覚醒のディストピア(東北英文学研究)

DOI Web Site

書誌事項

タイトル別名
  • A Dystopia of Disillusionment(Tohoku Review of English Literature)
  • 覚醒のディストピア
  • カクセイ ノ ディストピア

この論文をさがす

抄録

Criticizing capitalism was one of Philip K. Dick's postmodern themes throughout his career. This brief paper aims to clarify how he embodies the dystopian contour of capitalism through disillusioning the complicated hallucinatory worlds in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (hereafter TSPE). The enigmatic plot of TSPE develops in modernity. Palmer Eldritch is attempting to deprive Leo Burelo of his interests in the enormous monopolistic enterprise that he runs. In a thoroughly stratified society, the characters act well in accordance with the logics and ethics of capitalism. The hallucinatory world induced by an illegal drug Can-D, sold by Leo, allows the "translated" users pleasure of consumption, which is certainly a utopia of capitalism that consists of a utopian vision of the better future. Another drug Chew-Z, supplied by Eldritch, seems to be anti-capitalistic as its illusion lets its users "reconstruct the past." However, Eldritch's ultimate goal is the profit from the illegal business. His scheme is rather deceitful and capitalistic in that he commercializes the anti-capitalism. These illusory effects cause epistemological complication. Can-D translates its users into a single personality, which makes the experience objective. However they are also aware that it is an illusion. The hallucinatory world is an objectively experienced reality as well as a realistic fiction. Chew-Z produces a more intricate situation since its illusion both intervenes in and correlates with the real world. The manifestation of Eldritch is particularly striking. When he appears in the real world, he overwrites the others with himself. Chew-Z wipes reality off the real world and simultaneously allows its illusion to be eroded by reality. These narrative frameworks indicate that Dick's focus lies in the disillusionment of utopian worlds. For the oppressed under the reign of capitalism, the most desperate moment occurs when they become aware that capitalism promises nothing but a utopia that will never be realized. The opposition of illusion and reality consists of another opposition of internal psyche and external body; though, as with the case of illusion and reality, these are certainly opposed and at the same time vaguely indistinguishable. One of the peaks of the narrative occurs when Barney Mayerson finds himself mutually translated with Eldritch and discovers there is another extraordinary creature inside Eldritch, since it does reveal that even the ruler of the illusory world embraces both the opposition and forcible unification of the internal and external. This complicated interweaving of illusion and reality blurs the boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity. Cognitive reality turns into fantastic illusion and vice versa. This explains why most of the characters act deceptively as seen in the case of Mayerson, who needs to feign sickness in order to avoid being levied as colonist. Eldritch's mysterious personality is a synecdoche for the people living in a modern capitalistic society. The epistemological ambiguity is resonant with an analogy for an ontological quest for who they are. It is of much significance that the story begins with the epigraph of Bulero's speech, which chronologically should have come after the last chapter. TSPE starts and ends with his words. The plot proceeds toward the death of Eldritch, and the epigraph obviously indicates its realization. The killing of Eldritch by Bulero is certainly the end of the nightmare in some sense. But since Bulero forever remains a capitalist, the capitalistic society will last even after Eldritch dies. The extrication from the nightmarish world controlled by Eldritch ironically results in the prolongation of the capitalist regime. What Dick delineates in this complicated work is not simply a dystopian reality. Constructing a dystopia of everlasting disillusionment is the grand design of TSPE.

収録刊行物

詳細情報 詳細情報について

問題の指摘

ページトップへ