NYRSF February 2013 Issue 294

by Kevin J Maroney

  SF is rife with AIs, androids, and robots. While the definition of robots has changed and spawned different variations of human merged with or imitated by machine, Asimov has most likely had the widest influence in shaping perceptions of artificial humans. However, more often than not, stories of robotic females tend to be sexualized. Disappointing but true, and I mentioned a few of them in my review of The Deep (NYRSF 280). Rather than rehash or repeat examinations of R. U. R. and The Truth Quotient with the literature they spawned and were generated from respectively, I would rather look at the disparity between the two in terms of the sf in each narrative.

  While R. U. R. and The Truth Quotient were disparate in terms of production quality, both are still extremely useful to an understanding how to navigate the relationship between science fiction and performance. Here the key may well be that while you don’t necessarily need an operational understanding of sf or need to be widely read (if you’re doing sf you should read the material related to what you are attempting to stage, for heaven’s sake) in order to create it effectively on the stage, you still cannot assume that sf functions the same way as any other piece of literary narrative. I think that the essays of Samuel R. Delany have elegantly and eloquently taught us that, and observations on the language of sf have pertinence here. If phrases that can be read as metaphor could also be literally true as in some sf, then how does this work in a theatre still mired in literal realism? Productions have moved away from this, sure, but as sf playwright Mac Rogers has observed, the impulse is to lean toward where we’ve usually seen sf presented—film and television.

  What realism lacks, as perhaps Brecht noted when he broke away, is the need to call this reality into question. Darko Suvin noted the same thing functioning in sf, borrowing from Brecht. It’s those subtle matter-of-fact differences in sf that make the reader/audience member stop and take a second look at assumptions, whether the material is grounded in object reality or ideology. We don’t need to see everything literally on stage in glorious three-dimensional, exacting detail. Audiences today live in the future that sf outlined, hinted at, and sometimes outright predicted. We’re here. Good sf theatre will be first and foremost good theatre. The sf elements need not be literal or futuristic, but they do need to be subtle, simple, and elegant. Save the explosions and ray-guns and green or gray aliens for film and TV. We might need to hear them, and sound is incredibly effective as an effect in sf theatre, but the audience doesn’t necessarily need to see them. SF is a lens, a way of seeing, that should point out humanity’s tendency toward myopia, but it isn’t the central focus of a performance—it’s a cultural and narrative filter—a very valuable one—that has made its way into current production strategies.

  Čapek was right. It isn’t about the robots. And 92 years later, Manly is right, and it still isn’t about the robots. It’s about us.

  Domin (Brad Makarowski) and Alquist (Chis Ceraso) get reports from Sulla (center, Jane Cortney) and 913 (Sean Phillips). Photos by Jon Kandel.

  Radius (Tyler Caffall) ignores orders from Nana (Charlotte Hampden). Photos by Jon Kandel.

  Gall (Kevin Bernard), Helena (Christine Bullen), Fabry (Matt W. Cody), Hallemeier (Mac Brydon), Alquist (Chris Ceraso) & Domin (Brad Makarowski) realize the robots are now in control.

  Dad (Brian Tom O’Connor) looks on; David (Jarel Davidow) gets a hug from Caprice (Meredith Howard) & Mom (Angelina Fiordellisi).

  David (Jarel Davidow) welcomes brother Donald (Mawell Zener) home while Dad, Mom & Caprice watch.

  * * *

  Jen Gunnels lives in a questionable reality.

  JeFF Stumpo

  Until Someone Loses an I:

  The Deconstruction of “self” in Borges and Lovecraft

  There are a surprising number of parallels in the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Jorge Luis Borges—views on the universe (infinite and incomprehensible), time (nonlinear), mirrors (abhorrent because of their reflection and duplication), God (generally absent and/or indifferent to mankind), and false creations (Lovecraft’s Necronomicon has become a real-life hrön). Besides the thematic links in their work, there existed a professional awareness. Borges was aware of Lovecraft, enough so that he construed him in an interview as a writer barely worth attention (Burgin 40), and yet dedicated a story to his memory (“There are more things” in The Book of Sand). Some scholars, generally associated with Lovecraft studies, have looked to this story for a thread between the two. Juan José Barrientos even proposes that “El Aleph” is “una especie de parodia de Lovecraft” [“a sort of parody of Lovecraft”] (443). The most serious and comprehensive comparative study to date, “Synchronistic Worlds: Lovecraft and Borges” by Barton Levi St. Armand, is an excellent examination of the universal aspects held in common by the two writers. Unfortunately, his work does not cover issues of identity. The fact remains that, while some scholarly, comparative studies have been undertaken, they are rare in Spanish, nearly nonexistent in English, and none of them appear to have covered this particular ground. In the following essay, I will concentrate on the self/Self in the short stories of Lovecraft and Borges, specifically the way in which both utilize false and fractured personalities to eventually deconstruct the possibility of a stable self.

  I do not intend to prove a direct line leading from Lovecraft to Borges. The latter read too much and too widely for anyone without written evidence to be able to say “This is where he got idea x.” However, criticism on one can shed light on the other, and some areas which have not been touched by previous criticism deserve investigation. In Borgesian fashion, we can observe certain synchronicities and see some of the patterns which develop. There are several reasons why this has not yet happened.

  For one, scholars tend to view Lovecraft as a horror writer. Even those who advocate the serious study of his work tend to view it through a genre lens. While horror, like comics or film before that, is no longer persona non grata in the Academy, it means that both those who embrace and those who shun horror writers inadvertently discourage the examination of Lovecraft’s work in other light, particularly the light of postmodernism.

  The second reason involves both writers. This issue of identity is one that requires the examination of multiple stories. It is easier for scholars to look at a single work and critique it. To note that a character named Borges appears in multiple stories is accepted but not given much thought. I have not yet found anyone who questions which Borges appears in these stories, though the query would seem obvious after his short essay “Borges y Yo” [“Borges and I”] opens the door on multiple personalities and avatars. That being said, Ana María Barrenechea’s Borges the Labyrinth Maker does a fine job of exploring Borges’s works thematically and falls short only in its brevity regarding certain subjects.

  Third, the self is generally seen in Western literary culture in a Freudian sense. While aspects of a person may change, that person’s identity remains unique. However, Jungian or even Buddhist or Schöpenhauerian views of the individual—a view in which all beings are interconnected—are far more appropriate to these stories. Though the culture of Freud has certainly cracked in the world of psychology, those of us in literary studies often lack the tools to re-examine identity in these and other authors. An attempt to find Buddhist underpinnings in some of Lovecraft’s stories was undertaken by Walter Mosig and, later, Ester Rochon, and this attempt should be applied to Borges as well. Borges himself frequently references Schöpenhauer regarding a pantheistic view of Self, and this lens should also be applied to Lovecraft. I believe that the extensive “Orientalist” research of both authors, for better or worse in other contexts, demands a closer look from the big-S Self perspective.

  A Few Definitions

  To this point, I have already used some terms that may not be familiar to the reader. Without belaboring the point, I think it appropriate to review exactly what I mean in this essay by such terms as self/Self, bodies, identities, and avatars.

  The lowercase “self” refers to an individu
al personality, a unique set of mental and emotional characteristics that make up a person. The self is independent of the body and is analogous to the Freudian combination of ego, id, superego, as well as the Judeo-Christian concept of “soul.”

  The “body-self” refers to the combination of self and the physical form with which we most commonly identify it. For example, we meet Borges and address his body as “Borges.” Even were we to write a letter or call him on the phone, our concept of interaction requires that there is a somehow recognizable and stable body in which the self resides. The body may go through changes over time, but does so in a logical way. Note that in magical realism, what is logical is not necessarily what is mundane. For example, if Borges were to begin growing feathers and eventually look like a large chicken, the changes would be logical (if we accept that a human being could begin to grow feathers in the first place) and consistent, preserving the body-self. An instantaneous change into a bird, on the other hand, would imply a different body.

  This exact problem, however, arises in fiction, and especially the fiction of Borges and Lovecraft, in which bodies may be exchanged, multiplied, or done away with completely. If Borges’s mind suddenly inhabited the body of a lemur (and vice versa), we would likely follow the hierarchy of self over body and address the lemur’s body as “Borges.” This leads us to the concept of avatars.

  An “avatar” is any physical incarnation of a self. This is not synonymous with body-self. The body-self is the most common or best recognized avatar. In the example above, we would acknowledge (at a particular time period) the blind human being as the body-self, and the lemur to be an avatar. As time and space break down for Borges and Lovecraft, however, the concept of body-self becomes increasingly difficult and useless (or at least viewed as illusory) and the concept of avatars increasingly useful and applicable.

  Finally, the uppercase “Self” which comes into play later in the essay is similar to a Jungian or a Buddhist or a Schöpenhauerian conception of interrelatedness. All existence is linked to all existence. In the grand picture, there is no individual. The Self is all beings at all times in all places. There are no such things as charity or murder because there is no Other to be charitable to nor murder. Questions such as “Is the self at seventy years old the same as the self at two years old?” no longer matter, because the self as such does not exist. This is the position at which Borges and Lovecraft ultimately arrive, albeit problematically.

  To reach this point, however, there are four barriers to the deconstruction of the self which Borges and Lovecraft break down. The first is the barrier between dream and reality. The second is inherent truthfulness in representation of the self. The third barrier is the persistence of the self over time. The fourth is the singularity and unique nature of the self. Taking each in turn, we will see how Borges and Lovecraft deconstruct/destruct the concept of self and move towards a vision of Self.

  The First Barrier: The Red King’s Dream

  The first barrier is that of inside/outside, specifically manifested in the form of dream/reality. For this purpose, I will draw on “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” by Lovecraft and “The Circular Ruins” by Borges.

  In “Kadath,” the character Randolph Carter makes his third appearance in Lovecraft’s stories. Previously, he was the narrator of two stock horror tales, but here he is a dream-adventurer who goes on an epic quest to find a dream-city stolen from him by the Gods. He literally travels through the realms of his and others’ dreams in search of this city. Along the way he interacts with various characters and places mentioned in some of Lovecraft’s other stories. In “Ruins,” Borges presents us with an unnamed man who sets out to dream a human being into existence. He succeeds in doing so, only to discover at the end of the story that he himself was dreamed into existence by another.

  The question of whether the waking or dreaming state is reality is an ancient one. The most common retelling goes, more or less, “I dreamed I was a butterfly. Now am I awake, or am I a butterfly now dreaming that I am a human?” In any event, the question presupposes a binary relationship and an eventual truth: that one state is a dream and one is the “real world.”

  Borges plays into this binary opposition and adds one of his favorite paradoxes: the play within a play. The man in “Ruins” features as the main character. We assume his reality because he interacts with other human beings. He then dreams into existence another being. We do not have to ask whether or not this second being is real, because we are told that it, too, interacts with humans in the man’s world. The first question, rather, is whether or not this created being has a self. The second question is whether or not this matters.

  Let us look at the second question first. The creator discovers at the end of the story that he himself is just a dream. We are presented with the unsettling potential that we are all someone else’s dream. And as Tweedle-Dum asks Alice, what would happen if that someone (let us call her/him the alpha dreamer, although we admit that this dreamer might also be dreamed by another) stopped dreaming about us? More pertinent to this essay, are all of the man’s thoughts a byproduct of the alpha dreamer?

  The man could state “Cogito, ergo sum.” His very creation of another being through thought should prove that he has a self. But Borges has cleverly introduced a mirror into the story that tampers with our ability to determine whether or not the man really thinks. Recall that he made a deal with a fire god in order to give life to his creation, which rendered the creation immune to fire. Recall that he himself is immune to fire. Recall that the man and his creation occupy similar positions in the jungle. Consider that they are simply iterations. Or, to use a technological metaphor, the man is essentially a computer program who copies himself, not an individual. Thus, the dreamed is not a self. Considering that the alpha dreamer may also be a dreamed being, all reality, and thus all selves, are called into question.

  A parallel may be drawn from “Ruins” to one of Lovecraft’s phrases: “inward dreaming.” As Burleson points out, “this phrase suggests the symmetric possibility of outward dreaming . . . not only does the difference between dreaming and ‘waking reality’ not matter—the suggestions is that perhaps it does not even exist” (9). This “outward dreaming” seems to be exactly what the alpha dreamer does in Borges’s short story.

  Lovecraft explores an equally convoluted situation. In “Kadath,” Carter encounters a ghoul who used to be a man, the artist Richard Upton Pickman. Pickman was first introduced to the reader in a previous tale, based in the real world and involving a narrator who was not Carter. Pickman and the other ghouls interact with the real world. Carter travels through a country called Ulthar, also presented as part of the real world in a previous story. There are several interesting problems here.

  One, Lovecraft envisions the boundary between dreams and the waking world to be a semi-physical entity, crossable through force of will and arcane knowledge. That is to say, he has done away with the binary opposition between dream and reality. The two elements are not mutually exclusive. The philosopher is both a philosopher and a butterfly, one form perhaps preferred, but neither one inherently more real than the other.

  Carter does not suffer from the same problem as the man in “Ruins.” He knows that he exists, but he exists simultaneously in two places—the dream world and the real world, having presumably left his real body behind. Yet conceivably he is able to visit it in his dreamed body, as could the ghouls.

  Two, if we are to accept the above statement, we must accept that the interactions between the dream world and reality are in fact “real” and not just an additional facet of Carter’s dream. The fact of the matter is that we are unable to do so. We are in a closed system, and as Gödel points out, there are certain types of knowledge which are beyond reach from inside the system. This is part of the point. Reality and dream cannot be separated. Rochon provides us with two pertinent quotes from Buddhist sources here. From “The Seven Points of Mind Training” by Atisha, a set of about sixty
aphorisms used by all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the second aphorism tells us, “Regard all dharma [phenomena] as dreams” (13). Another teacher, Padmasambhava, instructs, “All appearances are verily one’s own concepts, self-conceived in the mind, like reflections seen in a mirror” (13). All these various sources, Lovecraft, Borges, Gödel, Atisha, and Padmasambhava, tell us that we cannot really know what is dream (imagined) and what is waking (actually perceived), nor if there is a difference between the two. If the inside and outside of the mind cannot be distinguished, what is the defining line for the body-self?

  The Second Barrier: What Happens When You Assume

  The second barrier of the self is the notion that we are who we say we are. Borges and Lovecraft tackle this misconception in their own disconcerting manners.

  Borges’s fiction has several characters who pretend to be someone who they are not: Vincent Moon in “The Shape of the Sword” and Red Sharlach in “Death and the Compass” come to mind as obvious charlatans. In the first case, the deception is a result of a guilty conscience, a ploy to keep the listener (a character named Borges) listening through to the end of the story. In the latter, the deception is a trap, intended to ensnare an overly intellectual detective.