From Urban Space to Cyberspace: A Research on Spatial Writing and Human-Android Relations in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

• Published in: Theory and practice in language studies Vol. 13; no. 12; pp. 3157 - 3165
• Main Authors: Chen, Mi, Omar, Noritah, Zainal, Zainor Izat Binti, Awang, Mohammad Ewan Bin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Academy Publication Co., LTD 01.12.2023; Academy Publication Co., Ltd
• Subjects: American literature; Analysis; Attrition (Research Studies); Critical theory; Criticism and interpretation; Cybernetics; Dick, Philip K; Doctoral Dissertations; Empathy; Ethics; Fiction; Human-computer interaction; Internet; Literature Reviews; Mathematical Logic; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Novelists; Novels; Personality Traits; Postmodernism; Robotics; Robots; Science fiction; Science fiction & fantasy; Sensory Experience; Subjectivity; Theology; Urban Culture; United States; Los Angeles California; United States > US
• ISSN: 1799-2591; 2053-0692
• DOI: 10.17507/tpls.1312.13

Philip K. Dick takes the highly computerized but ruined Los Angeles of the United States after the post-apocalyptic war as the background and brings the cyberspace struggle between androids and humans as the novel's theme, sketching a cyberpunk society in which humans and androids fight against each other. The novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? invites people to think about cyberspace and human-androids subjectivity. Inspired by Slavoj Zizek's critical theory of cyberspace, this paper uses this science-fiction force as a text to explore how contemporary American science fiction reconstructs a revolutionary human-androids subject in cyberspace, challenging human subjectivity in the urban space. Faced with human-android coexistence, Dick affirms the coexistence of multiple subjects using equal dialogue, fully exploits the advantages of androids and humans, and constructs the subject with human-androids. Through an in-depth study of androids, this paper concludes that in a human-androids coexistence space, humans and androids should not be in a master-slave relationship; instead, they are each other's constitutive Other. Humans should try to break the boundary between self and others to accept a pluralistic and open subject.