The interaction between human beings and intelligent machines has challenged the traditional understanding of what it means to be "human." In his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, phillip k. dick rethinks human identity through the positioning of human beings within a technologically mediated reality that displaces the biological body and the spontaneity of human sensation. Written in 1968, dick's novel anticipates the effect of a technologically mediated culture on the formation of a posthuman identity. dick's fictional juxtaposition of the human being and the organically anthropomorphic android complicates conventional implications of embodiment. Androids are physically indistinguishable from human beings and the only identifiable difference is the human ability to feel empathy, which is encountered prosthetically through an "empathy box." In Do Androids Dream? the body is bled of any definitively human quality while human internality is mediated by the machine. Using dick's novel as an illustration of the process of human redefinition, "Cyborg Bodies and Digitized Desires: Posthumanity and phillip k. dick" argues that the posthuman state is a disembodied condition informed by what is deemed "digitized desires."

Cyborg Bodies and Digitized Desires: Posthumanity and phillip k. dick

Jennifer Attaway

<1> It was not long ago that one could walk into a coffee shop and expect to see bodies intently bent over books and notepads or expressive faces and arms engaged in an animated exchange. Times have changed. On a routine visit to my friendly neighborhood coffee house a few months back, I stumbled into a strange and symbolic scene. Humanity was hiding behind seductively luminous Apples: Gateways into the information superhighway of Good and Evil. In order to encounter what is recognizably human, I had to look beyond the intimidating interfaces of technology. This got me to thinking…

Figure 1: Cybercafe

<2> The intercourse between human beings and intelligent machines has challenged the traditional understanding of what it means to be "human." Technology's pervasive and penetrating presence has resulted in a posthuman condition: a state in which there is a continuous collapsing of man and machine. Throughout his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, phillip k. dick rethinks human identity through the positioning of human beings within a technologically mediated reality that displaces the biological body and the spontaneity of human sensation. Written in 1968, dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? anticipates contemporary critical conversations concerning the formation of the posthuman subject. dick's anthropomorphic android and various imaginative technologies provide fictional figures through which the problematic nature of posthuman embodiment and desire can be contemplated.

<3> Do Androids Dream? takes place in the disastrous wake of the World War Terminus. No one remembers why the war happened or who, if anyone, won, but toxic dust lingers as an insistent and deadly reminder. Animals are dying off, the sun no longer shines, and most of humankind is leaving the lonely planet for a new start on Mars. As the earthly state of affairs has become increasingly grim, the U.N. has instituted a law that issues each new emigrant a humanoid robot model of their choice: "That had been the ultimate incentive of emigration; android servant as carrot, radioactive fallout as stick" (16). Physically indistinguishable from human beings, the androids satisfy a strange need for the colonists. "It's hard a hard thing to explain," muses Mrs. Klugman from New New York, Mars, "Having a servant you can depend on in these troubled times…I find it reassuring" (18). The colonists find that being granted a little bit of power over their robotic counterparts gives them a peculiar sense of dignity in a time when spirits are generally low. Although androids are considered to be comforting and useful to the people on Mars, their presence is feared and forbidden on Earth.

<4> Rick Deckard, the main character in Do Androids Dream?, is a bounty hunter. It is his responsibility to locate, identify and terminate, or, in modified terms, "retire" earthbound androids. Distinguishing the difference between humanoid robots and human beings is no easy task, and Deckard is forced to face the blurred boundaries between man and his technological creations. In an essay entitled "The Android and the Human," dick explains the way in which technology animates the environment: "In a very real sense our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi-alive, and in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves….Underneath the metal hull is a heart such as we ourselves have" (184-185). According to dick, the creative energy that fuels technological invention is analogous to the life force pumping through the hearts of human beings. Taking this into consideration, Do Androids Dream? presents an interesting segue into a discussion of posthuman subjectivity by complicating the distinction between humanity its technological surroundings. "The posthuman subject," according to N. Katherine Hayles, "is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-information entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction" (3). It is the bounty hunter's responsibility to police these boundaries. Deckard's colleague, Phil Resch, aptly describes their position within the society: "…we stand between the Nexus-6 and mankind, a barrier which keeps the two distinct" (141). Deckard's challenge is found in the fact that these barriers, as Hayles asserts, are under constant construction. Rick Deckard continuously asks himself, "What is human?" In the age of information and technology, definitions are slippery at best.

<5> Flesh and blood are customarily characteristic of organic life forms. However, in the year 2021, scientific advancement has made it possible to build a robot out the same biological matter that humans are made. Human embodiment, as it is classically understood, is contested by the anthropomorphic android as the biological body is bled of any human significance. Descriptions of bodies throughout the narrative further complicate the distinctions between bodies made and born. "Human" flesh is frequently masked by its material surroundings and described as "sharply dressed" or clutching the handles of a briefcase or the Empathy box. Android bodies, however, are lingered over with meticulous attention to detail. Not only is the android described with explicit bodily language, but android bodies are also depicted as being particularly expressive. Tears flow in response to sensual arousal and troubled looks pass over android faces when they are perplexed. There is one particular instance in which the body language of the android suggests that it is far more human than human. After escaping "retirement," Pris Stratton is separated from her fellow androids. Pris settles into an abandoned and dilapidated apartment building whose only other occupant is a sub-human "chickenhead" named J.R. Isindore. (Due to their mutual lack of acceptance, not to mention Isindore's inability to distinguish an android from a human, Pris and J.R. become friends.) Isindore and Pris are having dinner when they are interrupted by a knock at the door. Although the knock is accompanied with an announcement of her friend's arrival, Pris becomes frightened that the bounty hunter has found her. Pris' fear and hope show in her face as she looks to Isindore for reassurance: "Her eyes, wild and powerful, fixed themselves beseechingly on him, as if praying to him to make it true" (152). When Pris and her friend Irmgard catch sight of each other, Irmgard's "face dissolved in rapture" (153) and the two androids scramble into each other's arms. This kind of physical articulation of joy and affection is not seen between humans. Androids participate in a more traditionally physical human expression of affection while humans touch each other through a technologically mediated experience.

<6> dick embraces the critical potential of the mythic cyborg through his anthropomorphic android. Donna Haraway's notion of the cyborg is useful when applied to a discussion of dick's contestation of boundaries and the construction of the posthuman subject. According to Haraway, the cyborg is not merely a fantastic phenomenon that occupies the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. It is a "powerful social and scientific reality." Haraway explains that, "(l)ike any important technology, a cyborg is simultaneously a myth and a tool, a representation and an instrument, a frozen moment and a motor of social and imaginative reality…The cyborg is the figure born of the interface of automaton and autonomy" (1). dick's androids are an embodiment of the interface between automaton and autonomous beings. Occupying a borderland of blurred distinctions, these renegade robots have a mind of their own: "Do androids dream? Rick asked himself. Evidently; that's why they occasionally kill their employers and flee here" (184). "Androidization," according to dick, "requires obedience and predictability" ("The Android and the Human" 191). In Do Androids Dream?, the androids are defiant and unpredictable. Like humans, androids long for liberty.

Figure 2: Android Face

<7> Although the androids possess fleshly bodies that are animated with passions and affections that their human counterparts do not appear to have, there is a constant reaffirmation through language that they are not alive. After Deckard has sexual intercourse with Rachel Rosen, an android who is pretending to help him in an attempt to save her friends, his conflicted position as to the humanness of the androids is exacerbated. He transcended boundaries. He ventured too close and is no longer a distanced observer. As Rachel emerges from a post coital shower, she appears cheerful and radiant and "as human as any girl he had known" (196). Deckard's intimate encounter Rachel not only complicates his understanding of the android, but it inspires a traditional kind of romantic love. Warmed by the afterglow of their encounter, Rick divulges a blissful fantasy to Rachel: "If you weren't an android, if I could legally marry you, I would" (197). When Rachel explains that this was not the first time she had been with a bounty hunter, Deckard becomes a jealous lover and asks her how many times she has done this. Deckard's struggle to consider Rachel as an inanimate object is revealed in the language used to describe her response: "She -- or rather -- it nodded. 'Yes, nine times'" (199). This Freudian slippage occurs throughout the text as an indication of the ambiguousness of the android's subject position. Deckard instinctively responds to the androids as he would any human being, using the pronouns "he" and "she" to describe them. Earlier in the novel, Deckard is given a poop sheet describing "the man -- or rather the andy -- "(86) he is assigned to kill -- or rather -- retire. Once again, Rick catches himself and reestablishes the appropriate status of the android through objectified language. dick uses language to enact the process of prescribing subjective positions through ideological incantation. This literary tactic enables dick to critique the ways identities are placed upon individuals and are manifested according to an unnatural law.

<8> In a society where human beings and humanoid robots are virtually indistinguishable, it is the ability to experience empathy that separates man from machine. Popular belief in dick's dystopia characterizes androids as incapable of feeling any kind of affection or identification with another. However, there are instances in the narrative that suggest otherwise. Aware of her supposed empathetic inadequacies, Rachel Rosen attempts to describe to Deckard what she feels for Pris Stratton, an android of the same model type. Rachel and Deckard discuss her strange and purportedly impossible association: "'You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?' 'Empathy,' he said. 'Something like that. Identification; there goes I'" (189). Rachel's self-reflection forces Deckard to acknowledge the possibility that androids do, in fact, experience empathy. When Deckard "retires" Irmgard and Roy Baty, he sees first hand the capability of androids to experience empathy, or more specifically, love. Before shooting Irmgard, Rick apologizes: "I'm sorry Mrs. Baty" (223). At this moment, Rick acknowledges not only the humanlike vitality of his victim, but the relationship she had to another as it is indicated through the title, "Mrs." When he shoots Irmgard, Roy lets out a cry of anguish to which Deckard responds, "Okay, you loved her" (223). Deckard acknowledges the empathetic nature of the androids and their love for each other, but he continues to kill them. This heartless human action illustrates the problematic nature of humanity in the world of Do Androids Dream? Although empathy is the definitive characteristic of human beings, it is exhibited more explicitly in the android community.

Figure 3: Androids in Heat

<9> The only way in which Deckard can identify an android is through the Voigt-Kamff Empathy Test. The Empathy Test, developed by the Pavlov institute, monitors the "empathetic response" of the test subject. Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in the area of human and animal responses to the environment. Pavlov's studies investigated the way in which environmental stimuli inspired biological reflexes in animals. After much experimentation, Pavlov found that human beings and animals could be conditioned to respond to particular aspects of their environment in a physiological way, and his ground breaking discovery led to significant progress in the adjustment of paranoid responses. Interesting enough, the device used to detect the distinction between the human and the android measures responses to a series of questions through the monitoring of capillary and pupil dilation. Both measured responses are physiological functions. Dick's subtle reference to Pavlov suggests that the "empathetic response" according to which human beings are defined in this dystopic society is actually the capacity to be physiologically programmed. The ability to produce a conditioned response indicates the test subject's humanity. Unlike androids, human beings can be trained. (Incidentally, this interesting anecdote informs my later discussion of "digitized desire.")

<10> The "rule of life" as proclaimed by Mercer is "You shall kill only the killers" (31). This cryptic creed was established during the fist year that Mercerism came into existence. Like most doctrines, Mercerism leaves room for interpretation. It was never made particularly clear who "The Killers" might be, and as a result, "the Mercerite was free to locate the nebulous presence of The Killers wherever he saw fit" (32). In other words, it is up to the individual to create his or her own enemy. "The Killers," according to Rick Deckard, are escaped androids. This makes his job much easier. The Voigt-Kamff Empathy Test used to identify androids employs a series of questions that are informed by the moralistic ideals of Mercerism. These questions are composed according to Mercer's view that living things are too sacred to be used for human consumption. To the contemporary reader, however, many of the scenarios that are supposed to inspire horror from the average "human" are everyday occurrences, such as calfskin wallets, boiling lobsters and fur coats. There are many human beings today who are revolted by the thought of these animalistic indulgences; however dick's point is that the reader would not typically respond with the appropriate "human" horror. In this case, literary trickery interrogates the possible inhumanity of the reader. This is a classic dickian tactic. Do Androids Dream?, like many of dick's novels, opens a space for exploration that leads to an annihilation of assumptions, forcing the reader to realign their reality and reconsider their position within it.

<11> Mercerism is the ideological institution that promotes the value of animals and encourages identification and suffering with other human beings through "fusion." "Fusion" is an exclusively "human" experience that is mediated by the technologies of the Empathy Box. The Empathy Box could be compared to the modern day PC. It is a site of communion, a way in which human beings merge into a virtual embrace. For members of the human collective following the teachings of Mercer, the Empathy Box serves as a spiritual prosthesis. Isindore describes the Empathy Box as "an extension of your body; it's the way you touch other human beings, it's the way you stop being alone" (66). Ironically enough, the Empathy Box often replaces actual human interaction. When Deckard surprises his wife, Iran, with a pet goat, she immediately runs to the phone to call a friend and then over to the Empathy Box to give thanks to Mercer. Instead of hugging her husband, Iran holds fast to the handles of the mechanical box in order to pour her joy out into a simulated spiritual experience: "She became involved almost at once. Rick stood holding the phone receiver, conscious of her mental departure. Conscious of his own aloneness" (176). While Iran is engaged in a simulated community, Rick is left standing alone. Interestingly enough, the androids simply cannot make sense of this cultural practice. They much prefer one on one interaction. And that is why they are considered to be "inhuman."

<12> In addition to addressing the problematic nature of human identity, dick raises questions about desire. In Do Androids Dream? the technologically and ideologically mediated experiences of humans have diluted their desire to a point that there is no such thing as individual expression of desire. In "The Android and the Human," dick further addresses this problem:

Free will for us -- that is, when we feel desire, when we are conscious of wanting to do what we do -- may be even for us an illusion…And -- here is a thought not too pleasing -- as the external world becomes more animate, we may find that we -- the so called humans -- are becoming, and may to a great extent always have been, inanimate in the sense that we are led, directed by built-in tropisms, rather than leading. (187)

It is dick's grave concern that human beings are loosing their characteristic free will and the ability to express the individual self due to mediated experience. dick's criticism of the loss of human desire, or freedom, is particularly expressed within the narrative through the use of the Penfield Mood Organ. The name of the device is suggestive for two reasons. First of all, the brand name is synonymous with its mention, which alludes to the capitalistic nature of this sensation-synthesizing device. Secondly, the term "mood organ" insists that the technological tool is a prosthetic that displaces the organic organ that might control these kinds of responses naturally.

<13> Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? opens with "(a) merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm form the mood organ" (3). The narrative is initiated by an artificial awakening of human consciousness. Rick Deckard starts his day "well disposed toward the world" (3), setting D, which he had chosen months before hand. The Penfield Mood Organ is a way in which human interaction with the social conditions might be mediated. The mood organ is the emotional day planner of dick's narrative. According to the prescribed setting, the individual wakes in a state already chosen. There is no genuine inspiration for one's mood. Human behavior becomes predictable as they are set on a program of mental states and emotions. Emotion and sensation are not inspired through interaction with the world, but rather put into action before any conflict takes place. Iran contests this kind of predetermined happiness and chooses to dial in states of depression and despair because she finds this to be a more realistic approach. When Rick informs Iran that she is slow getting out of bed because she has set her mood organ "too low," her response is: "I don't want to be awake"(3). On the first page of the novel, dick brings into light one of his major concerns: that human beings have become so manipulated by outside forces that they have no sense of inspiration or organic desire. What one wants or desires is no longer taken into consideration. The concern here is that one can appropriately assimilate into the environment without too much thinking. When Rick and Iran start to argue about her decisions to skew the whole function of the organ, Iran once again states a position of resistance: "to dial right now is the most alien drive I can imagine"(4). The Penfield Mood Organ serves as an inspiration for my term, "digitized desire."

<14> In order to define "digitized desire," it must first be contemplated as two separate terms. To "digitize" information is to extract it from its context and then convert it into a series of numbers or digits that can be understood by a computer. Digitized data it is stripped of any narrative nuances and reduced to numeric abstraction. Incidentally, "digitalization" is a treatment for heart disease in which the patient is administered dosages of the heart-stimulating plant, digitalis. "Digitize," as it is used in the expression "digitized desire," is haunted by the provocative potential of "digitalize"; insinuating a prescriptive stimulation of the heart. Desire is a wish aroused by an intimate engagement with the world. What one desires is an articulation of individuality. In Do Androids Dream?, human beings do not experience the world firsthand. Physical contact is replaced by technological mediation and truth is produced through a circulation of hearsay. Rick Deckard "…let the information remain secondhand; like most people he did not care to experience it directly" (5). When human beings do not interact with the world directly, desire becomes diluted. It is from the context of secondhand experience that "digitize desire" emerges in an effort to describe the prescriptive quality of desire as it is encountered in Do Androids Dream?. By pressing a series of buttons on the Penfield Mood Organ, one can dial up any kind of mood from "business like attitude" to "ecstatic sexual bliss." If one does not feel like dialing, there is always the desire to dial, setting 3. Reduced to a series of numbers, desire is digitized and is no longer expressive of the individual.

<15> Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? presents an interesting fictional context within which posthuman embodiment and desire can be discussed. It is a playful interrogation of reality as it is altered by the interaction between man and machine. According to dick, reality is a matter of subjective perspective: "Everything is true. Everything anybody has ever thought" (227). dick does not provide any authorative answers to the questions he poses. For example, Rick Deckard struggles throughout the novel to delineate the distinction between androids and humans only to be left in a state of destabilizing ambiguity. After retiring the last android, Deckard receives a call from the main office informing him that he will be issued a citation "[b]ecause [he] retired those six -- " (232) androids or humans? The conclusion is interrupted by Deckard's statement, "I know what I did" (232). As to Deckard's final position, dick leaves the reader dangling. In her discussion of the development of the posthuman subject, Katherine Hayles mentions that "literary texts often reveal, as scientific works cannot, the complex cultural, social, and representational issues tied up with conceptual shifts and technological innovations" (24). In Do Androids Dream? dick addresses complex issues surrounding the (re)definition of human embodiment and desire as they are complicated by technological advancement.

Works Cited

dick, phillip k. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968.

dick, phillip k. "The Android and the Human (1972)." The Shifting Realities of phillip k dick. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995. 183-210.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Gray, Chris Hables. The Cyborg Handbook. New York: Routlege, 1995.