Abstract:
This thesis aims to explore how utopian desires re/shape the posthuman, cyberspace and histories by means of information technologies in William Gibson¡¦s Idoru and All Tomorrow¡¦s Parties, which construct a fragmented but subversive power by representing the world in a utopian text that allows the free play of ideology. Gibson uses utopian imagination to cobble together a near future that reflects his concern with information technologies and media over contemporary society. Utopian imaginations on the one hand open up possibilities and transform fixed ideas; on the other, utopian imaginations are easily turned into utopian desires that are subject to manipulation if utopian designers want to sell. I intend to discover how desires to realize a utopia (body, space, and history), which is the ultimate goal of utopian program, are being manipulated by utopian designers. I will mainly adapt and blend Katherine Hayles¡¦s notion of the posthuman perspectives to challenge human possibilities, Donna Haraway¡¦s notion of the cyborg as a blasphemy to Western traditions, Louis Marin¡¦s Disneyland analysis as an apparatus to examine utopic expressions in William Gibson¡¦s textual constructions of utopias, and Walter Benjamin¡¦s notions of material historiography and history¡¦s messianic power in tracing individual memories under a capitalist contextualized History. In Chapter One, I will argue that Idoru as well as Idoru metamorphosize from a dialectical structure into an informational pattern-random structure, from a commodity into a posthuman subjectivity. I will adopt Katherine Hayles¡¦s concept of information narratives in explaining the re/shaping of Rei¡¦s body and her concept of the posthuman to explicate the struggle between the posthuman and the transhuman. In Chapter Two I will argue that cyberspace serves as a utopia that brings forth the desire to transcend the flesh. This utopian desire is a transgressive discourse that breaks up the totality of a closed system. Moreover, cyberspace exposes the feedback looping of the discourses of capitalism and anti-capitalism. Respectively, by the representation of virtual Venice and the Walled City, these two utopias write proposals that project discourses of pleasure and criticism for achieving their programs. I will adopt Donna Haraway¡¦s cyborg ontology in explaining cyberspace as a transgressive discourse and Louis Marin¡¦s Disneyland analysis as an apparatus of utopic expressions and the limits of utopia. Next, in Chapter Three, I shall expose how Harwood the capitalist manipulates the world to fit into his utopian proposal: modernization of the city as a manifestation of a utopia by means of cyberspace as a network that connects people globally. To contravene Harwood, Idoru, Laney and the Walled City denizens collaborate to checkmate Harwood¡¦s king. I will elaborate on the interactions between the universal history and the individual histories based on Walter Benjamin¡¦s concept of history.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0702108-153519 |
| Date | 02 July 2008 |
| Creators | Li, Hui-chun |
| Contributors | Huang Hsin-ya, Rudolphus Teeuwen, Chang, Shu-li |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0702108-153519 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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