Lecture 11 - Scientific Productions

Lecture 11: Scientific Productions
English 192
Summer 2013
21 August 2013
“It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who
hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?
Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls
down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries,
enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance,
wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and
gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many
generations.”
— George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876), ch. XXI

In response to common MLA-related
questions …
Remember that the function of a citation in MLA-compliant papers
is to point to a specific item on your Works Cited page and to
locate the idea within that work.

Two texts outside of your (likely)
experience
q Many of you will not have previously written about movies,
and those writing on Alien may be struggling to figure out
how to cite it.
Alien. Dir. Ridley Scott. [Screenplay by Dan O’Bannon. Perf. Tom
Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright.] 1979. 20th
Century Fox, 2004. Film.
q If you are citing the contributions of a particular person, reformat
your Works Cited entry to begin with that person’s name and to
indicate their contribution to the film.
Scott, Ridley, dir. Alien. 1979. 20th Century Fox, 2004. Film.
q Alien doesn’t have page numbers, so all you can do is to cite the
work as a whole. Don’t use play time, DVD chapter numbers, etc.

q R.U.R., if you’re using the online version, isn’t
paginated. Don’t refer to the page numbers that your
computer created in your margins when you printed it,
because they won’t (necessarily) be consistent with your
reader’s computer’s pagination.
q It’s a courtesy to your reader to indicate location as
specifically as possible: by act number, for instance.
q If you are using the Kindle edition, you may use location
numbers. In this case, you should treat your in-text
citations the same as you would citations when you’re
citing a poem by line number: use “loc.” in first reference
to the text, then omit it on subsequent references to the
same text.
(Čapek, loc. 1699; act 2)
(Čapek 1726; act 2)
(Čapek, act 2)

A few more words on “estrangement”
q One way to approach SF as a genre is as “the
literature of cognitive estrangement.”
q This concept draws on the Russian Formalist notion of
“defamiliarization,” which we discussed yesterday, as
well as on Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical “estrangement
effect” (Verfremdungseffekt).
q Brecht argues in his Short Organon for the Theatre
(1948) that "[a] representation which estranges is one
which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the
same time makes it seem unfamiliar."
q SF, in this sense, operates in two ways: by presenting
radically different characters and/or by presenting a
radically different context for the story.

q By presenting various phenomena as
estranged, then, SF encourages cognitive
attentiveness to the everyday and avoids
presupposing it as necessary or inevitable.
q As a gross overgeneralization, then, SF
encodes and valorizes liberatory dreams of the
realization of desires, and is thus the opposite
side of the coin from Jameson’s concept of
History as “what hurts, […] what refuses desire
and sets inexorable limits to individual as well
as collective praxis.”
Implications of estrangement

q To put it another way: estranging the reader
from his/her direct, everyday full immersion in the
world around him-/herself brackets off the world
that we (think we) know, presenting it as
contingent, one of many possible worlds.
q This skepticism towards the “real” world breaks
with the mimetic tradition that the “real world” is
what should be represented in literary fiction, and
modifies the formula to say that the world is not
what SF reflects, but rather what it reflects on.
The break with mimesis

q From this perspective, then, the “science” in
“science fiction” is not the hard sciences and their
technological products that were especially
important in the early history of the genre.
q Nor is the “science” in SF “the social sciences”
and their insights that get incorporated into SF in
the so-called “classic period.”
q Instead, the “science” in SF is the adoption of
several aspects of the scientific method as basic
structural approaches in the genre:
q Skepticism
q Empiricism
q Experimentation
q Statistical projection and extrapolation

“The natural sciences caught up and surpassed
the literary imagination in the 19th century, the
sciences dealing with human relationships might
be argued to have caught up with it in their highest
theoretical achievements but have certainly not
done so in their alienated social practice. In the
20th century, SF has moved into the sphere of
anthropological and cosmological thought,
becoming a diagnosis, a warning, a call to
understanding and action, and—most important—
a mapping of possible alternatives. This historical
movement of SF can be envisaged as an
enrichment of and shift from a basic direct or
extropolative [sic] model to an indirect or analogic
model.”
— Darko Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction
Genre” (1972)

“Čapek is full of self-contradicting ideas co-
existing at the same time, ideas that make us
grin or laugh as we wish to clap our ears shut
and flee. But in the old days his ideas were
possibly more mystifying than frightening; we
were more likely to read him as a charming
curio. Now his world is far less outrageous or
even improbable. We have evolved into his
nightmare.”
— Arthur Miller (1990)

Modern production and labor
Old Rossum's notes: “Nature has found only one
way of organising living matter. There is however
another way which is simpler, easier to mould, and
quicker to produce than Nature ever stumbled
across.” (loc. 180; introductory scene)
HELENA. They do say that man was created by
God.
DOMIN. So much the worse for them. God had no
idea about modern technology. (loc. 260)

Domin: “And then Rossum’s nephew came out
here. Now this man, Miss Glory, he was a
genius. As soon as he saw what the old man
was doing he said, ‘This is ridiculous, to spend
ten years making a man; if you can’t do it
quicker than Nature then you might as well give
up on it’.” (loc. 216)
Domin: “What the old man did might have been
alright for a university but he had no idea at all
about industrial production. […] After the age of
research came the age of production.” (loc.
231; introductory scene)

HELENA: The best sort of worker? I suppose
one who is honest and dedicated.
DOMIN: No. The best sort of worker is the
cheapest worker. The one that has the least
needs. What young Rossum invented was a
worker with the least needs possible. He had
to make him simpler. He threw out everything
that wasn’t of direct use in his work, that’s to
say, he threw out the man and put in the
robot. (loc. 245; introductory scene)

HELENA: I saw my first robot in our village. They’d
bought him so that. … that’s to say they’d employed
him to…
DOMIN: Bought it, Miss Glory. Robots are bought and
sold. (loc. 260; introductory scene)
FABRY: […] One robot can take the place of two and a
half workers. The human body is very imperfect; one
day it had to be replaced with a machine that would
work better.
BUSMAN: People cost too much.
FABRY: They were very unproductive. They weren’t
good enough for modern technology. And besides
[…] to give birth to a machine is wonderful progress.
It’s more convenient and it’s quicker, and everything
that’s quicker means progress. Nature had no notion
of the modern rate of work. (loc. 545)

ALQUIST: […] Does Nana ever pray?
HELENA: She never stops.
ALQUIST: Does she have prayers for the
different things that can happen in a life;
prayers against hard times, prayers against
illness?
HELENA: Prayers against temptation, prayers
against floods, …
ALQUIST: No prayers against progress though,
eh?
HELENA: No, I don’t think so.
ALQUIST: That’s a pity. (loc. 1103; act 1)

Čapek’s robots
Domin: “Our factory for making people”;
“Making artificial people” (loc. 116; introductory
scene)
Domin: “He [young Rossum] took a good look
at the human body and he saw straight away
that it was much too complicated, any good
engineer would design it much more simply. So
he began to re-design the whole anatomy,
seeing what he could leave out or simplify.”
(loc. 231; introductory scene)

Domin: “Sulla doesn’t have feelings. You can
examine her.” (loc. 279)
Domin: “Robots don’t cling to life. There’s no way
they could do. They’ve got no sense of pleasure.
They’re less than the grass.” (loc. 346;
introductory scene)
NANA: “You [Helena] hate them [the robots].
Everyone hates them, it isn’t possible not to.
Even this dog hates them, won’t take a scrap of
meat from them; sticks out his tail, he does, and
howls as soon as he gets the smell of them.”
(loc. 820; act 1)

Čapek’s people
Domin: “All our visitors want to see the factory”
(loc. 116; introductory scene).
HELENA: What makes you think that’s what I
was going to ask?
DOMIN: Everyone asks for the same thing. (loc.
138)
HELENA: (to the others) You aren’t robots?
BUSMAN: (laughing) God forbid!
HALLEMEIER: The idea’s disgusting! (loc. 501)

DOMIN: Excuse me, Miss Glory, but are you
sure you’re talking to robots?
HELENA: (taken aback) Who else would I be
talking to?
DOMIN: I’m afraid these gentlemen are people,
just like you are. Just like the whole of
Europe. (loc. 501)
DOMIN: People are supposed to be a little bit
mad, Helena. That’s the best thing about them.
(loc. 736; introductory act)

The transcendental signifier
Nana: “It’s against the will of God, that’s what I say;
work of the Devil, it is, making scarecrows like that
with machines. It’s blasphemy against the Creator,
(raises hands) it’s an offense against the Lord who
made us in His own image, Helena.” (loc. 839; act
1)
NANA: (syllable by syllable) “War in the Bal-kans.”
Oh Jesus, it’s God, He’s punishing us again! (loc.
1012; act 1)
Domin: “Miss Glory, robots are not people. They are
mechanically much better than we are, they have an
amazing ability to understand things, but they don’t
have a soul.” (loc. 258; introductory scene)

“Happiness for everybody … Free!
… As much as you want!”*
Domin: But in ten years’ time Rossum’s Universal
Robots will be making so much wheat, so much
material, so much of everything that nothing will cost
anything. Everyone will be able to just take as much
as he needs. Nobody will live in poverty. They won’t
have jobs, that’s true, but that’s because there won’t
be any jobs to do. Everything will be done by living
machines. People will do only the things they want to
do, they can live their lives just so that they can
make themselves perfect. (loc. 636; introductory
scene)
*Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic, qtd. in Jameson 75

Remember some of the
characteristics of dystopian fiction …
q Characterized by a society suffused with mass
poverty, oppression, or other suffering.
q Often extrapolative, based on contemporary
social trends.
q Often provides explicit explanations for “how
things came to be this way” within the fictional
world.
q Often positions itself explicitly as warning about
how contemporary trends may turn out.
q Often intends to provide a critique of (Utopian-
intended) totalizing solutions to social problems.

Lecture 11 - Scientific Productions

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Lecture 11 - Scientific Productions