Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?
~ Philip K. Dick’s ~
Kiss of the Spider Woman
~ Manuel Puig ~
Question:
Post-modernism celebrates self-conscious hybridity in text
and a move away from the need for “unprecedented originality.”
Compare the extent to which Philip K. Dick’s
‘ Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? and Manuel Puig’s
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” conform to this statement.
Postmodernism is a revolutionary movement that challenges
the authoritative voice or absolute truth in core religious,
patriarchal and capitalistic values. It shuns the modernist’s
quest of meaning through unity, coherence and reason
(enlightenment) in a frenzied world; instead it delights
itself in the caricature of this quest. Postmodernism subverts
the traditional single grand narrative of human experience; it
chooses instead to embrace the concept of micro-narratives in
explaining human phenomena. The hallmark of postmodern
aesthetics include terms like Hybridity and Intertextuality.
Hybridity is a randomly chosen collages of different genres,
approaches, ideologies, and discontinuous narratives.
Intertextuality, the process of hybridity; it refers to the
borrowing and transformation of prior texts. Originality rigidly
remains to be the venerated novel and innovative ideal
inscribed in the ‘high’ literature of the Romantic period.
Twentieth century Postmodenism’s schizophrenic style rejects
originality and celebrate fragmented hybridity instead.
Postmodernists continuously undermine and erode distinctions
of boundaries, categories and hierarchies and thus render the
loss of the much revered ‘unprecedented originality’. Both
novels: Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? and
Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman reject the notion of
“unprecedented originality” and employ distinct postmodern
characteristics instead: hybridity and intertextuality to depict the
multiple ideologies of their flawed, contemporary societies.
Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? yields to the
hybridity of multiple texts: social, cultural, philosophical,
economic and political.It explores how material conditions
determine ideology and consciousness in the relationship
between global capitalism (economies) and postmodernism
(culture). Set in the historical context of Marxism (political),
Dick exposes the capitalist’s version of social reality, and
reveals the hidden class struggles and the processes of
alienation. Marxism focuses on two opposing classes: the
capitalists and the workers. Capitalists, the ruling class
exploits the workers to make profits for themselves. The
worker is compelled to repeat mundane tasks and eventually
he is reduced to a machine, an object or a commodity. The
capitalist also control all means of mental and ideological
production (social/philosophical); ideology functions in
obstructing the realities of economic exploitation. Hence, the
workers are made to believe this capitalist economic system
as the only natural way to organize a society.In this way
workers do not realize that they are being continuously
exploited. The capitalist social system with its associated
class struggles fundamentally influences the social, cultural,
philosophical, economical and political ideals of the society.
Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman is a hybrid mix of a wide
variety of texts and discourses which clash and yet fuse
with each other on the pages. The many forms of hybridity in
the novel includes: ‘B’ grade films, plays, footnotes, coded
letters, bolero, prison reports, police reports in dairy as well
as the thoughts, dreams and nightmares of the two
protagonists. The footnote is a voice that speaks in disparity
to the Molina’s sentimental film narratives; it speaks
extensively on a range of cultural and psychoanalytical
theories. The blurring of different discourses leads to the
creation of self-consciously hybrid literary tradition. Puig’s
deliberate rejection of an authoritative, dominant voice is
depicted through the absence of a authorial narrator, using
the dialogic voice instead with the strategic juxtaposition of
intertextual texts and accentuating silences.
The hybridity of texts in Dick’s novel considers his country’s
preoccupation of that time : the fear that America was
producing a dangerous conformist society. Set in a fictional
industrial world, Humans like Eldon Rosen are considered
the autocrat (capitalist), Rick, the bourgeoisie; Isidore and
androids are considered ‘proleteriats’ of this fictional society.
The capitalist provides a certain degree of pleasure to
workers, thus breaking the monotony of their lives and
making their exploitation more bearable. The economic
imperative on individuals to work is the ideological pressure
to own a genuine animal. Rick, the bounty hunter, a worker,
makes his living by killing androids with the main objective
of earning enough money to own a real animal. Isihore, a
chickenhead, belongs to the lowest class of the society,
can never leave the planet for a better life:
“They informed him in a countless procession of ways that he,
a special, wasn’t wanted. Had no use. Could not, even if he
wanted to, emigrate.” (Dick 16)
Although Isidore is a human being, he is not considered any
better than the androids. Additionally, the androids belong to
another form of class struggle: conflict between slave and
freeman. Rosen corporation (capitalist) is the exploiter of
androids and Eldon Rosen, its owner, told Rachel Rosen,
the android:
“…you’re the property of the Rosen Association, used as a
sales device for prospective emigrants.” (Dick 47)
Rick, Isidore and the androids are the workers and to a
varying extent, they are all alienated by their work. Ideas
of oppression and utility value are imposed on androids and
even on human like Rick and Isidore. The inequality of this
master and slave relationships results in the lack of
capitalist’s empathy for their workers and the worker’s
alienation.
Using hybridity, Puig is able to present the disturbing,
oppressive and unyielding political and gender issues of
contemporary Argentinian society. To Puig, politics and
sexuality are never a dichotomy: they are never mutually
exclusive. Puig uses hybridity and intertextuality in creating
a multiple of ideologies. The quality of dialogic voices in
the novel produces different discourses and ideologies:
Valentin as a ideologue of Marxist ideology while Molina
as the anti-ideologue of sexuality and gender, and
readers also get to access both Valentin and Molina’s
thoughts and dreams. The novel becomes in a sense,
a therapy: Molina and Valentin model the psychoanalytical
therapy where Valentin plays the psychiatrist and Molina,
the patient. Through the Freudian psychosexual
development lens, Molina’s homosexuality and gender
role is shown to be related to his relationship with
his mother:
‘A lovely lady, who gave her husband every happiness
and her children too, always managing everything
perfectly’ ( Puig 16).
Additionally, though the authorial footnote is invented, it is
an accurate representation of Nazi gender ideology:
“Her single mission is to be beautiful and bear sons of the
world” (Johnson 173).
The contrasting discourses of the authorial footnote and
Molina’s ‘vulgar’ and tasteless films both depict the woman
as being beautiful, seemingly passively waiting to fall in love
or passively assuming the nurturing feminine role and
inescapably confined to the domestic sphere.
Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? has a main
philosophical concern : what it means to be really human?
Android reveals the capacity to empathise as well. Though
Rachael is an android, she is shown to show emotions:
“ …her expression had now become one of moodiness.”
“Rachael said, ‘…You know what I have? Toward this Pris
android?’
‘Empathy,’ he said ”. (Dick 148-9)
Rachael shows she is able to identify and emphasise with Pris:
the fact that Pris will be retired soon and recognizing androids
are nothing more than ants and would wear out over time
and be retired eventually. On the other hand, humans are
shown to be lack of empathy. Rick told Phil Resch:
“ You don’t kill the way I do… You like to kill. All you
need is a pretext..”and Rick wonders if there is anything
‘unnatural or unhuman about Phil Resch’s reaction” ( Dick 113)
- that Phil kills just for the sake of killing. Rick himself too
admitted that he “ had never felt any empathy on his own part
toward the androids he killed”( Dick 112), however later
Rick also said, “I’m capable of feeling empathy for at least
specific, certain androids.” ( Dick 113).
The difference between “living humans and humanoid
constructs” is blurred. Rick, being deeply embedded into the
capitalistic worker mentality, does his job of killing
mechanically, however he later becomes more human when
he becomes in touch with his genuine feeling: empathy.
Humans like Iran shows great sympathy by dialing a
depression mood just to experience the agony of others
and Isidore makes no distinction of his empathy for the
real spider and the android cat. The realization of what it
means to be human is the need to extend empathy to all
things.The loss of empathy is evidently seen in postmodern
situations and the real is connected with humanity’s innate
empathy.
Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman philosophical concern
is depicted though starkly different scientific and mythical
discourses: to explain the paradox of sexuality. The films
reveal Molina’s repressed desire of sexual orientation. The
presence of homosexual is being repressed by the society.
There are interesting parallels to Freud’s three stages of
psychosexuality: oral, anal and genital stages in the novel’s
pleasure of oral narratives; the cleaning up of Valentin’s
diarrhoea and the sexual intercourse. The imprisoned
masculine and feminine roles are being unyieldingly imposed
by the patriarchal society. Masculinity and femininity are later
shown to be false polarities when Valentin and Molina
eventually swapped their gender roles. Puig is hinting that the
transformation of gender relations could be a prerequisite for
fundamental social change. Valentin believes the root causes
of society’s illness are economic and class-based. The
suffering of both Valentin and Molina is due to patriarchal
domination and class oppression. Significantly, the novel is
asserting that Freudianism and Marxism need not be
mutually exclusive, the fact that being subjected to the modern
consumer and civilised society renders false desires and
keeping individuals in a state of repression.
According to Baudrillard’ s “The Precession of Simulacra”, the
postmodern culture relies faithfully to models and maps, that we
lost the sense of the real world; of reality that preceded the map.
The postmodern culture is artificial and people have lost the
sense of the distinction between nature and artifice. There are a
few phenomena to explain the loss of distinction between ‘reality’
and the simulacrum: language, exchange value and media culture.
In the industrial age, once money become the ‘universal
equivalent’ our lives is measured in terms of money rather
than real things like our time, our sweat or our tears of labour.
Also because we rely solely on language to structure our
perceptions; thus any representation of reality is already
constructed by simulacra and is already an ideology.
Media culture is one of them, in the sense we interpret our
most private selves through the lens of media images and
our desires become increasingly defined by commercialised
images. Media technologies reproduce social identities and
values that precede the real.
Puig’s Molina internalise the submissive feminine in the stories
he narrates and his identity is part of this cultural identity; he,
himself has no real identity. In a sense Molina, the simulacra
(copy) is consumed by these characters. In Dick’s novel,
the mechanised reproduction of simulacrum distorts the real,
we become confused between the real and the fake and
simulacrum also shows the loss of individual’s sense of
agency. Isidore and the androids seem to be a copy of each
other as they both have the same social status. The empathy
box and fusion with Mercer is not real experiences, it is a
virtual reality. Though Phil Resch is human but his lack of
empathy make him seem like an android, on the other hand,
Rachael, an android with the capacity to empathise make
her seem more human.
Twentieth century’s Post-modernism moves away from the
need for ‘unprecedented originality’ of the solitary genius of
the Romantic period of ‘high’ literature. In a subverting
manner, it embraces hybridity and intertextuality; it rejects
absolute truth and instead honours fragmentation. With the
wide variety of tones and ideologies, the readers are no
longer passively consuming a single meaning rather they
take an active role in judging the text with its multiple
meanings. In this way there is no single dominant voice and
each voice is an ideologue in itself. The reader becomes
an active creator of literature rather than a passive consumer.
Both Dick and Puig are original in the postmodern sense:
the way their novels yield to multiple discourses and
ideologies. Both Dick and Puig in depicting the pressing
issues of their oppressive societies, offer their readers
in-depth philosophical insight: Dick’s -what it means to
be human? and Puig’s –paradox of gender roles and
sexuality (-…).
(2011 words)
Works Cited:
Dick, k. Philip. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”Gollancz, Great Britain. 2010. Print
Johnson, David. “The Popular & the Canonical.” The Open University, Routledge. 2005. Print.
Puig, Manuel. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” Vintage, London. 2007. Print
Postmodern Literature. Wikipedia. Web. 17 sept. 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
Simulacra and Simulation. Wikipedia. Web. 17 sept.2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
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