‘Statue’s Gate’ by Stephanie Wexler »

« back to home

Technologized Desire
An Interview with D. Harlan Wilson

EIGHT CLOUDS: Thank you very much for the opportunity to conduct this interview. Your literary critique, Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction, was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. I’m excited to hear more about this subject and about you as a writer in general. First of all, could you please explain the significance of the title? In your mind, what does it mean for something to become “technologized“ and what are the implications of this in the case of desire?

D. HARLAN WILSON: Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction was not my original title for the book, which is based on my Ph.D. dissertation. My original title, before I wrote it, was Anatomy of a Scream: Capitalizm, God Complexes and the Cult of the Image in Contemporary Fiction and Film. At this point I had not planned to focus exclusively on science fiction texts. Within a month or so, after I drafted a working introduction and the first chapter on Vanilla Sky, my focus shifted and I revised the title to The Technological Self: Subjectivity and Cultural Pathology in Postmodern Science Fiction. This title stuck until the completion of the manuscript. Then my dissertation advisor suggested that I come up with something snappier and less clunky. So it became Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postmodern Science Fiction. And it wasn’t until I revised the dissertation for publication in book form that I changed Postmodern to Postcapitalist in the subtitle. So, for me, the significance of the title has been slippery, shifting, schized – much like the book itself.

Basically, I try to reevaluate the concepts of selfhood and subjectivity within a technological framework, i.e., within our increasingly science fictionalized world, which, I argue, pathologizes us with more and more efficiency and flair. I equate selfhood directly with technology. In my view, they are interchangeable terms that denote both a literal and metaphorical extension of the body. Subjectivity, then, is the mental realm that “speaks” to the body and tells it how and in what direction to extend its technology/selfhood. Desire exists and operates within the realm of subjectivity, although its effects emerge in technology/selfhood. These are the core dynamics expressed in my title. Using the term “postcapitalist” instead of “postmodern” was not an attempt to introduce a new kind of literature, but to rethink an already existing literature and its potential future. “Postcapitalist” isn’t a neologism. It’s been used before. It doesn’t mean that we’ve moved beyond capitalism and that capitalism is moribund or even dead. Rather, the term indicates an extension and intensification of capitalism, just as many aspects of postmodernism indicate an extension and intensification of modernist praxis.

In another interview in which you discuss Technologized Desire, you were quoted as saying:

“[P]ostcapitalism is inherently troublesome ... combining the prefix ‘post’ with the word ‘capitalism’ is technically absurd. Putting ‘post’ in front of any academic word is technically absurd ... ‘postmodernism’ is ... what? Beyond modernism? That goes for poststructuralism, postcyberpunk, postimpressionism, etc. ... This is further problematized by the notion that, in the twenty-first century, we inhabit a post-postmodernist universe. Where does it end?”

My sentiments exactly. And yet, in Technologized Desire, you rely on the above-mentioned “absurd” terminology to construct your argument, without pausing to question what exactly the terms signify. I imagine providing working definitions for these words and taking the time to clarify your personal interpretation of each one would have required at least as many pages as the book itself. Also, the fact that you originally wrote Technologized Desire as a Ph.D. dissertation goes a long way toward explaining the academic parlance.

You’re right on all counts. I opted not to address my use of the prefix in postcapitalism for the sake of time and space. And like I said, the term had been used before, in several different contexts. I merely explain those contexts without engaging in any sort of linguistic or etymological critique. There is a discourse in place, a conversation that’s been ongoing for years with its own body of language. I wanted to enter that conversation as well as foster it, and I thought using a term like postcapitalism would allow me to do that. There’s no question that my discussion of postcapitalism is limited; in fact, I don’t talk about it in any depth until the book’s short coda. But, for better or for worse, I had always envisioned Technologized Desire as a starting point for more discussion on the issue, by me as well as others. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen.

For someone like me, who doesn’t have any background to speak of in postmodernist (or post-postmodernist) theory, portions of your book are difficult to decode. This begs the question: Who is the intended audience of Technologized Desire? Is it a prerequisite for readers to be familiar with Frederic Jameson, Scott Bukatman, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and the many other critics whose works you cite? Or do you think you could find a way to express your ideas in a more widely accessible vocabulary?

My target audience for Technologized Desire is a decidedly scholarly one. It’s primarily geared toward theorists of postmodernism, science fiction and popular culture. Readers who are familiar with Jameson, Bukatman, Deleuze/Guattari, etc. will get more out of the book and be in a better position to make certain connections. That said, I think it speaks to a wider audience as well. The third chapter on Army of Darkness is the best example. It’s the most intensely theoretical chapter. Yet I’ve spoken to a number of readers who are not theoreticians or critics that have told me how much it resonated with them and made sense. This probably has a lot to do with the film not being taken seriously, by critics, or anyone for that matter, despite being extrapolated from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Raimi simply modernizes Twain’s narrative and sprinkles some zombies into the mix. Viewers are offset by Army of Darkness’s juvenile antics, slapstick routines and cartoon ultraviolence – they don’t think twice about a deeper meaning. The film boasts a large cult following, too, as do its precursors Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. So, if nothing else, I think my analysis has the capacity to catch readers’ attention and prompt them to take a look at the film differently.

I must admit, the Army of Darkness chapter was definitely my favorite. For me, I think it was partially because your choice of subject (what many people justifiably dismiss as a B-grade zombie flick) caught me off guard, and I was intrigued to see how you would handle it. But, more than that, I think that chapter was much more concrete in its analysis than the rest. That is, you pointed to very specific examples for each of your conclusions. I suppose it makes sense. In order to make any literary critique of Army of Darkness seem plausible, you would be forced to take a defensive stance, considering the film’s lowbrow reputation.

As an aside, the chapter on Army of Darkness was originally published in the Journal of Popular Culture. I recall one of the peer-reviewers saying that it was the best critical essay he had ever read. That’s among the most flattering things anybody has ever said about my writing, nonfiction or fiction. I could be wrong, but this praise might stem from the accessibility of the chapter’s theorization.

As for expressing my ideas in a more widely accessible vocabulary – I do this in my fiction, engaging many of the same themes I engage in Technologized Desire, above all pathological subjectivity/selfhood as produced by technolcapitalist media forces.

Although mystified by some of your larger, more abstract conclusions, I thoroughly enjoyed your insights regarding specific works of science fiction, and I appreciated the level of detail to which you critiqued them. These works represent a diverse cross-section of the genre; many of them – William S. Burroughs’ cut-up novels and Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness, for instance – challenge conservative definitions of the science fiction genre itself. By what criteria did you choose the subjects of your analysis?

In a recent review of Technologized Desire in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, somebody critiqued me for the practice of “programmatic criticism.” Meaning I selected texts that best suited my argument. That’s exactly what I did. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do. What the reviewer wanted, I think, or rather what he thought would make for a stronger book, was one that theorized a surplus of texts so as to better understand a particular category, theme, genre, etc. This is done a lot nowadays – far more than it used to be done – and frequently at the expense of careful textual attention. I like doing close readings. It had always been my intention to close read a small (albeit varied) set of texts in order to make a case about a larger issue. At first, I didn’t know that issue would directly regard the science fiction genre, as I mentioned earlier. I knew I wanted to work with Burroughs’ cut-ups and Army of Darkness. The Matrix trilogy, too – when I began writing Technologized Desire, the third film, Revolutions, had just come out and was ripe territory for critical mining. Anyway, the reviewer has a point. Then again, methodology is often subjective and a matter of personal taste. How one unfolds a theory will resonate with some readers and annoy or even piss off other readers. But that’s the nature of writing criticism – to facilitate discussion, i.e., to produce more criticism. This is a good thing.

By pure coincidence, the last book I read before Technologized Desire was Ayn Rand’s (in)famous Atlas Shrugged. Like it or not, her notions regarding capitalist philosophy were on my mind as I read through the radically different cultural theory you (and the critics you quote to support you) present. In fact, although Rand self-identified as a “romantic realist”, Atlas Shrugged is undeniably science fiction as well.

Rand argued that capitalism is the only socio-economic system under which people can be truly free. However, you demonstrate that much of current-day science fiction (and even some vintage sci-fi) has a far bleaker view; often implying that capitalism necessitates a total lack of free will. To draw upon one of your examples, the machines that serve as the primary antagonists in The Matrix were created in a misguided attempt to facilitate a capitalist economy. Therefore, by extension, mankind has been enslaved by the forces of that economy itself. Why do you think the writers you chose to analyze foresee capitalism spiraling down toward inevitable dystopia, as opposed to Rand, who envisioned those same forces creating utopia? What do you see as the central argument for capitalism negating freedom, rather than promoting it?

Most science fictional depictions of capitalist power occur in dystopias. One reason has to do with the nature of utopias. People used to believe that utopias were realizable. Edward Bellamy’s nineteenth century utopian novel Looking Backward, for instance, had a huge following and was the third best-selling book of its time behind Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur. Looking Backward maps an urban bourgeois utopia set in futuristic Boston. Communities of “Bellamites” wanted to implement Bellamy’s ideas into society. It never happened, of course, and following the horrors of World War I and later World War II, utopias were perceived as fantasies rather than potential realities. That’s how we perceive them today. Utopia is a subjective matter. Different people have different ideas of what constitutes a perfect world. On a sheer level of entertainment, we like reading about and watching narratives full of conflict, struggle, suffering, fighting, etc. Narratives in which people get along and are happy and content don’t sell. So there’s a fundamental problem with utopias.

There’s a fundamental problem with capitalism, too, at least in terms of Rand’s perspective. She may be right in suggesting that capitalism is an optimal system. But it’s still a system. Any systemic formation in which subjects are interpellated renders those subjects subjugated. The system of capitalism is contingent upon an illusion of freedom. Subjects must believe that they can achieve the American Dream – i.e., make a lot of money and do things with that money – in order for the system to function. But of course most subjects don’t achieve the American Dream. That’s why it’s a dream. We are born into a particular socioeconomic class, and we die in that socioeconomic class. There are exceptions to this rule, subjects who move between classes. But they merely serve to sustain the illusion – “If soandso did it,” says Blah Blah Nyborg, “then I can do it.” The fluid exceptions are as important as the static masses.

Now that you mention it, in your chapter on The Matrix, you discussed this in detail. The “static masses” are represented by the people unwittingly jacked into the robots’ computer simulation. Neo is the “fluid exception”, and when it’s revealed that even his transcendence was hard-wired into the Matrix, he becomes a metaphor for the illusion of freedom in the capitalist system.

In Technologized Desire, I study how texts extrapolate and critique the capitalist system, portraying capitalism as a machine that continually processes us, revises us, pathologizes us. Certainly Rand’s views would not gel with my “programmatic” analysis. But I’m utterly opposed to Rand on the issue. Capitalism is dystopian by nature. Some people reap the “benefits” of capitalism. Most don’t.

Apart from writing literary critique, you are also a professor of English, editor-in-chief of a literary magazine (The Dream People: A Journal of Irreal Texts) and a fiction writer. Is there any crossover between the themes in Technologized Desire and the stories you write or the classes you teach?

Yes. There’s a lot of crossover. Especially between my novels and literary criticism. All of my novels can be categorized as critifictions that operate both as modes of entertainment and cultural theory. In other words, I try to use fiction as a means of theory-construction, and vice versa. For example, my scikungfi trilogy (Dr. Identity, Codename Prague and The Kyoto Man) theorizes many of the same themes as Technologized Desire. You could say that the scikungfi trilogy is the novelistic version of Technologized Desire. Just as, say, Thus Spake Zarathustra is Nietzsche’s novelistic version of Beyond Good & Evil.

I’ve taught my books before in creative writing and media studies classes, when I first started teaching, but I don’t do it anymore. It feels too self-indulgent, and I don’t like the idea of requiring students to buy my books. Earlier this year, though, I had students in my 19th Century Literature course read the Army of Darkness chapter in Technologized Desire because we watched the film in class after reading Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee. And this spring I’m teaching a fiction writing course in which students will read and critique a story of mine called “Hovercraft.” So I still bring my work into the classroom on occasion. And I always encourage my students not to be afraid to tell me what they think. This usually doesn’t work. The most effective tactic – the only tactic, maybe – is to give students extra credit for critiquing my fiction, or for formulating counter-arguments against my criticism. Then I get all kinds of responses, ranging from “This sucks” to more interesting and compelling theories. The point is, my pedagogy, creative writing and critical scholarship are all plugged in to one another, and they’re better for it.

Why write?

Above all, to cultivate the self. We are defined by language. Engaging with the creative construction of language is the most effective way to develop our personalities, our desires, our intellects, our perceptions, our ideologies, our identities, our ontologies – everything. To wrangle, manipulate and master language is to coordinate and define the contours of selfhood. There is nothing without an acute awareness and learned articulation of language. Too few people realize this. That’s why the world is what it is.

Among other genres, your fiction has been classified by some as “Bizarro”. For those out there in Internetland who might not be familiar with this term, how would you distinguish Bizarro from, say, Absurdism? Do you personally identify as a Bizarro writer?

Bizarro is a term that was created by a group of small presses for use as a promotional tool. It encompasses different kinds of weird writing and speculative fiction. Absurdism is a kind of Bizarro literature. But of course Absurdism came before Bizarro, so that’s a retroactive application.

I’m often referred to as a Bizarro writer, but I don’t really think of myself as one. I don’t think of myself as anything, really. I don’t consciously try to write within a certain category or according to a generic formula. I just write what I want to write. Usually I combine elements of science fiction, horror and fantasy in irreal ways.

From a marketing standpoint, Bizarro seems to be working. There are a growing number of practitioners and readers. I can’t say that I read a lot of Bizarro writing, though. In fact, I’ve read very little.

In your online biography, you are at one point referred to as a “pseudobodybuilder”. What is a pseudobody and how do you build one?

I tacked on the prefix “pseudo” because I’m not a professional bodybuilder and I’m not aspiring to be one. I take vitamins, and I take creatine. Otherwise I don’t take muscle-enhancing supplements, legal or illegal. And I don’t kill myself every time I go to the gym. I’m in good muscular shape, the best of my life, and I work out hard, but not as hard as I should in order to classify myself as a mainline bodybuilder. Hence “pseudo.” But this is subjective. I usually work out with weights and do cardio for approximately 60-90 minutes five days a week, and I’m on a strict high-protein, medium-carbohydrate, low-fat diet that I only violate one or two days a week. Often only one or two meals a week. By some folks’ standards, that’s bodybuilding proper. I guess I just think I could do better. The same goes for writing, incidentally. I write all the time and I publish lots of stories, essays and books, but I don’t make a living writing. So in addition to being a pseudobodybuilder, I’m a pseudowriter. At least when it comes to money.

Hmmm... I guess that would make this a pseudomagazine.

That said, I would encourage anybody who’s interested in serious bodybuilding or writing to do as I do. Just be more conformist and formulaic. There are rules upheld by communities of bodybuilders and writers that I break. If you want to be “successful,” i.e., if you want to turn yourself into the Incredible Hulk and make a living writing, pay close attention to the rules and follow them. In which case, I implore you: don’t do what I do. I have the liberty of making a good upper-middleclass living as an English professor, a liberty that many people in either field don’t have.

What next? I mean this both personally (your plans, works in progress) and globally. That is, as a writer and critic of science fiction, what do you think the future has in store for us? Are you a member of the utopian or the dystopian camp? Or floating somewhere in limbo?

Later this year, I have a collection of stories being published called They Had Goat Heads (Atlatl Press). In 2011, the second installment of my scikungfi trilogy, Codename Prague (Raw Dog Screaming Press), will come out. I’m also working on a “cultography” on John Carpenter’s film They Live for publication in 2012 by Wallflower Press. After that, the third and final scikungfi novel, The Kyoto Man (Raw Dog Screaming Press), will be released.

I’m not a member of any groups. I suppose I would call myself a dystopian. Which is to say, a pessimist. Or, more accurately, a realist.

In the future, our bodies and identities will continue to be more acutely defined by screens, literally and figuratively. Technologies of violence will become more effervescent and stylized. People will get stupider, reading less; selfhood and society will be spoken more and more by images than words. More strip malls. More sitcoms. More flavors of Vitamin Water. More more more.

*

Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Fiction © by D. Harlan Wilson; Published by Guide Dog Books.

Cover image: Kazuhiko Nakamura a.k.a. almacan (image) & Brandon Duncan (text).