Reconfiguring the Android in “The Electric Ant” by Philip K. Dick

Yıl 2021, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 2, 169 - 188, 01.12.2021

Jian Ibrahim , Sanaz Alızadeh Tabrızı

Öz

In his theoretical essays and literary narratives, Philip K. Dick highlights haunting concerns about the rise of technology and its adverse impact on humans, influencing their realities, behaviors, and subjectivities and often resulting in dehumanizing effects. These effects, he explores through the ambivalent conflation between humans and machines, incarnated in his android characters. In the android, Dick creates a multi-layered metaphor. Most importantly, the android is the antithesis of the “authentic human,” whose soul is the combination of freedom of will, independence, disobedience, the ability to feel and express affect, among other behavioral traits. Additionally, the android manifests the traditionalist views projected on technology, whereby machines are confined to their function as instruments at the disposal of humans, excessively exploited by totalitarian ideologies to deprive authentic humans of their souls and, thus, convert them into instruments themselves. This process of conversion, Dick calls andronization, which ideologies— chiefly the capitalist regime—apply to humans through manipulating their behavior by controlling their perception of reality and their own subjectivities. For Dick, andronization is possible because reality is constructed, not given. Utilizing the potentials of construction, he argues, ideologies use technology to create and impose fake realities and subjectivities on humans and entrap them in illusions of authenticity. Moreover, through fake realities, ideologies turn humans into machine-like creatures, who serve their power-driven interests. All these ideas weave through Dick’s selected short story “The Electric Ant” (1987). Backed by core thematic arguments within the theory of autopoiesis and gaining insights from Martin Heidegger’s approaches to technology, the paper attempts to explore the problematics with which Dick grabbled throughout his career and seeks to reconfigure the android metaphor. Therefore, using these theoretical frames to analyze the short story, this paper aims to examine Dick’s treatment of his protagonist, the android Garson Poole, and, then, to reconstruct the image of the android as a rebel, capable of championing the authenticity of humans, rather than being a passive tool in the hands of ideology.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Dick, Android, Human, Posthuman, Technology, Reality, Ideology, "The Electric Ant"

Kaynakça

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