The body’s mistake: technology and an inclusive model of the posthuman

Abstract

The novel Antibodies, by David J. Skal, explores a dilemma between the body as a

dispensable space and the technology as the utopian answer for the body‟s

insufficiency. Considering that the disembodiment is just one more version of the issue

concerning the continuity man-machine, this paper argues that a body‟s place which is

only connected with technology is a mistake. Instead, this paper sustains the need for an

ethical and inclusive model of the posthuman that shall encompass the idea of the body

as a utopian space, in the sense that the body is a transitorily utopian space. This model

overlaps the pluri-scalar use of technology and has some points in common with the

transhumanist view of human nature as a work-in-progress, which means that the

current humanity is not the endpoint of evolution. This paper concludes with a

theorization of the “wrong place” or “mistake”, a speculative and heuristic concept of

imagining a new model of belonging-in-transience where the body fits.

Keywords: man-machine interaction, technology, science fiction, society, body, utopia

1. Technology and disembodiment

The impact of informationalism in the social and cultural domain is defined by Castells

as the emergence of a „culture of real virtuality‟ (Castells, 1996,2000). We perceive the

world as a succession of electronic signs that not only represent reality but increasingly

become reality. This is explained, amidst other reasons, since we are living in an audio-

visual multimedia environment. In this way, what is created is “a multifaceted semantic

context made of a random mixture of various meanings” (Castells, 1996:371). It is, in a

sense, a homogenized culture. Receivers still interpret this cultural context but

individually, not starting from common cultural codes, or do so to a lesser degree. This

generates fragmentation but at the same time leaves room for collective actors to

communicate and participate in the system, as no single actor, most even large

companies or governments, can completely control this system. Unfortunately, this

emancipator power of the new system is only realized in principle because computer-

mediated communication is unevenly distributed and the prosperous, the wealthy, and

the skilled are far more likely to participate in it than others.

This brings us to another aspect of the network society, that is, power relations.

Networks lack a single centre and have no clear-cut hierarchy. Networks are clusters of

relations that can change in number and intensity, unbound by a fixed space or time in

the interaction with changes in their environment. Networks are, therefore, at odds with

territorial and hierarchical organizations such as nation states, churches and schools

(Castells, 2000:19). As far as the nation state is concerned, it loses some of its powers in

a network society because of the aggregation of interests and policies at a supranational

level and the tendencies towards decentralization (Castells, 1997). As a result, national

identities are waning and new identities are being built on the basis of other cultural,

ethnic, social or geographical elements. This can lead both to a rejection of the globally

networked society and a turn towards local, narrow cultures or to new forms of

democracy embracing local democracy, electronically stimulated participation and

communication and political mobilization (Castells, 1997). Furthermore, some thinkers

as, for instance, Arthur Kroker, perceive technology as a basis for national identity

while others, like Marshall MaLuhan or George Grant emphasize the technology‟s

influence on people. However, one of the most accessible sources of information about

different discussions on technology is literature, particularly, science fiction literature

characterized by a fascination for computer technologies and their fusion and interaction

with human beings, corporate economies and the darker elements of ultra modern urban

culture. The reasons for this are clear; it is argued that „cyborg imagery can suggest a

way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to

ourselves‟. Haraway has asserted that the dissolution of three crucial boundaries or

dualisms is what makes cyborg

discourse possible: a) the distinction between humans and other living beings; b) The

distinction between animals-humans and machines, c) the boundary between the

physical and the non-physical.

Fátima de Oliveira thinks that the main question about cyborgs (which is the future of

all of us) is to choose what kind of cyborg we will be. In Antibodies the problem is that

the disembodiment is just one more version of the issue concerning the continuity man-

machine, with all of its worries, namely in what regards the fear that such mixture may

lead to new forms of domination, loss of intensity and human singularity.

The ideal type of the network society will take on a different form in specific societies

because each society has its own history, its own culture and its own institutions. On

this matter, what Antibodies (1987), one of the science fiction novels written by David

J. Skal, questions is precisely this notion of diversity or cultural diversity in favor of the

above mentioned homogenized culture, but also as somehow feminist culture in line

with the Feminist work on computing technology that has for the most part concentrated

on concepts of cyborgs and notions of (dis)embodiment in cyberspace. However, as

argued by Martina Gillen, these conceptions have outstripped the realities of the

technology and that an alternative and technically realistic model is that of the

disembodiment (Gillen, 2002). The disembodiment has all the positive theoretical

advantages of the cyborg, as well as the added benefits of being in existence now as

opposed to the product of science fiction, and disembodied beings may be capable of

use as a tool for education and activism.

2.Technology as a driving force

The network society could not have developed without Information and Communication

technologies (ICT), which has become an important part of social life since the 1960s.

The existence of ICT and the level of use of its instruments strongly influences the

development of the network society. Inversely, too, the network society contributes to

the development and dissemination of ICT. In other words, there is a dialectical

relationship between the network society and ICT.

In the novel Antibodies, Skal tells us a story about a young woman – Diandra -

searching for immortality at the expense of bodily existence and an aging

psychologist/writer - Julian Nagy - who specializes in the shock deprogramming of cult-

addicts come together for a bizarre confrontation of wills that erupts in a violent and

graphic finale. Disturbing in its implications as well as in its explicit descriptions, this

near-future story – Antibodies - is, nevertheless, compellingly written. A body is a

system and all systems develop some features to maintain competitive efficiency.

Among these features, as stated by Alexander Chislenko (1997), is liquidity, which is a

mean to allow transformations and growth. By liquidity, the author means two things:

one is independence of structure from the physical substrate, facilitating more

replication and other functions. Structures originally imbedded in the substrate

developed more independence; the other concerns growth, that is, the possession of

internal structural liquidity. “Functional structures should be able to modify

themselves and combine with each other, to optimize behavior, to adapt to changing

conditions, and to occupy new domains. This liquidity requires generalized layered

architectures, modular adaptable designs, common communication interfaces, etc”

(Chislenko, 1997).

Recently, Spanish researchers have carried out a study looking into the potential future

impact of robots on society. Their conclusions show that the enormous automation

capacity of robots and their ability to interact with humans will cause a technological

imbalance over the next 12 years between those who have them and those who do not.

All agreed on 2020 as a technological inflection point, because by then robots “will be

able to see, act, speak, manage natural language and have intelligence, and our

relationship with them will have become more constant and commonplace”, said López

Peláez. This will follow a revolution in robotics after which they will no longer be

sophisticated machines, but tools to be used on a daily basis, helping us with a large

number of work and social activities.

3. What will robots do for us?

Automation currently exists in areas such as water management or unmanned aircraft

that fly and shoot missiles, but whole new areas of robot use will open up in future. One

such use will be in a medical context, as exoskeletons to help disabled people move,

helping to make them less dependent on others.

Even more significant will be the insertion of robots into our bodies, such as intelligent

implants in the brain, which will improve our rational thought, and nanorobots to be

released into the blood to clean our arteries.

Another important role will be the replacement of people working in the areas of

security, surveillance or defence. According to Professor López Peláez, it is predicted

that 40% of armies will be automated with robot soldiers by 2020 “just as a car factory

is today, which will result in less human deaths during violent conflicts”.

Robots will be intelligent machines to be incorporated into both domestic and industrial

life: they will help us to clean our houses, will milk cows on farms, and will be

programmed to work 24 hours per day in factories without resting, with a yield

equivalent to three day shifts. In addition, replacing human labour with robots will

prevent workers from being exposed to dangerous, stressful or unhealthy environments,

thus reducing labour-related risks.

The most striking feature of this technological revolution are social robots, machines

with artificial intelligence, and with which we will have emotional and even intimate

interactions. “A robot might be a more effective partner and a better person than the

humans we actually have in our immediate lives: just as you can see dog owners talking

to their pets today, soon we will be talking to robots,” says López Peláez – to such an

extent that sexual robots are currently being designed to carry out pleasurable personal

interactions. These will be equipped with the required sensorial abilities, such as touch.

“Since they will be used as objects, sexual robots may be able to act as a future

substitute for prostitution or pornography.”

4. The impact of a robotized society

The study also looks at the possible repercussions of incorporating robots into society.

On one hand, just as with uneven access to technologies such as the Internet, they will

open up a new gulf, this time a robotic one. This will result in a cultural distinction

being drawn between companies and people who can afford to buy robots to help with

their activities – and those who cannot. The robotic gulf will also favour more

industrialised societies, potentially widening the gap between the first and third worlds,

or providing greater possibilities for success in logistics and war. On the other hand,

López Peláez says argues that “just as many Japanese people today believe that their

robots are alive, we will attribute human characteristics to robots, and we may even

define robots‟ rights”.

Another major concern is that if robots are to carry out so many labour tasks and replace

human labour, unemployment may rise just as it did in the 19th century with the

invention of textile machines. The robotics experts interviewed for this study claimed

that factories with high robot use will retrain workers to work in other, though possibly

more poorly paid, areas. However, they also point out that the situation will balance out

with the development of new services involved in the design and maintenance of the

robots.

5. A very instinctive «self»

At a certain point, Veronica Tramhell, the rich, maimed sculptress who presides over an

underground network of performance art and human vivisection, asks Diandra if she has

had any training in cybernetics. “No, I have only studied art and I have been reading lots

of science fiction”, Diandra replies, which leads Veronica to think that Diandra owns a

very “instinctive” intimate nature. In fact, human rules of social interaction are based on

the concept of the permanence of human identity. Without it, some social rules may

become outmoded. For example, if a person breaks some laws, and then replicates into

lots of clones, and modifies himself beyond recognition, who should be punished for the

crime? If currently you may not be allowed into a court with cameras, weapons, or

drugs, then what will they do if you could turn any part of your body into any of these

things at any time? Would they restrict the quality of your visual memory and monitor

the chemical composition of your blood stream? (like it happens in the movie I, robot).

One may, thus, say that the personal identity becomes an increasingly fluid and

reconfigurable thing. At some stage, you may be able to change yourself rapidly and

dramatically and whenever you want you may experience a kind of “death forward”,

meaning a modification beyond recognition, in which you will lose your identity. This

is one of the beliefs and aims of Diandra, as she considers herself as a most progress-

oriented person who is not interested in a very wide identity life span and she‟s

definitely not interested in prolonging the life of her physical substrate. She thinks of

herself as a truly morphologically free person and, therefore, she may change all her

parts and configuration and preserve only the general goals that all converge in the

desire of becoming a machine. That‟s why she is true in every way to the Antibodies

cult– starving and draining the blood from her body to entirely prepare herself for

mechanical integration. However, circumstances prevent her from completing her

transition smoothly. She is captured by the notorious hedonistic psychiatrist Julian Nagy

who runs a therapy clinic to heal, and eventually exploit, those of the cult. At the same

time, her only guides through this process are vague and ominous directions from the

Antibodies authority while contending with the resentment of the public. As we can see,

this novel takes many elements of our current society and exaggerates and stretches

them into a possible future universe in which people worship and want to become the

technology they have created. The depravity of humanity is evident as its constituents

are each proponents of some broken part of our very system. Coilhouse writes:

“That‟s what Antibodies is, at its heart: a horror novel. There are no heroes here,

only the deluded and the ruthlessly predatory. But for all its Gran Guignol

touches, Antibodies hits home. In a rush to the future, it‟s easy to forget or

ignore the wreckage that draws in the alienated and insane into any dream that

offers them easy transcendence from their previous lives”.

For Coilhouse, Antibodies is just a “detailed examination of how nasty it gets when

humans try to permanently scrap flesh for metal, and how easily believing plebs are still

led to the slaughter by their puppet-masters”. However, what Coilhouse doesn‟t refer to

is the reality and desire patent in many science fiction stories: the pursue for intelligent

entities that will be extremely fluid and highly independent from the physical substrate

of this world. This means that in a real post- human future the identities may completely

dissolve.

Regarding the Sherryl Vint's study - Bodies of Tomorrow – in which the author

examines a large body of science-fiction writings from the last two decades, bringing to

bear an array of current scientific, cultural, and ethical debates on her analysis.

Championing an ethics of embodiment and an epistemology of the dynamic

interconnectedness between mind and body, Vint argues that representations of cultural

practices encountered in selected science-fiction writing can help audiences better

evaluate the ethical challenges differently composed future bodies and communities

might pose (that is, indeed, one of the roles played both by science fiction and utopia). I

agree with Vint on one of her major arguments: “we are currently in a moment of

defining a new human subject, a posthuman subject, whose features and implications

will be intrinsically bound up with the assumptions about identity and embodiment that

inform it” (Vint, 2007: 171). This is, as we have already seen, the main issue of the

novel Antibodies, but the problem it raises is that a body‟s place that is only connected

with technology is a mistake, as argued in this paper. That is, machines, even the most

intelligent ones, will continue to be our tools but what really matters is an intelligence

amplification (considering intelligence as a dynamic attribute), which will not be

created, as sustained by some authors, by a complete human-computer interface. It is

true that “the bio and techno media are mutually transforming and transformed” and that

the “relationship between the biological body and technological body will be presented

from the perspective of proposing a revision of the ways of understanding the two

bodies, now no longer separate and distinct” (Santana, forthcoming).

Instead, the argument of this paper is more in line with Vint‟s idea when she says:

“As Foucault makes clear in The order of Things, the idea of man as the cogito

has a specific historical beginning, and perhaps we are now reaching the moment

where that vision/version of humanity has a specific historical end. Struggles

over posthuman identity are thus more than strategies over technology and the

ethics of various technological ways of modifying what it means to be human

(…) I believe that it is important to maintain this category and struggle for an

ethical and inclusive model of the posthuman because, like the category of

human before it, the posthuman has achieved a status such that we cannot ignore

the concept, cognizant though we might be of its dangers” (Vint, 2007: 172).

The need for an ethical and inclusive model of the posthuman encompasses the idea of

the body as a utopian space, as argued by Pere Gallardo-Torrano (2007), but not in the

sense of a quest for the body perfection. The sense of the body as a utopian space that

overlaps the pluri-scalar use of technology has some points in common with the

transhumanist view of human nature as a work-in-progress, which means that the

current humanity is not the endpoint of evolution, but just a tiny step towards it.

“Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other

rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with

vastly greater capacities than present human beings have. Transhumanists

(transitional humanists) see themselves as a logical evolution from humanists

and as the logical stage prior to posthumans. They defend technoscience as the

obvious vehicle to reach the posthuman condition, though they are not

necessarily optimistic about the results of the indiscriminate” (Gallardo-Torrano,

2007).

An ethical and inclusive model of the posthuman must, instead, perceive technology not

as a vehicle to reach the posthuman condition, but as a tool that should move hand in

hand with the moral, intellectual and learning progress of beings. Just as the body. In a

certain way it is true what Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of the magazine Wired, says

when he states that we have created our humanity and that humanity has been created

by technology, since our humanity is defined by things we have invented. Like the

alphabet. Our culture is one thing we've created. But, he adds, there has been an

evolution of morality. Culture and cultural inventions are part of the technologies,

according to him. Of course there are bad technologies, but the answer to that can only

be a good technology and the answer for a good technology can only be a better

technology. Technology, thus, broadens our set of possibilities and choices and that is

its main contribution: providing possibilities, opportunities and diversity (in a similar

way that utopia does when considered as a moving target and a ongoing creative driver).

We just have to replace the technologies that limit our potential and capacities for

technologies that broad and improve them. Each choice and each possibility only works

when there are values to guide them; values that emanate from the main purposes of

life: learning and sharing with others. Only in this manner technology can contribute for

the human being self-knowledge and evolution. This is exactly what doesn‟t happen

with the antibodies of David J. Skal as it expresses a view according to which the

technology (a machine) is a further step in evolution, posing, however, the question of

the commercial orientation of that “ideal” behind technology. In reality, Diandra‟s

mistake (and the rest of the antibodies‟ community) is that she doesn‟t understand that

they are only replacing one technology by another; because the human body is also a

technology. In fact, it seems that, in the novel Antibodies, Skal evidences a dissipation

of the site in site specificity when this means a prioritizing of its discursivity, its

displacement by the community. Instead, that dissipation and site specificity is exposed

in relation to the dynamics of deterritorialization as elaborated in architectural and

urban spatial discourse. While the accelerated speed, access and exchange of

information, images, commodities and, especially, bodies is being celebrated in one

circle, the concomitant breakdown of traditional temporal-spatial experiences and the

accompanying homogenization of places, identities and erasure of cultural differences is

being decried in another. The intensifying condition of spatial indifferentiation and

departicularization (disembodiment) – that is, the increasing instances of locational and

emotional unspecificity – are seen to exacerbate the sense of alienation and

fragmentation in contemporary life.

Furthermore, there is one aspect that neither literature, nor science fiction novels have

been approaching. That aspect consists of the possibility of the parallel existence of

much more developed technologies in worlds parallel to ours. I mean, at the present

time, but in a place different from ours, may already exist a high level of technology

development that we, now or in a near future, may not even dream of. Obviously, this

encompasses the idea of multiple inhabited worlds. In science fiction books and films

we have only been dealing with future possibilities of technology. However, and if

those possibilities already exist in parallel worlds populated by more developed beings,

who may influence, by several mechanisms (such as intuition), the developments made

on planet Earth as we currently know it? Technology is also what we are, but its

purpose is not to take part of us or of the substrates that hold our existence. That is, once

the body is a temporary object which purpose is to help us (or to provide us the means

to progress moral and intellectually as spiritual beings that we are), technology will

always be hand in hand with that progress, not with the body, not even to replace it. In

other words, the more developed are we as spiritual beings the more developed will be

the technology, which will always be a tool for intellectual and cognitive practice and

not for the real configuration of the being?

6. Concluding notes

Countering both the nostalgic desire for a retrieval of rooted, place-bound identities on

the one hand, and the antinostalgic embrace of a nomadic fluidity of subjectivity,

identity and spatiality on the other, this paper concludes with a theorization of the

“wrong place” or “mistake”, a speculative and heuristic concept of imagining a new

model of belonging-in-transience. As evidenced throughout Antibodies, even though we

may consider it as a frightening, fascinating, and perversely erotic novel, this task of

imagining altogether new coordination of technology and its relation with the body site

is an open-ended predicament. Moreover, Skal‟s book shows the critical capacity of

intimacies based on absence, distance and ruptures of time, space and dystopias, which

is very common in dystopic science fiction novels.

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