Week 10: Cyberpunk Bodies

Text: Meat Puppets or Robopaths? Cyberpunk and the Question of Embodiment
Centering on the novels Antibodies, by David J. Skal, and Neuromancer, by William Gibson, Thomas Foster digs into the nature of cyborg and cyberpunk identity, confronting the limiting dualities that stand in the way.
He first digs into the necessary background information on cyberpunk including its commodification and the perhaps somewhat typically 'punk' attitude of Gibson that 'As soon as the label is there, it's gone.'
He then moves on to the cyborg in a racialized context, examining the Marvel comic Deathlok. In selectively quoting W.E.B. Du Bois, Deathlok, so it seems, has defined himself in terms of 'multiple forms of hybridity, without transforming one form into a metaphor of another, racial identity as a metaphor for the cyborg, for example.'
He then moves on to the 'meat' of his argument, if you'll excuse the pun. Here, he digs into [sorry, I don't know what's up with me and digging tonight] gender, fetishism, and cultural identity. In Neuromancer, gender in particular (according to Foster) may find a way out of its limitations, whereas Antibodies takes a much more reactionary stance on the cyborg

Film: Blade Runner
Blade Runner is set in the inconceivably distant future of the 21st century, when advanced cybernetic robots known as 'replicants' have become illegal on planet Earth. The blade runner Deckard is informed of several replicants that (who?) are to be 'retired,' a euphemism that makes it sound a lot less violent than it actually is. The strongest among these, Roy, wishes to quite literally meet his maker, and for this he requests the help of one of the Tyrell Corporation's (makers of replicants) genetic designers, J.F. Sebastian, who has in the meantime met the replicant Pris. Leon, another replicant, is being pursued by Deckard. Deckard meets a replicant, Rachel, who (that?) does not know she (it?) is a replicant; it is Rachel who saves him from having his eyes gouged out by Leon. This incident occurs directly after Deckard 'retires' a replicant working (nude) at a sleazy bar. In the end Pris is also 'retired,' but Roy, who drives Deckard into the position of merely trying to survive, attempts thereby to instill empathy before finally succumbing to the end of his predetermined four year lifespan. Deckard hereupon announces his retirement, which is to say, that he's got no intention to 'retire' Rachel, with whom he flees in the end to who-knows-where.

Terms
Meat puppet- one confined to an organic body, in Neuromancer, more literally a prostitute controlled by software, while consciousness is suppressed.
Cyberpunk- literary movement within science fiction, with a focus on cyborg characters and the relationship between the body and technology.
Robopaths- those who believe themselves to be robots trapped in human bodies.
artificial intelligence- some electronically programmed form of intelligence, emulating the human type we all take for granted.
cyberspace- surprisingly to me, coined by William Gibson to be an effective buzzword, denoting a complex array of interconnected electronic information; perhaps now it is better to just say 'the internet,' as, regardless of how people want to define it, the word often gets used this way.
Questions

Why does Deckard drink so much?

What does the vision/dream of the unicorn signify, and what of the origami unicorn left by one of the cops?

It has already been discussed how cyborg identity might relate to the traditional, dualistic concepts of gender. How might it relate to those whose gender is not so easily classified?

Have people begun to think of themselves, as some of the characters in cyberpunk novels do, as 'meat'? Is this a real danger?

If cyborgs present a 'crisis in dualistic thinking,' then how might is this to be resolved? Should this be resolved at all?

Do androids dream of electric sheep???