Abstract
This article aims to contribute to a wider discourse on the implications of technologies on notions of selfhood, identity, social constructs and power dynamics by delving into the literary representation of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) in selected science fiction (SF) tests. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes phenomenology and identity politics theories, this article explores the intricacies of BCI in two SF texts: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton and ‘The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling’ by Ted Chiang. The analysis hinges on the multifaceted implications of its integration of concepts of identity and selfhood. Bestowing an agential identity on machine, mind–machine interfaces, as this argument contends, proposes the machine as a figure of defiance in the texts being analysed – challenging traditional notions of identity, consciousness, agency and freedom, and facilitating a shift towards an alternative world-view where human agency is decentred in an Anthropocene era. Embracing Jameson’s view of SF texts as sites of imagination, ‘symbolic acts’ and ‘archaeologies of the future’, the analysis highlights how these texts employ mind–machine interfaces to challenge and subvert a world-view, which grants human beings special rights and a privileged status over other beings and entities.
Published Version
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