Postmodernism in literature often recontextualises narratives in ambiguous ways that challenge the audience to question the relationship between the near and the distant past.  It “inaugurates an unprecedented self-consciousness about writing out of a historical epoch and responding to its cultural conditions” (Gregson, xiii), leading to the weakening of historicality and subjectivity.  Besides, postmodern fictions display a sense of fragmentary narrative voices that deconstruct representational symbols, imagery and the role of language. It also seeks to reject cannons and subvert orthodoxies established by dualist oppositions.  For example, the cyborg figure lies in the boundary between the biological and the technological is opened to questions of humanity and morality.  It raises ontological questions about the very status of reality and the world: “What is a world?; “What makes a human?” Thus, the boundaries between real/artificial worlds are blurred as postmodern narratives place readers in a state of continued ontological uncertainty that engages cultural and political questions. 

 

Machines Like Me is a 2019 sci-fi fiction written by the English author Ian McEwan.  The story takes place in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, surviving by playing the stock markets online, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret that threatens imprisonment. With money inherited from his mother, Charlie buys Adam at 86,000 pounds, one of the first synthetic humans that are created with intelligence and self-awareness by Alan Turing, who is still alive.  With Miranda's help, he designs Adam's personality.  It is not long before a love triangle soon forms, and these three beings confront a profound moral dilemma with Miranda’s secret, as well as humanity, unfolded.

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“We may be confronting a boundary condition, a limitation we’ve imposed upon ourselves.  We create a machine with intelligence and self-awareness and push it out into our imperfect world.  Devised along generally rational lines, well disposed to others, such a mind soon finds in a hurricane of contradictions.”      

(Machines Like Me: 180) 

 

Tokyo Cancelled is a magical realist novel written by Rana Dasgupta. The novel narrates the stories told by thirteen different passengers stranded in an airport.  The Doll is the eighth of the thirteen frame stories.  Yukio, who is under pressure from work and his family, he creates a life-size doll hardwired to a computer and falls in love with her.  The doll shows care, pride, anger and jealousy like humans do. It suggests both the vulnerability of a woman body and the postmodern image of woman whose sexuality and desire are objectified.

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“He tried to reassemble her with panicked hands but her head was cracked and things would not go back together.  He pressed wires and components inside and forced the head to stay on.  She had done nothing.  She was a victim.  Innocent.”

(Tokyo Cancelled: 219)

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Works and images cited:

Dasgupta, Rana. Tokyo cancelled. Black cat, 2005.

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Gregson, Ian. Postmodern Literature. University of Wales, Bangor, UK, Oxford University Press, 2004. 

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McEwan, Ian. Machines Like Me: A Novel. Nan A. Talese, 2019.

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Front page image:

Underwood, Underwood. "Remarkable Mechanical Doll (1918)." "Mechanical Dolls Aid Airmen's Benefit," Popular Mechanics (Nov 1918), found, uploaded on 25 Oct 2011, Abaculi, abaculi.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html.