Free from Our (de-constructed) Angels

It seems to this blogger that our last Topias class discussion was quite full of interesting interrogations of the works at hand, with examinations and deconstructions of nearly every potential topic: capitalism, classism, feminism, ecocriticism, genderism, racism, and more. Yet, I say NEARLY every potential topic, for it seems one sub-ject seemed to fly (almost imperceptibly) below the radar. That topic/subject/(no.some)thing? As Thomas Dolby would say…

SCIENCE!

Even the remarks made about science as related to our “science fiction” served, not to deconstruct or interrogate, but more to reify science as a static, fixed, totalizing, objective truth. Comments like, “the fact that Herland depends on parthenogenesis makes this novel un-scientific” seem to allude to a universal, immutable, higher standard by which ideas are measured and found either unacceptable or acceptable. We can’t be blamed, critics though we be, for science has been ensconced in a position of authority that is higher that beatification, and perhaps approaching deification. We come by our acceptance of science as something other than “fiction” honestly. You could say, we were "blinded by science."

However, a study of the Rhetorics of Science problematizes our acquiescence to Science as Objective truth. Readings from Kuhn or Latour or Feyerabend make the rhetoric of science to become “visible,” giving us a behind-the-curtain look at how the magic is made – or how the “knowledge” of science is “made.” We may legitimately ask whether oxygen was “discovered” or whether it was “constructed.” (Of course the same cold be asked about the “discovery” of America.)

Our hands-off approach to science has its results. Uncritical veneration of science produces a “brave new world” where the only rescue is the hope that “the machine stops.” Yes, this is the (dystopic) Kingdom of Science, and its co-ruling cohort, Technology. The dystopias of Huxley’s Brave New World and Forster’s The Machine Stops are worlds tamed by, re-created by, ruled by, and watched by, the all-knowing, all-seeing Science and Technology.

In his book, Ecocriticism, Greg Garrard devotes a chapter to “Wilderness” in which he proposes that “The idea of wilderness, signifying nature in a state uncontaminated by civilization, is the most potent construction of nature available to New World environmentalism.” As a corollary, I propose that the dystopias of Huxley and Forster are precisely the opposite of wilderness. That is to say – they represent worlds that are, or at least seek to be, constructed worlds of (and by) Science and Technology uncontaminated by nature or wilderness.

SciFi theorist Alicia Hatter raised the question about the connection amongst the names Huxley uses to represent the ruling paradigm of Brave New World. “What connections do these disparate names have with your idea of Science and Technology as the new deities of Huxley’s dystopia?” Indeed the names mentioned range from Freud to Ford to Marx and beyond, but there is a common element that binds them together – their position as unquestioned, totalizing authorities. Peter Firchow, in The End of Utopia, points out that “All these forces share the claims of ‘totality,’ to a final knowledge… All are fundamentally materialist….”

These dystopias have enthroned Science and Technology as God and King. The new ruler sets out to accomplish that bureau-lutionary process by which the ruling paradigm insulates itself from other ideas. (This same bureau-lutionary process is what creates “normal science,” and privileges ruling paradigms in theory, politics, and any number of other systems.) This process insures unity in the topia it rules. This unity is what Kenneth Burke might call a “congregation by segregation.” Oppositions to the throne (heretics) are segregated, excluded, marginalized, ghetto-ed, interred, but…. still existing in the ex-stasis, waiting.

Those not cast out to reservations, made “homeless,” etc. are confined within a certain prescribed range of motion. This range is limited spatially, intellectually and spiritually. For example, lectures and learning and discussion are seemingly limitless in quantity, but not in direction or intent. Consider the description of learning (which rings eerily prescient of post-modern theory) in The Machine Stops:

"Beware of first- hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist… Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought LafcadioHearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution… there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free -- From taint of personality"

Beatirce Battaglia refers to this passage (without crediting this blogger, mind you) as she describes how the ruling system allows a motion of ideas that is “merely circulation” or the “illusion of movement,” but not real intellectual movement (Histories of the Future, 61).

“Seraphically Free.” Free LIKE an angel? Or more fitting – free FROM angels? Delicious. A pogrom against angels. Rich. The ostracizing of seraphim. After all, if you let angels rush in… will the fools be far behind?

How can such a ruling paradigm be overthrown? What is the “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” in these dystopias?

It begins when one of the excluded, marginalized savages has a “discovery” that is dangerous to the system.

“He had discovered Time and Death and God.”
(Huxley, Brave New World)

Go ahead, you know you want to...