BIO
Laurie Tseng is an Associate Professor teaching at English Department of National Taitung University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from English Department of National Taiwan Normal University in 2012. Her dissertation is on Virginia Woolf’s looking-glass complex and the mirror images in her works. Her recent research interest is in Philip K. Dick’s science fictions. Her journal papers include a study on the dualistic element and capitalistic logic in Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (2018), and a study on love and faith in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (2015).
TITLE
"From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to Blade Runner 2049 and Others--Reading Philip K. Dick’s Posthumous/Posthuman Presence in Our Time"
ABSTRACT
Just a quick review of the emergence of Blade Runner as a cult film and the wide array of its sequels and the extended re-creations of the film contributed by its fandom in various forms (including films, animations and comics), and one can see Dick, the author of the original novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, looming as a cult figure in his posthumous presence. Moreover, considering the cultural fever’s genesis from the followers’ collective imaginations, and its capacity to create a fandom that not only outlasts Dick’s mortal life, but also turns the followers/consumers into creators/producers and hence reconstructs the roles of and relations among the entangled bodies, Dick’s posthumous presence may well be treated as what Timothy Morton called a hyperobject, an object that is formed by relations between more than one object and has been so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity. However, while mystifying Dick as a cult figure or a hyperobject in his posthumous presence, the Dick (or Blade Runner) followers in our time may have also paradoxically dismissed him as an absent father, pushing him to the background of the cultural fever against which the related interpretations, representations and even re-creations of the cult figure can be equally justified in the foreground simply because of their actual entanglements with the cultural consumption/production mesh. In this paper, the shift of our focus of attention from Dick to his cultural derivatives, as well as the latter’s legitimacy to speak, will be discussed from the perspective of Donna Haraway’s theories on cyborg and posthuman agency where a more materialistic view of the cultural assemblage is provided and justified. In this light, Dick in his posthumous presence is studied as a posthuman agent both inspiring and powered by the fandom’s ongoing movement. To argue my point, I will elaborate Dick’s novels, particularly those on the issues of postmodern condition, late capitalism and simulacra, and Morton’s and Haraway’s theories on new materialism and posthumanism in the paper. It is expected that while exploring Dick’s novels and their receptions and re-creations in our time from the perspective of posthuman agency, a better understanding of our posthuman living condition can be reached.
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
Laurie Tseng is an Associate Professor teaching at English Department of National Taitung University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from English Department of National Taiwan Normal University in 2012. Her dissertation is on Virginia Woolf’s looking-glass complex and the mirror images in her works. Her recent research interest is in Philip K. Dick’s science fictions. Her journal papers include a study on the dualistic element and capitalistic logic in Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (2018), and a study on love and faith in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (2015).
TITLE
"From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to Blade Runner 2049 and Others--Reading Philip K. Dick’s Posthumous/Posthuman Presence in Our Time"
ABSTRACT
Just a quick review of the emergence of Blade Runner as a cult film and the wide array of its sequels and the extended re-creations of the film contributed by its fandom in various forms (including films, animations and comics), and one can see Dick, the author of the original novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, looming as a cult figure in his posthumous presence. Moreover, considering the cultural fever’s genesis from the followers’ collective imaginations, and its capacity to create a fandom that not only outlasts Dick’s mortal life, but also turns the followers/consumers into creators/producers and hence reconstructs the roles of and relations among the entangled bodies, Dick’s posthumous presence may well be treated as what Timothy Morton called a hyperobject, an object that is formed by relations between more than one object and has been so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity. However, while mystifying Dick as a cult figure or a hyperobject in his posthumous presence, the Dick (or Blade Runner) followers in our time may have also paradoxically dismissed him as an absent father, pushing him to the background of the cultural fever against which the related interpretations, representations and even re-creations of the cult figure can be equally justified in the foreground simply because of their actual entanglements with the cultural consumption/production mesh. In this paper, the shift of our focus of attention from Dick to his cultural derivatives, as well as the latter’s legitimacy to speak, will be discussed from the perspective of Donna Haraway’s theories on cyborg and posthuman agency where a more materialistic view of the cultural assemblage is provided and justified. In this light, Dick in his posthumous presence is studied as a posthuman agent both inspiring and powered by the fandom’s ongoing movement. To argue my point, I will elaborate Dick’s novels, particularly those on the issues of postmodern condition, late capitalism and simulacra, and Morton’s and Haraway’s theories on new materialism and posthumanism in the paper. It is expected that while exploring Dick’s novels and their receptions and re-creations in our time from the perspective of posthuman agency, a better understanding of our posthuman living condition can be reached.
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
