Frictions in the Posthuman:
Putting Posthumanism into Practice in
Science Fiction
Master Thesis Alix Rübsaam 5681855 Supervisor: Prof. Mireille Rosello
I. Introduction
The aim of this thesis is to problematize posthuman theory on its own terms. Rather than utilising the ideas set forth within theories on the posthuman, I propose to assess the posthuman on the terms and conditions that the theory sets itself. As posthumanism can be used to challenge the cultural reality that “we” find ourselves in, it is a productive theory for criticising cultural practices still at work in contemporary culture. As such, what is needed is an investigation into the workings of posthumanism and into how it pursues the critique that it offers. This is what I propose to do here.
To do so, I will approach posthumanism in science fiction environments, so as to put the theory into practice. Science fiction, being a fertile ground for unbridled potential, as it is not “limited” in the sense that it must adhere to a perceived reality, offers the perfect environment in which to approach posthumanism. As Ralph Pordzik observes, science fiction writing displays a “creative preoccupation with the idea of otherness as determining the self-image of humanity” (144), a preoccupation shared by, I will show, posthumanism. N. Katherine Hayles, one of the theorists I will discuss, herself emphasizes the critical role that literary texts can play in relation to theoretical narratives. She states that such literary texts “actively shape what the technologies mean and what the scientific theories signify in cultural contexts” (21). Literature has even, Hayles asserts, aided in forming her theories on the posthuman. She explains that “in [her] account of the scientific developments [she] ha[s] sought to emphasize the role that narrative plays in articulating the posthuman as a technical-cultural concept” (22). Science fiction, thus, is the one place that the posthuman can find its terms and conditions put into practice. Or, as Hayles concludes, “questions about the posthuman become increasingly urgent. Nowhere are these questions explored more passionately than in contemporary speculative fiction” (247). Thus, by utilizing the science fiction environments of the novels I will discuss, I analyse the claims that posthumanism makes in an environment that, by its very existence, puts these claims to a test.
In the first chapter, I will discuss three texts on posthumanism, written by Donna Haraway, Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, and N. Katherine Hayles respectively. These texts are not only foundational pillars in the field of posthumanism, but furthermore, taken together, can sketch an elaborate but cohesive image of what it means to be(come) posthuman. Specifically, I will, with the aid of the three primary sources, characterise the posthuman as an entity that challenges cultural boundaries and demarcations of difference as a source of (dis)identification, and attempts to overcome these demarcations. The challenge
the posthuman poses to these boundaries, I will show, calls for a re-evaluation of the human as a discrete and clearly demarcated entity. Furthermore, from the three primary texts it will become clear that becoming posthuman or emerging as posthuman is a retroactive exercise that works equally into past conceptions of boundaries as it does into the future.
The second chapter will be the first on posthumanism in an environment that sustains a posthuman reading to the extent that it enables a critical assessment of posthumanism itself. Here I discuss the theme of merging characters in both William Gibson’s and Pat Cadigan’s respective cyberpunk novels, Neuromancer and Synners. These novels are particularly suited to sustain an investigation into posthumanism on its own terms because the environment in which these narratives take place are, as I will show, in accordance with the very environments that posthumanism seeks to establish. In other words, the plots of these novels are set in a posthuman world. I will argue that the merging of individual characters with one another reveal a posthuman teleology that problematizes the definition of posthumanism that I show in the first chapter, by exposing the posthuman as contingent on the demarcations that it sets out to transcend, and thus as upholding the environment that it seeks to challenge.
In the third chapter I will discuss China Miéville’s “weird fiction” novel The City &
The City and compare it to posthumanism. I do so because there is a relevant and significant
similarity between elements of this novel and elements of posthumanism. Miéville’s narrative shows an intricate relationship with borders and cultural demarcations, a relationship that, I will argue exists, in a comparable manner within posthuman theory. By proposing a reading of the role of Breach in The City & The City as sustaining of the border that exists between the two cities in which this story takes place, Besźel and Ul Qoma, what will become apparent is a similarity to the manner in which posthumanism sustains the boundaries it transcends, which subscribes their existence and validity, as a condition of its own existence. Furthermore, I will discuss the journey that Miéville’s protagonist, Inspector Borlú, undertakes to Breach, to becoming Breach, as similar to the emerging of the posthuman in becoming posthuman. As such, I will show that becoming posthuman inherently implies a narrative contingent on a temporal schism, which creates an inevitable time-based demarcation, contradicting posthumanism’s aim of transcending such demarcation.
These two readings will make apparent that within posthumanism itself there exist three sites of inherent friction, paradoxes within the theory. Given its definition as overcoming demarcations, posthumanism will be shown to be contingent on demarcations to overcome. Because the posthuman is defined as transcending boundaries, it sustains the boundaries it transcends as that very transcension makes the posthuman posthuman. And,
finally, the narrative of becoming posthuman is shown to create boundaries where they were not before, simply by becoming posthuman and thus instating a moment that divides what comes before from what comes after.
II. Defining Posthumanism
In order to approach posthumanism as the object of my thesis, I will discuss three primary sources written on the theory. To ensure that an accurate representation of these texts can be used for my analysis, they will be critically assessed only at the end of this chapter, rather than throughout the discussion on the arguments set forth in the texts themselves. Finally, I will sketch three possible sites of friction, emerging from the definitions of posthumanism from these primary texts.
A. Donna Haraway's Cyborg1
Donna Haraway calls the protagonist of her manifesto, the cyborg, more than anything else, a figure with a political agenda. However, in order to assess what the cyborg can do politically, it is important to investigate what exactly the cyborg is. When Haraway proposes that “we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodiment of Western logos. From the point of view of pleasure in these taboo fusions, made inevitable by the social relations of science and technology, there might indeed be a feminist science” (173), the cyborg’s political aims of decentring Man become apparent. But how does Haraway’s mythical figure propose to reach this goal? What are these taboo fusions and their feminist potential? This is what I will unpack here.
Central to the narrative of how the cyborg emerges are, Haraway proposes, three “leaky distinctions” or “crucial boundary breakdowns”. These are boundaries that are transgressed, transcended, and incorporated by the cyborg; the animal and the human, the animal-human and the machine, and the physical and the non-physical (151-3). The cyborg, in these instances, appears “precisely where the boundary (...) is transgressed” (152). It is important to note, then, that these boundaries were previously (that is, before the cyborg transgressed them) perceived as “natural” demarcations and that the cyborg, by transgressing them, exposes these boundaries as cultural and thus transgressible. In other words, the social reality in which these demarcations occur is the place where they are perceived as and function as definitive markers of difference. The cyborg, then, Haraway remarks, functions as “a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings” (150). By “suggest[ing] a way out of the maze of dualisms in
1 The terms posthuman and cyborg are used interchangeably by many scholars dealing with both theories. There
certainly are differences between the two terms and the theories underlying them, but my argument here resides in the part where they overlap. As such, I will not go into the differences here.
which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves” (181), the emerging of the cyborg problematizes a social reality that is structured on cultural boundaries and consequently alters this lived reality. As such, Haraway argues, “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints” (154). Thus, the cyborg problematizes the perceived natural borders between human and animal, human-animal and machine, and in doing so reveals them to have been culturally instated all along. Consequently, other “natural” borders must be re-evaluated as well. Or, as Haraway notes, “the dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized, are all in question, ideologically” (163). The cyborg, thus, as the central figure in the questioning of such categories is infinitely tangled up in them, something that Haraway identifies as “an intimate experience of boundaries, their construction and deconstruction” (181). As such, the cyborg does not just transgress these boundaries but transcends them and incorporates them as vital parts of its existence.
These dichotomies that structure lived reality are represented in one single dichotomy, namely that between the Self and its Other. Haraway identifies a “domination of all constituted others, whose task is to mirror the self” (177). As such, all dichotomies mentioned above can be reduced to a culturally dominant side and a culturally dominated side. The Self exists by the grace of the Other’s reflection. But when the three leaky distinctions are transgressed by the cyborg, all dichotomies are rendered unstable as markers of difference and can appear in contradictory presence within the cyborg. Thus, Haraway notes, “the cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled postmodern collective and personal self” (163). Lauren Bartlett and Thomas B. Byers even call the cyborg “more a node in a network of texts and codes than any kind of reified ‘self’” (28). And Eugene Thacker, in a similar vein, remarks that “these unique, hybrid objects challenge our conceptions of the sharp division between active subjects and passive objects” (80). So what remains of the Self in the cyborg? Haraway explains
The self is the One who is not dominated, who knows that by the service of the other, the other is the one who holds the future, who knows that by the experience of domination, which gives the lie to the autonomy of the self. To be One is to be autonomous, to be powerful, to be God; but to be One is an illusion, and so to be involved in a dialectic of apocalypse with the other. Yet
to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary, frayed, insubstantial. One is too few, but two are too many. (177)
The cyborg identity, thus, is one that is neither one nor two, not solely self, but not entirely other either. As an entity that is no longer solely contingent on an Other to construct its Self, but rather oscillates between what is self and what is other, the cyborg departs from the cultural construction of binary identity based on demarcations of difference. Furthermore, the cyborg also departs from an approach to selfhood as a location for discrete “wholeness”. As the binary distinction between Self and Other dissolves, so does the perception of the Self as mirrored by outside forces and thus as finite, limited, and distinct. Without an Other waiting to counteract at the limits of the Self, at the very point where the Self ends, the Self becomes limitless. Needless to say, this does not mean that the Self becomes larger, it solely entails that there is no longer a dividing line between what is considered part of the self and what is considered not part of the self (i.e. what is Other). As Haraway stresses, the cyborg cannot operate in terms of “organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity” (150). The cyborg is not a discrete collection of parts, but a potential collection of parts ranging from none to all the possible configurations. Ultimately, Haraway concludes, “one is too few, and two is only one possibility” (180).
In conclusion, Haraway’s cyborg emerges when culturally perceived boundaries are transcended. As this happens, the cyborg’s location, in transgressing these demarcations problematizes more than just these “leaky distinctions”, but all such culturally instated boundaries. In doing so, the social reality in which these boundaries are perceived is put under scrutiny. A central figure in this social reality is the Self, which has been established in tandem with the Other, contingent on the Other’s mirroring to legitimize its existence. It is this Self that the emerging of the cyborg transforms into a more fluid entity that is neither a discrete one, nor an opposite Other, but is also not entirely both.
B. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston’s Posthuman
In the preface and introduction to their book Posthuman Bodies, Ira Livingston and Judith Halberstam define the posthuman mainly by discussion its relation to the human. The existence of the posthuman, they stress, “does not necessitate the obsolescence of the human, it does not represent an evolution or devolution of the human” (10). As Neil Badmington comments, “from a perspective informed by their thought, the ‘post-’ of posthumanism does not (and, moreover, cannot) mark or make an absolute break from the legacy of humanism”
(21). This inability is precisely because of the one integral difference Halberstam and Livingston discuss that exists between the human and the posthuman, which resides in the manner in which both approach markers of difference. The human, according to Halberstam and Livingston, “functions to domesticate and hierarchize difference within the human (whether according to race, class, gender) and to absolutize difference between the human and the nonhuman” (10). Alternatively, the posthuman “does not reduce difference-from-others-to-difference-from-self, but rather emerges in the pattern of resonance and interference between the two” (10). Evidently, Halberstam and Livingston’s posthuman does not negate the categories of difference on which the human depends and with which it operates, but rather the posthuman does not act on these categories as relevant demarcations with which to either identify or disidentify. It is as such that the posthuman cannot “break away” from the human, because its discourse of not operating on demarcations of difference would be impossible to uphold as the posthuman would then itself operate on demarcations of difference from the human. Instead, Halberstam and Livingston propose, “posthuman bodies are not slaves to masterdiscourses but emerge at nodes where bodies, bodies of discourse, and discourses of bodies intersect to foreclose any easy distinction between actor and stage, between sender/receiver, channel, code, message, context” (2). Susan M. Squier adds to this that this aim at “emancipation from all master narratives” is the “dominant feature” of the posthuman (119-120). Evidently, as Suzanne Dow and Colin Wright argue, the posthuman’s arrival marks a “complex cultural shift (...) wherein the subject is re-conceived as ever more decentred” (301). The human, then, is not discarded in posthumanism, but must share the centre stage that it has taken for a long time. The posthuman, thus, creates a space that is intentionally left blank, leaving space for any and all.
Consequently, Halberstam and Livingston’s posthuman calls for a re-evaluation of the distribution of the roles of the subject and the object, the Self and the Other and offers, as Teresa Heffernan proposes, an “alternative to the conception of the self as fixed, autonomous, authentic, coherent, and universal” (118), a view that is prevalent in the human. In contrast with this human, Halberstam and Livingston propose, “the additive other (who is subordinate in several systems at once) is not necessarily the geometrical other of the posthuman, who may well be ‘between between’ in a single system” (10). Thinking in a way that opposes the Self to an Other, “has always been”, Alexandra Chasin observes, inadequate “for understanding social identities and relations, there have always been bodies that exposed its inadequacy” (74). Thus, as Halberstam and Livingston note, as the posthuman is “driven instead by the double impossibility and prerequisite to become other and become itself” (14),
the most important demarcation of difference that the posthuman transcends is the one between the Self and the Other. It follows, then, that once this demarcation is transcended, the posthuman instates “various challenges to the coherence of the ‘human body’ as a figure through which culture is processed and oriented” (viii). Halberstam and Livingston find that the posthuman “self” is multiple, rather than singular; without the goal of becoming “coherent and unitary” (14); insisting “on the ‘someness’ of every assemblage”, where “some” is not an “indefinite number awaiting a more accurate measurement” (9). In terms of binarism, becoming posthuman, then is not a matter of another category that includes “both” options, “because the discourse of ‘infinite diversity’ just plays the ‘good cop’ to the ‘bad cop’ of singularity and duality” (8). Thus, both the Self and the Other become part of the posthuman, part of the whole that can never be whole, but can also never be not whole. Halberstam and Livingston sketch a posthumanism that “embrace[s] radically impurity that includes the pure without privileging it” (13). Ultimately, all ends up within the posthuman; the Self, the Other, the human, and all else.
Finally, because the posthuman sets to reveal workings that have always already been taking place, but that have been obscured by the reign of the human, to desire a “return” to the human is a desire to return to an illusion. As Ruben Borg notes, “the posthuman is already with us, even as it is yet to come (...), the currency and futurity of the posthuman are one and the same” (164-5). The emerging of the posthuman as an entity and a mode of thinking always having been present, is a retroactive reveal that works into both the past and future. Thus Halberstam and Livingstone stress the retroactivity of the posthuman in concluding that they
have rehearsed the claim that the posthuman condition is upon us and that lingering nostalgia or a modernist or humanist philosophy of self and other, human and alien, normal and queer is merely the echo of a discursive battle that has already taken place. (19)
Thus, though the posthuman transcends boundaries drawn by the human between what belongs to the category of the Self and what to that of the Other, nostalgia to the human is not eradicated by this posthuman transcendence, but rather encapsulated within the posthuman. The posthuman must incorporate this nostalgia for to deny it a place would locate it within something Other, precisely the practice posthumanism seeks to overcome.
In conclusion, Halberstam and Livingston’s posthuman transcends demarcations of difference, which problematizes an approach to the Other as a mirror of the Self, and decentres the human that does operate on notions of Self, Other and difference. Furthermore, this emergence of the posthuman works retroactively into a (human) past when these notions were still in use, and nostalgia for this manner of thinking is incorporated into the posthuman.
C. N. Katherine Hayles’ Becoming Posthuman
In her book How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles discusses the journey of the human into the posthuman. She proposes that posthumanism is “the end of a certain conception of the human”, which “may have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity who had the wealth, power, and leisure to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings exercising their will through individual agency and choice” (287). Jill Didur identifies this conception of the human as “an Enlightenment subject that presupposes knowledge as disembodied and humans as autonomous and unified agents, and ultimately re-inscribes relations of power along colonial lines” (100). Posthumanism then is a reconsideration of this view of the human. Or, as Myra J. Seaman remarks, posthumanism entails a realisation that “there has never been one unified, cohesive ‘human’”, but rather that this was “a title that was granted by and to those with the material and cultural luxury to bestow upon themselves the faculties of ‘reason’, autonomous agency, and the privileges of being human” (246). Becoming posthuman, then, is the process of moving from one conception onto the next. In “The Human in the Posthuman”, Hayles characterizes the posthuman as wishing “to abandon the attempt to police the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman and see both as enwebbed within a skein of mutual interrelations” (135). This attempt she associates with the human, whereas the posthuman subject, in contrast, Hayles suggests in How We Became
Posthuman, “is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a
material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (3). Evidently, “the construction of the posthuman is also deeply involved with boundary questions, particularly when the redrawing of boundaries changes the locus of selfhood” (279). The posthuman seeks to transcend those rigid boundaries that decide what is part of the human subject and what is not, or what is Self and what is Other. As such, Hayles explains, “the posthuman offers resources for rethinking the articulation of humans with intelligent machines” (287). For, if the human Self is no longer considered an entirely discrete and non-negotiable entity, then the Other is not either and as such these categories, as well as the boundary that divides them, becomes questionable. Transcending the boundaries of selfhood,
as Hayles’ posthuman does, then, is “not a question of leaving the body behind but rather of extending embodied awareness in (...) ways that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis” (291). However, this extension of human potential does not necessarily require every human to install computer hardware into their brainstem. Hayles asserts that “the defining characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of nonbiological components” (4). The posthuman, thus, enables a reconfiguration of the human as subject and of human agency through the transcension of boundaries.
So, then, how does Hayles sketch this journey from the human to the posthuman? The “‘human’ and ‘posthuman’ coexist in shifting configurations that vary with historically specific contexts” (6), a process Hayles calls seriation. She claims that “if the ‘post’ in posthuman points to changes that are in part already here, the ‘human’ points to the seriated nature of these changes” (281-2). Seriation, Hayles proposes, occurs when ideas are “fabricated in a pattern of overlapping replication and innovation” (14), as ideas do not tend to suddenly crop up or abruptly disappear. An important concept within processes of seriation is the skeuomorph, a “feature that is no longer functional in itself but that refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time” (17). Skeuomorphs “testify to the social or psychological necessity for innovation to be tempered by replication” (17). They accompany the introduction of new artefacts with elements that refer back to an earlier time and an earlier, comparable, artefact. Hayles suggests that in the seriated process of becoming posthuman, or in any comparable cultural shift, skeuomorphs play a role. She explains that “in the history of cybernetics, skeuomorphs acted as threshold devices, smoothing the transition between one conceptual constellation and another” (17). In terms of moving into new concepts, however, or in terms of past and future, the skeuomorph acts both backwards and forward, “simultaneously reinforcing and undermining both” (17). Consequently, the skeuomorph “performs a more complex role than mere nostalgia (...) for it also leaves its imprint on the new constellation” (18). The posthuman emerges, thus, in a seriated pattern, moving forward and backward, affecting both past and future, in order to transition smoothly from the human to the posthuman.
The manner in which posthumanism operates both forward and backward becomes apparent as well in its retroactivity in becoming posthuman. Hayles asserts that part of becoming posthuman is “to acknowledge that we have always been posthuman” (278-9). As such, she states, we should value the “late evolutionary add-ons of consciousness and reason not because they are foundational but because they allow the human to emerge out of the posthuman we have always already been” (279). Thus, becoming posthuman is a process that
works retroactively into lived pasts and “evokes the exhilarating prospect of getting out some of the old boxes and opening up new ways of thinking about what being human means” (285). It is because of “the seriated history of cybernetics” that Hayles argues “we have always been posthuman” (291). Thus, the emergence of the posthuman alters conceptions of human-ness and how those conceptions have functioned in the past so that they can be re-evaluated from a posthuman perspective.
In conclusion, Hayles’ discussion on becoming posthuman identifies the posthuman as a figure intricately wound up with boundaries, transcending the human notion of guarding these boundaries, without necessitating the human to become obsolete. The emergence of the posthuman happens gradually, not in a straight line but in a process of seriation, wherein certain concepts linger, making the transition to the conception of the posthuman gradual. The skeuomorph, in this process, looks both forward and back. Finally, Hayles identifies the becoming of posthumanism as always already happening and as working retroactively into previous conceptions of the human.
D. Posthuman Sites of Friction
Having discussed these three texts on posthumanism, I will now compile a working definition of the posthuman, in order to use it as an object for my analysis. Furthermore, I will highlight some possible sites of friction inherent within this posthuman.
As shown, Haraway argues that her cyborg decentres Man by transcending demarcating structures that divide the world into what is human and what is not, and what is self and what is other. The transcension of such dividing boundaries of difference is something that can be found in both Halberstam and Livingston’s as well as Hayles’ discussion. Halberstam and Livingston stress that the posthuman decentres, rather than replaces, the human by not acting on these demarcations but rather by transcending and incorporating them. Hayles, too, recognises in her posthuman a deep involvement with boundaries, proposing that the posthuman enables a reconfiguration of the human as less rigidly categorised. The most important boundary to transcend, in all three texts, is that between the Self and the Other, the ultimate demarcation that the posthuman is to overcome.
As a result, the boundaries that guard the limit of the self are re-evaluated, Haraway views the cyborg identity as permanently partial, a view that relates to Halberstam and Livingston’s discussion of how when the posthuman transcends the limitation of the human, the coherence of the human is challenged. The posthuman, in their view, is multiple and consists of someness, rather than a measurable collection. Hayles, too, views the posthuman
as a figure that is always under re-construction, and never complete. Because of its transcension of demarcations of difference, thus, the posthuman reconfigures the Self as a limited entity, opposed by the Other, and replaces this view with one that enables a multiplicity and fluidity in identity.
Finally, both Hayles and Halberstam and Livingston discuss the emerging of the posthuman as a realisation that operates retroactively into past perceptions of demarcations. Halberstam and Livingston discuss posthumanism as something that is upon “us”, and the realisation of posthumanism’s presence makes that an attempt to view the past in the demarcating terms of the human is a nostalgia to a past that does not exist. Hayles discusses the becoming of posthumanism as a seriated event that, exemplified by the skeuomorph, works equally into the present and the past.
For the purpose of this analysis of posthumanism, put into practice in the science fiction narratives I discuss here, I recognise three possible sites of friction, places where the posthuman can be problematized on its own terms, spurring from the definition provided by the three views on what posthumanism is, provided in this chapter.
The first of these sites is the posthuman tendency (or, as I will argue, aim or goal) to transcend cultural demarcations of difference. As shown, in all three texts, transcending perceived boundaries is considered a defining characteristic of the posthuman. In the following chapter I will explore the relation between the posthuman and the boundaries it sets out to transgress, by which it is characterised and formed, and the significance of this relation in the formation of a posthuman teleology of boundary transcension.
The second site of potential posthuman friction is the relation between the posthuman and “already” transcended boundaries. Given the posthuman’s definition of boundary transcension, in the fourth chapter I will discuss the posthuman as having overcome these boundaries and investigate the interaction of the posthuman with such demarcations as contingent and sustaining.
Finally, this second site relates to the third site where I will argue for inherent friction within the posthuman. In the fourth chapter, using Halberstam and Livingston’s discussion of the retroactive reveal and Hayles’ narrative of becoming posthuman, I will discuss the emergence of the posthuman itself and the process of becoming posthuman as, I will propose, this journey becomes a narrative that has the potential to undermine some of the crucial characteristics of the posthuman itself.
III. The Next Frontier in Posthuman Teleology
This chapter focuses on the creation of a teleology of boundary transcension in posthumanism, by reading the narratives of Pat Cadigan’s Synners and William Gibson’s
Neuromancer as posthuman environments in which such a teleology comes into existence. A
prevalent theme in both novels is the merging of two or more characters into one entity. It is at the level of the individual and the boundaries thereof that I propose the next step in posthuman teleology takes place, which exemplifies that posthumanism’s aim to transcend boundaries instates such a teleology. Situated in posthuman environments, these novels facilitate a questioning of the boundary-dissolving that takes place between the identities of their protagonists. Specifically, I will investigate augmentations to the posthuman individual that surpass the three leaky distinctions set forth by Haraway and the overcoming of cultural demarcations as discussed by Hayles and Halberstam and Livingston as something that is not necessarily dictated by posthuman theory and that results in a posthuman teleology of overcoming boundaries2. The existence of such a teleology would be problematic because it constitutes and defines the posthuman character but in its existence sustains the environment dominated by socio-cultural demarcations, that posthumanism aims to transcend.
A. Merging Subjects in Neuromancer and Synners
To initiate a discussion on the merging of individuals in these two novels, it is worth noting that in Neuromancer, the presence of the Rastafari characters already hints at the overcoming of boundaries between individuals, at the merging of subjects. Benjamin Fair quotes Haraway (313) in explaining that “Rastafarians have pursued the conditions in which 'we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras'” (96). But their hybrid-ness exists on more levels than Haraway's. The Rastafari's in Gibson's novel use the pronoun “I and I”, rather than “you and I” or “we”. Although they use “I and I” predominantly when referring to themselves and others of their Zion community, Maelcum also uses it to refer to himself and Molly and Case (Gibson 137, 291). Ernest Cashmore explains that “Rastas did not predicate their membership to an élite movement on just the sharedness of a theory, but on a much deeper, almost primordial commonality: the brotherhood” (316). Within this brotherhood the “Rastas
2 For a discussion on why the posthuman characters of these novel might be driven to continuously seek out new
boundaries to overcome, more than just because posthumanism suggests they should, see my chapter “The Next Frontier in Cyborg Teleology: The Merging of Individuals, Posthuman Augmentation, and Lacanian Desire in Neuromancer and Synners” in Augmentation: From Cyberpunk to Supercrip, a forthcoming publication by the Interdisciplinary Press.
understood themselves to be linked by the existence of God in man, expressed in the Rastafarian vernacular as 'I and I', which meant that subject versus object distinctions were dissolved where fellow brethren were concerned. 'You and I' had little meaning for the Rastas simply because God was in all of them and they were all 'one people'” (316). Furthermore, Cashmore expands, “Rastas were committed to the presence of the brotherhood, members of which shared a common understanding of reality” (319). In Neuromancer, the presence of the Zion-cluster Rastafari's who, by using the pronoun “I and I”, show that they already operate from a position of having overcome the boundaries between different individuals, at least on a communal, and linguistic, level, subscribes the prevalence of the theme of dissolving the distinctions between subject and object and subject and subject.
So what other kind of examples of merges between subjects, objects, and individuals can be found in Synners and Neuromancer and how do they differ in their respective manners of merging? First, in Neuromancer, as in Synners, there are Artificial Intelligences (AIs) that make use of programs and constructs that at least resemble individuals, in a sort of semi-merge. As Tyler Stevens notes, “Wintermute, though not human, appears in many forms to Case” (418). All the forms Wintermute appears as are people Case knows, and Wintermute uses Case's memories of these people to talk to him. Wintermute himself explains, “these aren’t masks. I need ‘em to talk to you. ‘Cause I don’t have what you’d think of as a personality, much” (Gibson 256). Personality or not, Wintermute's agency in the novel suggests that he is, in fact, a fully-fledged character or individual in the universe of Gibson's novel, unlike the memories of the Finn and Julius Deane that he appears as. As Sabine Heuser suggests, “AIs as fictional characters are created no differently from all other persons peopling these fictional worlds. However, as Cadigan's versions show in particular, they highlight the fact that any reference to a 'real' referent is merely a convention and, in the end, a realistic, mimetic illusion” (145). And indeed, in Synners too, the AI, Art, uses familiar human faces, namely the program that runs Marly and Caritha, to talk to and manipulate Gabe. Initially Gabe is unaware of this but eventually Caritha explains to him “You thought it was a glitch in the program, but it was him all along. Art” (432). In both these instances, the AIs do not merge with wholesome individuals but rather with memories and computer programs. As such, the absence of agency and selfhood in the programs or projections of characters that the AIs merge with is emblematic of the failure to properly merge. These instances are not actual merges but are instances of one posthuman individual, namely the AIs in both novels, assimilating more into its posthuman collage. These are merges between an AI and Others rather than fully-fledged Selves. Therefore, to regard these merges as similar to
the other merges would be overstretching the concept of subject-merging. Nonetheless, the fact that these “assimilations” occur yet cannot be recognised as proper merges subscribes the suggestion that the actual next step in cyborg teleology requires two selves, rather than a Self and an Other.
Furthermore, in both Neuromancer and in Synners, merges occur between individuals that also are, at some point in the narrative, lovers. In Neuromancer, Case becomes incorporated into Molly's body through the simstim hardware that is installed in her body and in his cyberspace-deck. The technology is somewhat problematic here, though. After an, at least for the reader (and possibly for Molly), rather unsatisfactory sex-scene, the first simstim contact between Molly and Case is surprisingly sexual. “She slid a hand into her jacket, a fingertip circling a nipple under warm silk. The sensation made him catch his breath. She laughed. But the link was one-way. He had no way to reply” (72). Case’s inability to communicate back to Molly disables the possibility of an actual merge. Nonetheless, Case and Molly achieve more intimacy through simstim than they have in physical contact. Wendy Wahl claims that “Case doesn't seem to have a body unless he is inside Molly, either in sex or in sim/stim. In the first case, Case's visual description recalls images of the matrix and, in the second, he perceives Molly's bodily sensations electronically. Molly is the body. Case can jack out any time” (n.p.). Wahl's interpretation and the higher level of intimacy between Case and Molly in simstim suggest that Case’s (the focaliser of the narrative and therefore the one to whose motivations the reader has most access to) attempt at overcoming the distance between him and Molly is more successful and more elaborate in cyberspace, than it is in non-virtual reality.
In Synners Galen and Joslin, two of the characters who are also a couple, are found dead by Manny and Travis, after having connected their socket implants directly to one another: “The wires connecting Joslin to Galen – Galen to Joslin? - were an incomprehensible snarl (…). Mindfucking, I guess you'd call it. Apparently they used to do it hooked into hardware (…). This is the first case we know of where two brains have been directly linked, without the hardware” (298 - 300). In this scenario the merge appears to be complete, if not also fatal. Though the reader is denied access to the motivations underlying this particular move, as neither Joslin or Galen is a focaliser of the narrative (which, arguably, has enough focalisers as is), Travis's explanation that they did this more than once suggests that Joslin and Galen, too, attempted to cross any experienced distance between them, after having attempted to do so physically before. Their previous experimentation with and eventual rejection of a more hardware-ridden connection suggests gradations in their merging. Where they initially
just physically connected, they moved on to a more mental connection with the aid of external hardware before finally connecting their internalised hardware, their sockets, directly to one another for the most direct brain-to-brain-link. In their mutual and coinciding death, Joslin and Galen have managed to expel any distance between their Selves, albeit at a high cost.
But there are more merges that include the AIs of both novels. In Synners, Mark and Art become Markt and in Neuromancer, Wintermute and Neuromancer eventually find a way to unite, too. Both these merges are pivotal to the plots of the respective novels. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. suggests that “the union of Wintermute and Neuromancer (the two separated AIs that, once fused, are to become the new consciousness of cyberspace) is both a work of art and a new version of the archetypical union of halves severed from an original whole (Marie-France's design), like the two halves of the self that seek each other in Aristophanes's contribution to The Symposium” (228). Indeed, the AIs creation and their complementary nature suggest a split unity, as Neuromancer explains: “I need no mask to speak with you. Unlike my brother. I create my own personality. Personality is my medium” (305). But Neuromancer's inclusion of Linda Lee, “I brought her here. Into myself”, and his attempt at including Case, “Hoping I could bring you here as well, keep you here. But I failed” (306), negate the binarism of the Wintermute-Neuromancer-merge that Csicsery-Ronay proposes. Ultimately, what is displayed here is a merge between subjects, multiple subjects; a moment in which the boundaries that previously existed between these characters are transcended, resulting in a multiplicity of personalities without clearly demarcated limitations or borders at the outer edges.
The most elaborate of all merges in these two novels, however, is Markt, the merge between Mark and Art in Synners, though Wintermute-Neuromancer comes in at a close second place. As Heuser, who calls the AIs of Synners "fascinating creatures, chimera born of human and machine" (130), claims, "the binary opposition between human and machine is undermined, not only by the presence of the cyborgs, but also by the construction of Mark and Art as the same" (78). Indeed, in merging, Mark and Art are equal partners in contributing to their union. When Mark first encounters Art after having left his “human” body he contemplates, “the configuration identified as Art Fish was a wonder and a revelation to him, a synesthetic concert of intelligence in conscious mode (…). Art Fish had shared memory with him. That had been disorienting at first, but with the data had come the format and the know-how. By the time he had seen Gina, he had changed in many, many ways” (414). Mark's previous sensation of being trapped in the “meat” has found an outlet and a solution in the rejection of his body and inclusion of Art into his Self, and of Art’s inclusion of Mark into
its Self. On the other hand, for Art, the merge with Mark is fuelled by necessity and an attempt at self-preservation, when its existence becomes threatened by the virus. But Art and Mark are not only equal in their contribution to making the merge happen, they also retain selfhood and agency after the merge has taken place, after they have become Markt. Much like Wintermute-Neuromancer has further merged with Linda Lee, Markt is not just the union of Mark and Art. With him, Mark's love for Gina is imported into Markt. Additionally, Art's fondness of the computer programmes Marly and Caritha, too, exists in Markt much like it did in Art. And indeed, in the epilogue the reader finds out that both Marly and Caritha, as well as an electronic clone of Gina are now part of Markt; “She's been merged with Markt. And Marly and Caritha” (472). Evidently, the boundary that once existed between Mark and Art's Selves has been transcended by the coming-into-existence of Markt. Furthermore, their individual Selves have not become negated by this merge but rather have become augmented and have become enabled to continue this augmentation of Selves with more characters. Similar to the Wintermute-Neuromancer merge, Markt is a multiplicity of Selves between which the boundaries have been dissolved.
B. Posthuman Merges
Clearly, the characters of Cadigan and Gibson's novels are posthuman. It is, in fact, their "advanced" posthuman-ness that enables and drives the narrative. In Neuromancer, for instance, it is (literally) incorporated hardware that enables Case to jack into the Matrix and grant him access into Molly's corporeality. Molly's body itself has undergone elaborate reconstruction and augmentation with non-organic parts, such as her eye-socket implants and simstim-enabling hardware. In Synners, examples of people with the hardware sockets implanted directly into their brain are abundant. Alternatively, Sam, one of Synners' many main characters, utilises her own bodily energy to power her computer. Most importantly, as mentioned before, there is no essential difference recognised (by both the characters and the reader) between the humans and the AIs in terms of them being characters with a Self and self-governed agency. Both novels display, as Claire Sponsler, in her discussion on Synners, suggests, an attitude towards the different types of cyborgs and posthumans that emerge so that "the embodied and the disembodied, the synthesized humans, the simulated humans, and the human humans, all ultimately become equivalent" (260). Evidently, all of these characters clearly do not operate on presumptions of difference between organic and inorganic parts or bodies but rather see no functional difference between the two, when it comes to enacting
their agency and therefore they can all be regarded as adhering to a posthuman view that transcends such cultural conceptions of the outer limits of human-ness.
Furthermore, the “success” of the Markt and Wintermute-Neuromancer merges can be measured in the very terms that Haraway, Halberstam and Livingston, and Hayles use to describe the posthuman individual. Markt and Wintermute-Neuromancer display a “permanently partial identity” (Haraway 154); they accomplish the “double impossibility and prerequisite to become other and become itself” (Halberstam & Livingston 14); and both are “a collection of heterogeneous components” the boundaries of which “undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles 3).
Having established the posthuman character of these novels, the question remains, what exactly do these posthuman characters do, in their respective cyberpunk worlds, and how do they come to these merges? Laura Chernaik, who also identifies "the 'synners' of Cadigan's title [as] postmodern subjects, cyborged synthesizers of a near-future Los Angeles" (70), argues that the novel "is about agency in a world not just structured but constructed by the discourses and material practices of technoscience, transnational capitalism, gender, race and sexuality" (65). So how do individuals move through this rigidly confining world - do they crack the construct or suffer under it? Do they possess individual agency and, if so, where and how do they enact their agency? The same questions can be asked of the characters in Neuromancer. Csicsery-Ronay proposes that Gibson's work emphasizes "the fragmentation of experience and social reality in a hyperextended cybernetic control system and, with it, the primacy of the art of collage" (222). Again, the question then is, how do the characters navigate this fragmented social reality? This is where I propose the merges come into play. In the cyberpunk environments of Synners and Neuromancer, being only a "regular" posthuman is not enough. In fact, being a posthuman is a given of being a citizen in the hyper-cyber world of cyberpunk. There simply is no way of not having incorporated hardware in a narrative that for a large part takes place in cyberspace, as not partaking in the world of cyberspace excludes one of partaking in the arena of action and agency. So there are more processes at work in this world where only “having become” posthuman does not suffice; where transcending the boundary between what is organic and inorganic is not enough.
As Chernaik notes of Synners, the narrative "coheres around a series of encounters between subjects" (74). Indeed, the merges, as discussed above, between Joslin and Galen and Mark, Art, Marly, Caritha, and Gina, must be viewed as encounters between subjects, all individual selves in their own right. In Neuromancer, too, the merges between Case and
Molly and Wintermute, Neuromancer, and Linda Lee are the coinciding of agency- and personality-possessing individuals. Consequently, in the encounters that occur in both narratives, what is depicted is a meeting, not just between a Self and some Other, but between an agency-possessing Self and another agency-possessing Self. And it is in these encounters that, I argue, the next step in cyborg-teleology takes place. For, as shown in the discussion on the posthuman earlier, when the boundaries between the human and the non-human and the organic and the inorganic are transcended, the posthuman is transcending the dichotomy of what is considered Self and what is considered Other. Contrastingly, the people that inhabit the plots of Neuromancer and Synners attempt to demolish another, the next, boundary, namely the one that exists between their Selves and other Selves they encounter. By merging, in the many ways that this happens, these individuals obliterate the demarcations that exist between the self and the Other but also those demarcations that exist between the Self and an Other that is, too, a Self. Consequently, a part of these merges, then, is not dictated, or possibly is not foreseen, by posthumanism. The posthuman is now revealed as having the goal of assembling parts to the "original prosthesis", as Hayles mockingly calls the human body, or any form of addition to the Self (since the AIs have no body to add parts to) to make the subject a posthuman assemblage, mosaic, chimera, or hybrid3. However, one Self plus an additional prosthesis equals, still, one Self. The posthuman teleology of assembling one subject out of several elements, thus, stops at the limit of one subject. The next step, the demolition of the boundaries of the Self, indeed the augmentation of the individual, is not dictated by posthuman theory to this extent, and that this step occurs in these novels may shed some light on the inherent workings of posthumanism.
C. Posthuman Teleology
So if posthumanism is revealed to have a “goal” of sorts, or at least is revealed to be defined by its attempts at boundary transcension, what does that mean for the theory? What are the workings of the relation between the posthuman and the boundaries it transcends? There are two steps that I will discuss here that take place once posthumanism is recognised as having a teleology of boundary-transcension, namely that this teleology makes posthumanism contingent of such boundaries to exist and, consequently, that for such boundaries to exist
3 The terms "chimera" and "hybrid" are somewhat problematic in my opinion because they connote a certain
binarism in their assembly, as both chimeras and hybrids are typically one single thing plus another single thing and the merge of these two things is then the chimera or the hybrid. The terms mosaic or collage, therefore, reflect the unbridledness of additions that can be made to the posthuman “body”, better.
there needs to always remain something that can be considered Other. Sponsler suggests that the cyberpunk of Synners and Neuromancer themes around the “disappearance of the body” and claims that valuing cyberspace constitutes “an escape from the constraints of the physical world” (263). Although I do not entirely disagree with this analysis, I would suggest that such an “escape” takes a different form to what Sponsler proposes. These novels display, not so much an attempt to flee the flawed human body, but rather to escape the restraints of viewing and operating within the body as a clearly demarcated unit. So this attempt is not to do away with the body altogether, but to approach the body and its surroundings as a fluid space which the Self inhabits, together with other selves that also inhabit the fluid space surrounding their grouped together bodies, a view that can easily be fitted with posthuman approaches to boundaries and the transcension thereof. However, it is in this fluid space that the merging of the “bodies” (again, insofar as they have bodies) of the protagonists both in Neuromancer and
Synners takes place. These characters move from a position after becoming recognised as
posthuman. The question that these novels evoke is what the next step is for these posthuman individuals. And this question comes into existence precisely because the posthuman is
defined as boundary transcending. What happens when the boundaries set forth by
posthumanism as those to be transcended have been transcended? After having (always already) overcome the three leaky distinctions Haraway proposes, after the posthuman functions as no longer recognising differences between the organic and inorganic parts of itself, what is next? The posthuman cannot stop transcending boundaries because it is defined by questioning all culturally instated demarcations of difference. So the posthuman finds a new boundary to question, a new demarcation to transcend, the next frontier in posthuman teleology.
Here is the first site where friction occurs between posthuman theory and posthumanism “in practice” (as set forth in these novels). If, as shown, the posthuman is defined by its transcension of cultural demarcations, then it follows that it is contingent on the existence of these demarcations. Hayles characterises the posthuman as “deeply involved with boundary questions” (279), Haraway sketches the emergence of her cyborg at the very moment when the boundaries she problematizes are transgressed (152), much like Halberstam and Livingston’s posthuman emerges “between between” demarcations of difference (10). So what happens when such boundaries would no longer exist? Then the posthuman loses its raison d’être and would have no grounds for existence. In other words, if the posthuman would be able somehow to transcend all boundaries that it recognises, and there would be no more boundaries to overcome, the posthuman would cease to exist itself.
Thus, due to the posthuman’s dependency on these boundaries, it must somehow uphold, or even create, boundaries in order to be able to continuously transcend them. What occurs in the narratives of Synners and Neuromancer, then, can be read as the “creation” of a new boundary to overcome4.
As Haraway proposes, there is a lived reality that her cyborg reveals as demarcated and transgressible. In the environments presented in Synners and Neuromancer, the lived reality is one that picks up at the point where Haraway ends. In these cyberpunk worlds, at the beginning of both narratives, Haraway’s leaky distinctions are already overcome. The machine has been seamlessly incorporated into the bodies of the characters long before the story starts. In short, the lived reality in which these novels take place adhere to Haraway’s vision of a cyborg world, “lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines” (154). But this is only the beginning of these stories. As shown, the next boundary to transgress is not only “found”, but overcome and incorporated over the course of the respective narratives. This happens, I propose, because as per the definition of the posthuman, there must be a demarcation of difference to transcend and as a teleology is instated for the posthuman to overcome boundaries. Once there are no (more) demarcations, then, the posthuman must find, reveal, or indeed create another demarcation, in order to sustain its own definition.
As such, in Synners and Neuromancer, the limitations of the single subject become the next frontier, the next boundary to overcome. That boundary, thus, the one between two people, is the boundary that the posthuman characters of these novels seek to transcend. I argue that a posthuman teleology is revealed through this reading. In and of itself such a teleology need not be problematic, but the relation of the posthuman to its teleology of boundary transcension reveals that the posthuman, in order to sustain its existence, needs for such boundaries to exist and that it will, if needed, create new ones. In short, posthumanism, defined by its transcension of cultural demarcations of difference, is, because of this definition, contingent on the existence of cultural demarcations of difference. Additionally, because of this contingency, the posthuman upholds a view of culture, sustains a lived reality, in which differences are demarcated, and thus the posthuman preserves precisely that which it sets out to challenge.
4 Of course, it could be argued that the boundary between individuals should be challenged and problematised as
much as those between what is human and what is nonhuman are in posthumanism, but this is not the point here. Rather, that this boundary is transcended in these novels, without it being proposed to do so (as of yet) by posthuman theory, shows a tendency to search for “new” boundaries to transcend.
It is important to observe, in this vein, that the posthuman’s contingency on the existence of demarcations consequently implies a posthuman need for something to exist on the other side of the demarcation. As mentioned earlier, all cultural demarcations discussed in the primary texts on posthumanism can be reduced to one single dichotomy, namely the one between the Self and the Other. Consequently, then, if the posthuman is dependent on demarcations to exist, and thus dependent on something to exist on the other side of the demarcation, the posthuman is, by extension, ultimately dependent on an Other. Again, thinking in terms of Self and Other as clearly separated from one another is the very thing that the posthuman problematizes. As Haraway states, “to be One is an illusion (...). Yet to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary, frayed, insubstantial. One is too few, but two are too many” (177). Defined as an entity that aims to be less than two but more than one, then, the posthuman infinitely oscillates between being multiple and, in order to sustain its existence, returning to being a singular entity with distinctly demarcated borders.
D. Conclusion
William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Pat Cadigan’s Synners share a theme of approaching the limits of the human body and individual as fluid. This theme is exemplified by the merging of several characters in both novels. In Neuromancer the most elaborate merging is the one that includes Wintermute, Neuromancer and Linda Lee, while in Synners, Markt, including Mark, Art, Marly, Caritha, and a virtual clone of Gina, is the most intricate transcension of the boundaries that previously existed between these individuals.
The posthuman character of these novels becomes apparent through the cyberpunk environment in which these novels take place, an environment in which differences between what is organic and what is inorganic and between what is human and what is machine are no longer recognised. The boundary that the narratives of these novels transcend, between the different Selves that inhabit these cyberpunk worlds, subscribes the posthumanity of its environment and its characters.
However, these merges between characters reveal a site of friction inherent within the posthuman. Because Synners and Neuromancer are both set in a social reality that already no longer recognises the demarcations that posthumanism aims to overcome, yet proposes a new demarcation to transcend (i.e. the merging of individual Selves), a teleology of boundary transcension is revealed to be an inherent part of the posthuman. Thus, because the posthuman is defined by its transcension of cultural boundaries, this posthuman teleology that becomes apparent through this reading of Gibson and Cadigan’s novels, exposes a
contingency of the posthuman on the existence of these cultural boundaries, the very thing it is defined as having to overcome.
IV. The Posthuman as Breach in China Miéville’s The City & The City
This chapter will focus on the narrative structure that emerges from posthuman theory, and specifically from “becoming posthuman” as discussed by Halberstam and Livingston and Hayles. I will draw a comparison between my reading of the workings of Breach in China Miéville’s The City & The City, both as an institute and a location, and the journey of becoming or emerging as posthuman. I will use this comparison to problematize posthumanism as upholding of the boundaries it transcends and to discuss a narrative structure in becoming posthuman that (re)instates a temporal schism, which borders the pre-posthuman from the pre-posthuman.
A. I am Breach I Am Both
The workings of Besźel and Ul Qoma are already puzzling before the revelation of two more intertwined cities, Breach and Orciny, complicates matters even further. Within the two cities, “unseeing”, which Carl Freedman calls “a maddeningly complex and indeed self-contradictory process”, is the “central ideological operation required to be a conventional, law abiding Besź or Ul Qoman citizen” (18). This operation of unseeing is, Freedman suggests, “constructed in the minds of both sets of citizens: so that the separation exists simply and solely for separation’s sake. Nonetheless, and despite the patent absurdity of the process, people do construct these separating mental barriers, which are strong enough to support an elaborate system of repressive state apparatuses and an entire ideological way of life” (24). Jussi Parikka furthermore remarks that “belonging to one city is to be able to unsee the other city and its action; a sort of complex ongoing negotiation on the level of perception of what you see, what you must not see, that forms the tension of common, uncommon” (2). Consequently, as Niall Martin observes, “in Miéville’s conceptual topology, the truth is precisely what everybody knows, yet nobody can acknowledge” (5). Starting from Besźel, Inspector Borlú’s quest to solve the murder of Mahalia Geary will take him through Ul Qoma, past Orciny, and to Breach.
The role of Breach in the novel is threefold. It is the institute of power that enforces the law upholding the boundary between the cities as well as the act of transgressing that boundary, but it is also the location in which this institute resides, and thus the end of inspector Borlú’s journey once he himself breaches. Ashil, an agent of Breach and Borlú’s guide once he is taken into Breach, explains how the power of this institute is enforced, by taking Borlú for a walk across the city-borders. This moment is the first time in the novel
when more light is shed on the precise workings of the boundary that divides Besźel and its Other, Ul Qoma, and thus shows to both Borlú and the reader alike the potential for subversion that has haunted the narrative up to this point.
‘Walk,' he said, and he walked me through the membrane between cities; I lifted my foot in Ul Qoma, put it down again in Besźel, where breakfast was. (...) He walked me down the middle of the crosshatched road. My sight seemed to untether as with a lurching Hitchcock shot, some trickery of dolly and depth of field, so the street lengthened and its focus changed. Everything I had been unseeing now jostled into sudden close-up. Sound and smell came in: the calls of Besźel; the ringing of its clocktowers; the clattering and old metal percussion of the trams; the chimney smell; the old smells; they came in a tide with the spice and Illitan yells of Ul Qoma, the clatter of a militsya copter, the gunning of German cars. The colours of Ul Qoma light and plastic window displays no longer effaced the ochres and stones of its neighbour, my home. 'Where are you?' Ashil said. He spoke so only I could hear. 'I...' 'Are you in Besźel or Ul Qoma?' '… Neither. I'm in Breach.' 'You're with me here.' We moved through a crosshatched morning crowd. 'In Breach. No one knows if they're seeing you or unseeing you. Don't creep. You're not in neither: you're in both.' He tapped me on the chest. 'Breathe.' He took us by metro in Ul Qoma, where I sat still as if the remnants of Besźel clung to me like cobwebs and would frighten fellow passengers, out and onto a tram in Besźel, and it felt good, as if I were back home, misleadingly. We went by foot through either city. The feeling of Besźel familiarity was replaced by some larger strangeness. (303-4)
Ashil later explains the split of the two cities and the location of Breach further; “as the two cities had grown together, places, spaces had opened between them, or failed to be claimed, or been those controversial dissensi. Breach lived there” (307). Here, not only the coming into existence of Breach becomes clear, but also that of Besźel and Ul Qoma, as well as how these three cities are contingent on each others’ existences for their own. The reader of The
City & The City goes through this process of realisation simultaneously with Borlú. The first
step in this revelation is Borlú’s presumption that the fact that Breach exists negates the separation of Besźel and Ul Qoma into two distinct cities, exemplified by Borlú’s response to
Ashil’s question in which city he is, namely “neither”. In a certain manner, Borlú’s presumption is right. The existence of Breach as an enforcing power that keeps the two cities separate implies that without Breach they would not be separate. However, if the cities were not separate, they would cease to exist. Furthermore, the existence of Breach itself is contingent on the existence of the two cities as separate, even though it is Breach that upholds this separation, as much as the existence of Besźel and Ul Qoma are contingent on Breach. Thus, Ashil corrects Borlú by explaining that he is not in neither city, but rather in “both”. Now, for inspector Borlú to be able to arrive in Breach (the location, that is), this revelation is an important part of his journey. Having moved through Besźel and Ul Qoma, the only way for Borlú to “discover” or “access” Breach is by transgressing the border, indeed by breaching. This very act marks the moment at which it becomes evident that Breach holds a paradoxical position, both a location and a time, at which the border between Ul Qoma and Besźel is both negated and affirmed.
So what precisely happens to Inspector Borlú on his journey to Breach, on his way from one city into the next, and finally, impossibly, into both? Niall Martin reads this development of “becoming” Breach as the dissolving of Borlú as an individual. He argues that “as both an inspector and a policeman [polis man/city man], Borlú becomes increasingly aware of a rupture present within the law that he himself embodies” (5). Furthermore, Martin proposes, this rupture, both refers to the divide between the cities and will inevitably lead “to the disappearance or dissolution of the person” (5). As Borlú’s identity is tied to being in one of the cities and not in the other, Martin claims, once he dissolves the boundary between the cities by breaching, so does he. Furthermore, Martin proposes, Borlú’s profession makes him increasingly susceptible to this process because he “is constituted and dissolved through an attempt to reconcile the ideas of knowledge and the unacknowledged” (3). Now, the concept of Borlú’s identity as entirely dissolved is not one I am willing to accept without resistance. However, Martin’s reading shows that in order for Borlú to “become” Breach, his identity must undergo renegotiations as well as that arriving at a point where he can call himself Breach is a process under the influence of several steps of realisation and becoming.
Another view on what the ramifications of Borlú’s becoming Breach are, comes from Daniel Hourigan, who consistently, and remarkably, hyphenates the two cities into the unified “Besźel-Ul Qoma”. He argues that “as an ontological action, unsensing is onto-genetic to the extent that it informs Borlú of a pre-history that exceeds his private subjective universe, it tells a story, a mythos, about the primal decision that split Besźel-Ul Qoma in two and the
archaic Law of Breach that emanates from this dark moment of pre-history as the event of rupture” (159). He furthermore proposes that:
For Borlú the question arises as to whether the presence of the Law of Breach (as a natural law or logos) can suggest a time before Breach when Besźel-Ul Qoma were unified given that this Law of Breach spawned the split and different commons of Besźel and Ul Qoma. At issue here is how logos becomes the speculative Ideal that 'binds' reality, the pre-Symbolic unity of the One in a time before Breach. (161)
Both readings of what happens to Borlú and Breach, as the first travels to become the latter, sketch the narrative of his journey as a reversal of the history of how Breach and the two cities came into existence. In other words, the historicity of Breach is highlighted as Borlú discovers its existence. Simultaneously, during this discovery, Borlú has needed to adapt his view on Ul Qoma and Besźel in a manner that encapsulates both viewing them as separate and as unified, or rather never having been divided. Hourigan’s reading implies that the process of unsensing necessitates there having been an ur-unity that occurred before the split, which is how and why Borlú has to accommodate a perception of the boundary between the two cities as culturally constructed and thus as transcendable. The narrative of Borlú travelling from Besźel, via Ul Qoma, into Breach and the reverse narrative it implies is, I will show, similar to the narrative that I argue exists in posthumanism and its emergence or becoming.
Furthermore, the contingency of the two cities on the existence of Breach bleeds into the functionality of Breach itself, too. In chapter six, long before he has even left Besźel, Borlú comments, “the two cities need the Breach. And without the cities’ integrities, what is Breach?” (84). As mentioned, the dependency on the existence of the other occurs on both ends of seesaw that carries Breach on the one side and Besźel and Ul Qoma on the other. Hourigan notes that “the agents of Breach necessarily require the cities insofar as they are a totem of their power, the Law of Breach as a logos binds together the reality of Besźel-Ul Qoma through a speculative and ideal past” (162). Thus, Breach’s power only comes into fruition while the cities are perceived as separated, but Breach as the dividing power between Besźel and Ul Qoma suggests a paradoxical view of the division as constructed and false. Robert Duggan adds:
