
subcultures, the texts present a relatively wide range of characters, contexts and
situations, in an attempt to a create possibly coherent and complete vision of
reality.
Morgans extrapolation is cynical, pragmatic, and in a manner of speaking
very mundane. He does not follow the numerous science fiction writers in whose
work futuristic discoveries and technological developments are paralleled by
equally stunning social, religious or spiritual transformations, often narrated with a
prophetic tone. As one might reasonably expect, in Morgans world the impact of
the already mentioned advances on the human nature itself is rather marginal.
While describing social life, Morgan draws on and magnifies the tendencies and
threats that already exist in modern post-capitalist, fragmented society. What is
especially notable, Morgans social life is realistically ruled by the laws of
economy, and the economy that prevails here is the corporationist and oligarchic
economy at its worst. Thus, in the world of the altered carbon, the privileged can
take full advantage of the digitalization of the human mind, switching on a whim
between a broad range of beautiful, specially engineered bodies and spending
centuries of orgiastic leisure whereas the dispossessed cannot afford even an
ordinary sleeve and have to wait in storage for the same centuries without much
hope for resurrection.
Morgans texts abound in descriptions of complex and difficult life situations,
like, to mention just one, the case of Irene Eliott, who in order to pay her and her
husbands clone and resleeving policy engaged in illegal activity for which she was

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convicted to 30 years in storage (the penal system, for economic and practical
reasons, no longer stores live criminals, but only their digitalized personalities) 6
whereas her body was bought by some corporation from the municipal storage
facility. As Irenas husband reveals Kovacs bitterly: I was okay for six months ,
then I turn on the screen and see some corporate negotiator wearing Irenes body
[] Paid five times what I could have afforded. They say the bitch wears it only
alternate months. 7
Another interesting motif is that of people who like the Roman Catholics on
Earth and members of some sects on Harlans world - voluntarily reject the
blessings of resleeving from religious reasons. The narrator condemns such
attitudes as inhuman and primitive, but at the same time sympathizes with
particular individuals who are taken advantage of, like a young prostitute from the
first novel, who is murdered because her oppressors know that as a catholic she
will not be resleeved and consequently, will not testify against them.
As I have already pointed out, it is not the main leitmotif of the trilogy itself the digitalization of the human consciousness (or other inspiring technological
ideas that continually appear in the trilogy, and are no less imaginative or
impressive than those found in the texts by other leading SF and cyberpunk
writers), but rather an attempt to explore the social, religious, economical and
psychological consequences of the described advancements, that is central for the
narration of the trilogy. The subject which seems, however, to be most obviously in
focus is that of human identity.
3. The Question of Human Identity
Where are the borders of our selves? What is the relationship between our body
and our consciousness? Do we need bodies to be human beings? Can we survive
the death of our bodies? Is our identity and self-awareness intrinsically and
inseparably connected with the body we were born with? What makes us who we
really are? These are only some of the ultimate questions touched upon by
Morgans texts. Again, the trilogy supplies a wide range of interesting problems
and cases related to the question of human identity and individuality. What is also
notable, whereas in Gibsons books, especially in Sprawl cycle, similar motifs
were described in terms of unusual experiences that befall chosen individuals, in
Takeshi Kovacs texts all the revolutionary advancements have been broadly
implemented and analyzed from various angles; the extreme has become the
ordinary, the statistical,; the digitalization of the mind is no longer a personal
epiphany but rather a routine procedure, a social convention, with all the
consequences resulting from this fact.
Quite obviously, in the world of altered carbon, the body is not what primarily
identifies a person; sleeves can be switched like clothes or used like professional
gear conveniently suited for a particular job or situation, as, for example, durable,
armoured and enhanced combat suits many of the characters wear. The characters

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attitude towards the body is purely practical as can be seen from Kovacs interior
monologue at the beginning of the first book:
In the shower I whistled my disquiet away tunelessly and ran
soap and hands over the new body. My sleeve was in his early
forties, Protectorate standard, with a swimmers build and what
felt like some military custom-carved onto his nervous system.
Neurochemical upgrade, most likely [] There was a tightness
in the lungs that suggested a nicotine habit [] but apart from
that I couldnt find anything worth complaining about. []
Every sleeve has a story. If that thing bothers you, you line up
over at Synthetas or Fabricon. Id worn my fair share of
synthetic sleeves [] Cheap [] and they never seem to get the
flavour circuits right. 8
At the same time, Kovacs or other characters almost never have doubts
concerning their own identity. They are simply the personalities recorded in the
cortical stack the sum of their feelings, emotions and past experiences. Bodies
can be lost, switched or replaced, but the personality as well as, what is
interesting, the relationships between people remain. Occasionally, human
individuality can be perceived even from behind a sleeve, as in this scene when
Kovacs meets a long-lost friend:
It wasnt the face I remembered, not even close. Hed sleeved to
fairer or broader features [] But the body wasnt much
different [] And his moves still radiated the same casual poise
when he made them. I knew him as certainly as if hed torn open
the coverall to show me the scars on his chest. 9
As it might be expected, in the world where bodies are temporary, confirming
ones identity is also a matter of important social convention:
Ascertainment. In todays society, its as common a ritual as
parental acknowledgement parties to celebrate a birth, or
reweddings to cement newly re-sleeved couples in their old
relationship. [] on every planet Ive been to, it exists as a
deeply respected underlying aspect of social relations. Outside of
expensive hi-tech psychographic procedures, its the only way
we have to prove to our friends and family that, regardless of
what flesh we may be wearing, we are who we say we are.
Ascertainment is the core social function that defines ongoing
identity in the modern age []. 10

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The common digitalization of the human mind does not, as one might suppose,
obliterate family ties or human relationships. The Elliots desperately struggle to reunite. The former quellist revolutionaries are still eager to follow their
miraculously and out-of-her-poque resurrected leader who has been believed to be
dead for more than two centuries. Takeshi Kovacs affection for Sarah his oldtime lover - does not fade in spite of the enormous vistas of time and space or their
individual experiences that have separated them, and his main obsession in the last
part of the trilogy becomes to retrieve the womans cortical stack, buried deep in
the ocean.
As the narration suggests, bodies can be easily replaced or modified but they
cannot be completely abandoned if we want to experience our humanity at its full.
Although technology makes it possible to renounce the reality for the sake of the
virtual world, only the few follow this path. As the surfer and rebel Jack Soul
Brasil states, while arguing with his ex-comrade who has become a member of the
Renouncers sect:
I was standing on a ten-metre wall four days ago [] Thats
worth all of this virtual shift twice over. [] Out there actions
have consequences. If I break something, Ill know about it
because itll fucking hurt. 11
Virtual reality is used frequently throughout the trilogy for practical purposes
(it provides, for example, highly effective interrogation and torture chamber), but it
is seldom the cause of any ontological doubt on the part of the characters. Despite
all the revolutionary developments, the concepts of reality and individuality seem
to be solid and stable.
Another interesting motif concerning human identity is that of doublesleeving or in other words a situation in which two copies of the same person
exist side by side. In the whole Protectorate double sleeving is a serious crime and
one of the most important taboos whose breaking may result in punishing the
culprit with the real death, but from various reasons it is illegally applied on
several occasions in the trilogy. The most extreme is the case from the last volume,
when Kovacs opponents in order to pursue him effectively, sleeve his own copy
from an earlier stage of life. Thus, the protagonist himself becomes his most
virulent and dangerous enemy; the younger version hates the older one for what he
has done with his (their?) life, and the older Kovacs, tamed by age and experience,
despises the ruthless and cruel ways of the youth he used to be. The situation
creates a convenient pretext for deliberating on who we really are, what has made
us the way we are, and how much we can change ourselves.
Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is an impressive and sophisticated extrapolation that
multi-sidedly and pragmatically reviews basic concepts of the cyberpunk genre.
The futuristic reality it presents appears gloomy, though it is perhaps not because

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of the technological advancements but despite them. After all, they cannot really
change human nature, but only emphasize some of its aspects not necessarily the
more favourable ones. The vision of humanity Morgan offers is rather cynical, if
not openly nihilistic. Yet, paradoxically, it contains also a trace of reassurance,
since this is the human individuality and identity that seem to remain most reliable
and constant elements in the shifting, merciless world of altered carbon.

Notes
1

Obviously, the word cyberpunk has become as much a social and cultural label as
a purely literary term (or perhaps even more so; see, especially, J. Rauleson, The
Politics of Cyberpunk, Inter-Disciplinary Net. Visions of Humanity in
Cybercultures, Viewed on 12 March 2010, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/
cyber/hub/visions/v1/raulerson /paper.pdf). In this article, however, I will use it in
its original generic meaning, referring to a science-fiction genre.
2
Even as a strictly generic term, cyberpunk appears as vague as postmodernism
itself, within which it is, presumably, well-situated (B. McHale,
POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM, Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of
Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press, Durham,
N.C., 1991, pp. 308-323).
3
Among the most significant and influential cyberpunk books and movies such
titles as William Gibsons Sprawl and San Francisco trilogies, Bruce Sterlings
Schismatrix, Neal Stephensons Snowcrash, the Matrix Trilogy, film Casshern by
Kazuaki Kiriya and Japanese anime movies Ghost in the Shell and Akira should be
mentioned.
4
V. Strauss, Altered Carbon: A Review, SFSite, 1996, Viewed on 15 March
2010, http://www.sfsite.com/03a/al123.htm.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
R. Morgan, Altered Carbon, Ballantine Books, New York, 2006, p. 105.
8
Ibid., p. 15.
9
R. Morgan, Woken Furies, Gollancz, London, 2005, p. 214.
10
Ibid., pp. 335-336.
11
Ibid., pp. 270-271.

Bibliography
Akira. DVD. Directed by Otomo, K., IDG, 2006.
Casshern. DVD. Directed by Kiriya, K., Vision, 2005.
Ghost in the Shell. DVD. Directed by Oshii, M., IDG, 2005.

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Gibson, W., All Tomorrows Parties. Putnam, New York, 1999.
, Count Zero. Ace Trade, New York, 2006.
, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Bantam Spectra, New York, 1997.
, Neuromancer. Ace Trade, New York, 2004.
, Idoru. Berkley, New York, 1997.
, Virtual Light. Bantam, New York, 1993.
The Matrix Collection. DVD. Dir. Wachowski, A. and Wachowski, L., Warner
Home Video, 2008.
McHale, B., POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM. Storming the Reality Studio: A
Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press,
Durham, N.C., 1991.
Morgan, R., Altered Carbon. Ballantine Books, New York, 2006.
, Broken Angels. Ballantine Books, New York, 2004.
, Woken Furies. Gollancz, London, 2005.
Rauleson, J., The Politics of Cyberpunk. Inter-Disciplinary.Net. Visions of
Humanity in Cybercultures. Viewed on 12 March 2010, http://www.interdisciplinary.net/ci/cyber/hub/visions/v1/raulerson /paper.pdf.
Stephenson, M., Snowcrash. Bantam Spectra, New York, 2005.
Sterling, B., Schismatrix Plus. Ace, New York, 1996.
Strauss, V., Altered Carbon: A Review. SFSite. 1996. Viewed on 15 March
2010, http://www.sfsite.com/03a/al123.htm.
Grzegorz Trbicki, Ph.D., is an assistant-professor of English and American
literature at Jan Kochanowski University of Sciences and Humanities, Kielce,
Poland.

The Mind Body Problem through Science Fiction:

Charles Stross and Richard Morgan in Philosophical Review
Benjamin Manktelow
Abstract
The works of Charles Stross and Richard Morgan make frequent mention of the
brain being the seat of the person, and are awash with technologies which map,
upload and transmit minds, by scanning brains and, therefore, people. The science
fiction of Charles Stross, as encapsulated in Accelerando, and to a different
degree Glasshouse, evokes futures and societies coming to grips with a person
who can be mapped and uploaded into a virtuality, specifically relying upon the
brain of the individual. Stross does not stop at the upload or the idea that the status
quo of humanity will continue, he posits futures in which humanity is different
from the one we currently know. Strosss speculative work promotes discussion
and debate concerning what it means to be human. Richard Morgan takes a
different tack, through his collection of Takeshi Kovacs novels, in which humans
can be uploaded and then beamed to other planets, because physical movement is
too slow or impossible. People are downloaded into bodies, but not their own,
unless they have serious wealth. These two simple conceits allow Morgan to open
up a large range of ideas concerning who we are as humans and who we think we
are. Both Stross and Morgan offer visions of the future in their novels which
should be given closer critical and philosophical reflection.
Key Words: Science Fiction, philosophy, mind, body, science, technology.
*****
Science fiction is an especially good vehicle for thought experiments. I like to
think that this includes Rene Descartess musings on a brain trapped in a jar, living
a simulated reality it believes to be real: a thought experiment which reflects upon
what the world is and who we are who live in and with it. For this very reason I
find the writings of Charles Stross and Richard Morgan fascinating. Both writers
deal with worlds and characters, which profoundly question who we think we are
and where we think we are at. Charles Stross and Richard Morgan are science
fiction authors currently residing in Scotland. The novels of Charles Stross are
often utopic and show a positive view of science and technology in society and
culture. In this chapter I refer primarily to the works Accelerando, 1 Glasshouse, 2
and Saturns Children. 3 Richard Morgan, however, writes about dystopias in his
Takashi Kivacs trilogy, which I discuss in this chapter. The trilogy includes the
novels Altered Carbon, 4 Broken Angels, 5 and Woken Furies. 6 The picture I paint
below is a landscape of ideas and thoughts captured in the novels of Stross and

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Morgan; I let the authors give answers from which I ask new questions, as asking
questions is as important, sometimes more important, than having answers.
The questions and possible answers in which I am most interested are those that
surround the aged ideas of the mind/body problem in philosophy. Succinctly put,
the mind/body problem considers the connection and understanding of the mind
and body, whether they are at all separate, and how this relates to the way we
understand who we are individually and as a group. Questions and considerations
which penetrate the depths of what it is to be human, to be a person. This chapter
will concentrate on several views taken from the writings of Stross and Morgan, to
highlight the power that science fiction has on our understanding of the mind/body
problem in philosophy.
Before discussing the ideas and their philosophical consequences, a caveat
should be given: for those people wanting, or thinking that, what follows will
involve a great deal of philosophical and technical jargon, fear not. This chapter
focuses more attention on Stross and Morgan as philosophers themselves and what
they are telling us, than to actual philosophers.
By following Rowlands 7 and calling science fiction philosophy SciPhi, I offer a
complimentary approach to science fiction that sits alongside Wellsian or
Orweilian takes on science fiction, in which the story is an extended allegory,
specifically dealing with social criticisms of the world the author inhabits.
Following this approach is not to say that it is outside Stross and Morgans
writings, simply that here I am interested in SciPhi.
Many of the ideas expressed within the novels mentioned make for good
fiction. For example, the idea of the protagonist Takashi Kovacs, in Richard
Morganss novel Altered Carbon, copying himself so he can be in two places at
once. However these ideas become more interesting when the two versions of the
character meet and decide together what will happen to themselves as one version
has to die. For me, this decision was more interesting because it is not simply a
question of someone existing or not, but rather questioning what the ability to copy
oneself means to the person(s), and the self in relation to the mind/body dilemma.
This inevitably leads to questions pertaining to what it means to exist, to
experience the world, and the role experience has on deciding who we are, and
who we become. Therefore, I do not discuss the real world arguments surrounding
the possibility of upload-able minds, but focus on what such a feat would mean if
actually achieved.
The ability to up- and down-load ones mind from a body into a computer, or
vice versa, or from one body to another body are all concepts present in both Stross
and Morgans novels and is nothing new within contemporary SciFi. Such
arguments usually view the brain as housing the mind, where the mind is physical
and, thereby, the seat of the self. Daniel Dennett 8 wrote a wonderful short story
called Where Am I? in which his brain is saved after an accident. Here again we
see philosophy dressed up in thought experiment and science fiction. As

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mentioned, these ideas are not new, nor are the arguments for and against them .
In Strosss Glasshouse, the characters are able to embody whatever or
whomever they wish. The idea of creating an avatar in cyber-space is no longer a
virtual, all but physically existent, pursuit, but do-able. In Surrogates 9 we see that
the beautiful female surrogate, an android avatar, in reality turns out to be an
overweight man, which itself spoofs the very fact that many overweight males play
skinny, sexy, characters in online video games such as World of Warcraft. It is in
this very creation of an avatar that delineates from ones physical appearance that
we see the use of control and communication of the systems of self. Cyberspace
frees the self to be as it wishes and chooses. This process is taken into a physical
reality in Strosss Glasshouse. Yet, we rarely see the darker edges of what such
freedom does to people. It is seen to be freeing and wonderful to design and decide
who you will be today, yet we are never shown that there might be drawbacks in
playing with ones body. Similarly, in Greg Egans Permutation City 10 we are
presented with the fact that the mind-copies uploaded to cyberspace can be
switched off, or their mental states can be changed, or even delete sections they no
longer like. Again, we never get the idea that this may be damaging. Perhaps it is
something elusive to us at this stage. The point at which post-humanity changes
who we are as people.
However, in Morgans Altered Carbon, we find a very different view of the
body in relation to the self. In Altered Carbon, the mind of a person can be
downloaded and transmitted to another planet by what is called needlecast
transmission. This procedure is easier than a manned space-flight, which is
difficult, slow, and expensive. The downside is that if you do not have the money
to clone a body (and not many people do), then you are sleeved into a body you
can afford, usually one belonging to someone who has been downloaded and
transmitted elsewhere. Such re-sleeving in Morgans dystopia highlights that only
the wealthy have choice, while everybody else must deal with what is given to
them. For example, early in Altered Carbon, Morgan shows us what happens when
a family does not recognise their husband/father because he has been sleeved in a
body that isnt his own. The relationship is alien at first because the family is
expecting a specific (physical) persons arrival, but are faced with someone, or
something, else. Contrary to this, what happens when the sleeve worn is
recognised by others to be someone other than you? This is exactly what happens
in Altered Carbon. The reader slowly finds out that Kovacs, the protagonist, is
sleeved into a body that has a specific meaning for several other characters in the
book, a deliberate ploy by the man who hired Kovacs, especially as he is rich
enough to have Kovacs sleeved into any body he desired.
In Strosss storylines, there is a sense of freedom in changing the body and
becoming who we are; technology allows transference and gives us freedom from
our original genetics. Morgan provides a vision of the body as imprisoned, which
is the price one pays for travelling away from their planet, their home.

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The ability to look as we wish pushes the notion of the individual to the
extreme. The ability to change the physical self pushes traditional perceptions of
the physical self into flux, as do changes of mental states and memories. In many
ways, the self is set free from its specific and un-changeable meat-body. What is
strange, however, is that the characters always have bodies. They are forever
portrayed as embodied beings.
In Accelerando, the space-ship crew chooses to upload themselves to a
cyberspace. In this space, the characters are able to decide what they look like and
the environment they want to be in, much like the beginning of Icandescence, 11 by
Greg Egan in which the characters are in a cyberspace and communicating, but
each character has his or her own environment, language and avatar, so that one
character may see everybody on the beach and the language being spoken as
English, while another character may see everybody on a space station speaking a
completely alien dialect. The notions of freedom, autonomy, and the creation of the
wanted self are factors which influence science fiction through cyberculture, which
itself comes through cybernetics.
Cybernetics dates back to the early post-war years in America. Norbert Wiener
coined the term Cybernetics drawing on the ancient Greek term for
Steersman. 12 It is also in this vein that Wiener subtitled his book Control and
Communication. 13 Yet, the central aspect of Wieners thoughts was not power,
but understanding: how humans, non-human animals, and machines functioned.
So, Steersman and control and communication are of the self and the world of
systems, not dominion over them. Wieners second book on cybernetics is entitled
The Human use of Human Beings. The fear Wiener harboured was that the military
or government would utilise these ideas, with what he believed were dark motives,
to control people.
In a philosophical sense, then, cybernetics, as viewed by Wiener, is about
autonomy and freedom, ideas which are deeply rooted in the pages of Strosss and
Morgans plots. For example, Manny, in Accelerando is free of traditional nations
and currency; and, in Glasshouse, the characters are free to design and re-design
their bodies. This happens similarly to the characters in Accelerando in the second
act, which takes place in Cyber-Space.
This is tightly linked to the notions of cyberspace present in Gibsons
Neuromancer 14 and Bethkes Headcrash. 15 It is also evident in Stephensons Snow
Crash. 16 In these Cyber-spaces/places, it is possible to decide and design who you
are, making you the master of your own destiny. All the ideas presented in these
novels and within cybernetics itself revolve around the understanding of the
systems that make something function. Most important are those underpinning the
mind and body, where the communication and control between both are of the
upmost importance.
Speaking of memories, early in Accelerando, Stross introduces us to Bob, who
is externally backing up his memories so that there will be a semblance of himself

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when he dies, if not the/a full upload. When we next encounter Bob, it is as a
partial upload who is performed for a collective as part of his charitable
foundation bequest. People in his collective take turns channelling him. Once again
the key questions resurface: what does this do to the mind/body disconnect? What
does this say about who the person was, is, and continues to be beyond death? And
what does this mean for experiences and memories (re)building?
This question of who is a person, or what does the term person mean, engages
with a core theme of the first novella of Accelerando, in which the idea of
personhood is debated and discussed. What is or can be defined as a person,
especially when uploading becomes possible and, especially, if other animates can
also become conscious? This includes lobster uploads, or even cat-mind uploads
which move Aineko, the protagonists android cat, forward in his evolution and
consciousness.
The notion of artificial intelligence, including android cats such as aineko,
reaching a level of consciousness higher than that of a human is called the
singularity. The whole idea of the singularity is that humans will no longer be the
smartest in the room, let alone the smartest biological life forms in the room. How
does this make us feel about consciousness, mind, body and the person?
At the other end of the spectrum is the eschaton, the super Artificial
Intelligence in Strosss Singularity Sky 17 and Iron Sunrise. 18 This godlike form is
not embodied. In many ways, it is easy to identify it as not-human because it lacks
a body, for keeping a body keeps one human, as all humans have bodies. It can
also be said that all that humans know is embodiment, making us unable to
imagine or create what we do not know. This reconnects us with the idea of writing
about truly alien or other people/things.
Of course the other fascinating idea within Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise is
the very fact that the eschaton was made by humankind and the very moment it
was switched on, became sentient and copied itself to every point in time and
decided to do something about the people on earth who were behaving like
children. At the same time, eschaton also dictated rules governing how people
would/should react in relation to itself. Therefore, the humans godlike creation
became God itself and took its parents in hand; God became a projection and
creation of humanity.
A key plot development, and interesting philosophical question, arises in
Altered Carbon when Kovacs creates a copy of his mind, which is illegal in his
world. Kovacs does this so that he can be in two places at once. Of course, once
Kovacs accomplishes what he needed to do, the copy and the original meet to
decide which one will be the primary Kovacs when they integrate their minds.
Such a situation leads the reader to question the role of experience and its role in
moulding who we are. After all, when Kovacs splits himself, both copies have the
same memory up until that point. It is only as they start to experience different
things that they diverge and become different people.

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Such questions of copying, authenticity and primacy, also come to a head when
the starship crew of the Starwisp return to the solar system and are informed of
what happened to their original physical selves in Accelerando. This involves
learning that the protagonists physical self is now bankrupt, which means that the
uploaded copy is held liable and seen as bankrupt, resulting in her not having any
way to re-embody herself. This leads to her accepting the help of her son, who was
born while she was away and of whom she has neither knowledge nor memory.
The protagonist also has no understanding of whom she married or why, and
cannot work out why she would have pursued that course of action in the first
place, as if the original were not her, or she not the original.
Woken Furies sees Takashi Kovacs hunted by an earlier version of himself,
who is awakened and told that he has been suspended for several hundred years
without his knowledge. However, for the reader, and for the older Kovacs when he
finds out, it is not that simple. It is learned that the younger Kovacs was copied
illegally. Additionally, the younger Kovacs is not a straight copy of Kovacs, not
anymore, as he is a younger, different person.
Throughout Woken Furies it is the older Kovacs we follow as the protagonist,
as we did in the other two volumes, yet the other Kovacs in Woken Furies are no
less original, only that the protagonist was a Kovacs copied earlier in his life. In
seeing two different Kovacs, we are able to compare and contrast them, see what is
important to them, how they operate, and why. Again, it gives rise to questions of
who we are and how we become who we are. Also, if it is possible to make a copy
of our mind and come back to it later, to interrogate it and learn about how history
and experience change who we are and how we feel, what might we gain from this
ability?
This chapter has articulated a SciPhi which does not see or use science fiction
as an introduction to philosophical issues, but instead sees science fiction as a
legitimate source of philosophical speculation and argument. It is the power of
fiction, specifically fantastical fiction, whether it is science fiction, fantasy or
childrens stories, that allow thought experiments to take shape, and to answer
what-ifs. Stories tell us about the world we inhabit and within which we function
in such a way that they provoke our attention and curiosity. It is important to
interact with stories, to look beyond the surface to see what they have to say.
Sometimes it takes a little learning, but once learned one is able to see stories, in
this case science fiction, not as escapism or stories for children, but as sources of
meaningful engagement with the world around us.

Notes
1

C. Stross, Accelerando, Orbit, London, 2005.

C. Stross, Glasshouse, Orbit, London, 2006.
3
C. Stross, Saturns Children, Orbit, London, 2008.
2

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133

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4

R. Morgan, Altered Carbon, Gollancz, London, 2002.

R. Morgan, Broken Angels, Gollancz, London, 2003.
6
R. Morgan, Woken Furies, Gollancz, London, 2005.
7
M. Rowlands, The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, Ebury, London, 2003.
8
D. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology,
Bradford Books, 1978.
9
R. Venditti and B. Weldele, The Surrogates, Top Shelf Productions.
10
G. Egan, Permutation City, Orion, London, 1994.
11
G. Egan, Incandescence, Gollancz, London, 2008.
12
N. Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine, MIT Press, Cambridge 1965.
13
Ibid.
14
W. Gibson, Neuromancer, Gollancz, London, 1984.
15
B. Bethke, Headcrash, Orbit, London, 1995.
16
N. Stephenson, Snow Crash, Roc, London, 1993.
17
C. Stross, Singularity Sky, Orbit, London, 2004.
18
C. Stross, Iron Sunrise, Orbit, London, 2005.
5

Bibliography
Bethke, B., Headcrash. Orbit, London, 1995.
Dennett, D., Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology.
Bradford Books 1978.
Egan, G., Permutation City. Orion, London, 1994.
, Incandescence. Gollancz, London, 2008.
Gibson, W. Neuromancer. Gollancz, London, 1984.
Morgan, R., Altered Carbon. Gollancz, London, 2002.
, Broken Angels. Gollancz, London, 2003.
, Woken Furies. Gollancz, London, 2005.
Rowlands, M., The Philosopher at the End of the Universe. Ebury, London, 2003.
Stephenson, N., Snow Crash. Roc, London, 1993.

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The Mind Body Problem through Science Fiction

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Stross, C., Accelerando. Orbit, London, 2005.
, Glasshouse. Orbit, London, 2006.
, Iron Sunrise. Orbit, London, 2005.
, Saturns Children. Orbit, London, 2008.
, Singularity Sky. Orbit, London, 2004.
Venditti, R. and Weldele, B., The Surrogates. Top Shelf Productions, 2006.
Wiener, N., Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1965.
Benjamin Manktelow is an anthropologist and archaeologist who has just finished
his Mphil at the University of Sheffield. His main research interests are the
philosophy and anthropology of science and technology and role they play in
society and culture.

Human Magic, Fairy Technology and the Place of the

Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture
Anna Bugajska
Abstract
Artemis Fowl, written at the dawn of the twenty-first century by Eoin Colfer, hails
a new era of cyberculture, one so immersed in technology that even a book for
young adults is hardly understandable without the knowledge of a specialized
jargon. Part of the success of Colfers series lies in his striking combination of
supernatural and technical elements. He forces us to take a new vantage point,
which no longer allows for the ordinary division of the technical from the
magical. In the age of cyberculture, yesterdays magic is todays technology. The
twentieth century was a time of rapid technological advancement. Even at its start,
one could read in Sir James Frazers The Golden Bough how technology had
replaced the magical, the supernatural, and the fantastic. More than a century later,
however, we cannot confirm his description. The two spheres co-exist and merge,
being indispensable for humans. The Supernatural, the magical, and the
fantastic become separated, which is clearly visible in Artemis Fowl. All of these,
traditionally considered together, come to interact with a highly technical world:
fairies deprived of natural wings use their artificial counterparts; dwarves are
practically walking machines; invisibility is achieved by shielding; and Artemis
uses human magic to heal a fairy, but must rack his brain to escape fairy
technology. The convergence point comes at the search for a Booke of Magick
and at a failed ritual performance. This chapter intends to examine the
consequences of the meeting of these two worlds. Apparently, the supernatural has
not been swallowed up by technology, and is vital to human life. It is, rather, our
approach to it that has changed; and this needs to be discussed. In the face of
scientific progress, we have to redefine our stance and combine fairy with
technology.
Key Words: Artemis Fowl, Colfer, supernatural, technology, magic, Cyberculture.
*****
1. Introduction
The second decade of the twenty-first century opens with a vibrant keynote,
connecting a sci-fi, highly technological world with a widely popular sword-andmagic swashbuckling adventure story. Kids flock to the theatres to learn from a
juvenile technician how to train their own dragons, as a more mature audience is
lured by the fluorescent world wide web of Pandora, presented in James
Camerons Avatar. If this accord of technology and magic does not strike us as a

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dissonance, it is because somehow this connection seems to us in tune with what
we intuit about our nature as human beings.
Cyberculture, as noted by Lvy, is a space in which culture, society and
technology permeate one another, creating a fluid, processional environment of
ever-shifting particles. 1 If we touch one of them, there is the immediate shooting of
synapses, inviting us to embrace more than we originally intended. Although a
century ago the realms of technology and magic were set at opposite poles by
Frazer, 2 these concepts are now brought together. By delving into the mythologies
of the past we rediscover the truth known to archaic societies: it was the blacksmith
who was complementary to the shaman, 3 so technology and magic have been
intertwined all along.
The re-emergence of this idea to the surface of our collective-cultural
consciousness could be spotted ten years ago in literature. The dealings of the
infamous teenage criminal, Artemis Fowl, saw the light thanks to his selfproclaimed biographer, Eoin Colfer, unearthing at the same time the underworld of
high-tech fairies, equipped with iris-cams, detachable wings and electrocuting
batons. The LEPrecon Captain, Holly Short, spurting out specialized jargon, is a
long shot from charmingly malicious Tinker Bell.
Artemis, a twelve-year-old child prodigy, flanked with his faithful bodyguards,
Butler and Jill, sets off on a quest not unlike the challenge humanity faces in the
age of cyberculture. Since the death of God, famously announced by Nietzsche,
orphaned humans have been seeking to access the supernatural world by means of
psychology and culture studies, or to explain away the inexplicable with the use of
natural sciences, in the attempt to master the world. 4 Similarly, Artemis tries to
step into his missing fathers shoes to restore the family fortune. He ceases to be on
the constant lookout for Artemis Seniors return, focusing instead on his goal: fairy
treasure, which he hopes to obtain by illegal means.
Is the young criminal mastermind, then, an example of the last man, 5
interested solely in material gain, and forsaking morality for worldly riches?
Indeed, the coat of arms of his family reads Aurum est potestas, which would
suggest such an interpretation. However, in the course of the story, we learn that
said gold is strongly associated with the supernatural, so connected by a special
link with the fairies. 6 If we borrow Mr Pullmans alethiometer and substitute gold
with fairy, and this with supernatural, we face an equation which is not easily
dismissed.
For if the supernatural is in fact what young Artemis seeks and desires, what is
its character and quality? In a world where fairies rely on blasters and bio-bombs to
take out their enemies, is there any place for good ol magic? Or is it, by any
chance, homogenous with man-made magic, 7 i.e., technology?

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2. Hand, Head and Heart
The alliterative hand, head, heart title of this section of the discussion invites
an association with nursery rhymes, and, perhaps, causes us to imagine children
standing in a circle, waiting to be counted out, or dubbed it, in some game. Yet,
in this enumeration, none of the constituent parts of the system can be discarded
without a threat to the integrity of the whole. In this three-dimensional reality of
human interior, we are aiming at the convergence point, rather than pursuing each
of these axes individually to infinity and beyond.
Traditionally, in our handling of the perceived world, it would be head and
heart that contend for primacy. The eighteenth century clash between the rigidly
scientific head and the divinely inspired heart has become, by now, a classic.
What tends to be overlooked, however, is the third factor, namely, the hand. It
expresses the stance of understanding the human being as a tool-maker, who
subdues the Earth and has dominion over all creation. While initially, the heartman looked for salvation in divine providence, after the death of God, he was
forced to take refuge in a sterile and ordered world of science, with head
necessarily gaining ascendancy. Technology was employed in the service of
dissecting reality and understanding it better, and found its niche as a sort of
technoscience. Yet, since it exists in opposition to the spiritual side of humanity,
the two were perceived as parallel and separate. If we accept this vision of the three
axes of the human predicament, then we clearly see that pursuing only one of them
leads nowhere. With the development of technology, humanity as tool-maker
reached out to embrace the heart. As a result, a new hybrid was created, which, for
the sake of this discussion, we can call technospirituality.
The visible form of technospirituality may be spotted in such phenomena as
technopaganism. In Grahames Representations of the post/human we read that
the:
digital world is animated and enchanted, that information
technology is the continuation of hidden codifications of wisdom
known only to initiates, and in their recovery of neopagan rituals
to celebrate not only the cycles of nature but the wonders of
technological invention, such high-tech adepts are the direct
descendents of the hermetic magi. 8
The associations with memory and an arcane elitist knowledge are, perhaps,
those which most ring true in our daily experience of a more and more technicized
world. The modern quest for knowledge resembles the journey of the Gnostic
search for enlightenment. 9 It is popular to seek spiritual experiences through
techniques, trying to control and channel the sacred. While pure reason and
unrestrained fantasy each proved unreliable, technology remained the only option.

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Such a stance is clearly visible in Colfers book, where overblown emotions are
locked away in the dark and dusty attic, in the person of Angelina, Artemiss
mother, who, after her husbands disappearance, descends into mental illness. She
suffers from delusions, photophobia, and mood swings, leaving the young criminal
to his own schemes. Any association between hallucination and the supernatural is
renounced. 10 It appears, the question of the physical vs. the virtual is no longer
valid.
I see, fibbed Butler.
Metaphorically or literally? smiled his employer.
Exactly. 11
As long as the bodyguard sees something clearly, the matter of the reality of
the experience is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the degree of trust we
can put in our equipment.
On the other hand, science is perceived as a mere prop for the efficient handling
of the world. Root, the Commander of the fairy LEPrecon force, finds it hard to
cooperate with Foaly the chief scientist, and psychoanalysts are openly ridiculed.
As Root says, science is taking magic out of everything. 12 The directness of the
experience is lost, as Foaly feels Hollys pain through sensors, removing the
human factor from the time-stopping ritual.
Magic in Artemiss world exists only in a rudimentary form of blue sparks,
which are used for healing and regeneration, and of mesmer, used for hypnothising.
It is the very power both to subdue Nature and to gain domination over people,
which Artemis seeks to obtain in his attempts to restore the family fortune. Thus, it
bears an uncommon resemblance to technology, which is used to excess by both
sides of the conflict use.
The key to the world of fairies is the Booke of Magick, which Artemis coerces
from one of them. He learns their secret language and their rules, which he later
uses to fulfil his wishes. Culture, with its symbols to be deciphered, stands at the
convergence point of the supernatural and the human worlds, opening the door to
creation through imagination.
3. The Ghost in the Machine
The Booke of Magick must necessarily assume a form that is acceptable and
easily manageable in the contemporary world. Thus, each leaf is photographed
with a digital camera; and the images are stored in multiple files, saved to
minidiscs, and projected into virtual space with the help of the internet. The
mechanical decoding of the fairy language is taken care of by Artemiss computer
translator. The humans are left only with jigsaws to rearrange and make sense of
the disconnected pieces. 13

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The supernatural, then, is forcefully put into a man-made machine, and
acclimates there pretty well. It is drawn into the world wide web of associations,
instantly linked to ancient cultures, and digested through analytical systems. Not
only Mud People (i.e. humans), but the fairy People as well, cram their magic into
technical devices, as is the case with the ritual of time-stopping, channelled by
Foaly to the lithium batteries.
Are not Colfers fairies then, yet another version of the ghost in the machine
dilemma? Science fiction offers us cyborgs, animated with artificial intelligence.
Instead of breathing life into a new construct, people reheat old mythologies to suit
the age of technology. Supernatural creatures, locked in the realm of fantasy and
armed with advanced weaponry, are now gaining ground.
The age-old stories look slightly different when processed through the modern
mind, just as the Booke of Magick had to change its form to be analysed by
Artemis. Cyber-fairies do not wield wands, but electrocuting batons, and are
largely deprived of traditionally sacred powers. The abilities of farseeing,
farhearing, invisibility, and flying appear to be possible thanks only to advanced
technology.
The actual magic, in the shape of blue sparks, much akin to electricity, is kept
in a rudimentary form to enhance natural processes in the organism (as is the case
with regeneration). Other than that, it is present in the life of fairies as a system of
rules, preventing the supernatural from interacting too closely with the human.
Thus, breaking into a human household results in the instant loss of magical
powers; and disobeying hosts eyeball orders is punished with a severe allergic
reaction.
However, one can live without this kind of magic, as demonstrated in the
examples of Holly and Mulch. They can work efficiently without resorting to
tricks; and the protection against mesmer is all too simple: putting on sunglasses
provides enough security from supernatural influence. Fairies, eons ahead of
humans in the realm of technology, bear a resemblance to medieval intelligences. 14
Still, divinities, with their magic, now come under the threat of becoming mere
tools for achieving human desires. Artemis uses the laws of the fairy world to heal
his mother, but keeps fairy treasure as well, being the ultimate winner of the human
vs. supernatural clash.
The characters of Artemis Fowl live in the abstract, virtual space, where the
body is redundant. The disembodied breathing of Commander Root meets
Artemiss voice, coming from a box. 15 Explaining away supernatural phenomena
by the means of science, concerned with the physical, becomes inadequate. Instead
of trying to fit the supernatural into the natural, we ponder the utility of the
phenomena that appear to us in the virtual world. More often than not, the
interaction depends on outsmarting the other party, with crime and violence
commonly serving as the currency of exchange.

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4. Conclusion
If the quest for the supernatural in cybernetic space is fraught with so much
danger (not to mention morally dubious actions), is it worth pursuing? Fairies
themselves wish to remain hidden safely in their Haven and avoid the hazards of
contacting Mud People. Yet, both races are threatened by uncontrollable predators,
trolls, and both seek to eliminate them. It appears that in order to rise above our
animal instincts we must turn to the supernatural and risk the unstable balance that
it brings.
One of the many aims of young Artemis is to escape the time field, in which he
and his companions are trapped. Thanks to the observation of his mother Angelina,
he learns that the rigid rules of the fourth dimension do not apply to individuals
who are sunken in their unconscious. To escape death from a bio-bomb, he finds it
necessary to remove himself from the realm of consciousness. This breaking from
human constraints is in agreement with the transhumanist aim to escape mortality,
and testifies to a new kind of idealism, tailored to the needs of modern times.
Artemis Fowl, it appears, is a book that invites us into a virtual world that is
wholly dependent on imagination. This time, however, the goal is not to provide us
with an escape from a harsh everyday reality, but to suggest that we create our own
world, one which we can tame and inhabit by means of technology. To battle our
trolls we must don medieval suits of armour, with the combination of magic and
modern appliances giving us every chance at survival.

Notes
1

P. Lvy, Cyberculture, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001, p. 1.

J. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, January, 2003,
http://www.manybooks.com, pp. 26 and 37.
3
M.A. Czaplicka, Shamanism in Siberia: Aboriginal Siberia, A study in Social
Anthropology, Forgotten Books, 2007, http://books.google.pl/books?id=o9b4L67
k528C&pg=PA58&dq=shamans+descend+from+blacksmiths&hl=pl&ei=AAj1S9
HiDNCssAaex5iIBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6
AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false, Viewed on 20 May 2010, p. 58.
4
L.W. Ortmann, Human Nature and the Creation of New Values, Journal of the
Alabama Academy of Science, July 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/
mi_hb178/is_34_75/ai_n29150666/?tag=content;col1, Viewed on 20 May 2010.
5
B. Waters, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a
Postmodern World, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2006, p. 25.
6
E. Colfer, Artemis Fowl, Puffin Books, London, 2002, p. 255.
7
Ibid., p. 13.
8
E.L. Graham, Representations of the Post/human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in
Popular Culture, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002, p. 168.
2

Anna Bugajska

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9

J.A. Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western
Religious Tradition, InterVarsity Press, Westmont, 2004, p. 272.
10
see, e.g., Colfer, op. cit., p. 233.
11
Ibid., p. 131.
12
Ibid., p. 94.
13
Ibid., p. 28.
14
Herrick, op. cit., p. 275.
15
Colfer, op. cit., pp. 108-109.

Bibliography
Colfer, E., Artemis Fowl. Puffin Books, London, 2002.
Czaplicka, M.A., Shamanism in Siberia: Aboriginal Siberia, A study in Social
Anthropology. Forgotten Books, 2007, http://books.google.pl/books?id=o9b4L67
k528C&pg=PA58&dq=shamans+descend+from+blacksmiths&hl=pl&ei=AAj1S9
HiDNCssAaex5iIBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6
AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. Viewed on 20 May 2010.
Frazer, Sir J., The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. January, 2003,
http://www.manybooks.com.
Graham, E.L., Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in
Popular Culture. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002.
Herrick, J.A., The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western
Religious Tradition. InterVarsity Press, Westmont, 2004.
Lvy, P., Cyberculture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001.
Ortmann, L.W., Human Nature and the Creation of New Values. Journal of the
Alabama Academy of Science. July 2004. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1
78/is_34_75/ai_n29150666/?tag=content;col1. Viewed on 20 May 2010
Waters, B., From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a
Postmodern World. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2006.
Anna Bugajska is a PhD student at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow in
Poland. Her main fields of study are childrens and fantasy literature, 18th-century
literature and the Age of Sensibility. She is interested in anthropology, history of
ideas and comparative studies.

Part V
The Future of Humanity in Film and Television

Enemy Metaphors and the Countdown for Mankind in the

American TV Series Space: Above and Beyond and
Battlestar Galactica
Petra Rehling
Abstract
Nearly ten years lie between the two American television series, Space: Above and
Beyond (S:AAB) and the highly acclaimed Battlestar Galactica (BSG), an
extremely political drama and product of the Bush administration period. This
chapter analyses how both shows are connected to reality, how they deal with the
intensity of human emotions in times of war and inner crisis in a highly militarized
and technological environment, and how we could come to understand our
technological selves through a show like BSG. While the humans in S:AAB are
facing a totally alien and hostile life form, the enemy in BSG was created by
humankind itself. These sentient AIs turn out to be the mirror-image of humanity at
its worst; they have chosen to remodel themselves in the image of their makers in
what looks like an attempt to infiltrate and destroy the rest of humankind. In the
stand-off between humans and enemy fractions, the alien Other in S:AAB or the
Cylons (toasters) in BSG, both sides are attempting to justify their own survival
and searching for reasons to commit genocide. In S:AAB, the treatment of In
Vitros (tanks), genetically engineered humans, symbolizes a first level in the
alienation of humankind from other life forms and, as it were, from its own
humanity, which then culminates in the wars against the Silicates (AIs) and the
Chigs. While first peace talks with the adversary in S:AAB end in disaster, the
conflict in BSG is eventually resolved and humankind lesson learned discards
its technological heritage to return to a life in nature, only to begin a new cycle of
slow dehumanization. BSG is about humankinds journey to (re-)discover its
humanity and the struggle with itself after a catastrophe, but it is also about the
Cylons quest for self-definition, two journeys which, as it turns out, have the same
destination. In both shows the fight is as much with the enemy outside as it is with
the enemy inside, the loss or the gain of what it means to be human.
Key Words: TV, enemy, other, mankind, artificial intelligence, technology.
*****
1. Introduction
The new Battlestar Galactica (BSG) series was produced during the era of the
Bush administration, a time of militarization, fear and attack on human rights and
freedoms. Space: Above and Beyond (S:AAB) came out in a different time, when
genetic engineering was the latest media scare. So much has changed between then
and now. Today, both shows are often discussed alongside each other, due to their

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similarities in content and atmosphere. S:AAB is regularly identified as a precursor
to BSG, which has picked up some of the earlier shows threads and ideas. Among
other parallels, humans in both tales are in some way related to their enemies and
go through confrontations that could read human nature fighting itself.
In BSG humankinds journey in the end converges with the Cylons own
identity quest and helps both sides to discover or rediscover humanity and initiate
an understanding of the enemy as next of kin. In BSG this is done by encouraging
the audience to explore its own technological heritage and becoming. In S:AAB
technology and humans are not blending into each other like they do in BSG.
Otherness is never completely negated; therefore, when one alien in the end tells
the humans about their genetic relationship, this merely serves to further alienate
the opponents.
In both tales the fight is both with the enemy outside and inside. In
confrontations with Others and by facing extinction, a mirror is held up to
humanity and, as in reality, the countdown for mankind is running.
2. Enemies
In BSG we are always reminded that the clock is ticking for humankind. Many
viewers have noticed that the Cylons rationale to eliminate all humans seems
logical; their machine minds have calculated their odds of survival, but it is wise
to say that there is no moral superiority among the Cylons. However, despite their
devastating first strike, Cylons do not appear as a classic genocidal culture. They
do not use language to demean humans or try to prolong or enjoy the annihilation.
However, we later learn about their fascistic breeding factories, their prison and
torture camp on New Caprica, and their rather dirty development of humanoid
models. Thus, even if they considered their odds, Daniel J. Goldhagen would say
that genocide is a political, and purposefully calculated, act. 1 We see how the
Cylons eliminationist notion is later reviewed by some individuals, such as the
characters Six, Sharon and others. Consequently, their change of heart should and
ultimately does annul the human rationalization to eliminate the Cylons in return.
Human distrust against the Cylons is based in their clone-like community,
which makes it difficult to identify or become an individual. It is easy to accuse
them as a collective. They do look a lot alike, which makes it easier to kill them.
Enemies are often perceived as faceless in war; see, for example, the way
Westerners often perceive terrorists as being characteristic of and indistinguishable
from the other members of the ethnic, cultural, and/or religious communities they
represent, thus identifying all members as potential threats.
How similar Cylons are to humans is shown when the human fleet finds its own
opportunity for a genocidal counter strike and the human leaders do not hesitate to
carry it out. They are stopped only by an individual who calls the bio-attack a
crime against humanity 2 and commits what any real government would call an
act of high treason. Goldhagen says that They started it is an emotionally

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powerful rationale used by children on the playground as well as men, and is
especially powerful when they really did start it and continue their attacks, but we
should understand all eliminationist acts as criminal. 3
Enemies need to be Others, they need to be dehumanized, so that we can justify
our own equally hideous actions and move on to eradicate them. Enemies are thus
identified by names that stress and demean their difference. In S:AAB humans call
In Vitros tanks or nipple-necks, the aliens are Chigs, Silicates are walking
computers, units or things. On the other side, Silicates call humans
carbonites, and even the aliens have a term for humans, red stench. In BSG the
Cylons are skin-jobs, chrome-jobs or toasters. The Cylons are the only Other
in this list who manage to enrich the word human with otherness without turning
it into a swearword.
In contrast to the Cylons, the Silicates have rudimentary emotions; they can act
independently through their Take a Chance virus, but their decisions are based on
chance, not reason. They are gamblers and their freedom is mechanical, and their
reactions can be triggered like some kind of automatism. When the show first
aired, viewers likely focussed on the humanness of these AIs; they have some kind
of evolution and emotions, but in comparison with the Cylons, the Silicates are
clearly portrayed as artificial. They need batteries, emit computer sounds, have
wires in their faces, and are not really killed, but, rather, turned off or
exterminated. They cannot reproduce and come with an expiry date, they are
childish and flawed creations, and their extinction is desired by humans and
considered just a matter of time. In the world of this story, there is not even a
rudimentary discussion about them being people.
Genetic relatives like the Chigs or In Vitros remain Other because they stay
unfamiliar. Mere knowledge about difference often suffices to trigger hatred, as
religious conflicts continue to prove. In Vitros look like us, but they were not
born in the human sense, they were grown and harvested and as a result are only
one step away from being artificial intelligence. In the 1990s, the Orwellian idea
that humans could be designed continued very much to scare the public; while
todays technological advances have caused the ideas of designer children and
beyond, sound less and less like science fiction.
While the humans in S:AAB struggle with their humanity, the In Vitro Cooper
Hawkes develops a human identity, much like the Cylons do in BSG. Here,
however, the show seems to follow a certain clichd checklist for what it means to
be human. Hawkes learns through his life as a solider about love, friendship and
more. In a way, like the Silicates, he rebels against his programming as a human
assassin, which is something the Silicates are unable to comprehend. In
comparison, another In Vitro in this tale, McQueen, fails to rise above his training
as a soldier, which does not however make him less human, but hints at the idea
that soldiers have a lot in common with machines.

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It is primarily the Chigs who progressively enrage and scare the humans in
S:AAB; they seem faceless, cruel and cunning. There are only brief encounters
when communication seems possible. Mostly they are an invisible enemy, like
fighters in the Vietnam War. Their presence looms in their terrifying weaponry and
planes, their bodies hidden in space suits, causing them all to look the same. A
human face of the enemy is presented in their Silicate allies, who often speak in the
name of the aliens. But when, at the end of the show, the first alien face is shown,
the humans cannot read it, and thus remain suspicious of the peace talks the aliens
initiate, which are therefore doomed to fail.
3. Finding Earth
Humanity is doomed, and nothing we can do will change this. Charles
Eisenstein states It is already too late. 4 He claims that there is a purpose to the
Fall 5 and humanitys demise will come from the separation from each other and
the world around. 6 In a way, Eisenstein creates the ultimate enemy metaphor in
nature itself by saying The world is an Other. 7 The Galactica story is a condensed
version about the fall of humankind. In the end, humans and Cylons unite to settle
on Earth, and it is, literally, a miracle that guides them there. Charles Eisenstein
speaks also of a miracle that will save humanity. His miracle however is less
divine. He believes the world as we know it (and not per se) will come to an end. 8
Humanity will save itself through a change of motivation and organizing principles
of technology, 9 new kinds of materialism and eco-friendly, new-age lifestyles. To
achieve this, Eisenstein concludes, we will have to face the ultimate evil before we
will choose to step up to a higher level of humanity. 10 In fact, we are dealing with
a double separation in BSG; humans have split from nature and from their
technological selves. The reunification of Cylons and humans is not a final
solution, but just the beginning of another cycle in what Eisenstein calls the tides
of separation and reunion, 11 initiated by handing down the technological gene to
the next generations. Humanity is a technological species whose technological
evolution feeds back into biological evolution. 12 The idea in BSG to move beyond
civilization, to leave the idea of building cities behind, is also in line with Daniel
Quinns thought experiment in Beyond Civilization. Quinn suggests a change of
lethal memes and a return to tribal values and organization structures. 13 He
understands this New Tribal Revolution 14 not as old-style ethnic tribalism, but as
new coalitions of people as equals who try to make a living. 15 In BSG the
separation in the end is temporarily healed, but Eisenstein and Quinns ideas are
revealed as idealistic when the story jumps to the cities of the future. Mankind has
begun a new cycle. Although human nature is meant to return to nature, human
separation from nature is like destiny; all we can do is forever yearn for it.
Ultimately, so Eisenstein contends, technology will again distance us from
nature. 16 Our genetic memory of nature is like nostalgia, an ideal that is eternally
out of reach. Finding Earth is, literally, humanitys never-ending quest.

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4. Technological Self
In BSG the question is not whether AIs are human, but if humankind is.
Humans have separated themselves from their technological self, but ultimately the
Cylons make the same mistake by separating their human natures from their more
mechanical selves. The human models distance themselves from the Raiders and
Centurions, who in addition lose their ability to speak. Like humans, Cylons are
scared of the free will of their mechanical selves and choose to lobotomize or
constrict them. They make the same mistake humans did, who made slaves out of
their robots. Because it was the Centurions who first created the human models;
and, once again, the children turn on their parents, just as the Cylon robots turned
on humanity.
If we want to see the AIs in BSG as a metaphor for humanity, we can see it in
their evolution, which did not reach for perfection. John C. Avise argues that
natural selection in humans does not aim to create a more perfect species, but
follows the short-term reproductive interests of individuals. 17 The Cylon god could
be a substitute for Avises genetic gods. He says that evolutionary processes are
mechanistic in nature and guided by a totally amoral and thoughtless natural
selection. 18 The desire to be human shows in the Cylons desire for their flaws. At
first this appears to be an odd idea of improvement and perfection. But replacing
resurrection or quasi immortality with birth just means replacing one type of
immortality with another. The technological self is indestructible. The
resurrection ship symbolises an anchor to a mechanistic self and prevents Cylons
from becoming human. They discover that without death there is no meaning to
life, especially when their being alive is questionable from the start. Genetic
immortality, after all, is another type of mechanism, biological mechanism. 19 It
has a close relationship to sexuality which could make it as desirable as mechanic
immortality.
The Cylons are depicted as a sexualized species with female characteristics and
strong female figures that help to amplify the sexual connotations and language of
the show. This feminine facet does in fact serve the Cylon quest for identity.
Explanations for why humans have sex include procreation, family bonding and
enjoyment. 20 If [e]volving is not a goal but a means to solving a problem, 21 then
the problem Cylons desire to solve is that of becoming human through selfreproduction, not replication.
Avises understanding of the genetic gods could explain the religiosity of the
Cylon race. Many researchers now understand religiosity as influenced by the
genes. Avise calls the genetic gods material agents, which have wrestled from
the supernatural gods considerable authority over human affairs. 22 BSG clearly
voices contemporary desires to bridge old chasms between science and spirituality.
The difference in how AIs are represented in S:AAB therefore shows how far our
relationship to technology has advanced over only a decade.

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It is popular to interpret the Cylons as people, but they are also machines. For
them humanness is a choice. Some models choose to turn their back on humanity
or dismiss it from the start. An understanding of our bodies as machines roots in
the fact that human life clearly is evolving from the natural to the artificial. The
Cylons represent this otherness in ourselves. 23 The desire to go beyond what is
humanly, sensory and intellectually possible is traditionally at the core of drug use
and now part of the fascination with virtual reality. The Cylons exemplify our inner
debates and the fear that the knowledge we crave could trigger our demise. At the
end of The Plan, Cylon Cavil opposes the other models fascination with the
human condition; he voices feelings of confinement and entrapment in his human
body: Im a machine, and I can know much more. Ironically, though coming
from a machine, his is the human voice of our time.
Many researchers have hope that a future machine consciousness may choose
humanity as the final stage of machine evolution and that humanity could embrace
new hybrid life forms. Storrs J. Hall believes that the AI of the future will be
capable of morality, and, therefore, advises that humans provide them with a
conscience. 24
5. Conclusion
BSG and S:AAB are not tales about post-humanism; human bodies are not
redundant or merging with computerized creations. 25 It is humanness or human
materialism, not technological transcendence that reside at the cores of these
stories. In BSG, humanity reaches a phase when it briefly understands itself
completely and sets a course for life. But after this climax, it, once again, drifts and
even tears itself apart. This tearing is done by first distancing humankind from
nature and then distancing it from technology. Humans put a piece of themselves in
their avatars, like artists who put a piece of their soul into their work. Like a
chemical reaction, these divided human natures strive for completion and, in the
very moment of success, inevitably set in motion a new process of rejection. BSG
is telling us to embrace our technological heritage and self as part of human nature,
a genetic condition we cannot and should not try to escape, despite is selfdestructiveness. But lessons can be learned from past failures. Eisenstein observes
that warnings from past civilizations do exist in our world and in our myths; we
simply dont care to listen to them. 26 In S:AAB the tale remains unfinished, the
ending both fabricated and unsatisfactory. In this version, we are offered only a
glimpse of humanitys path. The opportunity to embrace both otherness and
oneself remain out of reach. Now that even the sanctuaries of human bodies are
progressively designed by technology (e.g. growing up attached to iPods, mobile
phones and chip cards), how can we still fear the technology carry in our pockets
willingly? Therefore, it is no wonder that the robots in the stories of our time
consistently have human faces.

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Notes
1

D.J. Goldhagen, Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing
Assault on Humanity, Public Affairs, New York, 2009, p. 167.
2
Helo in Season 3, Episode 7.
3
Goldhagen, op. cit., pp. 201-204.
4
C. Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity, Panenthea Press, Harrisburg, 2007, p.
434.
5
Ibid., p. 534.
6
Ibid., p. 3.
7
Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 31.
8
Ibid., p. 438.
9
Ibid.
10
Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 534.
11
Ibid., p. 537.
12
Ibid., p. 59.
13
D. Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanitys Next Great Adventure, Three Rivers
Press, New York, 1999, p. 24.
14
Ibid., p. 163.
15
Ibid., p. 147.
16
Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 7.
17
J.C. Avise, The Genetic Gods: Evolution and Belief in Human Affairs, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1998, p. 14.
18
Ibid., pp. 50-51.
19
Ibid., p. 4.
20
Avise, op. cit., p. 125.
21
M. Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Penguin,
New York, 1993, p. 31.
22
Avise, op. cit., pp. 203-204.
23
C. Wertheim, Star Trek First Contact: The Hybrid, the Whore and the
Machine, Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema, Z. Sardar and S.
Cubitt (eds), Pluto, London, 2002, p. 91.
24
J.S. Hall, Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, Prometheus
Books, Amherst, NY, 2007, pp. 346 and 367.
25
M. Kaku, Visions: How Science will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 17.
26
Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 544.

Bibliography
Avise, J.C., The Genetic Gods: Evolution and Belief in Human Affairs. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1998.

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Enemy Metaphors and the Countdown for Mankind

__________________________________________________________________
Eisenstein, C., The Ascent of Humanity. Panenthea Press, Harrisburg, 2007.
Goldhagen, D.J., Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing
Assault on Humanity. Public Affairs, New York, 2009.
Hall, J.S., Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine. Prometheus Books,
Amherst, NY, 2007.
Kaku, M., Visions: How Science will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
Quinn, D., Beyond Civilization: Humanitys Next Great Adventure. Three Rivers
Press, New York, 1999.
Ridley, M., The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. Penguin,
New York, 1993.
Wertheim, C., Star Trek First Contact: The Hybrid, the Whore and the Machine.
Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema. Sardar, Z. and Cubitt, S. (eds),
Pluto, London, 2002.
Petra Rehling is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Dayeh
University, Taiwan. Her research interests are media and cultural studies with a
focus on popular culture, television and new media. She has published a book on
Hong Kong cinema and several articles on the Harry Potter phenomenon.

Quest for Closure: Re-Visioning Humanity in Battlestar Galactica

Dagmara Zajc
Abstract
According to Russell Reising, no social text can resolve in its imaginative work the
various crises and tensions that characterize the world of its genesis. The chapter
examines the numerous narrative slips and loose ends that one may encounter
while watching one of the most original and provocative sci-fi series of our time,
which is Ron Moores Battlestar Galactica. The series is frequently described as
controversial in that it upends some of science-fictions most recognizable clichs:
the supposedly evil Cylon androids are principled and deeply religious, whereas
most humans including the figures of authority emerge as fallible and often
dishonest. Throughout the four airing seasons, the story abounds in unresolved
mysteries, inconclusive episode endings and loose ends. Some developments in the
storyline might be described as downright illogical; what is more, the ending lacks
closure which would satisfy the disturbed viewer. I want to argue that this
particular inability to close results from the series trying to confront the problem of
the very survival of the human race in the post-industrial, or even post-humanistic
era. I believe that there is a profound sense of anxiety inspiring this disruptive
story, and for that reason alone it simply cannot close. It seems impossible to
merely assume that Galacticas quest is the quest for redemption: if the humans are
being punished for going too far in the field of science and technology, why do the
Cylon androids seem so very human? When our own creations turn against us and
there is no place to go, there is a need to revise the most basic assumptions for our
existence as a species. The chapter presents how Battlestar Galactica attempts to
place humanity in this entirely new and unprecedented context.
Key Words: Battlestar Galactica, closure, loose ends.
*****
Ron Moores Battlestar Galactica, which is a reimagining of a 1978 TV series,
has won widespread acclaim among many mainstream non-genre publications.
Time and New York Newsday named it the best show on television in 2005. Other
publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Review and
Rolling Stone magazine also gave the show positive reviews. The critics and fans
alike agree that the show transcends in some way the science fiction genre. Diane
Werts of Newsday wrote: You can look at this saga any way you wantas
political drama, religious debate, psychological suspenser, sci-fi adventure, deep
metaphor or just plain funand its scintillating from every angle. 1 Most
reviewers emphasize that there is more to Battlestar Galactica than plain fun,
having two main reasons in mind.

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First of all, it is supposed to be realistic and at the same time it upends some
of science-fictions most recognizable clichs: the supposedly evil Cylon androids
are principled and deeply religious, whereas most humans including the figures
of authority emerge as fallible and often dishonest. The other important reason is
that the show is said to reflect the fears and concerns of contemporary society.
Joshua Alston of Newsweek declares that the show captures better than any other
TV drama of the past eight years the fear, uncertainty and moral ambiguity of the
post-9/11 world 2 According to Joanna Weiss of the Boston Globe, This is a show
about religion, politics, parent-child relationships, and the moral dilemmas of
insurgency. Consider it a workplace drama where the business is armed
resistance. 3 The impression that the show is anchored in reality is strengthened by
the myriad of external references and symbols of many kinds that abound in the
show.
Let us consider a few of the more interesting examples, redirecting the viewer
outside the Battlestar Galactica universe. What we often get are the religious
references, such as those referring to the Old Testament: in the tenth episode of the
first season, President Roslin sees snakes on her podium while giving a press
conference regarding the fuel shortage. She speaks with Priestess Elosha, who says
that her dreams and visions are referred to in the sacred scrolls by the prophecies of
the oracle Pythia. In the scrolls, Pythia declares that the human race will undergo
exile and rebirth, and will be guided to their new homeland by a dying leader. The
snakes and the nature of the quest, bringing to mind the biblical Exodus, make the
viewer think of Laura Roslin as a Moses character. Some of the episode titles are
also derived from Christian traditions: He That Believeth In Me and Valley of
Darkness are clearly Roman Catholic references, whereas Blessed Be the Tie that
Binds is a Protestant hymn celebrating the unity that comes from love. At the same
time, the religious belief common to the surviving humans is polytheism based on
the Greek pantheon.
There are many other kinds of references, including, for instance, the ones
coming back to the original series and other science-fiction productions, such as
Star Trek. One of such quotes is The Circle, a secret tribunal passing judgment on
collaborators during the time of New Caprica occupation. From Blade Runner, we
have the name skinjobs, used to refer to humanoid Cylons. The phrase end of
line, uttered by the Cylon hybrid, is homage to the film Tron, in which the Master
Control Program finishes its sentences with end of line. Battlestar Galactica also
abounds in historical references. For instance, The events of the Cylon invasion
and occupation of New Caprica were, clearly inspired by the 1940 German
invasion of France and the subsequent collaborationist Vichy regime.
The show is also rich in literary references: the eighteenth episode of the third
season is titled The Son Also Rises which is of course a pun on the 1926 Ernest
Hemingway novel. In the sixth episode of the fourth season, Baltars wireless
broadcast contains a number of phrases from the To be or not to be soliloquy of

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Hamlet, including shuffle off this mortal coil, and the undiscoverd country,
from whose bourn no traveler returns. 4 We also get ironic and pointed allusions to
current political life, as in the nineteenth episode of season two: Roslins comment
to Baltar after the last presidential debate, Why dont you go frak yourself, is
likely inspired by the incident on June 22, 2004 in the US Senate, when Vice
President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck yourself, What
emerges in the world of Battlestar Galactica are not isolated examples of
quotations, but a whole network of references, intricately woven into the
framework of the narrative, bringing out the symbolic and the implied.
The myriad of references definitely makes the show more interesting to the
viewer by complicating it and opening the episodes up for discussion. There is,
however, one more characteristic feature to Battlestar Galactica, which, apart from
making the watching process more rewarding, may also be a cause for significant
destabilization on the part of the viewer. Throughout the four airing seasons, the
story abounds in unresolved mysteries, inconclusive episode endings and loose
ends. Some developments in the storyline might be described as downright
illogical; what is more, the ending lacks closure which would satisfy the disturbed
viewer. Let us briefly examine some of the numerous narrative slips and loose ends
that one may encounter while watching Battlestar Galactica.
First of all, there are problems connected with the supposed realism of the
series. The creators have introduced the term Naturalistic Science Fiction, which in
their opinion should be applied to what they intend to achieve in Battlestar
Galactica and to describe the shows aesthetics. Ron Moore explains that
Naturalistic Science Fiction is meant to be a realistic take on the genre, with its
roots in drama rather than adventure tales. It eschews science-fiction staples such
as one-dimensional characterizations, clear-cut conceptions of good and evil, socalled technobabble and deus ex machina approaches. There is also more of an
effort at continuity - the events in one episode have visible effects in subsequent
episodes, unlike other science-fiction shows in which episodes are more standalone. 5 It is definitely true that sometimes the science behind the episodes is very
real, as for example in the case of describing the consequences of decompression
and vacuum exposure. At other times, however, the explanations are far from
realistic. The example might be the Cylon virus, the science behind it being
somewhat questionable. While the biological aspect is sound, the existence of a
bioelectrical feedback component appears to be in fact technobabble. It would be
impossible for a biological virus, which is a physical pathogen, to be transmitted
by downloading.
It is definitely the case that in terms of realism and continuity, there are
instances when attention to minute details can be observed. For example, When Lt.
Gaeta takes his shirt off in one of the episodes of the third season, the tiger tattoo
he got in one of the previous episodes can be seen. Still, some continuity errors and
loose ends do disrupt this stability. Unanswered questions arise during the show:

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how are the consciousnesses of dead Raiders stored and where are they
transferred? How could the Circle punishing the collaborators operate in
Galacticas launch tubes without William Adamas notice or, for that matter, the
notice of anyone on the usually-busy hangar decks? Why does the human-cylon
child Hera need the medication for a curable disease, while her blood was used to
cure breast cancer for President Roslin?
Another problem with the show, which might be described as a problem of
coherence, is the ending itself. As noted in the previous chapter, it failed to satisfy
the fans and critics alike. What is lacking is closure the viewer finds himself
vexed with the unanswered questions and loose ends. What do the two mysterious
beings virtual Six and virtual Baltar represent? What higher power was
orchestrating the events? What happened to one of the most popular character Kara
Thrace?
The complex references, unanswered questions, loose ends, coincidences, and
the series ultimate lack of closure all continue to inspire heated discussions, also
among the academics. I believe that in order to better understand the primary
concerns of this destabilized show and in order to better understand the semantic
dynamics informing its narrative structure, we could refer to Russel Reisings
groundbreaking study, Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text. He
examines the works as diverse as Phillis Wheatleys poetry, Charles Brockden
Browns Wieland, and the Disney Studios animated classic Dumbo. Reising
analyzes the ways in which these and other works struggle to cordon off their
narrative worlds, and how the moments of stoppage with which they conclude
paradoxically function to exacerbate, to reopen, the very tensions they are meant to
conclude. 6 It is worth emphasizing that Reisings idea is that of an anti-closure, as
opposed to standard ambiguous or open endings. He provides numerous examples
of works with seemingly cryptic or unclear conclusions which might seem
confusing. Still,
These works all pulse toward these final moments, which,
however ambiguous or ironic, nonetheless crystallize many of
their narratives primary concerns. In all these cases, the
openness and ambiguity of the conclusions are themselves
versions of closural coherence, even when the coherence
functions to conclude narratives without obvious or stable
teleological end points. 7
Nevertheless, the works that Reising focuses on are characterized by an array of
absences, excesses, and final passages which function very differently relative both
to the thematic and structural dimensions of the works they conclude and to the
extranarrative worlds with which these works have their most plausible
relationships. He argues that the works he discusses in Loose Ends collapse into

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anti-closure because of historically specific concerns and narrative agendas. 8
Some poems, short stories, novels, or films cannot close precisely because their
embeddedness within the sociohistorical worlds of their genesis is so complex and
conflicted. 9 These are works that admit of no enclosing lines which would
separate them from the outside world. As such, they repeatedly problematize the
very possibility of such lines. The loose ends which characterize the concluding
moments of these works function largely as provocations for the reader to
reproblematize the very assumptions brought to the aesthetic experience and to
reimagine the entire world of the work of art. 10
The reimagining occurs as a shadow narrative is revealed: according to
Reising, it is the construct that has been lying latent within the dominant thematics
of the work from which it emerges. The shadow narrative is revealed through what
Reising labels the scaffolding within the recognizable world of material things
and historical recollections. The scaffolding simply constitutes the frame of any
narrative; still, sometimes it refuses to remain marginal and, instead, infuses the
work with the stresses inherent within their narratives. 11 The idea is something
similar to traditional notions of setting or background or environment, but
Reising suggests that we can pursue them even farther into a denser field of
material referents which constitute the sociohistorical basis for narratives of all
sorts, however tangential they may seem to the social world of their eras. 12 The
scaffolding includes a variety of deictic gestures that virtually require us to
supplement their narrative worlds with the discourses and concerns derived from
many sectors of social and cultural practice to which these works allude and from
which they draw.
As a virtual requisite for any representational scheme, these
elements I refer to as scaffolding comprise the entire range of
social, economic, historical, political, psychological, even
architectural assumptions and moments without which narrative
theme or plot would be impossible, hopelessly abstract. But
while they provide the structuring and complexity of details that
fatten up any narrative and make coherence possible, these
elements also have the potential to take on a counternarrative life
of their own and, paradoxically, to make coherence impossible. 13
Let us finally try to apply some of Reisings theoretical devices in our
discussion of Battlestar Galacticas quest for closure. The representational
vehicles comprising the series scaffolding might seem to be mere props of little
significance. Continuity errors of coincidental occurrences are often dismissed as
simple narrative slips. Nevertheless, according to Reising, what appears to function
merely as conventional, referential scaffolding for the works major thematics may
by itself emerge as a set of alternative, disruptive, and, quite remarkably, dominant

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themes. Such moments commonly emerge with a high degree of counternarrative
visibility as a result of the narratives closural failures. We recognize, that is, the
internal conflicts and referential instabilities of these works when, by virtue of their
endings, they emerge as an alternative and supplementary referential grid capable
of displacing what had been established by various generic and conventional
practices as the works dominant thematics. 14
The ending of Battlestar Galactica may very well be considered as an instance
of Reisings anti-closure. The series greatest question of who or what has been
orchestrating the events remains without an answer. Even Ron Moores attempts at
an explanation remain unsatisfactory. Clearly, we are supposed to believe that the
one true god, who is in fact a Cylon god, meant for the humans and the Cylons to
find the promised land together and to coexist peacefully. Such superficial
reading would also imply that the fear of science and technology could be easily
dismissed: if the humans are being punished for going too far in the field of
developing artificial intelligence, why do the Cylon androids seem so very human?
The interplay between free will, and destiny/predestination clearly emerges as
the pervasive theme for the series. Divine providence, manifesting itself in the
numerous coincidences, visions, epiphanies, and direct actions by the virtual Six,
appears to be the philosophy and the main deeper concern of Battlestar Galactica.
Nevertheless, I would like to argue that through the series inability to close,
another great theme, informing a shadow narrative, emerges. First of all, the
vision of a higher being protective of both the human and their creations can be
easily dismissed as one considers the several loose ends and contradictions. At the
beginning, the god clearly leads Virtual Six to help Gaius Baltar sabotage the
actions of her own kind. In the very first episode, she reveals the Cylon tracking
device. She later helps Baltar design a Cylon detector. Further, it is worth noting
that as an agent of god, her knowledge is quite limited. For example, towards the
end of the first season she is not aware of the fact that the baby Hera is not dead.
As a consequence, apart from the divine providence reading, the shadow
narrative might reveal deeper layers of meaning. Let us look once again at the
element of the scaffolding: a narrative slip which is seemingly devoid of any
deeper significance. The seven Cylon models are initially referred to with their
respective numbers. In one of the first episodes of the third season, Baltar calls one
of the Number Threes DAnna, to which she responds. However, this is not the
copy who was using the name as she was hiding in the Fleet. by mid season, all the
Cylons start referring to themselves with their human names. In the course of the
fourth season, Galen Tyrol refers to the Eights and Twos as Sharons and
Leobens, but the Sixes as Sixes.
I believe that all those deictic prompts reveal the underlying tension that
inspires Battlestar Galacticas disruptive plot. It is connected to the contemporary
crisis of identity and goes beyond the simple problem of identifying somebody or
oneself as human or Cylon. It is a crisis of the post-modern, post-humanistic era:

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there are no superheroes just as there is no justice, and we are essentially flawed as
a species. The supposedly inhuman as the Cylons are, they seem to redeem some of
the very human qualities. On the other hand, most humans in the series are often
cruel and dishonest.
The Galacticas quest for closure is not simply about the fear of technology. It
is an attempt at re-visioning the place of humanity in an entirely new and
unprecedented context; the context that might be described as postmodern, postreligious, or even post-humanistic. For this reason alone it simply cannot close:
similarly to the contemporary horror fiction, featuring the vampire in an attempt to
polarize the human/inhuman opposition, the narrative destabilizes the beliefs of
readers, serves as a cultural artifact, and focuses on the darker aspects of the self,
society, and the universe. To sum up: Battlestar Galactica is more than your usual
space opera. In the tenth episode of the third season, the hybrid makes the
possibly fourth wall-breaking statement: Throughout history, the nexus between
man and machine has spawned some of the most dramatic, compelling, and
entertaining fiction.

Notes

D. Werts, Best Shows on TV, Newsday, Friday 10 January 2009, Viewed on 10

May 2010, http://www.newsday.com/newsday/2.810/2.858.
2
J. Alston, The Way We Were, Newsweek, Sunday 12 December 2008, Viewed
on 10 May 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/2008/12/12/the-way-we-were.html.
3
J. Weiss, Moral Dilemmas Pulled into Battlestar Galaxy, Boston Globe, Friday
10 May 2006, Viewed on 29 April 2010, http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/
articles/2006/10/05/moral_dilemmas_pulled_into_battlestar_galaxy/.
4
W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Echo Library, London, 2006, p. 52.
5
R. Moore, Essay on NSF, BattlestarWiki, Viewed on 10 May 2010,
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/NSF#Ron_Moore.27s_Essay_on_NSF.
6
R. Reising, Loose Ends: Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text, Duke
University Press, Durham, NC 1996, p. 3.
7
Ibid., p. 6.
8
Ibid., p. 9.
9
Ibid., p. 12.
10
Ibid., p. 13.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., p. 15.
14
Ibid., p. 22.

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Bibliography
Alston, J., The Way We Were. Newsweek. Sunday 12 December 2008, Viewed
on 10 May 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/2008/12/12/the-way-we-were.html.
Moore, R., Essay on NSF. BattlestarWiki. Viewed on 10 May 2010,
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/NSF#Ron_Moore.27s_Essay_on_NSF.
Reising, R., Loose Ends: Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text. Duke
University Press, Durham, NC 1996.
Shakespeare, W., Hamlet. Echo Library, London, 2006.
Weiss, J., Moral Dilemmas Pulled into Battlestar Galaxy. Boston Globe. 10 May
2006, Viewed on 29 April 2010, http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2006/
10/05/moral_dilemmas_pulled_into_battlestar_galaxy/.
Dagmara Zajc is a doctoral student at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw,
Poland. Her primary research interest is the development of American
Gothic/horror fiction.

Whos Your Saviour? The Changing Messiahs of Contemporary

Science Fiction Film and TV
Sofia Sj
Abstract
Increasingly, scholars in religious studies and theology are turning to science
fiction for a greater understanding of both religion in this world and worlds to
come. Though science fiction has sometimes been hostile to religion, this genre has
also always shown interest in many religious themes. One such theme is the myth
of a messiah. Modern science fiction clearly shows that this myth is alive and well
today in at least popular culture. The messiahs we find in contemporary science
fiction film and TV are however not quite the same as the one in the JudeoChristian tradition. Contemporary science fiction saviours challenge ideas about
religion, the saviours gender, and the communitys role in the apocalyptic
struggle. This chapter looks closer at these changes as they are represented in a
couple of modern science fiction films and TV-series and reflects on what these
representations suggest about the role of religion, spirituality and the messiah-myth
in contemporary and future societies.
Key Words: Science fiction, messiah, saviour, gender, religion, community,
change.
*****
1. Introduction
Theologians and scholars of religion have long shown an interest in science
fiction. There are several reasons for this. With the study of religion and popular
culture making progressively more headway in the wider field of religious studies,
science fiction has naturallyconsidering its popular appealcome into focus.
Even if science fiction did not maintain the role it does in popular culture, it is
likely that the genre would interest scholars of religion all the same. That is, as
Farah Mendlesohn has shown, while science fiction often expresses a critical
attitude toward religion, the genre, nevertheless, frequently also deals with
questions of faith. 1 In a genre where a sense of wonder and a feeling of awe play
such significant roles, theological and mythological ideas are bound to emerge. 2
Thus, while science fiction has criticized religion, it has also sought and found
inspiration in religious themes. 3 One such theme is the end of the world and the
related idea of a messiah. In science fiction, however, religious themes are also
transformed. Consequently the stories of a saviour in science fiction films, for
example, are seldom identical to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The
changes that occur are noteworthy, both for what they suggest about attitudes in
our culture, and for the ideas about humanity that they convey.

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In what follows, I explore three ways in which the story of a messiah can be
demonstrated to have been changed in contemporary science fiction films and TVseries when compared with both religious traditions and earlier science fiction
stories, and I reflect on how these changes can be read. The transformations I focus
on concern religious concepts, gender and community. Saviour characters have
been identified in many genres and they have been characterized in different ways.
Many scholars have chosen to speak of Jesus-characters (characters in films about
Jesus) and Christ-characters (characters that allegorically represent the Christian
saviour). 4 I have here chosen to speak of messiah-characters, that is to say
characters that take it upon themselves to save the world, humankind, or the
universe, and are surrounded by clear religious references.
The films and TV-series that make up the material for this study are relatively
contemporary works. A majority of the material has been created in the USA. To
balance this American dominance, however, I have also analysed some Nordic
material. The films analyzed here include: the Star Wars (1977, 1980, 1983, 2000,
2002, 2005), Terminator (1984, 1991, 2003), Matrix (1999, 2003, 2003), and
Alien (1979, 1986, 1992, 1997) series of films; The Fifth Element (1997); Wing
Commander (1999); Avatar (2009); Deep Impact (1998); Vikaren (The Substitute,
2007); and Jadesoturi (Jade Warrior, 2006). The TV-series examined include:
Dark Angel (2000-2002); Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-3003); and the Swedish
TV-series Silvermannen (The Silver Man, 1996).
2. Changing Religion
Since I have chosen to define messiah-characters as characters surrounded by
clear religious references, we will naturally find religion in the material. The
messiah myth is not unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition, but since we are here
dealing with material made in the western world I use this tradition as my point of
reference. Not surprisingly, we find clear references to be substantial Christian
saviour in the selected material. We learn, for example, that Anakins birth in the
Star Wars films was a form of virgin birth. Likewise, a large number of the
messiah-characters pass through something akin to the passion found in Christian
narrativesthe characters give up their lives for others, die or disappear, and some
are brought back to life. Examples of this are found in The Matrix, Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, the Alien films, Terminator 2, and Silvermannen.
Despite these connections to Christianity, it is worth noting that this religious
tradition is far from the only one present in the films and TV series. Instead, we
often find in them a mix of religious ideas. In the Matrix films, for example, one
recognizes both Buddhist and Hindu themes, 5 along with a clear Gnostic
undercurrent. 6 Likewise, in the Star Wars films, Joseph Campbells monomyth
serves as a driving theme, 7 and is combined with Buddhist concepts. William Sims
Bainbridge has identified in these films also certain similarities with new religious
movements. 8 In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a Christian-inspired demonology is

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present, but the religion that wins out in the end is Wicca. In Silvermannen certain
references to Egyptian mythology are made, while Jadesoturi mixes Finnish and
Chinese mythology with a traditional saviour theme.
In addition to combining religious traditions, the films and TV series also
challenge religious hierarchies. While we do find religious elites in many of the
films, they often have to give way to the messiahs. The messiah may be a
representative of the faith, but traditional power structures are often defied. Thus,
in the Star Wars films, both Anakin and Luke are Jedis who ultimately go their
own way. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, authority goes to those who fight on the
right side, not the religious experts. Though exceptions to this trend can be found
elsewhere (e.g. Dark Angel), the picture the material draws generally is one of a
lack of interest in institutional forms of religion. Religious questions, rather,
become a more personal issue for many of the saviours.
3. Changing Gender
The traditional myth of a messiah includes a fairly strict gender structure. A
woman gives birth to man who subsequently saves the woman, the world, and
himself, underlining (according to some) the idea that a man can save himself,
while a woman cannot. This gender structure has lived on in the created worlds of
science fiction. In the classic science fiction tales, women were generally absent.
However, as Brian Attebery has shown, during the last 30 years a change has
occurred. 9 In much of the more recent science-fiction literature, feminist ideas have
been taken into account, 10 a trend that continues today in both TV and film.
Though men are still usually represented as the saviour in contemporary
science fiction, women are no longer confined to the sidelines. Instead, women are
allowed to fight side by side with men, and, often, on fairly equal ground. This is
the case, for example, in both the Matrix and the Terminator series of films. In
other films and TV series, we find also female messiah-characters and saviours.
This is true in the films Alien3 (and, to a lesser extent, the other films in this
series), and The Fifth Element, as well as the TV series Dark Angel and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer.
Though female saviours and strong women on film are interesting from a
feminist perspective, they have, nonetheless, often been found wanting. The films
might present femininity as something active; but, as Sherrie A. Inness has
illustrated, they also limit the characters in many ways. Consequently, strong
women are usually an exception to the rule and are often only allowed to be strong
if they act in a traditionally masculine way. 11 They do not want to be tough, and,
further, feel guilty for the powers they possess. 12 The spheres of power to which
they are allowed access are limited. Though they save the world, religious
powersin terms of religious leadership or a religious voiceare often not
granted them. 13 Despite these problems, a changes have clearly taken place; and
these changes are not limited to the female characters.

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The traditional saviour hero has often been a lonesome, strong male, who
maintains a strict control over his feelings. Though this character still exists, many
films today give us a different male saviour. In films such as Star Wars, The
Matrix and Jadesoturi, the saviour is someone for whom love and emotions are
important. While these emotions might lead to problems, they are sometimes what
are required to save the world. From a feminist perspective the new male heroes
are interesting but not unproblematic. Representing male characters in a new way
does not necessarily result in equality between men and women. Instead, what we
find, for example, in Wing Commander, Dark Angel and Vikaren is that the more
emotional male characters are now used to educate female characters about their
emotions.
4. Changing Communities
The traditional messiah story is very much about community. It is in troubled
communities that the idea of a messiah usually appears. The messiah is also closely
connected to the community. Though messiahs can be seen as world-saviours, the
ones they are actually expected to save are the members of a community of
believers. In regard to the idea of a messiah, the relationship between God and the
community also often becomes clear. It is God that sends the saviour, or the
saviour is in some way divine. 14
In contemporary science fiction films and TV-series, this idea of community
goes through some changes. Firstly, though the stories we are dealing with here are
steeped in religious vocabulary and imagery, the human/God relationship is, as
Conrad Ostwalt has pointed out, largely absent. God rarely appears in these stories,
and it is no longer the one who sends the saviour. Instead, both the troubles from
which the community needs saving and the saviours themselves are closely
connected to the human community. 15 Thus, humanity both creates the apocalyptic
situation and then chooses and trains their saviour.
Instead of being a representative for God, the majority of messiahs represented
in contemporary science fiction films and TV series are themselves representatives
of the communities that they save. This also gives a new dimension to the
communities. The supernatural aspects might be connected most clearly to the
saviour, but this character is often not the only one with special abilities. Rather, a
supernatural or divine element can often be found in other parts of the community
as well. In some films and TV series the saviour is represented in a group or a
whole community rather than just one chosen individual. In Deep Impact, for
example, the saviours are the crew of the spaceship The Messiah, while in Buffy
the Vampire slayer the saviour is always surrounded by friends and helpers.
5. Change for a Changing World
There are, no doubt, many ways to understand the changing messiah stories
analysed here. While, on the one hand, these changes should not be overestimated,

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that these changes point to something interesting cannot, on the other hand, be
denied. Some scholars have identified in these tendencies a sign of the
secularization of apocalyptic and messianic themes. Apocalyptic ideas are today a
clear part of secular culture. When the divine presence is removed from the story it
is commonly seen as a sign of the themes losing their connection to religion. 16
Though this is no doubt to a certain extent true, the picture is, as I see it, not
that simple. Traditional religious institutions are losing influence in contemporary
culture, and we can see this reflected in much of the material considered to this
point, as religious leaders play no great part in the stories and belief in a God or a
higher supernatural being is rare. This does not, however, mean that everything is
becoming secular. The part popular culture plays in the religious lives of many
today serves to contradict this reading. 17 I would argue that the material can instead
(or also) be understood in reference to the changing religious landscape and the
turn from religion to spirituality. For many, the divine is no longer found without
but within. For these individuals, gods are not unimportant, but are simply not as
important as in traditional religions. 18 This is, as we have seen, also often the case
in the material we have considered. The myth of a messiah, then, is here, but has
been, in a sense, detraditionalized, while retaining a spiritual core.
The challenge to gender structures that we find in the material can be read as a
challenge to both traditional gender structures and religious ideas about gender.
The image that the material presents is one of a world where both religion and
gender are a bit of a smorgasbord and do not have to be constructed according to
traditional rules. The centrality of female characters in the messiah stories can be
related to the feminizing process that is, according to Susan J. Palmer and others,
taking place in many religions today. 19 Though some gender inequalities are
eradicated in these stories the risk of new inequalities appearing is worth
emphasizing. The fact that many films with female messiahs do not bestow female
characters with religious power underlines the risk of certain power structures
prevailing. When power structures are not even challenged in science fiction, we
notice how taken for granted these structures are.
The challenge of traditional gender structures in the material is noteworthy, but
the question of whether the change also concerns ethnicity and class is worth
exploring further. I would argue that the material for this study does not present
humanity in an over idealized manner. From this perspective, it is interesting to
notice the often multicultural worlds we find in the material. The saviours are still
usually white, middleclass men, but the communities around them are often made
up of a great variety of characters. When large parts of the community are allowed
to take part in the battle many different people are then given a purpose. The vision
of humanity we find in the stories is then sometimes of a humanity that has caused
the apocalypse, but it is also in some cases a humanity where difference is the rule
and not always a problem. Read in a perhaps over positive way the material then
points to at least a wish for an acceptance of difference.

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6. Conclusion
Whether the changes identified in this chapter are good or bad thing is left for
each reader to determine. That a change is taking place, however, is hard to deny.
How this change in fictional stories relates to the real world is naturally a
complicated question. The stories of popular culture are neither direct reflections of
our world nor guaranteed predictions of the world to come; but, as Adam Possamai
has pointed out, there is still always an element of truth in them. 20 Considering the
importance of popular culture today, it is in any case clear that we cannot ignore
popular culture if we want to try to understand our present world or predict the
future. We might not then agree with the images being presented, but this does not
mean that they do not say something about us and our world, both when it comes
to religion and other matters. Though the stories do perhaps often predominantly
function as a form of escapism, it is always possible that they might inspire us to
think in new ways and work for a different future. If nothing else, the material for
this study shows us that the story of a messiah lives on and can adapt to new times
and challenge our ideas about who can be a saviour.

Notes
1

F. Mendlesohn, Religion and Science Fiction, The Cambridge Companion to

Science Fiction, E. James and F. Mendlesohn (eds), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2003, pp. 264-275.
2
J.C. Lyden, Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals, New York University
Press, New York, 2003, pp. 202-25.
3
J. Clute and P. Nicholls, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Orbit, London,
1999, pp. 1000-1003.
4
P. Malone, Jesus on Our Screens, New Image of Religious Film, J.R. May (ed),
Sheed and Ward, Kansas, 1997, pp. 59-60.
5
J.R. Fielding, Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded, The Journal of Religion and
Film, Vol. 7, No. 2, October 2003, Viewed on 17 May 2010, http://www.unom
aha.edu/jrf/Vol7No2/matrix.matrixreloaded.htm.
6
F. Flannery-Dailey and R. Wagner, Wake up! Gnosticism and Buddhism in The
Matrix, The Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2001, Viewed
on 17 May 2010, http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/gnostic.htm.
7
A. Gordon, Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time, Screening the Sacred: Religion,
Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, J.W. Martin and C.E. Ostwald Jr.
(eds), Westview Press, Boulder, 1998, pp. 73-82.
8
W.S. Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements, Routledge, London,
1997, pp. 395-399.
9
B. Attebery, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction, Routledge, London, 2002.

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10

H. Merrick, Gender in Science Fiction, in The Cambridge Companion to

Science Fiction, E James and F Mendlesohn (eds), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2003, pp. 241-252.
11
S.A. Inness, Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular
Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999.
12
S. Crosby, The Cruellest Season: Female Heroes Snapped into Sacrificial
Heroines, Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, S.A.
Inness (ed), Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004, pp. 153-178.
13
S. Sj, Are Female Messiahs Changing the Myth?: Women, Religion and Power
in Popular Culture and Society, Reconfigurations Interdisciplinary Perspectives
on Religion in a Post-Secular Society, S. Knauss and A. Ornella (eds), Lit, Graz,
2007, pp. 59-72.
14
H. Ringgren, Messianism, Encyclopedia of Religion Second Edition, L. Jones
(ed), Thomas Gale, Detroit, 2005, pp. 5972-5974.
15
C. Ostwalt, Armageddon at the Millennial Dawn, The Journal of Religion and
Film, Vol. 4, No. 1 April 2000, Viewed on 17 May 2010, http://www.unomaha.
edu/jrf/armagedd.htm.
16
C. Ostwalt, Apocalyptic, The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, J.
Lyden (ed), Routledge, London, 2009, pp. 368-383.
17
C. Partridge, The Re-Enchantment of the West Volume I, T&T Clark
International, London, 2004.
18
P. Heelas and L. Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving
Way to Spirituality, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005.
19
S.J. Palmer, Woman as World Saviour: The Feminization of the Millennium in
New Religious Movements, Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem: Contemporary
Apocalyptic Movements, T. Robbins and S.J. Palmer (eds), Routledge, London,
1997, p. 160.
20
A. Possamai, Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament, P.I.E.Peter Lang, Brussels, 2005, p. 23.

Bibliography
Attebery, B., Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. Routledge, London, 2002.
Bainbridge, W.S., The Sociology of Religious Movements. Routledge, London,
1997.
Clute J. and Nicholls, P., The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Orbit, London,
1999.

168

Whos Your Saviour?

__________________________________________________________________
Crosby, S., The Cruellest Season: Female Heroes Snapped into Sacrificial
Heroines. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.
Inness, S.A. (ed), Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004.
Fielding, J.R., Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded. The Journal of Religion and
Film. Vol. 7, No. 2, October 2003, Viewed on 17 May 2010, http://www.uno
maha.edu/jrf/Vol7No2/matrix.matrixreloaded.htm.
Flannery-Dailey, F. and Wagner, R., Wake up! Gnosticism and Buddhism in The
Matrix. The Journal of Religion and Film. Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2001, Viewed
on 17 May 2010, http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/gnostic.htm.
Gordon, A., Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time. Screening the Sacred: Religion,
Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film. Martin, J.W. and Ostwald Jr., C.E.
(eds), Westview Press, Boulder, 1998.
Heelas, P. and Woodhead, L., The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving
Way to Spirituality. Blackwell, Oxford, 2005.
Inness, S.A., Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular
Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999.
Lyden, J.C., Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals. New York University
Press, New York, 2003.
Malone, P., Jesus on Our Screens. New Image of Religious Film. May, J.R. (ed),
Sheed and Ward, Kansas, 1997.
Mendlesohn, F., Religion and Science Fiction. The Cambridge Companion to
Science Fiction. James, E. and Mendlesohn, F. (eds), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2003.
Merrick, H., Gender in Science Fiction. The Cambridge Companion to Science
Fiction. James, E. and Mendlesohn, F. (eds), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2003.
Ostwalt, C., Armageddon at the Millennial Dawn. The Journal of Religion and
Film. Vol. 4, No. 1 April 2000, Viewed on 17 May 2010, http://www.unomaha.
edu/jrf/armagedd.htm.

Sofia Sj

169

__________________________________________________________________
, Apocalyptic. The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Lyden, J.
(ed), Routledge, London, 2009.
Palmer, S.J., Woman as World Saviour: The Feminization of the Millennium in
New Religious Movements. Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem: Contemporary
Apocalyptic Movements. Robbins, T. and Palmer, S.J. (eds), Routledge, London,
1997.
Partridge, C., The Re-Enchantment of the West Volume I. T&T Clark International,
London, 2004.
Possamai, A., Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament. P.I.E.-Peter
Lang, Brussels, 2005.
Ringgren, H., Messianism. Encyclopedia of Religion Second Edition. Jones, L.
(ed), Thomas Gale, Detroit, 2005.
Sj, S., Are Female Messiahs Changing the Myth?: Women, Religion and Power
in Popular Culture and Society. Reconfigurations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
on Religion in a Post-Secular Society, Knauss, S. and Ornella, A. (eds), Lit, Graz,
2007.
Sofia Sj is a researcher connected to the Department of Comparative Religion at
bo Akademi University with an interest for religion, film and gender. She tends
to find saviour-characters everywhere and has infected several of her friends with
the same (dis)ability.

Endgame: Mitchell and Webbs Remain Indoors Sketch Series,

Absurdist Comedy and the Collapse of Meaning in
Apocalypse Narratives
Ewan Kirkland
Abstract
The Remain Indoors series, from Mitchell and Webbs BBC sketch show, is
explored in this chapter as science fiction, as absurdist comedy, and as apocalypse
narrative. This series of sketches takes the form of a futuristic game show being
broadcast after an occurrence referred to only as The Event. Through the quiz
masters desperately cheerful banter, exchanges with deranged contestants, and the
questions he asks - the correct answers to which are unknown to all concerned viewers are given random insights into this bleak world. While the nature of The
Event is never clarified, it appears most people are now blind, all the children
have died, the word water has lost all meaning, and both human civilisation and
its memory are corrupted beyond all recognition. While rooted in dystopian science
fiction, the Remain Indoors series can also be related to absurdist theatre, and
certain traditions in British comedy. Like the hapless characters of Becketts
Endgame, both host and contestants seem trapped within a ruined landscape,
possessing only a hazy sense of who, where, or why they are, and engaging in
nonsensical conversations, which have no point or satisfactory conclusion. From
Monty Python to Brass Eye to Psychoville, British comedy has echoed such dark
and surrealist themes. This leads to a consideration of apocalypse narratives, which
both the Remain Indoors series and Becketts plays evoke. The surreal war-zones
of science-fiction comic books, the tattered narrative style of Threads, or the
breakdown of language in the linguistic zombie film Pontypool, reflect similar
themes, in which the end of civilisation constitutes the end of meaning, the
collapse of discourse, and the fragmentation of collective and individual memory.
Key Words: Apocalypse, Beckett, comedy, Endgame, Mitchell and Webb, sketch
show.
*****
The focus of this chapter is the Remain Indoors series of sketches from the
third season of That Mitchell and Webb Look. 1 Across the three brief scenes which
make up this dystopian vision, viewers are given an insight into a world
overshadowed by The Event. As an unspecific occurrence, which has had a
dramatic impact upon human civilisation, the catastrophe and its consequences are
alluded to in oblique asides and details revealed throughout a game show The
Quiz Broadcast played and performed by a few survivors. This sketch is
explored in terms of absurdist theatre, British comedy, and apocalypse narratives.

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Connections between absurdist theatre and British comedy are evident in the
Remain Indoors sketches, which provide many intriguing parallels with Samuel
Becketts Endgame. 2 On a formal level, both take place on a single bleak stage,
isolated from a cold and unforgiving outside world. The universe of Endgame is
one of grey weather, flat seas, and a landscape devoid of nature; while the
environment of Remain Indoors is all fear, darkness, religious cults, and dead
children. The contestant dreams of sunshine, colours, smiling faces before the
misery of post-Event life; just as Hamm dreams of forests, and Nag and Nell
reminisce about crashing their tandem in the Ardennes during happier times.
Outside the bunker of The Quiz Broadcast, as in Endgame, an unspecified
something appears to be taking its course.
As the game show host cheerily observes, most post-Event citizens are blind;
similarly Clovs eyes are bad, Hamm cannot see, while Nag and Nells eyes are
failing. Hamm needs constant medication, just as viewers of The Quiz Broadcast
are advised to take whatever injections are recommended in your sector. Nag is
losing his teeth, just as one contestant is losing his hair. Both symptoms suggest the
effects of radiation poisoning following a nuclear holocaust; however, both play
and sketch complicate such a straightforward interpretation of events. The sense of
game is also evident in Endgame the first words Hamm says are Me to play
as too is an explicit sense of comedy Clov asking despairingly, Why this farce
day after day? A similar sense of self-reflexivity is evident in Remain Indoors, a
piece of comedic television pastiching an already self-conscious form of popular
television entertainment.
The announcer on the British Emergency Broadcast System, which airs The
Quiz Broadcast, seems unclear what date it is, either March or November 2013,
and somewhere between six-hundred and seven-hundred-and-fifty days since The
Event; the season ambivalently announced as The Dark Season. Similarly, time
has become meaningless for Becketts characters:
HAMM: What time is it?
CLOV: The same as usual.
HAMM (gesture towards window right): Have you looked?
CLOV: Yes.
HAMM: Well?
CLOV: Zero.
Time is reduced to zero; while yesterday exists only in vague terms, as that
bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day.

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Finally, both Becketts play and Mitchell and Webbs sketch produce comedy
through the suffering of their protagonists. As Nell, the woman in the dustbin, who
possibly dies through the plays course, says: Nothing is funnier than
unhappiness.
Locating the Remain Indoors sketch series in traditions of British comedy
suggests that David Mitchell and Robert Webb are not alone in drawing on a
theatre of the absurd or the comedy of misery. British sitcoms are traditionally
organised around characters trapped in domestic spaces, locked in class-based
hierarchical relationships, hating each other, yet unable, or ultimately unwilling, to
leave. From Steptoe and Son 3 to Red Dwarf, 4 British comedy drama is often based
on bickering and abuse, comparable to the exchanges of vitriol and resentment that
constitute the conversation between Hamm and Clov. It is easy to see the
relationship between the two reflected in the relationships of Tony Hancock and
Sid James, 5 Basil Fawlty and Manuel, 6 Blackadder and Bladrick, 7 or, even, Victor
Meldrew and his wife Margaret. 8
The clearest connection between Beckett and British comedy is represented by
the double act of Ric Mayal and Adrian Edmondson, whose routines as The
Dangerous Brothers, as Rick and Vyvyen in The Young Ones, 9 Richie and Eddie
in Filthy, Rich and Catflap, 10 and (again) as Richie and Eddie in Bottom 11 have
been explicitly linked to Beckett indeed, during the first season of Bottom, the
pair were starring in a West End performance of Waiting For Goddot. The duos
routines, whether as stunt men, students, celebrity and minder, or unemployed
losers, are characterised by argument and animosity, frequently spilling over into
physical violence which, while cartoonish, has enough impact to draw blood and
loosen teeth. Moreover there is frequently a surreal and slightly sinister quality to
the worlds these characters inhabit, while the circularity of the British sitcom form
is reflected in circular conversations between characters which lead nowhere.
British sketch comedy also echoes with Beckettian influence. Monty Pythons
Flying Circus 12 is characterised by its surreal sense of humour, where a faulty
toaster is replaced by a dead parrot, the Spanish Inquisition erupt into a suburban
living room, and a Bromley caf is home to spam-loving Vikings. While Python
rarely approaches anything as bleak as either Endgame or Remain Indoors, there
is something a little Kafkaesque about the Ministry of Silly Walks, and the
Argument Clinic situated next door to the Abuse Clinic where discussion
descends into repetitive contradictions, followed by a self-reflexive debate about
whether or not this constitutes an argument. Certainly the absence of punch lines in
many Python sketches leaves the comedy routines void of traditional closure, or
replaces the classic ending with a breakdown in performance where sets are
dismantled, actors walk off mid-routine, or officials terminate proceedings for
being too silly, again reflecting certain aspects of Becketts absurdist theatre.
More contemporary comedy shows seem happier with the darker elements of
surrealism. Chris Morris spoof news programme Brass Eye 13 combines an

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understanding of the often extreme discourse of the magazine television format, an
attack on the common sense rhetoric that frequently informs mainstream news
media, and absurdist comedy. The controversial paedophile special features: a
child abuser disguising himself as a school to lure unsuspecting victims; Trust Me
Trousers, which inflate to disguise a paedophiles erection; and a duped celebrity
earnestly explaining to the camera how a paedophile has more genes in common
with crabs than humans. Morris Jam 14 is a stream-of-consciousness sketch show
that features ambient music and audio-visual distortion effects, along with
disturbing sketches in which a dead baby is plumbed into a central heating system,
a man is forgiven by his girlfriend for kissing another woman because he was
raping her at the time, and someone commits suicide by throwing himself
repeatedly from a first floor window. The nightmarish atmosphere of the show,
combined with its bleak and misanthropic content, align it with certain theatrical
traditions.
The League of Gentlemen, 15 a sketch show with recurring characters living in
the north England town of Royston Vasey, constitutes the most recent articulation
of themes of entrapment, class antagonism, and dark humour in British comedy.
Characters include: Benjamin, a visitor to the town, who is effectively kept
prisoner by his disapproving aunt and uncle; an unemployment office intent on
keeping job seekers in ineffective job-training schemes; and a woman and her
cleaner locked in a vicious game of one-upmanship. The most grotesque of
Royston Vasey residents, an inbred brother and sister, live at the Local Shop, intent
on both turning away anyone who seeks to buy the precious things of the shop
and ensuring no passing stranger leaves their premises alive. Likewise, the blind
toy collector who is accompanied by his community-service servant in
Psychoville, 16 a follow-up to The League of Gentlemen, could be understood as a
reference to Endgames Hamm.
The Remain Indoors sketch has roots also in the comedy quiz show. While
the sketchs relationship to panel series like Have I Got News for You?, 17 Never
Mind the Buzzcocks 18 and Mock the Week 19 are slight, Vic Reeves and Bob
Mortimers Shooting Stars 20 has much in common with The Quiz Broadcast. A
development of Reeves and Mortimers Dadaist live show and subsequent sketch
series Shooting Stars, employs the celebrity panel shows question and answer
format to afford a platform for the performers surreal comedy. The genre provides
a structure to ridicule famous guests, allow running gags, and deliver punch lines
to often inexplicable questions, operating under a surreal logic understood only by
the two quiz masters. In many respects the series is not unlike the Numberwang
sketch on the first season of That Mitchell and Webb Look, another spoof game
show in which contestants call out a series of seemingly unrelated numbers, while
the host periodically and arbitrarily announces: Thats Numberwang!
Like Shooting Stars does with the celebrity quiz show, and Brass Eye does with
the current-affairs programme, The Quiz Broadcast takes the family game show

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and works within its structures and conventions, filling them with surreal content
to produce something that is, in unequal measure, funny and disturbing.
The game show of Remain Indoors incorporates common elements of the
television genre: question and answer, conveyor belt, sudden death, and what
happened next? rounds. However, in this game show, neither the contestants nor
the host know the answers; no one can remember how to turn on the conveyor belt;
a contestant dies before the sudden death round can start; and the noteworthy event
to take place after the film clip a snippet of dirty footage showing a 1960s-style
dance party is The Event itself. The following exchange mimics the light-hearted
banter which traditionally takes place between questions, while revealing the
devastating conditions of the characters world.
Host: Peter, Ive been meaning to ask you. Youre blind like
most people. Were you blinded by The Event?
Peter: No, I was blinded post-Event by raiders.
Host: Well that certainly is a funny story.
Other jolly exchanges reveal that nobody in the Remain Indoors universe can
remember how to grow food, and all the children are dead. As the host remarks
with grim buoyancy: Post-Event, the world would have been a different place if
we had managed to keep even some of the children alive.
Much of the humour results from the absurdity of a game show in a world
where human knowledge seems to have become corrupted beyond recognition.
Host: Books say that the body is 92% water. What was water?
Peter: Was it an animal?
Host: Could be.
Sheila: Was it a country?
Host: Equally plausible.
Within Becketts work, a recurring theme is the collapse of meaning, with
which comes the failure of language as a process of communication. Exasperated
at his masters inability to understand him, Clov, cries: I use the words you taught
me. If they dont mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent,
expressing his frustration with the breakdown of language, which accompanies the
end of civilisation. Similarly, the quiz master asks contestants the meaning of the

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word water, and follows the question with another: Books mention hope. What
was hope? Less a cry of anguish, although this would seem appropriate, this
seems a genuine expression of bafflement at a word which has lost all association.
The contestants response makes this clear:
Shelia: Was it a country?
Host: Possibly.
Peter: Was it a spice?
Host: Whats a spice?
Peter: I think its an animal.
Host: Fair enough. One point each.
While the status of both Endgame and Remain Indoors as end-of-the-world
narratives is open for debate by their surreal nature both texts elide a clear
narrative situation the description apocalyptic seems appropriate for both.
Moreover, many more explicit texts present the end of the world, language, and
meaning as somehow synonymous.
When the bomb falls in Raymond Briggs graphic novel When the Wind
Blows, 21 the force is so great it causes the geometric lines of the graphic novel
panels to twist out of shape, as though the language of the comic world itself is
warped by the impact. In Threads, 22 a chilling depiction of the reality of nuclear
war, for the first half of the television play, before the bombs fall, events are
depicted in drama-documentary style as characters are introduced and a sense of
place is established. After the nuclear attack, this coherent narrative style
fragments, as non-naturalistic techniques are introduced still images, voiceover,
and title cards reflecting the disintegrating lives of the survivors suffering in the
aftermath. Associations between apocalypse and the collapse of meaningful
discourse are evident as well in more recent films. In M. Night Shyamalans The
Happening, 23 the first sign of the self-harming infection is the failure of the victim
to speak coherent sentences; while the breakdown of communication similarly
characterises the virus in the linguistic zombie film Pontypool. 24
This end of meaning is evident to the inhabitants of Endgame, and apparent in
the following exchange:
HAMM: Were not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!

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(Brief laugh.)
Ah thats a good one!
HAMM: I wonder.
(Pause.)
Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldnt he be
liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough.
(Voice of rational being.)
Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what
theyre at!
(Clov starts, drops the telescope and begins to scratch his belly
with both hands. Normal voice.)
And without going so far as that, we ourselves...
(with emotion)
...we ourselves... at certain moments...
(Vehemently.)
To think perhaps it wont all have been for nothing!
The rational being of The Quiz Broadcast, as in Becketts play, is the real
world audience who observe The Events survivors and try to make sense of the
fragmented world in which they live. While the universe of Remain Indoors
appears to have more unity than the non-naturalist environment Becketts
characters inhabit, mysteries concerning the exact nature of The Event persist
through all three sketches. It is never resolved whether the incident constitutes a
scientific experiment gone wrong, along the lines of Half Lifes 25 Black Messa, or
the killer plants in The Day of the Triffids; 26 a deliberate military attack as in On
the Beach 27 or The Day After, 28 an act of God as in 2012; 29 or the intervention of
alien intelligence, as in The Day the Earth Stood Still. 30 The game show might be
synecdotal of the world itself certainly its incorporation of uniformed attendants
and public service messages suggests the broadcast is part of broader institutional
efforts or its stricken participants may be engaged in a personal nightmare,
something entirely compatible with the sense of confusion with which the culture
seems gripped. As Hamm suggests: beyond the hills Perhaps its still green
Perhaps you wont need to go very far. Only the fear of leaving keeps everyone
from venturing beyond their hole.
Foreshadowing the nature of The Event is the Reality Bomb, which appears
in a 1986 Grant Morrison-authored Time Twisters story in 2000AD entitled The
Invisible Etchings of Salvador Dali. 31 This tells of a world decimated by a military
detonation, where whales fall from the sky, refrigerators bleed from shop doorways
and zombies walk the streets, all realised through the dirty, scratchy penmanship of
artist John Hicklenton. One undead figure encountered by the short storys hero,
described as: repeating his national insurance number, as though its the only

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thing he remembers, seems similar to the Remain Indoors shows master of
ceremonies and contestants, who, like the characters of Becketts play, and like the
traditional characters of British sitcoms, seem locked in a performance with roles
and relationships which are beyond their control or comprehension.
Mitchell and Webbs Remain Indoors sketch series resides amongst a range of
apocalyptic narratives that elaborate upon an association between the collapse of
human civilisation and the disintegration of language. Across film, television and
comic books, popular forms are employing medium-specific conventions in
presenting the end of the world and the end of meaningful discourse as somehow
homologous. If humans are defined from other creatures by their ability to
communicate through words, and if human civilisation is a process of ascribing
meaning to the world, it is not surprising that many narratives chronicling human
races extinction and the break down of civilisation employ such techniques. The
Quiz Broadcast uses the quiz-show formula to such effect; its familiar format
providing a skeletal structure on which the shreds of a tattered culture in the wake
of the apocalypse seem all the more ragged, grotesque and absurd.

Notes
1

That Mitchell and Webb Look, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2006
to present.
2
S. Beckett, Endgame, Faber and Faber, London, 2009.
3
Steptoe and Son, Television Programme, BBC UK, Broadcast 1962-74.
4
Red Dwarf, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1988-1999.
5
Hancocks Half Hour, Radio and Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast
1954-71.
6
Fawlty Towers, Television Programme, BBC, UK, 1975-1979.
7
Blackadder, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1983-1989.
8
One Foot in the Grave, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1990-2000.
9
The Young Ones, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1982-1984.
10
Filthy, Rich and Catflap, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1987.
11
Bottom, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1991-1995.
12
Monty Pythons Flying Circus, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast
1969-1973.
13
Brass Eye, Television Programme, Channel 4, Broadcast 1997-2001.
14
Jam, Television Programme, Channel 4, UK, Broadcast 2000.
15
The League of Gentlemen, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 19992002.
16
Psychoville, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2009-present.
17
Have I Got News For You, Television Programme, BBC, Broadcast 1990 to
present.
18
Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1996.

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19

Mock the Week, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2005-present.

Shooting Stars, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1993-present.
21
R. Briggs, When the Wind Blows, Penguin Books, London, 1987.
22
Threads, Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1984.
23
The Happening, DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, UK, 2008.
24
Pontypool, DVD, Kaleidoscope Entertainment, UK, 2010.
25
Half Life, Videogame, Electronic Arts, UK, 1998.
26
The Day of the Triffids, Television Programme, BBC, Broadcast 1981.
27
On the Beach, DVD, MGM Entertainment, UK, 2004.
28
The Day After, DVD, Fremantle Home Entertainment, 2008.
29
2012, DVD, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, UK, 2010.
30
The Day the Earth Stood Still, DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,
UK, 2005.
31
G. Morrison, The Invisible Etchings of Salvador Dali, Time Twisters, No. 8,
1987.
20

Bibliography
2012. DVD, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, UK, 2010.
Beckett, S., Endgame. Faber and Faber, London, 2009.
Blackadder. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1983-9.
Bottom. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1991-5.
Brass Eye. Television Programme, Channel 4, Broadcast 1997-2001.
Briggs, R., When the Wind Blows. Penguin Books, London, 1987.
The Day After. DVD, Fremantle Home Entertainment, 2008.
The Day of the Triffids. Television Programme, BBC, Broadcast 1981.
The Day the Earth Stood Still. DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, UK,
2005.
Fawlty Towers. Television Programme, BBC, UK, 1975-9.
Filthy, Rich and Catflap. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1987.

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Endgame

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Half Life. Videogame, Electronic Arts, UK, 1998.
Hancocks Half Hour. radio and Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast
1954-71.
The Happening. DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, UK, 2008.
Have I Got News For You. Television Programme, BBC, Broadcast 1990 to
present.
Jam. Television Programme, Channel 4, UK, Broadcast 2000.
The League of Gentlemen. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 19992002.
Morrison, G., The Invisible Etchings of Salvador Dali. Time Twisters. No. 8,
1987.
Mock the Week. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2005-present.
Monty Pythons Flying Circus. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 196973.
Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1996.
On the Beach. DVD, MGM Entertainment, UK, 2004.
One Foot in the Grave. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1990-2000.
Pontypool. DVD, Kaleidoscope Entertainment, UK, 2010.
Psychoville. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2009-present.
Red Dwarf. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1988-1999.
Shooting Stars. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1993-present.
Steptoe and Son. Television Programme, BBC UK, Broadcast 1962-74.
That Mitchell and Webb Look. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 2006
to present.

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Threads. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1984.
The Young Ones. Television Programme, BBC, UK, Broadcast 1982-4.
Ewan Kirkland lectures in film and screen studies at the University of Brighton.
Specialising in the textual analysis of horror videogames, he also writes on popular
cinema, fantasy television and childrens culture.