my essay...
The Neuromancer was published in 1984 and established William Gibson as a leading novelist in the field of the science-fiction genre. In this essay we will focus primarily upon the relationships between technology and the individual. Also, how technology affects upon the relationships of characters within the novel. This focus will lead to close analysis upon the protagonist of Case and another major character of the novel, Molly. To establish the relationships that exist between themselves and the technology represented in the novel we will refer predominantly to the work of Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto and to the work of Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology. Their work will enable us to extract key moments within the narrative that allows the text to reveal the relations between technology and the individual. Observation of the characters will reveal them to function as Haraway’s cyborg. Also, we will observe how the cyborg is able to break through the supposed borders of nature and machine. This will show why the machine can be viewed as ultimately the embodiment of ‘us’. Furthermore, in establishing the role of the cyborg within the text we shall investigate the impact the cyborg has upon the narrative of the novel. This will concern us mainly with the affect the role of the technology has upon the relationship of our two main characters. This includes focus on sections of the text where the protagonist seeks toward the role of cyborg.
Firstly let us pay attention to the work of Donna Haraway and her work A Cyborg Manifesto. Let us observe how her work reveals an understanding of how technology affects the individual within a relationship in the The Neuromancer. When reading the relationship between Case and Molly let us consider Haraway’s work. She has this to say, ‘In relation to objects like biotic components, one must think not in terms of essential properties, but in terms of design boundary constraints, rates of flows, system logics, cost of lowering constraints.’[i] In Comparison with the characters of Case and Molly, we can see how they smash through the constraints cited here in the meditations of Haraway. The disregard Case and Molly have for themselves as ‘essential properties’ is displayed in their attitudes toward their own body and mind. Observing the text when Case becomes ‘the passenger behind her eyes’, through access of the matrix,[ii] a remote fusion with Molly enables Case to connect to a visual link enabling access through the eyes of Molly. It is interesting to note that Case displays no fear when, ‘He began to find the passivity of the situation irritating.’[iii] And his only problem we read here, ‘Her body language was disorientating, her style foreign.’[iv] Getting acquainted with an alien situation appears to be his major concern. This lack of fear in the language portrays Case as needing to be proactive and working. He is in need of using his skills in the situation which appropriates his attitude of feeling comfortable within the sphere of boundless technology.
The essential properties of the ‘biotic’ and ‘the natural’ are challenged and technology manifests within the crossing of design boundary constraints. Both Molly and Case appear to be without a moralistic standpoint and seem to have no concept of the invasive qualities associated with trying to enter the mind of another individual. Case tells the reader ‘her being, like his, was the thing she did to make a living.’[v] Again we have this reference to work and being. The bodies the characters inhabit and traverse using their minds and the technology of cyberspace breaks down the idea of inaccessibility. This in turn, leads to an eradication of borders which seemingly exist between the human and the machine. The technological society in which they navigate appropriates the two characters to adopt, or discard, a certain view of morality in order to successfully function, and to collaborate with technology to survive as a cyborg.
Haraway continues her expression of the cyborg and its position in a world, ‘Any object or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no “natural” architectures constrain system design.’[vi] Applied to the context of The Neuromancer Haraway’s work speaks of the realm of natural constrains of architecture of which Case and Molly function across. The architecture of nature and man are there to be integrated by technology to produce the role of the cyborg. To continue, in their first meeting Molly comes to capture Case where he observes that, Molly’s glasses are ‘…surgically inset…The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones…’[vii] Case is no competition for her skills in fighting, Molly warns him, ‘you look like you like to take stupid chances.’[viii], that he should not think of escaping. Molly acts with a display of power, ‘…with barely an audible click, ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails.’[ix] There is a fusion between Molly and ‘machine’ of which Haraway would state, ‘The machine is not an it to be animated, the machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment.’[x] The configuration of the machine by technology is incorporated into Molly’s being and we will witness how this affects her character’s status and behaviour in relation to Case. Haraway says, ‘No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other, if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language.’[xi] In relation to the latter technological functions and with the blades implanted into the fingers of Molly we can observe that the natural realm of the body is interfaced with the technology that exists in the world of The Neuromancer. The ‘proper code’ has been established through techniques of miniaturisation of electronics, combined with biology that is practiced in the clinics of Chiba. Haraway says; ‘Communication sciences and biology are constructions of natural-technical objects of knowledge in which the difference between machine and organism is thoroughly blurred; mind, body, and tool are on very intimate terms.’[xii] We can witness a part the environment plays to accommodate this theory of blurring. In New York, Case observes the ‘Freak winds in the East-side; something to do with convection, an overlap in the domes.’[xiii] Technology has amalgamated with the environment to construe possibilities of influence. Upon entering a secret laboratory through a corridor of strewn with disused junk Case observes its behaviour, ‘The junk looked like something that had grown their, a fungus of twisted metal and plastic…the guts of a television…’[xiv] His language conveys sentiments of the agricultural and biological processes of decomposition. The man made substances of plastic, glass and metal are illustrated as a fungus in order to establish them a life force. Here we can understand how the processes of nature and technology are intertwined on the microscopic biological level to inhabit and become the environment. Within the collaboration of these disciplines and the body we can form the understanding that technology, the characters way of being, the way they behave, strive towards surviving within a technologically influenced environment.
The intimate terms that exist between mind, body, and tool, working together to create the guise of Molly as a femme fatale of the cyborg are according to Heidegger ‘technology’ itself. In The Question Concerning Technology Heidegger explains, ‘it reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not lie here before us…Thus what is decisive in techne does not lie at all in the making and manipulating nor in the using of its means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing forth.’[xv] In relating this thinking to Molly she would cease to exist as the character Molly is without the necessary integration that she shares with the technology in The Neuromancer. What we can begin to understand is that the fusion of the ‘biotic’ with ‘nature’ goes to the ‘revealing’ of a Molly as ‘technology’ and so, she finds it a necessity to adopt the conditions of Haraway’s cyborg.
In relating this argument to the scene of Molly’s introduction and departure from her working relationship with Case a dynamic is created between them. We are given variation in their behaviour towards each other that can also offer technology as a mediator, or centre for the characters behaviour to revolve. Firstly, there is the repetition of acceptance within the dialogue from Molly that alludes to a capitulation of control through how she is, ‘wired’, which in turn, enables her to operate as a cyborg. Molly relates, ‘Cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it’s just the way I’m wired.’[xvi] Moreover, toward the end of the novel we can view Molly’s ambiguous conclusion to the relationship. An inverted equilibrium of the narrative is restored within their relationship when the note left by Molly points again to Haraway’s ‘disassembly’ and ‘reassembly’. The note reads, ‘HEY ITS OK BUT ITS TAKING THE EDGE OF MY GAME, I PAID THE BILL ALREADY. IT’S THE WAY IAM WIRED I GUESS, WATCH YOUR ARSE OKAY? XXX MOLLY’ The language of Molly and its repetition of, ‘…THE WAY IAM WIRED I GUESS…’[xvii] becomes an insistent catch phrase, or chant for herself that reveals an understanding of her position of Haraway’s cyborg. Her dialogue reveals her role of symbiosis to the larger framework of a technologically advanced world that has influence upon the construction of her character. Molly is an apparent individual, a ‘razor girl’[xviii] with ‘…a gymnasts body and conjurers hands.’ who works outside the law to survive but within the framework of society.
Analogous to abandoning the law, Molly has also turned her back on the love story that might have been and has no intention of sacrificing her successful role as an embodiment of unconstrained technology. She will not give up herself to emotions linked to Case that may destroy, ‘…THE EDGE OF MY GAME…’ the non-emotional instinctive side of Molly’s behaviour. Case, on the other hand displays symbolic behaviour of non-acceptance to the dilemma of turning away from emotion. This appropriates him as working against the role of the cyborg. It is at the beginning of chapter two that an anomaly is raised about the nature of Case, when Armitage claims, ‘Our profile says you’re trying to con the street into killing you when you’re not looking.’[xix] And also claims ‘You’re suicidal, Case. The model gives you a month on the outside.’[xx] Here, Armitage is explaining that for some reason Case is trying to die in order to escape life on ‘the outside’. This raises the question of the finality of death within this novel. When in surgery, we learn that Case has been previously fitted with ‘…endorphin inhibitors.’[xxi] This manipulation by technology would destroy communications within the brain and cut off a part that would normally emit emotions of well-being. The narrative here is portraying Case as an unstable and maligned character, but nevertheless controlled to some degree by the encompassing power of a technological society.
Toward the closing of the novel, after reading the message left by Molly we observe Case holding the shuriken, a ‘souvenir’[xxii] from Molly. He tells himself, ‘I never even found out what color her eyes were, she never showed me.’[xxiii] Not seeing her eyes or prevented in seeing them because of the technological barrier represented in the glasses can be interpreted as Case’s disappointment for not crossing the barrier of a working-relationship, into a personal human-relationship. The technology of the glasses becomes a symbolic form for the loss of the human in Molly and her gain of the cyborg. ‘Case then parts with the shuriken, “No”,[xxiv] he said, and spun, the star leaving his fingers, flash of silver, to bury itself in the wall screen.’ Although we can observe the thoughts of Case as, ‘Stars, destiny’[xxv] towards the acceptance of cyborg we can think the shuriken has a personal symbolic significance of holding onto to an emotion or belief of the human. Moreover we observe an association between the shuriken and identity. At the beginning of chapter 13 we can observe the undercover police arrest and question Case. He has his history of previous aliases read out by one of three officers. Also, the belongings of Case that could constitute as aspects of his identity are on the bed, ‘The shuriken lay by itself, between jeans and underwear, on the sand-tinted temperfoam.’[xxvi]
Once Molly has ended their relationship Case accepts his fate and rids himself of the throwing star, ‘“I don’t need you,” he said.’[xxvii] In this realisation, the star becomes the symbol to absolve emotional ties and his personal history of identity of what it is to be human. This in turn, he then accepts his fate towards the transition of the cyborg. Also, in the next line of the text we could conceive again the love-story-ending of the human and how the narrative has been affected by technology toward the lifestyle of the cyborg.
For Case and Molly and their money earned through work alongside Case’s feelings for molly may have steered the narrative toward a romantic ending. However, he spends most of his money on items for his considered survival, ‘…a new pancreas and liver, the rest on a new Ono-sendai and a ticket back to the sprawl.’[xxviii] Case finds an ambiguously named girl ‘…who called herself Michael’[xxix] and ‘he never saw Molly again.’[xxx] Here the narrative is distorted from conventional ending to the ‘human’ novel and in doing so has created the ending to a cyborg novel. Case gets a new girl, who is mentioned briefly and this contributes a disruption to the narrative of the Case and Molly relationship. What can be interpreted as an ending of equilibrium in a conventional novelistic sense is instead the achievement of a part-human protagonist’s realisation, acceptance, and function of the cyborg.
Again Haraway has an argument that sheds light on the dynamics of their relationship.
‘Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through restoration of the Garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos.’[xxxi]
Applying then this mode of thought from Haraway we can understand that Molly can be observed with the notion of working outside the ‘Garden’ of Eden. This is observed when Molly utilizes the incorporated technology of the self, such as the blades, to gain employment as ‘a street samurai’.[xxxii] She shows understanding in the note left to Case, discussed earlier, of a supposed working ‘for’ or ‘against’ technology and how a relationship may destroy who she is. For this reason Molly decides upon her choice of becoming a cyborg of a technological society. Paying attention to chapter 11 when Case meets up with Molly at a ‘cubical’ in Freeside we can observe Molly’s transition from a human victim of a ‘meat puppet’[xxxiii] to a cyborg. Molly had been a prostitute integrated with software that allowed her to be switched into an automatic mode. This renders her consciousness oblivious to the sexual acts performed on her by customers. In hindsight she reveals, ‘They had switched the software and started renting to speciality markets.’[xxxiv] It is the sale and trade of technology here that inflicts suffering on the human of Molly and causes her to ‘remember’[xxxv] dreams of her routines with clients. We then learn the theatrical scenes of what can be considered the quintessence of pornography, the ‘snuff’[xxxvi] movie, in which somebody is killed during the sexual act of Molly’s prostitution. Molly says, ‘I came up. I was in a routine with a customer’,[xxxvii] and ‘…we were both covered in blood. We weren’t alone. She was all…dead…’[xxxviii] Molly is greatly affected by the remembrance of this emotion, ‘she began to shake.’[xxxix] In the next line we read Molly narrative shift back to the present and back to the role of the cyborg. This is achieved using an emphasis placed upon the conquering, or the suppression of emotions, ‘“So I guess I gave the senator what he really wanted, you know?” The shaking stopped.’[xl] The transition that occurs in the bodily mannerisms show a state of fluctuation and change of being that implies the demand that the cyborg has the capacity to ‘forget’. In sharing aspects of her history and identity she inflicts self harm. Her circumstances have produced in Molly the drive to be more technologically advanced. This is bound with her desire to function affectively and successfully in society as a street samurai. Molly has removed herself from the ‘garden’ that is symbolically voiced through the brothel in which she had worked. Molly destroys her ‘god’ of control represented by the ‘boss’ of the brothel who changed the software and the customer who had control whilst she was in the automatic setting of the meat puppet.
In regarding the past of Molly a parallel can be drawn between her and Case. In thinking that Case reaches his destiny of the cyborg in the closing of the novel, we can experience the point that Molly had destroyed her role of the human and attained her position of cyborg within society. She has accepted that there will be no restoration of the garden as an outlaw for this would mean surrendering back to imprisonment or the entrapment of prostitution that leaves her under the self-limited control of the technology of society.
To conclude this essay, we have observed the role of the cyborg and how it has established itself with the technological climate of the novel. The technology of The Neuromancer permeates throughout the novel from the micro-biotic upwards through to the individual and society. Technology has its affect upon the environment by manifesting itself in a myriad of ways to a revealing of the environment as technology. The manifestation of technology, be it new software or techniques of the clinics, acts as a precursor of how the cyborg will operate. But the cyborg has the capacity to effect its environment on an individual level through its state of being and relationship. And also, regarding the fusion of the biotic and nature we have seen how the cyborg accomplishes a fruition when dealing on an individual level, by an expulsion of its emotions that are attributed to the human condition. So In order to operate within the world of The Neuromancer, the cyborg must synchronise with the conventions of technology of the environment. In a technological society it appears a devastating misfortune if the cyborg were to act otherwise.
