Posthumanism and Cybernetics

As The Silicon Tongue, by Beryl Fletcher, dwells more on the relationship between technology and posthumanism in view of cybernetics, the concepts of cybernetics, cyborg, and cyberspace should be elaborated first.

55 The words in bold and italic are Williams’ own emphasis. The abbreviation “C” in the quotation refers to “century”, “eC” “early-” and “mC” “mid-” centuries, “fw”

“immediate forerunner of a word”, “Gk” “Classical Greek”, and “L” “Latin”.

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Conceived to be the founder of cybernetics in the modern sense, Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician, defines the term cybernetics as “the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal” (1961: 11), and the name suggests the use of feedback mechanisms (11) in the sense that whether information is processed or not is best understood through feedback mechanisms. It is for this reason that in information technology cybernetics relies on feedback mechanisms and a reasoning mind which is transformed into a computational system.

As Wiener argues and as stated earlier, McCulloch and Pitts are significant figures in the study of neural systems; but for Wiener, the matter should be to transfer the biological neural systems to computing machines (14) as it is through technology that one can process information and observe its outcome via feedback mechanisms. The tie between cybernetics and posthumanism lies in the very aspect they both share: they bring forth new conceptions to visual representations or realities. That is, different conditions produce different outcomes, so there cannot be one single outcome and interpretation of a reality, an event, and a system. Therefore,

the nature of our reality is unavoidably tied up with our nature as observing systems. If we had some other nature (or, as we are doing to some extent, if we change our nature, for example through a change in values or instrumentation) then our reality will be different. (Clemson, 1991: 21)

It is for this reason that cybernetics or posthumanism is a challenge to Western humanism, which foregrounds the uniqueness of human beings in their biological forms in the universe. Posthumanism is not only a challenge to Western humanism but also a compulsory critique of anthropocentrism and speciesism (Wolfe, 2010: xix). A human being is not the sole living being in the Earth, and not all species are created for him/her. Instead, s/he is one of the forms and bodies like many others; and besides a

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biological body, there are also virtual bodies with artificial intelligence, which can be named as cyborgs. Cyborgs are “cybernetics organisms”, as the term coined in 1960 suggests (Haraway, 2003: 4). Haraway describes the term as hybrid creatures that are composed of organism and machines, that are high-technological guises of biological human forms, and that are related to information and communications systems (1991:

1). Hence, cyborgs are not mere technological images on a screen; instead, they have the human potentials reflecting the psychology, knowledge, and social background of biological organisms. As posthumanism does not reject humanism but takes it as a reference for itself, cyborgs do not exclude the human but process themselves and/or information by using the artificial forms of human neurons. The Silicon Tongue, therefore, portrays cyborgs as hybrid organisms that appear in a virtual space with some human faculties.

Cyberspace, on the other hand, refers to any artificial, virtual, or computational space through which biological human beings keep in contact with one another by means of such media as TV, internet, and phones. To be more precise, as a term coined by William Gibson (Whittaker, 2004: 4), cyberspace is a domain of “a series of symbolic definitions […] that constitute a network of ideas as much as the communication of bits” (3); it is “technical complexity – computer-generated graphical representations of data that are transferred across networks – but is also framed by psychology, epistemology, juridical and social systems” (4). That is, while cybernetics refers to a study field, cyberspace refers to a domain in which computer-generated data is processed with the accompaniment of both artificial and biological human systems crucial to keep healthy, conscious, and legal survival. It is for this reason that cyberspace as a posthuman space does not totally reject the biological human form;

instead, it offers a hybrid nature of lives with hybrid visualisations, which can be exemplified, in The Silicon Tongue, by the virtual cyber-game reflecting Alice’s life in

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the biological world, Joy’s appearance to reflect her anger in the biological world to her boss in a virtual space, and Pixel’s visualization in a cyber-game.

As the title of the novel suggests, posthumanism in regard to cybernetics offers the migrant and Pākehā Alice⁵⁶ a means to express herself and replace the sense of alienation as a postcolonial character with the sense of self-identification and belonging.

To begin with, it can be asserted that cyberspace is a domain through which she finds the chance of lessening the sense of alienation she feels in New Zealand as a migrant character: the cyber-game bought and organized by her great-granddaughter Pixel is at the service of Alice in reflecting her mind, her concerns, and her desire for the mother/motherland:

She wants us to work together to force a reconciliation between machine, body and mind. These are the questions we return to again and again. Can we make memory visual? Can we enter into another person’s past life? Now she takes me into a virtual world, a helmet for each of our heads, metal gloves on our hands. I am afraid. My senses are blinkered, no speech, no sight, no sound. Then suddenly I am flooded with colour and light, there is movement and music, I am flying!

Pixel and I join hands, we turn through circles, left, right, left again, while below us, the landscape unrolls. We leave Cape Reinga and the sacred pohutukawa tree, we see the line of white water where the Tasman and the Pacific oceans meet. […]

[…]

I can hear myself cry, “We are travelling north, lushness, the heat rises.”

56 As the main framework of the dissertation is postcolonial alienation, other posthuman characters like Joy and Pixel are not analysed in this part of the dissertation. They can be a subject matter of another study on posthumanism.

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I answer her/me, “We are crossing the centre of the world.” (Fletcher, 1996: 229-230)

The quotation by Alice depicts the reconciliation of biological and virtual worlds and the conglomeration of machine, body, and mind to make up a visualization of Alice’s internal concerns and desires. To quote from Katherine Hayles, “[w]hen someone breaks into a computer system, it is not a physical presence that is detected but the informational traces that the entry has created” (Hayles, 1999: 39), which is the case for Alice in fact. That is, the physical and the computational worlds come together in her transformation into a cybernetic organism that leaves New Zealand and flies towards the north. The north in her quotation is the metaphorical representation of Britain, her motherland. As a posthuman character who transforms herself into a cybernetic organism, Alice tries to reach her motherland, the land she misses, and her past when she is together with her mother in her hometown. Posthuman transformation of the character, then, serves a means of eliminating the sense of alienation felt in New Zealand. While describing posthumanism as a concept, Katherine Hayles argues in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999) that “the computational universe realizes the cybernetic dream of creating a world in which humans and intelligent machines can both feel at home” (239). In posthuman theoretical framework, therefore, a cybernetic organism does not feel herself estranged from home; the virtual space is the domain where she feels belonging to home since s/he can freely travel there without the limitations and boundaries of the physical and biological world. It is for this reason that posthumanism engenders many alternatives to biological realities and certainties, which is what postcolonialism as a theory does in its emphasis on reinterpreting colonial relations from different angles.

Instead of a colonized, a person with British origin and her viewpoint about and

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criticism towards colonialism are perceived in this novel, and colonialism is not a difficult issue only for the natives but also for some British.

The similarity between postcolonialism and posthumanism in the sense that they both offer alternatives to certainties can be exemplified in Alice’s narration as follows:

Next time I go into the cave, I will make a drawing for myself. I will draw Emain, both the cottage and the island of Celtic myth. And Miss Catley, walking on the hills, seeking herbs and moss, talking of celebrations of the seasons, Solstice, Beltaine. And Samhaine, that moment between autumn and winter when the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred, that time when the people of Eyam light bonfires and spread rumours that the plague has returned.

Pixel thinks that this is a good idea. “You are beginning to understand the potential Alice. So far I have shown you the creations of others but it is not a passive way of seeing. We can change or add to it at will. Or we can make something new. (Fletcher, 1996: 231-232)

The places related to Alice’s earlier life before her settling in New Zealand are the remembrances of her motherland which come out via a virtual space; hence, cyberspace helps her attain the sense of belonging lost with immigration, and it opens her different spaces and options of realities of biological world, through which she challenges Western anthropocentric human whose place in the world is certain and at the centre of all creations.

Digibodies are mapped with the desires of their creators, and their creators are on a quest for a great Real, What is this real? How do we know it when we encounter it? And why this desperate need to know, to look at the face of the real? The

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balance between real and unreal is perhaps nowhere more striking than in the realm of VR experiences. (Flanagan, 2004: 168)

What Alice experiences in the form of a digibody is, therefore, intermingling of the realities of the physical and biological world with the ones of the virtual world. The epistemological questioning of the reality engenders different ways and representations of having bodies. In the intermingled world, she visits her past life that appears once in her memories through the kaleidoscope. In this sense, that virtual space where she can recall and relive the past is similar to kaleidoscope; they both have the function of making her feel connected with her mother and motherland. Through a cyber-game, therefore, Alice’s experiences in the physical world can be altered, and even her death can be envisioned and invented (Fletcher, 1996: 232). Both Alice and Pixel or anyone

can travel to Eyam and read the names of those who died of the plague displayed on boards outside the stone cottages. [They] can walk the hills with Miss Catley, [they] can sleep in the cabin on the ship that brought [Alice] to New Zealand, all of it. And [Alice] can play the guide, [she] can direct the game any way [she]

want[s]. Any player can experience [her] life from inside [her] head. Or become Emily. Or Jack. Whoever. [She] can fiddle with time and space and identity, [she]

can reinvent the wheel if [she] so wish[es]. (232)

This option for revisiting the past and inventing possibilities of the physical world is also explained by Eugene Thacker in “Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman” (2003): thanks to posthumanism, human faculties like

“self-awareness, consciousness and reflection, self-direction and development”,

“perpetual progress,” and “self-transformation” can come out and appear in the virtual space (Thacker, 2003: 75), and posthuman characters like Alice can create an image of wholeness lost due to her forced immigration. In this regard, posthumanism, in general,

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is the medium for Alice in her self-identification process; she revisits the past and creates that image of Lacanian wholeness with the mother⁵⁷. Hence, she finds a solution to her alienation she feels in New Zealand through posthumanism.