Speculative fiction allows an expanded view of literature and so allows scholars to explore new boundaries in the way words and ideas work. In the titular character of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, the reader sees an expansion of self through liminality while A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick explores its collapse. In order to portray each of these the character examined must move though one seems to move upward and the other downward. This idea of movement is only part of what expands the idea of liminality past the traditional idea of a doorway to create a hallway that the character might traverse on the way from place to place. This is not a redefinition of the term but a revision, a change in the way that we look at the concept as we accept and explore newer genres.

This thesis expands upon Philip K. Dick’s philosophy surrounding ‘androidization’, a process of degradation leading to the devolution of individuals into what he termed as ‘reflex-machines’. Often used interchangeably with Dick’s reference to the human-android, existing criticism has applied the ‘reflex-machine’ label broadly to characters throughout his work. This thesis aims to clarify the implications of such a state through a close reading of his three works, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Maze of Death, and A Scanner Darkly while detailing the processes that comprise the androidization which produces it. In doing so, it proposes that androidization is made up of a series of stages. This distinction is vital for understanding what Dick suggests for the potential recovery of the individual from the state of a reflex-machine and his hope for humanity at large. Split into two parts, this essay first examines the production of the reflex-machine with the support of theories by Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. It then considers the solutions that Dick proposes for the individual undergoing androidization by referencing theories by Carl Jung, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Submitted by Fabiano Vassallo (fabianovassallo2127@gmail.com) on 2017-05-03T18:29:38Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Danilo - Mestrado.pdf: 4582767 bytes, checksum: e268d638f435833cc3b7d2e69a1ac790 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josimara Dias Brumatti (bcgdigital@ndc.uff.br) on 2017-05-29T16:56:54Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Danilo - Mestrado.pdf: 4582767 bytes, checksum: e268d638f435833cc3b7d2e69a1ac790 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-29T16:56:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Danilo - Mestrado.pdf: 4582767 bytes, checksum: e268d638f435833cc3b7d2e69a1ac790 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esse trabalho tem por objetivo analisar como os pensamentos religioso e científico se relacionam nos contos “O demônio familiar”, “Chá verde” e “Carmilla, a Vampira de Karnstein”, do autor irlandês Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, incluídos na coletânea In a Glass Darkly. Nessas narrativas, os representantes da fé e da razão são apresentados com enfoques distintos, o que permite observar as diferentes maneiras como Le Fanu aborda a religião e a ciência. Com base nessas leituras, procura-se observar se o autor dá mais credibilidade a algum desses ramos ou se ambos se mostram ineficazes perante os elementos sobrenaturais. Neste estudo também será levada em consideração a ambientação das narrativas e a quem pertence a voz narrativa de cada um dos relatos, que não permanecem as mesmas em todos os contos. Para fins teóricos, foram utilizados autores que estudaram o gênero do fantástico – Todorov e Roas – e do horror – Carroll / This work aims to analyze how the religious and scientific mentalities relate in “The Familiar”, “Green Tea” and “Carmilla”,short stories included in the collection In a Glass Darkly, written by the Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In these short stories, the representatives of both faith and reason are presented in distinct perspectives, which makes it possible to observe Le Fanu’s different approaches to science and religion in these works. Based on these readings, there is an attempt to observe whether the author gives more credibility to any of these branches of thought or if both prove to be ineffective in dealing with the supernatural events. This study will also take into account the settings of these short stories and their narrative voices, which do not remain the same in all short stories considered here. Authors who worked with the fantastic genre – Todorov and Roas – and with horror – Carroll – provided the theoretical support for this dissertation