The Impossible Subject: Cyborg Futures

Abstract

The final chapter moves past the structures of fantasy to question the possibility of a unity of Virtual and Real. This entails a reconceiving of the cyborg subject detached from the structures of humanity in the possibility of posthuman subjectivities, inserting a rupture from our present understanding of cybernetics. Jameson's critique of the present through a literary staging of a utopian future is used to construct a critical distance towards the subject. The analysis of the role of digital technology and consciousness in science fiction opens this discussion, before a case study of Hannu Rajaniemi's literary practices offers a fully posthuman framework. This stages an alternative consciousness that inserts a parallax rupture of self-awareness between the present subject and modes of rethinking its future possibilities.