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Technodemons of the Digital Self 233As Roy Batty arrives in the film to torture the Chinese biomechanicwho designed the replicants’ eyes, he utters some lines of poetry: “Fiery theAngels fell / Deep thunder rolled around their shores / Burning with thefires of Orc.” 136 The reference is to William Blake’s “America: A Prophecy”(1793), an apocalyptic poem allegorising the battle for American independence.Batty’s quotation, however, is significantly altered; the original Blakereads “the Angels rose” – not “fell.” 137 Batty is actually quoting Miltonthrough Blake. 138 There is no immediate plot rationale why Batty shouldnot have stayed with Blake (a rebel who regarded the authority of State andKing with the same dislike he later devoted to Church and God). Thechange of wording is important as it is yet another example of how demonicambivalence is produced in Blade Runner; Batty is not necessarily arighteous rebel, he has also destructive and demonic potential – and theambiguous combination of both makes his character the more interesting.Rosemary Jackson has written about the relativity of evil, how shifts incultural fears and values also modify the use of the demonic. 139 The latetwentieth century has witnessed renewed attention to animation narratives;as Lois Rostow Kuznets writes in her When Toys Come Alive (1994), numerousstories about living toys, automatons, and cyborgs are capable ofembodying “human anxiety about what it means to be ‘real’ – an independentsubject or self rather than an object or other submitting to the gaze ofmore powerfully real and potentially rejecting live beings.” 140 Demonic imageryis not immune to cultural change: omnipresent technology may beassuming the role which terrifying animals or demonic monsters used tooccupy. 141 The relatively permissive character of contemporary society may136 Blade Runner 0:26.137 “Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll’d / Around their shores,indignant burning with the fires of Orc; / And Boston’s Angel cried aloud as they flewthro’ the dark night” (Blake 1982, 116). – The impulse towards Blake came from directorRidley, but David Peoples chose the lines and rewrote them to suit Batty’s character(Sammon 1996, 134). See also Wood (1986, 185) for a political interpretation of this detail.138 Some relevant sections from the first book of Paradise Lost (1:34, 36-8): “Th’ infernalSerpent [...] his Pride / Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host / Of RebelAngels” – and from the second book (2:266-67): “And with the majesty of darknessround / Covers his Throne; from whence deep thunders roar.” And (2:771-3): “downthey fell, / Driven headlong from the Pitch of Heaven, down / Into this Deep […]”. (Aninteresting analysis of the intertextual relationships is the article by David Desser, “TheNew Eve: The Influence of Paradise Lost and Frankenstein on Blade Runner” [Kerman1991, 53-65].)139 Jackson 1981, 52, 54.140 Kuznets 1994, 2.141Michael Jackson writes in his article “The Man Who Could Turn Into an Elephant:Shape-shifting among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone”: “Just as images of were-animals areconditioned by the ubiquitous dialectic of village and bush in preindustrial societies, soimages of bionic people, androids and robots reflect the human-machine dialectic thatshapes both mental and bodily consciousness in industrial societies.” He also refers tothe famous case of “Joey: a ‘Mechanical Boy’” (reported by Bruno Bettelheim in Scientific
234Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsalso account for the change in the dynamics of the demonic conflict – it isnot so much characterised by the struggle of repressed instinctual materialfor recognition, as it is a means to process uncertainties about the self, its“reality.” The digital selves of “cyberpunk” science fiction invoke theirdemons precisely from those abysses.Rachael (Sean Young) from Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott).© Warner Bros., 1982.American [1959; 300:3]), who felt completely alienated from his humanity and identifiedhimself with a machine. (In Jackson - Karp 1990, 59-77.)
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Note on this editi
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TAMPERE STUDIES INLITERATURE AND TE
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Tampere Studies in Literature and T
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ments, and also such further lines
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IllustrationsCover: “Possessed Re
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The BeginningsAnd Jesus asked him,
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The Beginnings 3mons form an import
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The Beginnings 5negative, demonic a
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The Beginnings 7chapter four), but
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The Beginnings 9scious conflict, fo
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The Beginnings 11that is produced o
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The Beginnings 13The History of the
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The Beginnings 15emphasised that su
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The Beginnings 17turalism,” but i
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The Beginnings 19the materials I ha
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1. The Ancestry of the DemonicÑH.
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 25ness
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 27scrib
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 29tic o
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 31It sh
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 33of th
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 35able
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 37The f
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 39and t
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 41- in
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 43Chris
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 45[…]
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 47of th
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 49serpe
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 51tween
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2. The Demonic in the SelfBut ancie
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The Demonic in the Self 55Individua
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The Demonic in the Self 57should be
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The Demonic in the Self 59tack in t
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The Demonic in the Self 61A number
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The Demonic in the Self 63tion. 36
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The Demonic in the Self 65the nethe
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The Demonic in the Self 67sciousnes
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The Demonic in the Self 69influence
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The Demonic in the Self 71LEADER:Yo
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The Demonic in the Self 73Particula
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The Demonic in the Self 75NIETZSCHE
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The Demonic in the Self 77ing into
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The Demonic in the Self 79Nietzsche
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3. Unravelling the Demonic TextThe
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 83in o
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 85othe
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 87stru
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 89ies,
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 91open
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 93ill-
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 95both
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 97woul
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 99demo
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 101Thi
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 103tak
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 105“
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 107wor
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 109Bot
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PART II
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114Demonic Texts and Textual Demons
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The EpilogueIf there are answers to
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BibliographyA note on this bibliogr
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Index2001: A Space Odyssey; 207abje
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