Quiet Refusals: Androids as Others in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Nima Behroozi Moghadam, Farideh Porugiv

Abstract


This study intends to show how science fiction literature in general and Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in particular can be read as a symptom of the postmodern era we live in. Taking as the main clues the ideas of the cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, who combines Marxism with the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, as well as his account of “postmodernism,” the study discusses how, contrary to what capitalism dubs a “post-ideological” era, we are more than ever dominated by ideology through its cynical function. It further examines (through such Lacanian concepts as fantasy, desire, objet petit a, and jouissance) the way late capitalistic ideology functions in Dick’s narrative, and discusses how the multiculturalist society prompts new forms of racism through abstract universalization which only accounts for and tolerates the other as long as they appear within the confines of that formal abstraction. Finally, it looks into how ideologies as such can be subverted from the Real point within the symbolic.

Keywords


Science Fiction, Postmodernism, Ideology, Racism, The Real

Full Text:

PDF

References


Aaronson, Russell S. Would Lord Running Clam Wear Wubfiir Slippers?: The Ethical Imperative of Empathy in the

Alternate Ecologies of Philip K. Dick. Diss. Florida Atlantic University, 1996.

Benesch, Klaus. “Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg as Cultural Other in Fritz Lang's Metropolis

and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 44.3

(1999): 379-392.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. Rebel Press, 1983.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. New York City: Ballantine Books, 1996.

Dick, Philip K. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. Ed. Lawrence

Sutin. Vintage Books, 1995.

Fitting, Peter. “Reality as Ideological Construct: A Reading of Five Novels by Philip K. Dick.” Science Fiction Studies

2 (July 1983): 219-236.

Freedman, Carl Howard. “Critical Theory and Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 14.2 (1988): 180-200.

Galvan, Jill. "Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?." Science

Fiction Studies 24.3 (1997): 413-29.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.

Kucukalic, Lejla. Philip K. Dick: Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1992.

Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Book XI). Trans.

Alan Sheridan. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981.

Lind, Joshua Hajalmer. Expansive Reality and Restricted Desire in Three Novels by Philip K. Dick. United States:

ThrewLine Books, 2013.

Myers, Tony. Slavoj Žižek. Routledge, 2003.

Palmer, Christopher. Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. Liverpool: UP, 2003.

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Dir. Sophie Fiennes. Perf. Slavoj Žižek. Zeitgeist Films, 2013.

Pfaler, Robert. On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners. London: Verso, 2014.

Sharpe, Matthew and Geoff Boucher. Žižek and Politics: A Critical Review. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

Suvin, Darko. “On the Poetics of Science Fiction Genre.” College English, 34.3 (1972): 372-382.

Suvin, Darko. “The State of the Art in Science Fiction Theory: Determining and Delimiting the Genre.” Science

Fiction Studies 6.1 (1979): 32-45.

van Oenen, Gijs. “Interpassivity Revisited: A Critical and Historical Reappraisal of Interpassive Phenomena.”

International Journal of Žižek Studies 2.2. (2008). PDF file.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Afterword: Lenin’s Choice.” Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to

October 1917. V. I. Lenin. Ed. Slavoj Žižek. London: Verso, 2002.

Žižek, Slavoj. “From Politics to Biopolitics....and Back.” Southern Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (Spring/Summer 2004):

-521.

Žižek, Slavoj. Interrogating the Real. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006.

Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Massachusetts: MIT Press,

Žižek, Slavoj. The Plague of Fantasises. London: Verso, 2008.

Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989.

Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York: Picador, 2008.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.3p.10

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.