AMERICAN LIT STUDIES LEVANDER

The Posthuman Turn 461
nothing short of a pseudo - religious reincarnation. Gibson ’ s description of the virtual
matrix clearly marks it as the successor to the science fi ction galaxies of old and sets
it apart as the realm of a higher, extraordinary, almost transcendent experience. The
software engineer Thomas A. Anderson (aka Neo), played by Keanu Reeves in the
fi rst Matrix movie, has a similar experience of reincarnation and recognition when a
band of rebels decouples him from the machine that keeps all humans connected to
the matrix in this vision of the future, and decants him, in a process that visually
resembles a literal birth, from the organic fl uids in which his body has been preserved.
Yet all of Gibson ’ s assumptions are reversed in the Matrix scenario: the realm of the
virtual is indistinguishable from ordinary experience and accessible to all humans
– indeed, inescapable for most. Reincarnation here means becoming conscious again
of the organic realities of a body that for all practical purposes had been relegated to
the side in Gibson ’ s universe; it implies turning away from the lures of the virtual
and encountering the “ desert of the real. ” Some critics have argued that precisely for
this reason, the core philosophy of the fi rst Matrix fi lm is better described as a return
to old - fashioned humanism than any kind of posthumanism (Bartlett and Byers).
Maybe so – but the fascination of viewing the movie lies not in the real world the
fi lm ideologically endorses but in the virtual realm it ideologically rejects, with the
fantastic possibilities for perception, movement, and action that its purely simulated
nature enables. By presenting this virtual realm as more adventurous and visually
attractive than the devastated physical world, the Matrix movies do line up with the
posthuman imaginary of the cyberpunk universe.
The cyborg moment, then, marks out a rather different set of posthuman possibilities
than the alien moment did. The encounter with the alien in speculative fi ction
usually functions as a fi rst impulse or as the decisive step in humankind ’ s movement
toward some kind of greater unity – minimally, global governance, but, in the more
radical versions, the emergence of some kind of overmind, collective consciousness,
or biologically and psychologically distinct form of species community. The cyborg
moment, by contrast, emphasizes the potential for posthuman transformation that
arises at the moment of fi ssion, either of community or of self. What the various
modes of technological self - enhancement as well as the realm of virtuality offer is the
possibility, even for a single individual, to live more than one life, assume more than
one identity, and belong to various and contradictory communities. In typical postmodernist
manner, this fracturing of community and self is not usually rejected as a
“ fl aw ” in the self (as Jameson interprets it, wrongly in my view) but celebrated as a
transformation into a new mode of human existence.
This is particularly clear in Sterling ’ s novel Schismatrix (1985), which brings
together in its very title the ideas of fracture and new patterns. In Sterling ’ s future,
humankind has spread across the solar system, but does not live on other planets so
much as in artifi cial habitats that are frequently prone to breakdown. Humans are
divided between the Mechanists, who seek life extension by means of mechanical
body prostheses and medico - physical technologies, and the Shapers, who procreate
by carefully selected gene lines and psychologically condition their offspring. Under