Holy Fire and the Post-Human Body

Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire is a satirical reimagining of human society in the distant future where cats and dogs are modified to speak and only the oldest and most model citizens have any kind of financial power. The young people, however, are ignored and treated worse than animals. The main character, Mia, is a 94-year-old medical economist, who spends ninety percent of her life’s earnings on an advanced medical procedure to make her body young again. The government or authority in the book is called the Polity. Geriatric, very polite, rich people who have survived so long because of their will to adhere to what it means to be a strict ideal citizen run the Polity.

Early in the novel, Mia makes the shift to her new body and with it she dawns herself Maya, a nineteen-year-old girl full of naiveté and spirit. This shift is fully realized when Maya realizes she desires to be a photographer. Midway through the novel, we are presented with the philosophical approach to beauty and art after Mia has discovered she yearns to be an artist. The whole metanarrative hinges on the exploration of art and beauty between post-humans and human humans. The bridge is consciousness, and Mia’s newfound youth and exuberance allows her to pursue her wildest intellectual dreams – becoming a famous model – the object on the other side of the photographer’s lens. Why would Bruce Sterling make this choice in what was unfolding as an intriguing undoing of a coming of age story? Perhaps her career needed to match her post-human body’s age, but this seems a far cry from her previous career as a medical economist. It is possible Sterling was trying to make a point about the irony in the objectification of her post-human body portraying the literalized figure of herself in the 2020s during the fashion show with Josef Novak.

This establishes the idea that despite the medical and technological advances of the future, society still encourages the objectification of the female body for the male gaze. The part in the novel where Novak, met only with a little persistence on Maya’s part, sweeps her up and takes her to model the 2020s look, seems eerily like a kidnapping, which is exactly how it feels when men encourage you to do something you’re not sure about. Is this attempt to shift the line of narrative away from Mia’s interests in being an artist is certainly a reflection upon how it is to want to be an artist in reality. Everyone is pushing you into something you don’t want to do despite your efforts.

However, becoming a famous model is probably the highest status a young Mia could attain in this satire on our own society. Doing so may even place her higher than talking dogs and cats, which seem to be of great importance to include in the polity. This reconnection with her more human side through her post-human body is particularly intriguing when you consider the effects the age-reversal procedure on others like Mia.

Will they succumb to the humanity in their young post-human bodies? More perceptive characters in the book do notice that Mia is not what she seems. Whether they notice her as an exotic beauty, or they can see the years of experience behind her eyes, there is a difference between her post-human body and human bodies.

It is pretty clear by the end of the novel, that post-human and human are connected through art. Where the imagination exists, so too does the necessity to create beautiful objects and concepts. And beauty can emerge through fragmentation – in the metanarrative structure of the book, in the fragmentary nature of the characters’ lives, and in the actual fragmentation and rebuilding of Mia’s cells in order to undergo her elaborate rejuvenation treatment. 

Orly Ruaimi

Definitions of Holy Fire

Reading the book Holy Fire has challenged me to familiarize myself with possible human futures by realizing discursive policy issues related to the nature of a technologically advanced humanity. The story presents a critique and comment of the present through the lens of a possible future. This includes descriptions of the contemporary world, including: body, age, economy, gender changes, stereotypes, biological and ethical issues, medical research, elder care, drug addiction, psychology, and religion. This paper highlights several instances where the author mentions the term Holy Fire toward the purpose of analyzing its strategic placement and its connection to the question of policy.

The first instance the narrator uses the term Holy Fire is in this following quotation from chapter 1:

“Human lives, her human life. A night not really different from a thousand other nights, but there had been a profound joy in that one moment, an emotion like holy fire. She had known without speaking that her husband felt it, too, and she had slipped her arm around him. It had been a moment beyond speech and out of time.” (Holy Fire, chapter 1, 56)

The narrator places the term associated with vulnerability in the main character Mia. This is where the narrator brings into view the delicate human characteristics of Mia, supporting it through specific words: human life, joy, husband. In this chapter, Mia experiences a midlife crisis through a retrospective glance, recalling a time when these words manifested in her life. Considering the fact that the book contemplates advanced technology, this particular observation lends itself to the contrary. Holy Fire here translates to love, a distant concept according to the time where the story takes place – it is ephemeral in nature and non-materialistic, something that humans highly desired and rarely attained. 

A second time where the term is used is in the same chapter:

“And now she was looking at a drugged and naked stranger on her carpet and that sacred moment had come back to her, still exactly what it was, what it had been, what it would always be.This stranger was not her daughter, and this moment of the century was not that other ticking moment, but none of that mattered. The holy fire was more real than time, more real than any such circumstance. She wasn’t merely having a happy memory. She was having happiness. She had become happiness.” (Holy Fire, chapter 1, 56)

This scene involves a look on the family unit forward by a queering and a reinvention of the family. The author chooses to insert the term Holy Fire again but as a physical attribute: the question of treatment of people with drug addiction and the performative aspect of sex/gender through the viewing of the “naked” body. Here the term refers to the human physical condition involving desire and addiction, whether that means sex or drugs. Both of these have profound biological effects on humans. Mia views Brett’s young naked body, the instigative draw to its sexuality, coupled with Brett’s strong drug addiction, at the same time consulting her own lack of control of her biomedically modified old body. This is the turning point in the book where the book transitions from the genre of cyberpunk to biopunk. Cyberpunk is typified by the mimesis of high tech and low life or the diminishing of raw human condition aspects of society, in this case Mia’s civil support/social worker/house keeper/health inspector/police spy, as well as all her life extension treatments. Services and conditions make Mia’s life technologically advanced while also entertaining a low quality as to human relationships of trust and compassion. And the transition to biopunk, where the implications of technological bio enhancements creates  a society or “order”  where these miserable outcomes perpetually maintain.

Another place where the term Holy Fire is used is in relations to religion in chapter 4, quote bellow:

“But those who had directly experienced the descent of holy fire had no doubt of its sacred origin. The Church had always survived the uncharitable speculations of skeptics.” (Holy Fire, chapter 4, 226)

This passage references the current acting Pope in 2065 who undergoes life extension, thereby becoming ‘post human’. This chapter also tells a story of a hero’s journey, dealing with elder care and abuse, cyborgazation of humans (Novack’s arm) and tensions in religious institutions – these themes compare the concept of god with the advancements of biology and science. A Pope who enhances himself technologically, adopting super human abilities, can see the future and heal the sick. The Church, as a supporter of advanced technology, contradicts itself through violating canons of religion. Science slowly absorbs God, degrading His greatness. Here, holy fire means the manifestation or power of the omnipotent, or ‘God’. Looking at these three instances where the term appears supports the continuity of the main idea of the book: the miserable human condition will exist as a concept in the future through the contortion of economical, medical and social aspects of society. The theme of the book at the same time addresses issues of policy in each chapter.

Cancelled Seminar This Week

A medical emergency has cancelled our seminar together this week. I have posted the anime we were going to screen on our blog. I will circulate a DVD with English and other language option to interested students after we return from Spring Break. Please post questions and comments about the film on our blog and we will begin our conversation that way. I am terribly sorry. All will be well.

Roujin Z

Body and Gender in ‘All About My Mother’

In his movie, All About My Mother the way Almodovar approaches subjects such as the body and gender provides us with the means to reconsider these concepts based on the phenomenon of transgender which is located at the margins. The film thus centers around the idea of acting through gender, but through a gender not placed as their ‘norm’. As Manuela says to Huma, “I can lie very well and I’m used to improvising”, and the placing of a play in the midst of all the drama and gender performances, only accentuates this idea of being a constant character in life’s screen. Desire and suffering interlink and construct a plot that soon begins to dissolve some established principles concerning the body, gender and identity in All About My Mother.

The main transvestite character in the film, Agrado, does not seek camouflage. She doesn’t pretend to be a woman. Her public affirmation is carried out by exhibiting her body exactly for what it is: a body that has been transformed, manufactured, that appears and affirms itself as a manufactured body, not a substantive, objectified body but embodiment, a vehicle and meaning of experience. The authenticity of this body, according to Agrado’s own discourse, her ‘nature’, is part of the process that manufactured it. When she says that what she has that is most authentic is the silicone, Agrado is revealing that the ‘authentic’ in her is exactly that which is the product of her creation, the intervention of her desire, of her own agency.

Agrado’s feminine breasts are not the most authentic part of her, but the lived experience of metamorphosis, inscribed on her breasts, the embodied subjectivity which is constructed by this movement towards the other. By locating herself from the point of view of the person who is structurally and politically located as the other, as a non-subject, the trans dislocates the subject position from a structurally fixed place. The embodied experience of ‘becoming the other’, while dramatizing the mechanisms for constructing difference, is also an anti-hierarchic undertaking which destabilizes the dominant politics of subjectivity.

Almodovar is not only expanding the perspective of gender and performance adeptly, but also opens a dialog between being a woman and acting as a mother throughout the film.

After Esteban’s death, Manuela goes on playing the roles in which she’s cast. She agrees to donate Esteban’s heart in a scene that literally transforms simulacrum into reality, taking the actress from the training and putting her into the role of grieving family member. After Manuela leaves for Barcelona to find Esteban’s father, she assumes the role of surrogate mother to a stage actress, a pregnant nun and, eventually, the nun’s son Esteban, and at one point, she literally finds herself playing the role of a great theatrical mother. This being a melodrama and a women’s picture, Manuela surrounds herself with a strong emotional community composed of women who are each, in their own way, also playing a role—the aforementioned stage actress; the pregnant, HIV-positive nun; a prostitute Agrado, who occupies an ambiguous position between biological womanhood and maleness; Esteban’s father Lola, who similarly blurs the line between male and female. Role-playing here isn’t a put-on, though; on the contrary, Almodovar seems to believe that for these women, as Agrado declares in the film’s unexpectedly amusing and breathtaking centerpiece, “You are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.”

In this film, womanhood, on any terms, implies a kind of acting, whereby a person effectively authors herself through performance. It is in this sense that the use of film melodrama is most effective; for the emotional excess of this film, its profound sense of loss and love, regret and possibility, provides the raw material through which Manuela remakes herself in the face of tragedy.

Almodovar turns to these critical dramas about women, about the roles that women must play, about the price and possibility of performing the role of woman, to foreground the dizzying array of issues he’s taken on here and to underscore the spirit of wicked comedy and overwrought melodrama that make his film such an emotional whirlwind. Thinking about these experiences at the margins can help us rethink the concept of gender, its limitations and possibilities, both analytically and politically.

PostCanine but not PostSuffering

Kathy Sirico

Short Issue Precis

“We’ve jumped over the walls of the human condition by climbing on the backs of animals” (Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling p.17)

At the beginning of Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, we meet the dog Plato, who is part of a much bigger group of animal characters in Sterling’s future society who have taken on human qualities through scientific manipulation. Plato appears as Martin’s companion dog. Martin has put Plato through many longevity operations to make him postcanine, allowing the dog to speak like a human, but to also be shut off when necessary.
          Although Plato has increased human intelligence, he is still very much owned by Martin, and still considered property. Plato is Martin’s property to alter without regard for the harm or stress it might cause the dog. His reasons for making Plato postcanine come down to both wanting a companion and testing the boundaries of posthuman extenstion by testing every process on Plato before he uses the same operations on himself—classic modern day animal testing reimagined in a futuristic society. He claims that it is cheaper to test things on animals than humans, however it is also clear that the posthumans in this narrative do not think about the animal suffering and still consider the dogs as having fewer feelings and pain tolerances than humans. Dogs are below humans and thus testing on them goes on without ethical dilemma, just like today. Instead of admitting outright that he has put Plato through potentially painful operations, Martin refers to Plato with terms like “resilient,” “heavily altered,” and “my good old dog.” These words are void of any notion of suffering and thus void of any responsibility. 
          Plato is postcanine, however this term is misleading. Martin has “upgraded” Plato based on human values and human scales of intelligence with total disregard for animal intelligences and abilities. Similar to the idea of the white man’s burden, Martin has taken it upon himself to help Plato out of his animal suffering and elevate him to what humans consider valuable. He assumes Plato is better off now than he was before because he is more like a human. Even later in the book when the hackers disrupt Martin’s virtual palace and Plato suffers the most, nobody thinks of him as suffering. Instead they see him as either a tool with which to find more information or a threat to their discoveries. Plato’s mind is virtually linked to Martin’s virtual world so his suffering must be a horrifying kind of mental torture. Strangely, the only person who sees this is the widow. At the end of the book, Mia recognizes Plato and the widow informs her that Plato no longer talks. The widow is trying to make Plato into a dog again to ease his suffering. Mia remarks that he looks much better. She never says that she’s glad he is not suffering or straining his mind—her world choice implies that value still lies in appearance, much like the values of the futuristic youth-obsessed world she resides in. In the end, even though Mia reaches a sort of “separate peace,” she still holds the values of her society and thus never fully transcends it.
          Through these postcanines, Sterling is commenting on the issue of animal testing and human-centric views of the world. Every industry, particularly the cosmetics industry, uses animal testing before releasing their products on the market. Just like in Sterling’s futuristic society, we also value youth and beauty in today’s world. Celebrity culture and the cosmetics industry alone tell us that. Because of this fixation, only small groups (usually of vegans or vegetarians) pay attention to the products they use and if they are tested on animals. As a vegan, I pay more attention to this, but at a point it seems unavoidable that even the most diligent person might miss something, whether due to bad labeling or disguised ingredients. However, the larger issue is the total lack of compassion towards animals who suffer, whether through animal testing, factory farming, or abuse. This lack of compassion continues in other areas where a person of privilege sees others as below them, specifically racially or economically. To this point, it becomes an issue of white hetero-normative centric views and how destructive they are to a society of diverse individuals. As we look towards the “future” it is important to understand the importance of compassionate multiplistic thinking and acting, otherwise someone will always suffer, and another will always oppress.

Post-Human, Post-Gender

When they asked if she had named the hamster, she said “Fred”.  When they said that was a boy’s name she said it was short for Fredreika. - Holy Fire, (Pg. 75)

Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, details a futuristic global society that is a prophetic/satirical vision of our own.  A Society run by an older generation of identifiable “post-humans”, Gerontocrats, each granted an unnaturally prolonged life span in exchange for being model citizens.  This vision of the world is so focused on the “future”, medical perfection, and seeing what humanity can accomplish, that the scene of naming the hamster with “a boy’s name” is so bizarre.

With society getting an intense rewrite, socially legible ideas of gender should also get a similar rewrite.  In the first chapter Mia and Mercedes even discuss being post-women and post-sex, where individuals having lifespans prolonged so long by medicine have caused parts of theirs bodies to no longer function.  Only the important organs and tissues work so as to keep the person moving and continuing their routine.  This already begins to queer the social legibility of sex and gender whereas once one is beyond functionality, post-functional, they are no longer read as women or sexual beings, they are post.  Similar in ways today with ideas of our older generations who are pictured as “old people” just sitting around with no particular function.  

The Hamster naming does not happen when Mia/Maya is post-function, it occurs when Maya is newly functional, where everything works again as if she was young, and the only post, is post-human.  (And post-Hamster.)  What makes the hamster naming so bizarre to me is we are talking about a futuristic society where even hamsters cannot have certain names based on their apparent gender.  To have to correct and tell Mia that Fred is “a boy’s name” and have her defend herself and say it is short for “Fredreika”, feels so dated for the future Sterling is imagining.  It is a clear indicator of when this piece was written, where this would not of even had to be something to cross Bruce Sterling’s mind.  But now in 2016, we’re seeing ideas of gender evolve right in front of us, names included, where this Hamster named fred would not of been questioned.  Not to mention that this all takes place in San Francisco, a city constantly queering ideas of gender and sex.  Of course this could be satirical, as much of the book is, but this doesn’t feel as clear as other obviously satirical instances.  

Even with the book being so futuristic and advanced, certain things, like the gender binary, feel so...old fashioned.  It is not just the Gerontocracy running everything, but subtle something's about Sterling’s writing where you can tell it was written in the beginning of the digital age, and not the point where we are now.  Not that this is good or bad, simply something that Sterling could not have accounted for.  With it already being very prophetic, it is clear that is not going to prophesize everything.  The evolution of gender being one of them, as it has evolved in pop culture at a parabolic rate.  If we look at norms of a decade ago, 2006, a lot has changed in such a short time.  Nowadays the traditional binary is being questioned much more often by more people, where in discussing the future it can be brought up the idea of a post-gender society as we already have a much more trans-inclusive society.  (But still not a totally trans-inclusive society, moving towards something does not mean it has been achieved.)

Arguments against post-gender societies usually revolve around carrying on reproduction and preserving the human race.  In today’s world we are dealing with severe overpopulation where being able to reproduce should not be as much of a concern, as counteracting and controlling overpopulation.  While in Holy Fire underpopulation seems to be more of the issue following the plagues, genocides, and incidents that led to the creation of The Polity.  Most likely this world had overpopulation that’s numbers were severely cut down from these incidents.  To counteract underpopulation, The Polity has a population that can outlive any previous human lifespan significantly, and as this population gets older some ideas of sex and gender do change based on physical functionality, being post-sex and post-woman.  But overall the idea of the binary is still there, and is more evident within the more functional bodies, the younger generations and Maya-vs-Mia. Even to the contemporary idea of a post-gender society and the worry of reproduction, it is a simple misunderstanding of gender.  Regardless of gender(s), humans be able too, and definitely will, reproduce.  With our ever increasing knowledge of biology and the genome, reproduction has been queered to something that no longer needs the act of sex to happen.  

If we are to have a world like that of The Polity, then reproduction will not a be a worry.  It seems that when extinction/survival of the human race is not a priority, gender can begin to evolve to something “post”. Post-woman, post-sex, post-gender.  With regards to the medical regime of The Polity as a possibility of our advancing society, you cannot tell me that societies so infused with the futurity of medicine and medical advancements does not have research with reproduction to carry on the genome beyond the same aged bodies.  If they can melt people down into bio-Jell-O to create a whole new body of youth, then it is beyond a safe bet to say that similar facilities of the polity have little post-fetal pudding cups of Jell-O-Genome babies for excited post-human parents.  

And Jell-O doesn’t need a gender.