Autopoiesis, humanism and the posthuman in John Milton's Paradise lost and Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Abstract

Technological developments in the twentieth century have placed traditional Western humanist conceptions of the human under question. Machines are modifying every aspect of contemporary reality, including the human body and human subjectivity. One outcome of this modification is a new conception of the human, which cultural and scientific critic Katherine Hayles has labelled the "posthuman". A comparison between the two aforementioned conceptions of subjectivity provides an interesting overview of Western culture and where it may be headed. Exemplary texts for such a comparison are John Milton's Paradise Lost and P. K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the former being located at the beginning of the Modern period, and the latter at the end of it. Furthermore, each writer incorporates a conflict over what it means to be human at the centre of his work. Reading these texts within the context of Hayles' work How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, in which she examines the posthuman subject and its relation to liberal humanism, places the discussion in a postmodern perspective. Hayles' reading of autopoietic theory in particular also provides a way of analysing the power struggles that both Milton's and Dick's works are concerned with; these struggles are centred on creation and the question of the creators' authority over their creations, whether it is the case of God, the Fallen Angels and Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, or human beings and androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Issues of knowledge, memory and perception will also be central to the discussion of human and posthuman subjectivity, as the way in which the mind processes information and generally operates is central to the subject's sense of self and its relation to its environment. An examination of Dick's Valis trilogy and three of his short stories and Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner - based on Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - to the analysis, will extend and contextualise the comparison between the two main literary works.