Blog Entry 3: Science Fiction

Science fiction has been defined by Roberts as ‘a genre or division of literature distinguishes its fictional worlds to one degree or another from the world in which we actually live: a fiction of the imagination rather than observed reality, a fantastic literature.’ (2000:1)

Dick’s theory of dysrecognition theorises that science fiction, like most fiction, attempts to do something new with fiction, realist writers wanted to mirror the life of society so that people would recognise and relate to the text, whereas Science fiction gives readers the dysrecognition of a world unlike the one the reader lives in. Real life is not trying to be shown in science fiction novels but rather an unreal life, sci-fi texts are usually set in a world that does not exist at the time and therefore allows readers to see the world as real and fictional. As Roberts states ‘Where the realist writer needs to focus on accuracy, the SF author can use her imagination to invent things not found in our world.’ (2000:2).

Donna Haraway argues that

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism: in short, we are Cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation.

(Haraway 2000:292

There is no longer a distinction between human and machine. We have become so complacent with technology that we are no longer separate from it. Humans can now be seen as technological beings that can be altered and adjusted according to culture and society. Trends and fashion can change the way we look and act. We are in an era of advanced technology and science that have taken over our lives, yet at the same time saved our lives. The scientific and technological advance of medicine means that we no longer have just our bodies to rely on to keep us alive. We now have machines that literally breathe for us, prosthetic limbs in case something happens to our own. We live in such an advanced society at the moment that science fiction, whilst showing us a world we don’t know, could actually be making predictions for our future, and with the huge advances we have seen so far it may not be a world so far away as we may think.

Blog Entry 2: Hyperreality

Bennett and Royle state that 'the desirability of a given product is in a sense branded into our consciousness and unconscious. This leads to the world of what Jean Baudrillard calls the hyperreal, in which reality is fabricated by technology'. (2009:283-284) Hyperreality is the final stage of Baudrillard’s notion of a four stage development in Western society. Hyperreality occurs when ‘there is no relationship between the sign and reality, because there is no longer anything real to reflect.’ (Snipp-Walmsley Cit Waugh 2006:413) We can not escape the world of the hyperreal because, as Bennett and Royle state, it is 'branded' in to us. We recreate ourselves to fit whatever the latest trend is, what Snipp-Walmsley says is completely true we are programmed and manipulated to desire something and then create the desired 'thing'  to fulfil our desires. This changes our whole perspective on what reality is. The hyperreal is another way in which our reality is questioned, another way in which we are all tricked in to thinking that what we see is real. How can what we see on TV or in other parts of the media be real when there is no original to precede the simulacrum. The 'original' is created from the simulacrum.

Baudrillard goes on to further illuminate the theory that America is no longer real; it is simulated, and portrays Disney Land as an imaginary place ‘in order to make us believe that the rest is real’ (Baudrillard 1983). This hyperreality of America makes us again question what is real and what is fake. He further states that ‘It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.’ (Baudrillard 1983) 

Blog Entry 1: Simulation and Simulacra

Blog Entry 1: Simulation and Simulacra

The term postmodernism is difficult to assign a definitive definition to, it has been defined by so many critics that it can become a little confusing what is meant by it. Linda Hutcheon in The Politics of Postmodernism states that ‘it seems reasonable to say that the postmodern’s initial concern is to de-naturalize some of the dominant features of our way of life’ (2002:2). This definition is useful to us when looking at Baudrillard’s theory of simulation, the process of simulation completely de-naturalizes our whole ‘reality’ and leaves us questioning what parts of ‘reality’ are actually real and what parts are simulated. Roberts tells us that ‘Reality’ has been replaced by the hyperreality of our simulated world … it is the technologies of simulation themselves that rule.’ (2000:153)

‘The age of production has given way to the age of simulation … a desire is created for a product which is then created to fill that desire.’ (Snipp-Walmsley in Waugh 2006:413) This description of simulation shows us how the postmodern era has de-naturalized parts of our life. We desire a product that does not exist then create products to fit our desires? This thought explains how far simulation has taken over our ‘natural real’ lives and replaced it with ‘fake copies’ to the extent that we no longer associate these ‘copies’ with the ‘real, original’ thing that it derived from.

A simulacrum then is ‘a term which Baudrillard uses which not only refers to representation, but carries with it a sense of the fake, the counterfeit’ (Snipp-Walmsley in Waugh 2006:413), the way that simulations have absorbed us and replaced so much of our ‘reality’ that all we are left with is the simulacrum. We are so consumed by the media that we are asking; What is reality? How do we know this is reality? Where is the difference in the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’?

It is argued by postmodernists however that this was already occurring long before the persuasiveness of the mass media, Jameson argues that

‘In the form of the logic of the image or the spectacle of the simulacrum, everything has become ‘cultural’ in some sense. A whole new house of mirrors of visual replication and of textual reproduction has replaced the older stable reality of reference and of the non-cultural ‘real’.’

(Cit Hutcheon 2002:32)

This shift in to what Baudrillard calls the ‘hyperreal’ can be seen as progressive rather than degenerative, who is to tell us what reality is? And how do they know? We are actually looking at new realities perhaps and not just replacing existing ones.

Simulations

Jean Baudrillard 1981 Simulations - Mechanised reproduction has divided us from original/authentic objects; 'Simulacra' refers to the copy without an original. There is difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what is not. Media influences have blurred the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary.
'Simulation refers to the collapse of this distinction between real (Original, innate, substantive) and simulated (constructed, imaginary). The result is a society/culture of hyperreality.'
What I think Baudrillard is saying is that we have allowed ourselves to become so absorbed by the media that we no longer live in a society of 'reality', our simulated world means we have no means of differentiating between fake and real. We are literally living in the hyperreal and there is no way of avoiding this. We watch our televisions about 'fake' people and their 'fake' lives and are completely drawn in; we discuss this with our friends talking as though the people we are discussing are real, even to the extent where actors have been assaulted for having a 'bad' character. This shows again the way in which we do live in a simulated world. Media influence has taken away the reality and replaced it with 'things'; objects, imaginary lives, copies of things that do not even exist, this causes us to live in a state of hyperreality.
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''Reality' has been replaced by the hyperreality of our simulated world ... it is the techno,logies of simulation themselves that rule.' (Roberts 2000:153)
Simulation:
-the process in which representations of things come to replace the things being represented . . . the representations become more important than the "real thing"
-4 orders of simulation:
    1. signs thought of as reflecting reality: re-presenting "objective" truth;
    2. signs mask reality: reinforces notion of reality;
    3. signs mask the absence of reality;
            -Disneyworld
            -Watergate
            -LA life: jogging, psychotherapy, organic food
    4. signs become simulacra - they have no relation to reality; they simulate a simulation
            -Spinal Tap
            -Cheers bars
            -new urbanism
            -Starbucks
            -the Gulf War was a video game
(http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/jean_baudrillard_and_hyperrealit.htm)

Science Fiction

P K Dick stated that science fiction is about 'a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicted on our known society - that is our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it ... this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptuial dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition'. (Dick 1981 'My Definition of Science Fiction')
Broderick also gives us a definition of Science Fiction, he concludes that 'Science Fiction is that species of storytelling native to a culture undergoing the epistemic changes implicated in the riseand supercession of technological modes of production, distribution, consumption and disposal. It is marked by (i) metaphoric stategies and metonymic tactics, (ii) the forgrounding of icons and interpretative schemata from a collectively generic 'mega-text' and the concomitant de-emphasis of 'fine-writing' and characterisation, and (iii) certain priorities more often found in scientific and postmodern texts than in literary models: specifically to the object in preference to the subject.' (Broderick (1995) in Roberts, A. (2006), Science Fiction, London: Routledge)

Hyperreality

Bennett and Royle state that 'the desirabilityof a given product is in a sense branded into our consciousness and unconscious. This leads to the world of what Jean Baudrillard calls the hyperreal, in which reality is fabricated by technology'. (2009:283-284) This statement in Bennett and Royle explains fully the way in which we are 'taken over' and absorbed in to the media. Hyperreality is the way in which simulacra has completely replaced the true reality of life. Postmodernism has almost ensured that we almost lose sense of what our reality is, or if there is such a thing as reality. The way in which we are manipulated by the media by adverts and billboards etc not to mention the huge advance in technology has left us with the question; what exactly is reality?


Hyperreality:
-a condition in which "reality" has been replaced by simulacra
-Borges
-Baudrillard argues that today we only experience prepared realities-- edited war footage, meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show
The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal. . . which is entirely in simulation.
Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.
  
Division between "real" and simulation has collapsed
 -stage a fake hold up
-circular referentiality:




M.C. Escher:


T.V. verité: microscopic simulation that allows the "real" to pass into the "hyperreal"
-t.v. replaces real interaction by simulating it
(http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/jean_baudrillard_and_hyperrealit.htm)

Many theories of postmodern literature link together. The process of defamiliarisation can be linked to Baudrillard’s simulation theory which in turn preceded the theory of hyperreality. The theories correspond with each other ultimately creating the confusion of postmodernism, by making the familiar unfamiliar then creating a sense of desire for the unfamiliar we are in fact moving in to the world of the hyperreal and creating a blurred vision between the real and the fictional.

Themes & Techniques

Techniques:

*        metafiction *        non-linearity *        frame-breaking *        chinese box worlds *        mise-en-abyme; trompe-l’oeil *        intertextuality *        author as character *        historical and 'transworld' characters

*        polychronotopes *        irony *        parody *        pastiche *        genre mixing *        palimtexts *        bricolage *        palimsestic

*        fusion of high/low art *        mixed styles *        self-reflexivity *        self-consciousness *        open-endedness *        picaresque *        fictioning

Themes:

*        mirrors; glasses etc. *        fairs; circuses; sideshows; carnivals; theatres *        characters as performers *        cinema; screens *        historiography *        literary fantastic/SF tropes *        fragmentation/splitting of characters *        uncertainty/contradiction

*        marginalised characters *        hybrid, cyborg, fluid characters *        paranoia, schizophrenia, conspiracy theories *        postmodern condition (advanced media/technology; ecological disintegration) *        polymorphousness/androgyny *        labyrinth/maze