blacklace's blog

deities in "midnight robber"

blacklace — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:17:36 +0000

One of the most interesting, yet very briefly discussed, differences between the inhabitants born on Toussaint and those whose ancestry traces far back on New Half-Way Tree is the concept of a higher power, the god-figure. The humans have Granny-Nanny while the douens have Father Bois.

In many respects, this difference can be attributed to the realities from which each species originates. The douen live in a massive tree that provides them with food, shelter, and water. If the tree did not take on some level of godhood, it would be confusing. The humans, contrastingly, are in a technological world, where Granny Nanny is literally inside your head, inescapably from birth. The Eshu in some respects reminded me of angels. They are the mouth pieces for Granny-Nanny, who is somewhat incapable of directly speaking to the humans (i.e. the eshu are Alan Rickman in Dogma).

There is something deeper than this, though. When the humans are sent to New Half-Way Tree, they are very clearly severed from the Granny-Nanny network, yet they still invoke Granny Nanny much the same people in our world today invoke God in times of mild frustration, taking the name as an oath. Granny does, however, manage to break through the dimensional barrier (again, godlike omnipresence) and implant herself in Tubman, sowing the seeds for a somewhat perverted messianic story. The fact that Tubman is a child of incest, and thus of only one parental bloodline, also feeds into this.

The douens, on the other hand, see Father Bois as a benevolent figure who simply nurtures and loves. Chichibud says to Tan-Tan when he finds her under her dead father, "Papa Bois see what really happen in that room, Tan-Tan. He ain't judging you" (172). When he takes her to the home tree, the incarnation of Papa Bois, Chichibud tells Tan-Tan to come in peace and go in friendship (179). When the douen feel forced to cut down Father Bois, the tree reincarnates with unbelievable speed, creating a strong sense of the a messianic creature, but different from Tubman. Where Tubman is a bridge, the tree seems to be what is waiting on the other side of the bridge, the incarnation of the return to paradise when creatures are redeemed from The Fall.

Yet when Father Bois interacts with the mythic Tan-Tan and Antonio and creates the original Half-Way Tree, there is something vengeful in him at that moment as well. It seems that there is something inherent to the humans that prevents them from experiencing unconditional benevolence and love from any deity.

In many ways, this dichotomy parallels the versions of God in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The humans are associated with the vengeful, powerful God of the Old Testament, whereas the douen are a far more peaceful people in and of themselves, and thus can better accept and comprehend the loving, forgiving God of the New Testament. Taking things away from the Christian Bible, the douen also seem to have developed more f a oneness with nature, whereas the humans fight it, and thus incite conflict from the forces that surround and govern them. It seems that once again man's inherent hierarchical tendencies and the violence that springs from these tendencies will be his downfall and stumbling block, no matter where he goes or how low he is dragged down.

cool stuff with turntables

blacklace — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:28:30 +0000

So, I was watching "The Last Angel of History" tonight, and at one point, turntables are mentioned, and earlier today, Walter Kitundu came to my digital art class, and told us about and showed pictured of a ton of different instruments he has made out of turn tables that are played like string instruments, or drums, or by various forces of nature. For me, the concept of taking something so very far beyond its intended/expected/conceived of use really resonated with aspects of the movie. Also, cool sound art.

Juanita the goddess

blacklace — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:48:23 +0000

Though somewhat of a periphery character, Juanita is arguably one of the most powerful characters in Stephenson's "Snow Crash." While most of the people who were working for Lagos are in the project for their physical power, like Ng's security and the Mafia's muscle, Juanita is in the project because of her mind, and she is the only one who looks at Lagos' goals and makes her own larger, personal goals in the project.

It is Juanita who first brings Hiro into the project. She tells him he will be working somewhat under Lagos, but when Hiro meets Lagos at the concert, the man has no interest in Hiro. This is perhaps the first indication that Juanita may be working at something more than solving the mystery. By bringing in Hiro, who it seems is of a relatively comparable skill level with computers as Juanita, she frees herself up from her job as hacker to be able to pursue her own goals and work towards achieving her own power goals.

Juanita and Hiro both use manipulation as a source of power and control. Hiro, however, keeps this manipulation to a semi-concrete level by manipulating data and computers, but not people directly. Juanita, on the other hand, is presented as always using her skills as a manipulator on people: she programs the faces in the Metaverse, controlling people's ability to have life-like interactions. When she first asks Hiro to join her in the anti-Snow Crash project, she tells him , she tells him that she will talk to him in the Metaverse, something she usually avoids, "Because of our relationship--when I was writing this--you and I are the only two people who can ever have an honest conversation in the Metaverse" (67). Juanita's expressions are on the face of every single female avatar in the Metaverse, and Hiro's is on all the males. This gives Juanita a certain god-like quality in the Metaverse, for man and woman are made in her and Hiro's image. She can control subtle interactions in the Metaverse without even trying because she has programmed the faces, and because she only truly programmed two faces.

Perhaps her most disturbing exercise of power comes when she willingly goes to The Raft and becomes one of the people who is able to speak the ancient original tongue. When they release the nam-shub of Enki, she refuses to be "cured." When Hiro asks why, she says, "I'm a neurolinguistic hacker now, Hiro. I went through hell to obtain this knowledge. It's part of me. Don't expect me to submit to a lobotomy" (432). Yet presumably there are others on the raft who had a similar ability, and she had no qualms about "lobotomizing" them.

Juanita's close personal association with Inanna is a way for her to manifest the superiority she feels to those around her. By identifying herself as a goddess, Juanita can rationalize doing to others what she will not do to herself. The fact that she does retain the ability to hack the brainstem is perhaps the most frightening thing about her. What exactly does she plan to *do* with this ability? Rife tried to conquer the world with his knowledge of the me and his ability to "hack the brainstem." Given Juanita's past record, it is hard to believe that fundamentally she will do anything all that different from Rife. Perhaps not on the scale, perhaps far more subtly, but when one can hack the brainstem, when one has god-like power over others, is there truly any way to avoid turning those "inferior" to you into dependent slaves of one sort or another?

nicola griffith website

blacklace — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:55:49 +0000

Looking for resources for the bibliography, I tripped across a variety of interesting essays on Nicola Griffith's website in which she discusses science fiction as a genre, her books, her life, and gender in writing.

Living in a fish-eye lens, caught in the camera eye

blacklace — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:53:27 +0000

One of the most striking elements in Nicola Griffith's Slow River is the use of cameras. Throughout the text, the picture seen by the camera somehow shows a raw truth, and is able to catch characters at their most vulnerable moments, and with Lore, somehow seems to draw out her vulnerability.

The use of the camera is first introduced when Lore is taped begging for ransom. Her vulnerability at this moment and the total stripping of her defenses by her captors shows an underlying truth of a scared child. What is more interesting, though, is how knowing others have seen this video creates a level of paranoia in Lore once she escapes. She has a constant fear (though the intensity of it caries as time passes) that she will be recognized from the video. She both does not want to go back to her family, and, more importantly, does not want people to associate her with the person who was trapped in the camera's eye.

When Lore uses the camera against others, specifically Ruth and Ellen, she feels guilt, but she also feels justified in her actions. Though she cries as she films her friends, she responds to Ruth's subsequent confrontation by thinking "You've seen pictures of me in far more humiliating circumstances; and my abductors did not even have the courtesy to swap my head for another's" (197). This point is interesting in several ways. When Lore is in control, there is a sense that she has earned it, and that being the one wielding the camera is some sort of ultimate control. There is also the issue of body over face. Yes, the face is far more recognizable than the body to people. Yet Ruth implies that, in the situation of sex, especially in porn, it is not the faces that matter, but the body that is being traded and it is the body that becomes identity.

When Lore was younger, she made porn films of her parents using stock bodies and grafting her parents' heads on the bodies. When there s film, it is what is filmed that is directly important--any edits become the work of fantasy. Lore's manipulation of her parents' heads and environment on film does not violate them, because she did not actually capture them in a moment of weakness. It is this capture, this trap that film creates, that is so important n the text, and which justifies Ruth's anger and sense of betrayal.

When Lore manipulates the consensual footage she takes of Tom, he says he does not want to see the final result because he doesn't want to see himself looking confused and old and pathetic. There is again the sense that what the camera sees becomes truth.

The final, and perhaps most important use of the camera, comes when Lore tells the story of her life to the camera to be used as a starting point for evidence for the police. When she sets up the camera, she observes "The camera lens was like a cold fish eye, unblinking. I stared at it, forgetting what I was supposed to say" (326). The overwhelmingness of being exposed, laid bare to the camera is shown here.

There is also the interesting concept of the fisheye lens. There is the sense that the camera sees more than a normal eye would see, that there is no escape and there is no ability to hide any part of oneself, really, when presented with the camera. It speaks to Tom's fear, that there is a part of himself that really is that confused old man, and Ruth's anger at her violation by the camera, the capturing of her body against her will, and Lore's kidnapping being all the more humiliating because her degraded self was shown to the world.

post-humanity and philosophy

blacklace — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:49:13 +0000

So. There is a comic, bohemian drive, which looks at the solar system after the last human has died (peacefully) and robots inhabit the nine planets, various moons, and asteroids. The structure of the pages within the site is a bit odd, don't expect it to update anytime soon, but it's only 75 episodes, so finite procrastination, and it's an interesting society that is created. Also interesting commentary on humanity.

The site also links to ask philosophers, which addresses many questions that we've dealt with, sometimes peripherally, in class. I don't necessarily agree with what they say, but it's well-articulated food for thought.

brain flashes on butler

blacklace — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:51:14 +0000

K, first off, "Bloodchild" = creepy and not to be read right before going to bed, especially if one is particularly phobic about personal invasion by insects to begin with. Personal nausea aside, though, the contrast between assimilating a species into one's own, and using the Other as purely breeding ground is fascinating. "Bloodchild" made "Lilith's Brood" sit far more easily with me.

Ooloi--when I first saw the word, it looked very familiar, but I've never read anything by Butler before, and poking around on the web, she's the only one who's meant to use the word. It's not the pronunciation of the word that's familiar, it's the physical shape of it. Can anyone shed any light on this? It's driving me bonkers. The OED offers a fascinating array of words that start with oo (a prefix which means having to do with eggs or ova, yay butler making up intelligent names!), but nothing looks familiar.

Interesting that "Lilith's Brood" is also referred to often as the Xenogenesis Trilogy. Lilith's Brood is a far bleaker title.

Lilith's myth-based history is fascinating. Yay for Scott_of_the_Sahara's post on it. My first introduction to Lilith was through Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series, where he highlights Lilith's refusal to be sexually dominated by Adam, a motif that comes up again in a play that was put on here fall of 2004, "The Lovesong of J Robert Oppenheimer." The focus on sex that comes up with her, both in the above mentioned and in Scott_of_the_Sahara's post, with the seduction of men and the wantonness of spawning a demon race, is an interesting backdrop to the trilogy we just read.

There's a comic series, "Lucifer Morningstar," that's a spin-off of Sandman that I also kept thinking of during Lilith's Brood. In it, the Lilim, her demon children, are one of three sides in the armageddon battle. The three sides of a story instead of the traditional two plays out rather interestingly. The series also deals a lot with the creation of new worlds and species and the responsibility that comes with creation and manipulation and birth.

First person alien

blacklace — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:21:46 +0000

In the Lilith's Brood trilogy, "Imago" is the first time we get a first person narration. It's the voice of an ooloi, and therefore one of the most foreign to us in the world of the book. This functions on several different levels. It serves the utilitarian function of decreasing the number of "it"s in the text, making syntax more understandable overall. But it also sets up a very interesting self-and-other construct, removing it from the societal and making it far more individual.

On a certain level, Jodahs is both the most alien and the most comforting character presented to us who has Oankali blood in it. It is both Human and Oankali, and of a gender we have no concept of or parallel to within the human race. There's this tiny part of it that is like us, but it is wrapped in so alien a package, thinks with so alien a mind, that it is hard to understand it. The first-person narrative brings us closer to it, making it easier for us to sympathize with it on a level based in linguistics. It is the only character we get to understand through its self, its own concept of self, as an individual, something that is very integral to our (the reading audience) concept of self. There is an immediacy that is absent in the previous two books.

You also have Jodahs as the first...mistake? Throughout all three books, we hear all about how the ooloi perfectly craft magic little embryos that turn into the projected, desired offspring. Yet for a society that seems so hell-bent on privileging nature over nurture to the point of exclusivity, it's interesting that the child gets to, in some respects, choose its own gender. There is an implication in "Adulthood Rites" that the Oankali constructs have far more freedom/ability to choose their own gender, and that, if they do not like their Human construct paired-sibling, they can choose to be of the same gender as the human construct, thus avoiding having to mate with it.

This is echoed to a certain extent in "Imago." But in "Imago," the human-born construct is the first one to turn ooloi. Nikanj is torn between its own desires to have this same-sex child to help ease its loneliness, and the consensus of the Oankali, who fear this child. At the end of the book, though, we find out that this is not an independent occurrence--there is another pair of siblings in a Jah village who are becoming ooloi. "This produced confusion among the people. One mistake simply focused attention on the ooloi responsible. Two mistakes unconnected, but happening so close together in time after a century of perfection, might indicate something other than ooloi incompetence" (743). This brings to mind several threads of thought. One, when society is ready for something, it will happen. Take Newton and Leibniz and calculus. The nine different evolutions of the eye I learned about in high school also seems to fit in here (though poking on the internet seems to indicate that this is being refuted, and that the eye only happened once, and just branched like crazy). It also brings to mind "Jurassic Park," when Dr Malcolm says "Life will find a way" and *poof* the dinosaurs start morphing genders so they can reproduce.

What I find most striking about this dual evolution of ooloi constructs, though, is that it shows a certain level of fallibility within the Oankali, who have previously been presented as infallible on the genetic level of understanding and manipulation. They do not have the complete control over evolution that they like to seem to have to their "trade partners."

So, we've got these biological mistakes, specifically Jodahs, and it's the first person to speak to us in the first person, to have a true narrative sense of identity and individuality, and to offer us what seems like an unfiltered view into its mind. With the human and the human construct, there was a narrator who could observe and speak for them. With Jodahs, this is not possible. Why?

When the Oankali are in their second consensus meeting, Jodahs tells the reader "We represented the premature adulthood of a new species. We represented true independence--reproductive independence--for that species" (742). In Jodahs, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It has become a human-oankali-ooloi hybrid that in many respects overwhelms everyone who comes into contact with it. It has a way with humans that wins over century-long resisters. It succeeds where the Oankali fail. And it can reproduce. Until this point, even when the Oankali were reproducing with the humans, even when constructs formed second and third and fourth generations, there was still a purely Oankali ooloi involved in the process, controlling the process. The humans weren't partners in a trade, they were subjects in an experiment, because the oankali still maintained ultimate control over the future of the humans, refusing to let a human influence penetrate the level of the final decision-making process in creating offspring.

Looking at the three books, each begins with a birth of sorts. Lilith is born into a new world. Akin is born from the womb into the world. Jodahs has a birth into a gender and adulthood. The first time we hear from Jodahs, he is becoming ooloi. Both it and Akin speak of the sensory perceptions, changes in taste and smell. Lilith's birth is a gasping, a dimness, a struggle to see. With each birth, there's an increased level of comfort with being born, a better understanding of what is happening, what is being experienced. As understanding increases, the characters are better able to speak for themselves. Lilith speaks to the Oankali, but they do not listen to her until things have gone terribly wrong, and she has proved her fears and wishes were valid. Akin can convince the others of the necessity of an Akjai human colony without testing it first. Jodahs speaks with its own voice from the first moment we meet it.

By making that which should seem so alien to us the only person who gets to use its own voice, the separation between that which is alien and that which is human is decreased, blurred. Arguably, Jodahs is the most manipulative of all the people we meet, because it is human, oankali, and ooloi, able to understand both species, and to wield powerful narcotics, its mere presence winning its enemies to its side. It should be the most repulsive character to us as humans, because it effectively destroys the resister urge, the desire to go to Mars and preserve humanity with its very presence. Yet, narratively, we are put closest to it, made to understand it best.

I don't have a solid conclusion for this. In some ways, this drawing in through the first person seems like it's meant to simulate being in contact with an ooloi, drawn in against one's will, desire, conscious choice, through subtle things like the use of "I." Like it's the closest we can come to understanding something that is truly alien. Like we're meant to see ourselves as the alien.

Sex as power for the ooloi

blacklace — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:25:04 +0000

(This started out as a reply to two separate posts, but got rather long and wandered off a bit on its own argument, so I'm posting it independently, but referencing the posts that inspired parts of it where applicable.)

In reply to CZ and his assertion that the Oankali are definitely alien in his comment to roseblack's post --I'm not going to argue that there is a direct correlation between every aspect of the Oankali and humans. Lacking my own tentacled ooloi, I'd be a bit hard pressed. I will, however, argue that there are many parallels to be drawn between them and us, particularly pertaining to gender. That is, if I can be trusted to not be apparently inherently manipulative self.

As CZ stated in own blog, the Oankali are not in the moral right they wish to see themselves inhabiting (a self-delusion to which humans themselves are prone). Taking the argument one step further, they themselves are a hierarchical society, both internally with the submission of the males and females to the ooloi, and in the way they treat humans, who they claim they want as partners in an *equal* trade, instead treating the humans as pets, as Lilith herself explicitly notes when Nikanj first shows her off to the other Oankali its age (54). One would be hard pressed to argue that the Oankali do not treat the humans as lesser beings than themselves. There's a clear power dynamic present, in favor of the Oankali. Power dynamic implies hierarchy.

So how does this seemingly inter-species conflict translate to gender?

In many respects, it doesn't. There is a whole lot being said about race here. The different races of the humans are mentioned, but not dwelt on because there is such a huge gap between human and oankali. But there are clear parallels to gender within the power dynamic.

Before I get into that, though, I would like to point out that Butler was born in America (right here in LA, actually), and lived here during her life, and she specifically sees her work as commenting on the Western construct of race, and implied, greater Western societal situation. I will point you in this direction as a starting point into her biography and what she has to say about her work.

Roseblack brought up the idea that, while less graphic and traditionally violent than our society's concept of rape, or the flat-out rape attempts portrayed in the book, Nikanj rapes Lilith when it impregnates her in a comment replying to Count Zero's comment to the original roseblack post.

First some etymology. In Middle English, rape meant to do something hurriedly. By the fifteenth century, though, the word took on the meaning "The act of taking anything by force; violent seizure (of goods), robbery" (noun) and "To rob, strip, plunder (a place). Also used with a group of people as object" (verb) (OED online). Fundamentally, rape isn't about sex. It's about exerting power over another individual against the other person's will, power over that person's body, somehow objectifying that person, and doing this through a means that, nowadays, involves sexual organs.

Back to the book. Regardless of how many different individuals' genetic material Nikanj manipulated and melded and modified to impregnate Lilith with some "perfect" embryo, it is Nikanj who decides that Lilith should be impregnated, without her knowledge or consent, taking control of her own body away from her for its own purposes. Additionally, this happens just after the humans have realized that, without their knowledge or informed consent, the ooloi have taken away the humans' ability to have any physical contact with one another without extreme discomfort and revulsion. Additionally, they have rendered the humans sterile without their consent. The ooloi have manipulated the humans so that the ooloi have complete and utter control over the bodies of the human, control over the humans as objects, and they manipulate the objects sexually.

When Lilith fends off the attempted rape of Allison, she says "There'll be no rape here...Nobody here is property. Nobody has the right to the use of anybody else's body...We stay human. We treat each other like people, and we get through this like people" (178).

The oankali, especially the ooloi, do not abide by this. The rhetoric of Nikanj made my skin crawl. It says to Lilith, when discussing the problems that occurred by bonding with the humans before they were sent to the proto-forest, "'But most of us couldn't wait'...It wrapped a sensory arm around her neck loosely. 'It might have been better for both our peoples if we were not so strongly drawn to you'" (202). Nikanj is placing the blame for fucking up the humans ON the humans because the humans were just too damned attractive to the Oankali for their own good. Were the humans all running around in short skirts, asking for it, too? The Oankali see themselves as indisputable superior to the humans (again, in creeps hierarchy), and thus somehow, the failings of the Oankali are not entirely their own fault. Later, when Joseph is killed, it's because the oankali underestimated humans. There's an implication that humans, without anyone to moderate them, and too impulsive, violent, and weak-willed for their own good.

Additionally, the second time Lilith, Joseph, and Nikanj have sex, Joseph says "No!...You said I could choose. I've made my choice!" to which Nikanj replies "'You have, yes.' It opened his jacket with its many-fingered true hands and stripped the garment from him. When he would have backed away, it held him. It managed to lie down on the bed with him without seeming to force him down. 'You see. Your body has made a different choice'" (189). Um, rape much?

And it's not something inherently male or female, either on the victim or victimizer's side of the equation. In our own society, yes, there's a tendency for certain genders to act against others, but it's not a rule, and there are certainly cases of women raping men, men raping men, women raping women, transgendered people raping and being raped by other transgenders, men, and women. It's not something inherent to any specific gender. Certain types/pairings get more coverage and/or happen with more frequency, based on population size, societal expectations that people live down to, the comfort in acknowledging what happened as rape.

So what makes the ooloi male in this instance?

When push comes to shove, however much we want to skirt around it, when it comes to humans, you're sterile, you have functional sperm, or you have functional eggs and a functional womb. As far as the propagation of the species goes, this is it. While the oankali have their own system of procreation, when they interbreed with the humans, they adopt and must work with certain aspects of human procreative anatomy.

Could the ooloi be seen as a neutered medical professional? I don't think there's much of a movement to brand fertility specialists as rapists, or inherently male. The oankali assert throughout the text that they use organic matter the way we use machines. So why aren't the ooloi just cold, clinical medical professionals, using internal labs, probes, and turkey basters instead of synthetic ones?

It's because they do not give their patients/hosts/victims a choice in the matter. And, ultimately, in taking the genetic material, blending it, and then placing it in the womb, the ooloi are serving a function that, while more complex than traditional male fertilization in humans, achieves the same end. Without the presence of the ooloi and the embryo it creates and then plants into the womb, a woman cannot bear a child. Without the presence of sperm, the gumball's just going to roll right out the machine at the end of a woman's menstrual cycle. Is the maleness of the ooloi increased by the sensory arms? Yes. The imagery is certainly there to be interpreted as phallic at will. But we don't know exactly *how* the embryo is inserted. It's after Joseph's death, so not during sex. The implication is that Nikanj implanted it sometime after Lilith had healed it and was herself recovering. Again, kinda sketchy.

It could be argued that, because it creates the embryo, the ooloi is actually functioning more as a female. Really long fallopian tubes, maybe. It just doesn't ring true for me. I think what really drove the masculinity of the ooloi in procreation home for me was, on page 246, when Nikanj tells Lilith she's pregnant--"I have made you pregnant with Joseph's child. I wouldn't have done it so soon, but I wanted to use his seed, not a printâ€¦And there's a limit to how long I can keep sperm alive." This passage struck me far more as Nikanj being a conduit for the passage of sperm, taking the place of Joseph (male) because Joseph and Lilith were no longer able to touch one another.

Also, CZ said, in response to roseblack, "It actually designs the genetic code for its offspring, and as an afterthought returns that design to the female's body." The fact that, even though it has the genetic code, it CANNOT go through gestation, sets it up as male, compared to our base of knowledge and underlying biases going into the book. It's not so much an afterthought as an apparent inability.

Additionally,
""You're going to have a baby and there's nothing you can do about it." (roseblack)
'Now that is a far better point, but less directly male. The Ooloi do serve the role of determining birth time (as men did before the advent of birth control in more developed countries, and still do in less developed ones) but it is a subtle, finely tuned, and ultimately stronger dominance than simple penetration.'(CZ)"

So we're arguing that the ooloi are hyper-male, super-male? Unless there's something I'm missing. And while, yes, birth control can prevent birth, on the flip side, some aspect of a man is still necessary to *create* a baby if a woman so desires, so it really is rather impossible to completely remove one gender or the other from procreation.

Also, not to be discounted, there IS a history of patriarchy in our society, like it or not. On some respects, the ooloi are neutering the men and turning themselves into hyper-men when it comes to the process of procreation.

In the beginning of the second book, it becomes explicitly clear that the ooloi have rendered the "pure" humans sterile to force assimilation with the oankali, or die out as a race. They say, though, that they have given humans a choice. It's not much of a choice, though. And it completely disempowers humans as individuals, taking away their ability to create their own future. This has both racial and gendered overtones to it, but seemed worth bringing up at this point.

Are the ooloi always male? No. Compared to how humans are portrayed in the book, all of the oankali have impressively fluid personalities, independent of gender. I was actually rather struck by how abnormally black and white the treatment human gender was, comparatively. Perhaps it's more that there ARE gender distinctions among the humans, whereas they oankali are portrayed as more of an overall group, perhaps because they are the Other.

BUT, in the particular instance that roseblack initially spoke of, directly regarding the ooloi's role in reproduction, the ooloi is given a role of dominance over every other type of creature in its society and human society. In this specific act, the ooloi is treated as male, when seen through the filter of our own society.

Being Other in the Other's eyes

blacklace — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:25:52 +0000

There is a fascinating interplay between light and dark, and the role of shadows in "The Left Hand of Darkness." Perhaps most interesting is the concept of shifgrethor, a code of honor amongst the Karhidians, which "comes from an old word for shadow" (247). There is also, among the Handdarata, a focus on the "un"--that which seems to be the opposite of what is. In many respects, the Karhidians seem to be defined more by what they are not, by what is unseen, and by what traditionally is thought to obscure. It is a society that thrives through the unknown, through the unspoken ("Secrecy in Karhide is to an extraordinary extent a matter of discretion, of an agreed, understood silence--an omission of questions, yet not an omission of answers" (287.).

Perhaps this is just human nature, perhaps it is a result of the weather, perhaps it is a result of a society of kemmering, not static sex assignments. Whatever the underlying reasons are, though, this shadow life is something that the primary narrator, Genly Ai, does not understand for the bulk of the story, and which separates him from the others around him. Likewise, this keeps others from truly understanding or questioning him. It is not until Genly and Estraven have been a long while on the Ice that this cold wall between them begins to break down.

Throughout the text, the reader is presented with Genly's arguably problematic gendered perceptions of the world around him, ascribing his own frame of reference to a people that defies and in many ways destroys that frame of reference.

Yet there is also something deeply unsettling about Genly for the inhabitants of Winter. There is King Argaven's political fear and distrust of Genly's differences (34-40), and likewise his physical differences are noted by other characters over the course of his story. It is not until Estraven and Genly have escaped to the Ice, though, and a friendship based on sheer mutual survival begins to develop, that we get any insight into how Genly is perceived, not as The Alien Envoy, but as an individual who is different. Estraven's comments on gender at this juncture are perhaps the most interesting in the entire novel.

Estraven's comments on Genly fall into two categories: the physical and the spirit, as it pertains to the body. When Estraven himself is in kemmer, he reflects on Genly, musing "A strange lowgrade sort of desire it must be, to be spread out over every day of the year, and never to know the choice of sex" (232). This sentiment seems to get to the heart of the conflict between the two depictions of sex and gender. Estraven, when speaking of "the choice of sex," means choosing male or female, not being arbitrarily assigned to one for all of life. This flux between physical states of being seems to hearken back to the predominance of shadows in the Karhidian culture. The flux between being sexed and androgynous also bears with it a very strong cycle of emotion, with the intensity of sexuality while in kemmer, and the utter lack of a sex drive when not.

Yet reading the phrase "the choice of sex," as one Genly's breed of humanity, I first read it as "the choice to have sex, or not have sex." Were the phrase uttered by Genly instead of Estraven, this would be a valid interpretation, as the Gethenians are as captive to their expression of sexuality by time as we are by sex assignment.

Estraven also ties Genly's sex to his physical and spiritual (not religious, but of the spirit) abilities. He says "There is a frailty about him. He is all unprotected, exposed, vulnerable, even to his sexual organ which he must carry always outside himself; but he is strong, unbelievably strong. I am not sure he can keep hauling any longer than I, but he can haul harder and faster than Iâ€¦To match his frailty and strength, he has a spirit easy to despair and quick to defiance; a fierce impatient courage" (227-8). Given Genly Ai's fairly constant comment on the slowness of life, evolution, and time on Winter, Estraven's understanding of Genly is particularly profound. He has seen in an example of one what that one could not understand in an entire world. Yet even this understanding of Genly's spirit is seen through the filter of the Gethenians. Where Estraven sees frailty and physical vulnerability, our society has placed virility and strength. Even when there is a deep personal connection between individuals, they are both still coming to one another from such different perspectives as to never be able to truly understand one another. Though Genly spends much of the end of the book speaking of the universal human spirit, of "serving Mankind" (293), not just one nation or race, there are still deep differences between the races.

Perhaps the most telling indicator of the split between the Gethenians and Genly is that Estraven, in his times of deep emotion, of mind-connection, and in death, returns Genly's love for him by displacing his brother, Arek, onto Genry Ai, particularly in the mind-connection, where it is impossible to tell lies.

While this might paint an initially bleak picture of the hope for understanding between Peoples at first glance, in between the arguments, running as a thread throughout, is the desire and hope for understanding. Though this understanding might be doomed to be imperfect, on both sides, there is the effort, and the emotions created are very real. We may never be able to walk in the Other's shoes, but there is the hope of walking along side him, and recognizing that he too must wear shoes, different though they may seem.

The materials of the world of "Neuromancer"

blacklace — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:11:21 +0000

William Gibson's "Neuromancer" manages to create worlds that are both an exercise n sensory overload and a frustrating lack of detail, leaving the reader confused as to the environment. What is perhaps most interesting in this detailed description is the attention Gibson pays to material. Scarcely a page goes by without some mention of a plastic window, a silk futon, a leather jacket, denim pants, or a fiberglass chassis. A large part of what creates the futuristic sense of Gibson's world is the development of new materials and the unfamiliar hierarchy of materials, consisting of both the new and the jarringly familiar substances. This hierarchy of material breaks down to two separate categories: body modification and environment.

While others on the blog have delved into the politics of body modification, the one point I would like to stress is the use of materials in body modification. Ratz, a bartender, has a pink plastic arm. There is a sense that Ratz has gone for a model that is somewhat similar to human flesh in color, and its function is to replace a lost limb, not to give him super-human powers. Molly, contrastingly, has been fitted with retractable steel claws (Wolverine, anyone? But better?) for fighting, masked by burgundy (dried blood colored!) nails. Her visual enhancement is mirrors and metal, soldered to her face so that her own eyes are no longer visible. Metal and silver-toned items have a warrior connotation in this world.

Yet all these enhancing devices are non-biological. The only real mention of biological-based modification is in Case, with his magic anti-drug pancreas and liver. There is also a brief moment when Wage is said to have "vatgrown eyes" (21) that only serve a cosmetic use. There is a sense that the non-biological enhances, while the biological can only replace and aestheticize or streamline and detract from what the body can already do.

When materials are used by people, not to form people, a reverse hierarchy is revealed. The Villa Straylight is filled with wooden doors and cabinets, wool rugs, glass cases and other natural substances. These "natural" items are considered luxuries, with the implication that as society developed, expanded, and sprawled, natural resources became increasingly rare. Interestingly, though, Molly continually is found on silk futons (28) and wearing leather (29, 176), both animal products. Case earns a "new leather jacket" (68) when he successfully completes his part of the mission to steal Flatline Dixie from storage. There is a premium placed on organic materials, creating the assumption of scarcity of such materials.

Contrastingly, almost every building seems to be made of rough concrete with plastic windows*. The structures of this new near future have been built for functionality and durability. Luggage is all nylon, making it more durable and practical. The scarcity of materials does not allow for a flagrant show of luxury items, particularly in places they are vulnerable to the elements and the public. Even the treasures of Villa Straylight are housed in a cold concrete shell.

While one might expect the Rastafarians to have some connection with nature, especially given that they are a completely self-sufficient space island (226), this is actually the world in which there is the least natural materials. Instead, rooms are broken up by sheets of yellow plastic, and clear caulk decorates the Zionist ships.

Though the raw materials of this future world are often very familiar to current audiences, the proportions of materials used is very foreign. By emphasizing the manufactured and cold steel and concrete, the world Gibson creates becomes colder and subtly more sinister than our current one, familiar yet disconcertingly alien.

The disconnect the reader feels with this slightly skewed "real" world serves as contrast to the completely new, yet somehow more understandable world of cyberspace. Cyberspace is a relatively simple world, composed of light, basic geometric shapes, and precise grids that allow for precise locations and documentation of movement. There is a simple order in cyberspace that is distinctly lacking in the real world. By making cyberspace a simpler space (at least until the AIs get involved and bring personality and humanoid constructs/hallucinations into the plain geometric world), Gibson seeks to create a greater connection between the reader and Case, to clarify Case's preference for cyberspace over the real world.

*While I will not refute the impressive durability of plastic, the one issue I took with its prevalence in the novel, a world that it is indicated is run by fusion plants (85) and full of "the rusting shells of refineries" (85), indicating that oil is no longer the fuel that runs the world, plastic is a petroleum byproductâ€¦ Poking around the internet, there's also cellulose-based plastic (celluloid) and nylon is completely synthetic, but neither of these are strong enough to serve in buildings. The only other info I can find helpfully tells me plastic is made from polymers. Is there some completely synthetic plastic that I'm missing? Is there an assumption that we will recycle plastic till we make miracle buildings that will stand forever? Or is plastic just meant to sound more durable and futuristic than glass? I realize it's probably this last answer, but I am also genuinely interested about plastics.

fly-by meat

blacklace — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:50:12 +0000

Observation, I think it's rather interesting that the hotels/beds get referred to as coffins. I'm not entirely certain if this is societal, which would be interesting, given the focus on body modification, or if it's just Case, in which case that goes along with his death wish and frustrations and self-loathing of his body.

When Case first meets Armitage, he is described as looking like "he [was] carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue" (29). Armitage ends up being a rather hollow construct of Wintermute's not truly a person, and without any real personality. Foreshadowing? Or a commentary on the gradation of life and its connection/need for the flesh?

The whores are called puppets, and serve as pure body without mind, like giant slabs of living meat, extend the metaphor as far as you like. When Riviera does his projection show, the last thing he "creates" is Molly's face. Molly is treated publicly in this instance as meat. Molly has just eaten "real" meat, from a full animal, not one grown as parts in a vat. We soon found out that Molly was once a puppet, and one that was highly degraded. This discovery comes while she is seeking solitude and privacy in a puppet cubicle.

As frustrated as Case claims to be of the needs of the flesh, he's still quite groovy with the pleasures of the flesh.

I don't really have a direction for all this, but the thoughts kept bouncing around my head--pleasure seems key to the concept of meat.

ALSO! Cold! the T-A's exist in cold suspention. The cold drives Ashpool mad to the point of suicide, which he meditates on on page 184. Case is cold when he's held captive by Neuromancer. Ice is all the frack over cyberspace, and acts as a barrier. Cold is isolating, but in interesting ways and somewhat non-traditional ways. There are lots of other instances of cold, but, alas, I am lacking in a searchable version of the text, and don't really want to pay for the book a second time.

People who have control over Case are also always crushing gnats, whereas Case has to deal with the more dangerous wasps, and return of the hive mind. But, again, sad lack of searchable text. One gets spoiled, reading books no longer under copyright protection...

Also, an amusing yet thought provoking short story on meat I got from mw that I kept think of whenever the term was used in "Neuromancer." http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Individualizing Civilians within the Federation

blacklace — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:17:21 +0000

While the bugs are all kinds of huge in the movie, I was surprised at how little they actually figured in the book. The entire book I kept waiting for the epic bug fights, as my previous introduction to the story had been through the second half of the movie. A third of the way through the book, Rico gets out of boot camp. The bugs aren't even mentioned until the halfway point. For all that there is commentary about the evil commie hive-mind bugs, I found that they had virtually no importance in the novel. The book never truly ends, and the bug war certainly doesn't. Rico has had time to make it to Lieutenant, and it's still the same war against the same enemy with heated combat.

The Federation strikes me much more as a war industry than a political force. It doesn't matter who the enemy is, it just matters that there is an enemy, and that it is very different from humanity. At this point, there is an implication that the entire world and its numerous extra-planetary colonies are all under one government, one nation. Yet throughout the text, you have these small moments of the acknowledgement that earthly nationalities still exist, almost subversively.

When Rico's father rails against Rico joining the Federal Service, his comment of Mr. Dubois is "Hmmph, a silly name--it suits him. Foreigner, no doubt" (23). Throughout the text, there is the implication that there is but one government, one nation, under the Federation, and one official language, English. How there can be a foreigner, then, if this is truly the system, is quite the puzzlement. Given that the military is the one that clumped the entire world together, and has since maintained order with an iron fist, it seems logical that civilians have not had the sense of home and tradition and personal heritage taken away from them because they still have an individuality that implies a personal history. This individuality is stripped away from those who enter service with the Federation.

Even the Service, though, has some sense of national heritage, as is seen with the band that plays on marches. Rico always talks about the origin of the music when he talks about the band, be it the Scottish bagpipes that somehow grew on him, or French revolutionary nationalistic songs like Marseilles (94).* There are also many ethnically specific, or at least evocative, names throughout the text, which creates a small attempt by civilians to maintain personal pride and heritage. Juan becomes Johnnie, though, showing how the military environment, with its Standard English, further seeks to strip away personal identifiers and pride in and loyalty to something other than the Federation.

There is also a strong sense of a division between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres throughout the book. At boot camp, Zim adopts a completely different persona when fighting Shujumi. There is a strange highlight on the art of the martial art, with a step away from the martial. Attaching on to this, Heinlein creates a history, written during the Cold War, in which the "Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony" (113) are the two sides in the final war before all the world's government and law-enforcement systems break down, sometime in the late XXth century.** What I found most striking here was that Heinlein rearranged the alliances of the Cold War, putting bitter enemies together, mixing communism and democracy. Perhaps Heinlein was attempting to subtlety underscore his belief that neither system worked well enough. What struck me most about this, though, was the construct of the East versus the West. While both sides fall to shambles, the West ultimately wins, in that it is in Scotland that the Federation first begins to form.

I don't know exactly what Heinlein is trying to do with this. The best I can come to making sense of this is through the scene with martial arts. Yes, Rico mentions later that Shujumi serves as the group's martial arts instructor, but there is never again a point when it is explicitly used. Zim learned from Shujumi's father, whom Shujumi also trained under. Zim wins the fight. Is the message, then, that only when you have consumed all the cultures around you, form their fighting styles to their music, can you truly "win" at anything? The Federation maintains power by being the only governing body in the world, quite literally. To do so, they have had to consume all of the world's cultures. Is, then, part of the failure in the war against the bugs a result of their inability to learn from the bugs? Rico mentions that the brain bugs, though captured, prove to be of little use, as they die so quickly after capture. Or is this lack of understanding of the bugs, the inability to communicate or compromise, and the resulting war necessary for the continuation of the Federation, and thus in some way propagated by the Federation? I'm not suggesting some crazy paranoid conspiracy plan, but what I am suggesting is that Heinlein's stance in this book is that war is a human necessity, and that the lesser of the evils, that which is better for the group, is to fight against that which you cannot understand, rather than fight amongst those who you choose not to understand?

*Interesting tidbit! Apparently banned at various points in French history and has words like citizen running amok in it. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/marseill.html

**Perhaps XX instead of 20 is meant to indicate that we are so far in the future that Arabic numeral fail us, we need the oh-so-classy, complex Roman numerals for that might that is the World? Or maybe it's meant to harken back to the Roman Empire?

***Completely unrelated, but stuff I thought was fascinating: the bugs in the text are never given much size definition, but the queens are thought to be the size of large horses, which seems inconceivable to Rico, so presumably they're meant to be rather smaller than those awesome goo-filled guys in the movie. This seems important, but I haven't fully sorted out for myself just why.

****Other thought--Rico refers to Zim as an "invincible robot" (85), the MIs are forever being called apes, and "[Sergeants] don't have mothers. [â€¦] They reproduce by fissionâ€¦like all bacteria" (50). These MIs sure spend a lot of time not being human, then don exoskeletons to go fight intelligent bugsâ€¦ Something's up hereâ€¦ Alas, it is also 2am.

Reading Suvin 36 years later

blacklace — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:02:25 +0000

One of Suvin's main defining points of the SF genre in his 1972 essay "On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre" is "[t]he world of a work of SF is not a priori intentionally oriented toward its protagonists, either positively or negatively; the protagonists may succeed or fail in their objectives, but nothing in the basic contract with the reader, in the physical laws of their worlds, guarantees either" (378). While I realize Suvin isn't speaking to the sci fi tv shows of his day or that would follow, I wonder how his definition translates to a storyline with multiple installments. I suppose this works with written stories as well, though you don't have the added element of "that actor's contract isn't up yet, he'll make it through at least the end of the season" with the written story.

I guess you could argue that Suvin assumes a certain immersion in the world, ignoring things like "the book still has another hundred pages), but I feel a totally accepting immersion counteracts the cognitive estrangement and the bit about sci f that forces the reader/viewer to think.

It is entirely possible that I am trying to take his argument to a far too literal level. Part of it might also be that I can't think of any SF work where the protagonists decidedly fail--I feel like everything I've read or seen has some element of victory and/or promise of hope, however bleak it may be. Feel free to tell me I've been reading all the wrong stories and/or am looking to pick an argument where there isn't one.

I also get the feeling that we're reading this bit of theory at the beginning of class because, as we progress, the stories will deviate farther and farther from this definition...