The Post-human Utopian Paradise and the Impossible Gaze from Philip K. Dick to Spike Jonze’s Her
The Post-human Utopian Paradise and the Impossible Gaze from Philip K. Dick to Spike Jonze’s Her

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the dialectic between the absence of the physical body, the presence of the out-of-body entities, and the promise of a post-human paradise, as well as their connection with the (impossible) gaze. These motifs are discussed in relation to the science fiction genre in literature (Philip K Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Dr Bloodmoney) and film (from The Invisible Man-1933 to Transcendence-2014). The article concludes with a few examples that seem to transgress the science fiction genre (Spike Jonze’s Her, 2013; Black Mirror), and the entire science fiction tradition, where the absence of the physical body and the presence of an intrusive consciousness are always intertwined, generating dystopian worlds.

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