„Dusze przemierzają wieki, jak chmury przemierzają niebo” — Tożsamość sieciowa w filmie „Atlas chmur”
“Souls Cross Ages Like Clouds Cross Skies”. Network Identity in „Cloud Atlas”

Summary/Abstract: In 21st-century science fiction narratives, the figure of the cyborg has been replaced by a new group of liminal characters: avatars, clones, sentient AI, genetically modified humans and time-displaced individuals. Through these characters, the narratives explore philosophical questions about the unity of personal identity. One of the films that investigate this question is Tom Tykwer’s and Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s film „Cloud Atlas” (2012), as it proposes the notion of network identity, divorced from time. Network identity – in the form of transmigration of souls – is enacted in the film by the concept of eternal recurrence which is the film’s overriding framework. This identity is what connects the six juggled stories, spanning through various historical eras from the nineteenth century to the distant future. The paper analyses the film’s concept of twenty-first century subjectivity, singular and manifold, separated and connected simultaneously, and how it taps into the theme of global interconnectedness and co-temporality brought about by the media and globalization.

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