Take Two

Sorry this is so late, I either got a cold or developed allergies, not sure which. :\

So I know I posted a link to Digital yesterday, and I had originally intended to talk about Digital and how cyberpunk is dead (long live cyberpunk!), but I think I'm more interested in the debate about cyberspace vs reality, especially with respect to the body. So uh, enjoy Digital if you like, but don't feel compelled to play it before tomorrow (though it is an excellent game).

Instead. The physical and the virtual and the real, all mediated through the concept of the body.

Case, at the start of the book, draws a total distinction between the world of cyberspace and the world of meatspace. Gibson describes the aftermath of the mycotoxin: "For Case, who'd lived the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh" (6, emphasis mine). Case uses the term "meat" quite frequently as a derogatory reference to the body, as opposed to what he

prefers, the experience of "his disembodied consciousness" (5).

In response to his inability to jack in and live that disembodied life, Case develops addictions to drugs and sex. In Linda Lee, he sees "the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction" (9), and in himself, he sees "lust and loneliness riding in on the wavelength of amphetamine" (9). Drugs and sex are bound up in a ball of bodily desire, things he turns to after he can no longer access the matrix. These represent "all the meat...and all it wants" (10).

Case only imagines two extremes: disembodiment (cyberspace), or total embodiment (meatspace). Yet the novel resides in the intermediate spaces, where the physical is made virtual and the virtual made physical. These intermediaries, however, cannot exist in one person, but rather emerge from the relationships between people. The two most interesting mediating entities are the market and the corporation. Early on, Case presents the experience of living in the underworld as an analogue of cyberspace. He notes that under pressure, "it was possible to see Ninsei as a field of data, the way the matrix had once reminded him of proteins linking to distinguish cell specialties ... all around you the dance of biz, information interacting, data made flesh in the mazes of the black market" (17). Later, in Freeside, Case finds himself in the underworld yet again, and realizes that "the local action", "the real thing", is "commerce" (141). In this instance, the commerce is specifically that of bodies without consciousnesses, the cubicles where women (and maybe men but we don't see it) sell their bodies.

The other mediating space is the corporation. The word corporation carries the body within it, and in Neuromancer, the corporation is alternately imagined as a hive mind and as a single body. In describing the problems with Tessier-Ashpool, the Flatline relates them to "your immune system falling apart on you. Ripe for virus" (187). Here, the term virus refers both to the infectious agent that causes disease in living things, and to the computer virus that they will use to attack the ICE of T-A. Case also imagines the zaibatsus and multinational corporations first "as organisms" (196) and immediately after, as "hives with cybernetic memories, vast single organisms, their DNA coded in silicon" (196). The corporation, given a collective consciousness through computers, now has the ability to act as a true single organism, one body acting on the world around it based on disembodied data.

To Live is to Leave Traces

This book is a mess. The Publishers Weekly review quoted on the back cover declares it “Gleefully gory” but it is more than just gore that overflows in Body Surfing. In addition to blood and copious amounts of other bodily fluids, dirt, grime, and grit simply abound. It is a filthy, filthy book. The novel opens with Ileana in a grimy bar, wearing a “sweat-stained tank top” (9). The smell of Jasper’s room, with its piles and piles of dirty clothes, is easy to imagine (30-31) and the slug in his sneaker, oozing around his toes, is just fantastic (33, 57). In more extreme situations, the filth level escalates. After her night of revenge, Ileana is “caked with blood and gore. Ash and blood painted her face like a minstrel” (127).

The overwhelming tactility of this mess lends a certain sense of realness and tangibility to scenes that are otherwise hard to swallow. No matter how atrocious, terrifying, or disturbing the events that take place, and how much we might want to distance ourselves from them, those gritty little details are vivid reminders of how real and concrete these happenings can actually be. When Ileana notices the flour on the uniform of the soldier that approaches her, it is not just a visual detail of the scene, but a clue to what has already transpired, a trace of the events that have gone on before. Ileana recalls that her grandmother had been baking bread that morning, and it becomes painfully clear where the flour came from.

This leaving behind of traces—flour in this case, but more often in Body Surfing a trail of blood and bodies—is echoed in how the Mogran possess their hosts. Despite the fact that the Mogran are strong enough to be in complete control, they can also choose to release or augment “certain urges already present in their host’s psyche”—“Mogran loved to do that” (46). Even while possessed, the host’s personality may still be present, a residue of their former self.

When the Mogran are explained in a bit more detail, they are defined as mortals who have somehow shed their skins and become beings “of pure spirit” (141). I had envisioned this process of possession as a purely spiritual interaction, and therefore as being far cleaner. One might expect there to be no traces left at all—a spirit enters a new body, and that’s that. Instead, the amount of dirt and grime is almost overwhelming. Traces are left everywhere, blood and sweat stains every possible surface. There is no getting away from the sheer uncleanness of life.

As I was thinking about this idea of leaving traces, I saw online (thanks, Flavorpill!) that the Wellcome Collection in London has an exhibition entitled “Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life.” A few excerpts from the exhibition website: “'Dirt' will reveal the fascinating world of filth that remains one of the very last taboos. Our major new exhibition takes a closer look at something that surrounds us but that we are often reluctant to confront…the exhibition uncovers a rich history of disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past, and points to the uncertain future of filth, which poses a significant risk to our health but is also vital to our existence."

The topics mentioned here—the conflation of disgust and delight, dirty secrets, our uncertain future—are all themes in the book (field trip to London, please?).

Perhaps this idea of dirt and residue appealed to me so much this week because of the time of year. It is that magical time when piles begin to appear in libraries and computer clusters across campus. Stacks of books, puddles of papers, collections of empty food containers, half-eaten sandwiches, entire desks covered in empty Red Bull bottles. The amount of stuff and residue we manage to generate just writing papers is pretty incredible.