Utopic bodies, dystopic subjects [Elektronische Ressource] : dialogues between literature and theory / vorgelegt von Catrin Weimbs

Catrin Weimbs

Informations

• Publié par: friedrich-schiller-universitat_jena
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 45
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

UTOPIC BODIES, DYSTOPIC SUBJECTS:
DIALOGUES BETWEEN LITERATURE AND THEORY


INAUGURAL-DISSERTATION
ZUR ERLANGUNG DER DOKTORWÜRDE
DER
PHILOSOPHISCHEN FAKULTÄT
DER
RHEINISCHEN-FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITÄT
ZU BONN

VORGELEGT VON
CATRIN WEIMBS
AUS
BONN

BONN 2010










2
Gedruckt mit der Genehmigung der Philosophischen Fakultät
Der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn





























Zusammensetzung der Prüfungskommission :

Prof. Dr. Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp
(Vorsitzende/Vorsitzender)

Prof. Dr. Sabine Sielke
(Betreuerin/Betreuer und Gutachterin/Gutachter)

Prof. Dr. Marion Gymnich
(Gutachterin/ Gutachterin)

Prof. Dr. Bettina Schlüter
(weiteres prüfungsberechtigtes Mitglied)



Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 19.11.2009
3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................................ 4
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER I - GILLES DELEUZE AND WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ............................................ 15
CONTEXTUALIZING BURROUGHS AND DELEUZE................................................................ 21
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT.................................................................................................. 30
GILLES DELEUZE’S RHIZOMATIC WRITING....................................................................... 36
WRITERS AS “CULTURAL PHYSICIANS” ............................................................................. 44
DELEUZIAN BECOMINGS...................................................................................................... 49
BECOMING-WOMAN............................................................................................................. 55
BODY WITHOUT ORGANS..................................................................................................... 63
CHAPTER II – DONNA HARAWAY AND WILLIAM GIBSON...................................................... 76
NEUROMANCER.................................................................................................................... 80
“A MANIFESTO FOR CYBORGS”.......................................................................................... 94
OUR BODIES, OURSELVES?................................................................................................... 98
CYBORGS IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ........................................................................... 111
CHAPTER III - MARGARET ATWOOD AND HOMI BHABHA..................................................121
SURVIVAL OF CULTURE --- CULTURES OF SURVIVAL....................................................... 121
ORYX AND CRAKE: COLONIALISM IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD ......................................... 126
LOCATING HYBRIDITY AND MIMICRY IN BHABHA AND ATWOOD................................... 137
DISCOURSE AND HYBRID SUBJECTIVITY .......................................................................... 151
TOWARDS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF POSTCOLONIALITY.............................................. 164
DIALOGUES BETWEEN LITERATURE AND THEORY: AFTERWORD....................................167
WORKS CITED..................................................................................................................................172
KURZFASSUNG..186





















4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have written this dissertation had I not received help and encouragement from
many people. I am especially indebted to my advisor Prof. Sabine Sielke for her relentless
support, expertise, and valuable criticism in the process of writing this dissertation. My thanks
also go out to Prof. Marion Gymnich whose insightful comments helped my work-in-
progress considerably. Furthermore, I would like to thank my fellow dissertators from the
“Doktorandenkolloquium” but particularly my dear friend Dr. Michael Butter for his help,
insights, and fresh views on my writing.

This dissertation would also never have been written without the generous financial
support granted by the exchange program between the University of Bonn and the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, where I spent two years to research and write my dissertation. I am
immensely grateful for having had this opportunity and I owe my thanks to Prof. Russ
Castronovo from the English Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for
providing valuable criticism and direction in the early stages of writing.

I would also like to express my gratefulness to the people I cherish: my parents and my
sister for their unyielding moral support in this endeavor, and my friends Judith Michel,
Friederike Walter, Oonsie Biggs, Ainka Granderson, Saqib Mustafa, and the Wyman-Kuenzi
family for being my friends!

Finally, and most of all, I want to thank the two persons closest to me: My husband
Genia, for his love, understanding, friendship, and countless hours of babysitting and my
daughter Helene for amazing me with her sweetness and curiosity each and every day.


















5
INTRODUCTION

But with the Paradice method, there would be ninety-nine percent accuracy. Whole
populations could be created that would have pre-selected characteristics. Beauty, of course;
that would be high in demand. And docility: several world leaders had expressed interest in
that. Paradice had already developed a UV-resistant skin, a built-in insect repellant, an
unprecedented ability to digest unrefined plant material. […]
“Excuse me,” said Jimmy. “But a lot of this stuff isn’t what the average parent is looking for
in a baby. Didn’t you get a bit carried away?” (Oryx and Crake 304)


“Didn’t you get a bit carried away?” is the reply of Jimmy, the protagonist of Margaret
Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake (2003), when his friend Crake informs him about the
genetically engineered humanoid breed he has developed in his laboratory. Jimmy’s response
does not just convey skepticism towards new technologies such as genetic engineering but
also communicates a critical view of utopic notions of the body that strike similarities with
totalitarian ideas of the Übermensch. Atwood’s literary response to technological developments
but also utopic notions of the body is, as I will argue here, representative for a whole group
of literary texts that have taken a rather critical stand towards such promises of salvation.
1Despite a brief flare up of distinctly eutopian texts in the 1970s, such as Joanna
2Russ’s feminist utopia The Female Man (1975) or Ernest Callenbach’s environmentalist
Ecotopia (1975), literature in the second half of the twentieth century has increasingly turned
away from the utopian genre and has instead favored texts that are distinctly dystopian or at
least ambivalent. The body has continued to play an important role in the literary imagination
of societies better or worse than ours. While classic utopias have often used the body as an
allegory for the ideal state (e.g. Plato’s ‘organic state,’ Hobbes’s Leviathan, the infamous notion

1 The term ‘eutopian’ is commonly used in secondary literature to signify on a literary text that portrays a world
better than ours. The Greek prefix ‘eu’ means ‘good.’ ‘Eutopian’ is thus used to avoid the ambiguity of the term
‘utopian’ which signifies on both the Greek prefix ‘eu’ (good) and the Greek prefix ‘ou’ meaning ‘not.’ For an
example of the use of ‘eutopian’, see Raffaella Baccolini’s and Tom Moylan’s Dark Horizon’s (2, 3, 5) or Daniel Hager,
“Utopia vs. Eutopia” in Ideas in Liberty, March 2003 (44-46).
2 A comprehensive discussion of the literary history of feminist utopias has been provided by Frances
Bartkowski in Feminist Utopias (1989).
6
3of the Volkskörper in Nazi ideology ), postmodern texts problematize the claims made by
such totalizing images of the body. The gendered, racialized or ‘other’ body has taken center
stage in creating counter-drafts to the assumed ‘normality’ of the white male body. Politically
engaged texts such as Octavia Butler’s Lillith’s Brood (formerly Xenogenesis trilogy 1987, 1988,
1989) map out a dystopian future in which notions of gender and race intersect with
technology and ideology. These representations of the body are, of course, much less
projections of a ‘real’ future than negotiations of contemporary social and political grievances.
They map out the possibilities of what ‘could be’ while criticizing ‘what is.’
But has utopic discourse and particularly utopic discourse about the body really
di