Saturday 3 January 2015

Wearing Bodies


             
Societies that accept the expression of all types of identity in each of their members nurture in them a strong sense of self. By contrast, unique individuals within communities that encourage uniformity will develop defensive selves whose identities are defined only in relation to each society’s status quo. Using a comparison of the two very different societies that are represented in the short stories “Wang’s Carpets” by Greg Egan and “The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight, I will demonstrate how each of them embodies one of the above mentioned outcomes. I will show that it is the exile of the narrator’s genetically anomalous body in “The Country of the Kind” that causes him to identify with his uniqueness and isolation, thus compelling him to identify as being both special and superior to those around him. I will illustrate with the example of “Wang’s Carpets” that on the other hand, when individuals have the freedom to express through their bodies all the many facets of identity into which they feel the desire to refract, it will encourage a more complete self-understanding.
The narrator’s sense of self in “The Country of the Kind” is derived from his genetic uniqueness in relation to those who inhabit the world around him. On the face of the utopian society that produced him he exists as a living scar because he is, from their perspective, the only flaw in a flawless world. He is a mutation that resulted from an oversight in DNA selection that did not weed out a predilection for violence. Because this tendency has compelled him to commit murder he has been socially, though not physically exiled from this world spanning community. Citizens of this utopia have been ordered, “not to speak to him, touch him willingly, or acknowledge his existence.” (Knight, 348) thus denying him any sense of belonging and thereby further aggravating his negatively aggressive compulsions. Perhaps this reaction was anticipated when those in charge manipulated his body in such a way as to cause him to suffer an epileptic seizure whenever he felt the urge to be violent to those around him; and as a warning to those he might harm they also instigated “a careful alteration of his body chemistry … to make his exhaled and exuded wastes emit a strongly pungent and offensive odor.” (Knight, 348) Such extreme manipulations of a violent individual’s body only compel him to find less direct ways to cause suffering to the society that denies him membership. This excommunication contributes to a strong sense of self because he can do anything he wants to those who have rejected him, as long as it isn’t physically painful. Such autonomy causes him to identify himself as, “the king of the world” (Knight, 346) and to ironically think that a world where he does not belong belongs to him.
The narrator’s sense of privilege is further accentuated by his self-identification as the only “man to carve the portrait of the Age of Reason.” (Knight, 346) This belief stems from his understanding that he is the only artist on the planet.  In this world there is a chromosomal connection between violent tendencies and artistic creativity, so that when the genetic planners deselected for one, the other was eliminated as well. Of this removal art from human civilization he says, “I don’t suppose the genetic planners wanted to get rid of it, but they would have shed almost anything to make a homogeneous, rational, sane, and healthy world.” (Knight, 346) But on one occasion certain “genetic and environmental accidents … combined to produce” him, a mutant possessing those same destructive tendencies and creative urges that had been bred out of the population. (Knight, 348)
The narrator’s sculptural creations are extensions of his identity, and unlike him, they do not produce an offensive odour, they can be touched, they can be held and he hopes that through them he can reach out to find someone like him or someone who he can convince to become like him. He installs these works of art in various outdoor settings throughout the world with a message attached; “To you who can see … I offer you a world ... You can share the world with me. They can’t stop you. Strike now — Pick up a sharp thing and stab, or a heavy thing and crush. That’s all. That will make you free. Anyone can do it.” (Knight, 350-351) This message can have two possible meanings. If it is one of violence then perhaps he believes that if he can convince others to strike and stab, he will have community with them. He is also convinced that there is a historical correlation between art and war, and so he may believe that if violence is returned to the world then so as well will art and beauty. But it is possible that this message is not one of violence. The narrator does not specify in his message who or what he is urging the potential reader to stab or crush. From his perspective as a sculptor he may be attaching to his installations a message to “those who can see” and appreciate these pieces as works of beauty that they too can “share the world” of artistic expression with him. They can pick up “a sharp thing” such as a chisel, “or a heavy thing” such as a hammer to “stab … and crush” a sculpting medium such as stone to achieve freedom through art. The narrator’s hope is that someone in the world will find his sculptures beautiful and in appreciating them will consequently appreciate him, thereby satisfying his frustrated need for community.
The narrator’s need to be physically near the other humans who reject him gives shape to two identities. One is a vengeful identity and the other is his artistic one. He could go somewhere to be alone but that is clearly not a choice for him. He needs some kind of human interaction for self-definition. The problem with the narrator’s sense of self in relation to the population that surrounds him is that others react to him with revulsion, fear and disgust. A sense of self that is derived from the reactions of others, positive or negative, is highly subjective. Interaction as opposed to reaction is a better way of arriving at a sense of self, but he has been denied such communication except for one time while wearing scuba gear that serves to conceal his identity. On this occasion he encounters a young woman underwater, “Her cool body was in the bend of my arm; behind two thicknesses of vitrin—a world away … her eyes were friendly and kind. There was a moment when, two strangers, yet one flesh, we felt our souls speak to one another across that abyss of matter.” (Knight, 347) In this situation he is able to experience aspects of himself that would be attractive to another human being because he has circumvented the imposed limitations that would otherwise keep him from interacting with her. He has shown her with his interactive underwater dancing, another artistic expression of his identity, that he is beautiful. This interaction takes place not only below the surface of the water but also symbolically below the surface of the world of appearances where they can both experience one another’s inner selves. Unfortunately they cannot live long underwater and, perhaps in this world, not even for long under the surface of one another. When they emerge from below and unmask she sees who is and he is reminded that she belongs to the world that excommunicated him, and he understands their kind.
The word “kind” in the title of the story “The Country of the Kind” can be read with more than one meaning. It holds in it the implication that it is out of the desire for a common kindness that violence has been genetically removed from the gene pool that is the source from which new babies are born into this utopian world. Another reading of the title, which certainly corresponds to the perspective of the exiled narrator, is that the citizens of this utopia are “of a kind”, meaning they are all alike. In what way though are they alike? If we read the narrator’s descriptions of those he encounters in this society they are neither physically identical, nor alike in personality. The only two ways that the population of this utopia are shown to be alike are in their non-violence and in their lack of any extreme predisposition for creativity that would result in high art.  The narrator, having traveled widely in this world has found no displays of public art. He is because of this under the impression that he “had invented sculpture and drawing” until he finds historical examples in “a storeroom full of old printed books.” (Knight, 346) It is because everyone other than himself is lacking in a serious creative urge that he identifies them all of a kind, as “Dulls”. (Knight, 343)
In Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind”, the artistic creations that the narrator plants around the world are all extensions of his own identity distributed towards the purpose of arriving at some sense of community in his world. Similarly in Greg Egan’s “Wang’s Carpets”, the thousand clones each transhuman citizen of the Carter-Zimmerman Polis, including Paolo Venetti has sent out into space from Earth are also extensions of each of their identities in order “to find alien life”, or in other words, to achieve a sense of community in their universe. (Egan, 8) They “need to find aliens who've faced the same decisions—and discovered how to live, what to become.” They “need to understand what it means to inhabit the universe.'' (Egan, 8) What the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” as an individual and the transhumans of “Wang’s carpets” as a group have in common is that they are both looking for friends. The “Country of the Kind” narrator wants a sense of community or at least one other person in the world to understand him. The Transhumans of the Carter-Zimmerman Polis, having been completed as a collective entity on Earth, nonetheless feel incomplete in the universe. They have evolved far beyond the disrespect for the diversity of identities that was common when humans existed. From their perspective the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” may seem typically, and as Paolo says, “Humans, clearly, would have benefited from a good strong dose of each other's inner life, to keep them from slaughtering each other—but any civilized transhuman could respect and value other citizens without the need to have been them, first hand.” (Egan, 13) Looking back over human history then, the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” when compared to other humans overall would not seem particularly violent to a transhuman.
In “Wang’s Carpets”, each clone of a transhuman is the extensions of an original self on Earth but they each also have the power to wear any body they imagine because bodies are no longer flesh based but rather mentally projected. When for example Paolo finds himself suddenly under water he has “his exoself convert him into an amphibious human variant—biologically and historically authentic, if no longer the definitive ancestral phenotype. Water flooded into his modified lungs, and his modified brain welcomed it.” (Egan, 3) Each transhuman has an external self that enables its mind to experience any given environment with whatever type of body and brain that is most conducive to doing so. If as in this case the body is “biologically authentic”, the consciousness of the clone wearing it will be affected and influenced by the instincts of that body. “Paolo flicked water onto her face, affectionately; the impulse seemed to come with the amphibian body.” (Egan, 4) Unique impulses independent of the self that has created the body shows that each body has its own identity.
Each clone has an independent consciousness but can also access information from the original self if he or she chooses to share it, but new experiences in a separate body, even with the same consciousness will cause a different identity to form. Paolo thinks on this in relation to the death of one clone on his way through space, for whom, “after the first fifty years, his Earth-self had begun to hold things back; by the time news reached Earth of the Fomalhaut clone's demise, the messages had become pure audiovisual linear monologues. Paolo understood. It was only right; they'd diverged, and you didn't send mind grafts to strangers.” (Egan, 8) The clone has the potential and the freedom to develop its own self, far different from the original.
When bodies can change at will every individual is potentially an artist, as is shown in this description of the transhuman, Liesi, who had appeared as “a green-and-turquoise butterfly, with a stylized human face stippled in gold on each wing” (Egan, 6) she in this case identifies as a butterfly to communicate her concerns about a potential environmental disaster. Then after her pleas are not heeded, she comes “in mourning, as a giant dark bird.” (Egan, 11)
          In the world of “Wang’s Carpets” all expressions of self are valid, including the merging of two selves permanently into one or even selves choosing to cease to exist altogether.  Hermann, for example had over the centuries of his existence “wiped most of his episodic memories, and rewritten his personality a dozen times.” He thinks of himself as his “own great-great-grandson.” (Egan, 11) Identity is clearly a variable in this world of transhumans. People can choose to be alone which stands in stark contrast to the Country of the Kind narrator who has no such choice.
          The freedom to express one’s consciousness into multiple identities allows for a stronger sense of self and a better sense of community than that of one whose body is fixed in a singular uniqueness. If one can make changes to suit each mood, opinion or environment one finds oneself experiencing, then how better to understand other individuals? The society in which Paolo lives allows for such free expression. The world in which the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” lives has, in cutting itself off from creativity does not have the ability to express that which dwells beneath the surface of the self. No one in transhuman societies wishes harm on others, no one is shut out and no one is alone unless they wish to be. Each individual lives in their own utopia, which is frequently shared with others. The world of “The Country of the Kind” is in its absence of creativity, as its narrator says, “Dull.”

 Works Cited
Knight, Damon. The Country of the Kind. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.pdf. Robert Silverberg. New York. Tom Doherty Associates. 2003