Imagine you're at a cocktail party with the author of the work you're using as primary source. Also present are at least one opposing critic of that work and one or two critics who agree with your argument thesis.
Following class I asked the professor if I could take him literally. My friend Sean Kilburn and I have long imagined a barbeque at the end of all things in which only those people worthy to sit at a table and break bread with are invited. So I wanted to set this argument paper at the barbeque... The professor responded with, "Most people I'd say no to about that, but if you think you can pull it off, go for it."
I received the mark of an A++ and commentary that more academic papers should strive for a readable narrative. Even with the flaws I leave showing in this, it's still a damn fine idea manifested in word.
~•~
(1st draft)
English 490 - Gothic Disturbances
April 27, 2009
Kippled Logic in Barbeque Sauce
The entire planet had begun to disintegrate into junk, and to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally . . . or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer—not of radioactive dust—but of kipple. (8:87)
That's not a very cheery note to read at a cook-out, but this is a Phildickian barbeque, and, as Phil Dick reads from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I fill my plate with ribs and sauce, pull a draught of beer, and sit down at the picnic table with Kim Stanley Robinson, Stanisław Lem, and Dr. Sigmund Freud. We eat barbeque ribs. The kipple eats at the corners of our shared reality. We each have a few questions we want to discuss, but don't have long to share this time together.
"Kipple?" Dr. Freud asks.
"A sort of Escalation of Chaos," Kim Stanley tells him, "The First Law of Kipple is 'kipple drives out nonkipple.'" (DADOES)
Phil obliges by flipping the pages of his book, staining the edges with dark red sauce, and continuing our journey into his text with all the fervor of a speed-addled pulp writer.
"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more." (6:65)
"But what is the etymology of this word, 'kipple'?" Dr. Freud asks.
"There really is none," Stanisław says. "Phil made up this word."
Dr. Freud arches an eyebrow. "How very interesting. Do you often make up words to signify what you intend to say? A replacement for something deeper, perhaps?"
"The way Mercer is a Christ-like character in this novel?" I ask in return.
Phil grumbles at us, "Transcendental despair. Without empathy," Phil tells us, "we would stand detached, spectators, acting out by our indifference John Donne's theorem that 'No man is an island,' but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and moral island is not a man." ("Man, Android & Machine")
"I'm not a peace officer," Rick said. "I'm a bounty hunter." From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voigt-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments. [...]
"I'd like to watch," Rachael said, also seating herself. "I've never seen an empathy test being administered. What do those things you have there measure?"
Rick said, "This"—he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires—"measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know this to be a primary autonomic response, the so—called 'shame' or 'blushing' reaction to a morally shocking stimulus. It can't be controlled voluntarily, as can skin conductivity, respiration, and cardiac rate." He showed her the other instrument, a pencil-beam light. "This records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles. Simultaneous with the blush phenomenon there generally can be found a small but detectable movement of—" (4:46)
"Phil, you squander your talent by using these brilliant ideas and inspirations to keep up a game of cops and robbers." ("SF: A Hopeless Case")
"You're just being a contrarian," I tell Stanisław.
Dr. Freud leans forward over the picnic table, "I would like to hear more about this, Voigt-Kampff apparatus."
"It's named after the German physicist Woldemer Voigt," I tell him, "Known for, among other things, the Voigt profile in spectroscopy—associated with a Doppler broadening. Quite relevant, considering the empathy box and mood organs. I suspect the word 'doppler' is linguistically connected to the doppelgänger which you wrote about." ("Empirical fits")
"No, no, no, young man," Dr. Freud says admonishing me. "Not the same word at all. Doppelgänger means 'double-goer,' while the Doppler effect is named after my fellow Austrian, Christian Doppler. A sound-alike word—a homonym." (OED)
"Hmm," I feel embarrassed, but quickly recover, "Homonym, a sound-alike word. Android, a look-alike human. Interesting connection all the same. And, synchronistically," I add, "I believe Doppler was a professor in Prague when he wrote a number of his theories." (Doppler)
I'm met with mostly blank stares, but Phil's groan indicates he catches the connection between Doppler and the doppelgänger of the Prague Golem. But Phil doesn't comment, only reads another passage from his novel.
The Nexus-6 android types, Rick reflected, surpassed several classes of human specials in terms of intelligence. In other words, androids equipped with the new Nexus-6 brain unit had from a sort of rough, pragmatic, no-nonsense standpoint evolved beyond a major—but inferior—segment of mankind. For better or worse. The servant had in some cases become more adroit than its master. But new scales of achievement, for example the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test, had emerged as criteria by which to judge. An android, no matter how gifted as to pure intellectual capacity, could make no sense out of the fusion which took place routinely among the followers of Mercerism— (3:30)
"To play the—What's that you called it? Contrarian?—to play the contrarian again," Lem says, "If the androids are programmed with the information that they are human, I cannot see why they are persecuted; if the androids are intended to represent a model of discrimination, such as the Jews under the label of a 'final solution,' then the androids are innocent victims and should not be depicted as insidious creatures, something the novel does in places." ("SF: A Hopeless Case")
"The androids as Jewish victims, Stanisław?" I say, "I don't see that at all."
"No?" Stanisław asks, with a tone that prods for more from me.
"Still," I finally say, "Voigt-Kampff. With such an austere name such as that, it's easy to see why it could conjure images of fascist goose-steppers in a national socialistic Germany—no offense, Dr. Freud."
Dr. Freud shakes his head and I continue.
"Luba Luft singing before Deckard goes backstage to kill her is certainly reminiscent of the Nazi officers having Jewish performers sing for them before being sent to the showers and ovens. They had no empathy for their victims, and Deckard shows none for Luba Luft."
On the stage Luba Luft sang, and he found himself surprised at the quality of her voice; it rated with that of the best, even that of notables in his collection of historic tapes. The Rosen Association built her well, he had to admit. And again he perceived himself sub specie aeternitatis, the form-destroyer called forth by what he heard and saw here. Perhaps the better she functions, the better a singer she is, the more I am needed. If the androids had remained substandard, like the ancient q-40s made by Derain Associates—there would be no problem and no need of my skill. I wonder when I should do it, he asked himself. As soon as possible, probably. At the end of the rehearsal when she goes to her dressing room. (9:99)
"What follows backstage is a key scene which illustrates that Phil is not writing about politics, he's writing about ontology," Kim Stanley says. (Novels of PKD)
Stanisław comments, "But these reality breakdowns create a confusion between androids as a wronged lower class and as inhuman menace—" ("SF: A Hopeless Case")
"I think Phil deliberately creates this confusion—androids as victim or menace," I tell him, "He always refers to them as 'he' or 'she', never as 'it', thus, leaving the matter ambiguous. The humans in the novel feel alienated to themselves, as well as the world around them, preferring to withdraw into the artificial worlds of the Penfield Mood Organ, the empathy box, and the false religion of Mercerism. They don't—and seemingly don't want to—interact with the 'real' world."
"And why do you think that is?" Dr. Freud asks.
"Because the real world involves responsibility and emotional feeling."
"Ah, but isn't that too simple a formulae?"
Kim Stanley offers more clarification than I do, "The more contradictions there are in the androids, the more the novel succeeds in unravelling our easy biological definition of humanity, replacing it with a difficult spiritual and moral definition. Phil gives us two oppositions—Human/Android and Human/Inhuman." (Novels of PKD)
A pause and then Harry Bryant's face appeared on the vidscreen. "What's doing?" he asked Rick.
"Some trouble," Rick said. "One of those on Dave's list managed to call in and get a so-called patrolman out here. I can't seem to prove to him who I am; he says he knows all the about hunters in the department and he's never heard of me." He added, "He hasn't heard of you either."
Bryant said, "Let me talk to him."
"Inspector Bryant wants to talk to you." Rick held out the vidphone receiver. The harness bull ceased questioning Miss Luft and came over to take it.
"Officer Crams," the harness bull said briskly. A pause. "Hello?" He listened, said hello several times more, waited, then turned to Rick. "There's nobody on the line. And nobody on the screen." He pointed to the vidphone screen and Rick saw nothing on it. (9:107-08)
"Like the superimposing of Herr Freud's heimlich and unheimlich over virtually every theme in the novel—from the casual mention of designer lead codpieces to the twisting of the real and unreal when Deckard is accused of being an android with implanted memories working for a department that doesn't exist by an android working in a police department that doesn't exist," I add, not sure if my theory is true or even if that pretzel-logic even made sense. Nevertheless, what someone reads into the text is, in many ways, just as important as what the author intended to be there. We're all just offering our personal reading of the words Phil strung together for us to follow.
"As the novel begins," Kim Stanley says, " but the action of the narrative first forces the two apart, and then leads us to conclude that the first one is inessential, the second vitally important." (Novels of PKD)
"So by that context," Stanisław grudgingly admits, still not feeling it is so, "The contradictions I mentioned dissolve. You are saying that it is not illogical to think that androids can be at once innocent and malicious, on different levels conscious and unconscious of their own natures." ("SF: A Hopeless Case")
Dr. Freud nods. He makes a rare statement, speaking aloud what I am thinking, "Beings both human and threatening to human society. Much like we all are."
Phil himself mumbles, "What is vitally important is the theme of mystical identification via empathy..." but none of us are listening to him at this point, "When the Deity takes a trashy or even fake form, it says something about man's present, unredeemed state—his ontological condition—not an aspect of his state but is—esse—his condition." (Exegesis)
With his laser tube, Rick systematically burned into blurred ash the book of pictures which he had just a few minutes ago bought Luba. He did the job thoroughly, saying nothing; Phil Resch watched without understanding, his face showing his perplexity.
"You could have kept the book yourself," Resch said, when it had been done. "That cost you—"
"Do you think androids have souls?" Rick interrupted.
Cocking his head on one side, Phil Resch gazed at him in even greater puzzlement. (12:135)
The kipple at the edges of imagination consumes the cook-out of our shared reality. Kim Stanley Robinson and Stanislaw Lem have already disappeared—were they ever here at all?—and Dr. Freud licks the barbeque sauce from his fingers burning away like an drug-induced electric dream.
Before Phil disappears he tosses me his sauce-stained copy of the novel and flashes a cryptic smile. "One day, I'm going to write a book that will reach people outside the science-fiction ghetto. Something more than a recycling of life into a novel..." ("Horselover Fat & the New Messiah")
I look to where the novel has fallen open in front of me.
"No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization." (6:65-66)
Many years after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written—about the time the film Blade Runner was released—author William Gibson compared Dick's novels to taking a hit of some furious unknown psychotropic drug and spending 48 hours trying to find some way back to Base Reality. ("With a Strange Device")
The Base Reality in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is one in which reassures you that you've made it safely back home, only to reveal, when you open your front door, that home isn't where it was last time you were here.
The recursive layering of the heimlich and unheimlich juxtapose one other to the point that there is no differentiating one from the other, until, reaching some temporary penultimate truth, a static-stasis is reached wherein reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
In the years since this novel was written, what is commonly accepted as the Base Reality has seen environmental destruction and awareness on a scale Dick himself would likely be surprised by; the world's first cloned animal being a sheep named Dolly; our own personal versions of Penfield Mood Organs and Mercer Empathy Boxes in the form of small handheld devices with Phildickian names like iPod and BlackBerry (is it so far-fetched to say these machines control our emotions by their induced sensations and even generate a electronic empathy?); and daily accounts of false reality being perpetrated upon us by the Mercerian façades that are our spiritual and political leaders (sometimes in the same persona) to the point that is is difficult—if not outright impossible—to determine what is reality and what is the simulation of reality.
...he saw the dust and the ruin of the apartment as it lay spreading out everywhere—he heard the kipple coming, the final disorder of all forms, the absence which would win out. (18:212)
Our journey to discover meanings in this novel is akin to an attempt to answer the question posed in its title: "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"
To make that journey of discovery we must first determine who the androids are, what the difference between being an android and being human is, and empirically verify that the sheep in question are indeed electric.
Again, recursively turning back to author William Gibson drug-addled comment, at this point in our post-Androids world, we could all use a strong dose of the PKD drug to shake the scales from our withered eyes. But—alas!—we have a limited supply of that now, while the layers of pseudo-reality—environmental, scientific, religious, pop-cultural, emotional, spiritual, artistic, reflected, and re-reflected—are increasing and unlimited. Our machines become more important than reality and reality becomes less than our machines.
My own journey through this bewildering reality finds me sitting in front of my own empathy box—my scrying mirror that connects me with the world—I sit before my computer and write this. I sit. I write. I wait. Hoping to feel something real.
This is real. These words. Subjectively, anyway. So long as I hit SAVE on my machine; my empathy box. But eventually even this created reality will fall, like Deckard's love for Rachael, into kippled-oblivion of recycled electrons.
•
Dick, Philip K.
Freud, Sigmund. "Das Unheimliche."
Gibson, William. "With a Strange Device."
· • ·
Bibliography
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Rey.
—. In Pursuit of Valis:Selections from the Exegesis.
Underwood-Miller.
—. "Man, Android and Machine."In Science Fiction at Large,
ed. by Peter Nicholls.
"Doppelgänger." Oxford English Dictionary.Freud, Sigmund. "Das Unheimliche."
Gibson, William. "With a Strange Device."
In Wing Window (Seattle fanzine).
"Horselover Fat and The New Messiah."Interview with John Boonstra.
Hartford Advocate.
Lem, Stanisław. "Science Fiction:Hartford Advocate.
A Hopeless Case—With Exceptions."
In Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd,
ed. Bruce Gillespie.
Olivero, J.J., R.L. Longbothum.ed. Bruce Gillespie.
"Empirical fits to the Voigt line width:
A brief review."
A brief review."
Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy
and Radiative Transfer.
and Radiative Transfer.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Novels of Philip K. Dick.
UMI Research Press.
Štoll, Ivan. "Christian Doppler—Man, Work and Message".
In The Phenomenon of Doppler.
The Czech National University.
The Czech National University.
· • ·
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