Our present cultural moment, as we confront the rise of AI, bears more than one feature in common with the European belle époque of the turn of the twentieth century. Back then, as people adjusted to the appearance of electricity and new forms of communication, it seemed that the old limits of what was possible were breaking down. If this could be achieved, what else might be achieved? We seem to be facing a similar question today. We have pushed past the limits, in at least one regard, of what might have been regarded just a few years ago as science fiction. We now have machines that can convincingly speak and interact with us. And if this has become possible, what else might soon be possible? Teleportation? Intergalactic travel? What can still be safely confined to the realm of the impossible, if this feat now cannot?
In that spirit, it is worth revisiting one of the less-acknowledged classics of the belle époque: Alfred Jarry's The Supermale. This 1902 work is a quintessential avant-garde novel, beloved by Gore Vidal and others; a work of proto-surrealist turn-of-the-century absurdism that, along with the rest of Jarry's output, inspired future generations of dadaists and researchers into the realm of the unexpected and the preposterous. Reading the novel today, however—in the Wright/Gladstone translation published by Exact Change—it comes across less as a milestone in the development of the experimental novel, and more as a characteristic product of its era of technological optimism and wonder. Whatever else it might be, The Supermale is also a quintessentially belle-époque novel, complete with bicycles, electromagnetic experiments, and other Wellsian touches.
Indeed, the book is in many respects a parody of the turn-of-the-century Wellsian scientific romance. It opens with the stock conversation that begins every such novel of proto–science fiction from the era. The visionary innovator, who has just crossed some previously-insurmountable threshold in the realm of scientific achievement, and is about to reveal it to the world, must first tease hints of his discoveries to the Doubting Thomases of the scientific establishment. The innovator's standard foil, the learned men of science—engineers and doctors, e.g.—scoff at the rumors he lets slip of his achievements. "Impossible!" they cry. Yet the innovator in Jarry's novel, Marcueil, manages to demonstrate the impossible under controlled scientific conditions. He therefore invites the doubting scientists to assume what they previously claimed did not exist: a "chair in the department of the impossible."
So far, so Wellsian. Except here, the impossible technological achievement in question is Marcueil's thesis that the human body is capable of performing the sexual act an unlimited number of times within a twenty-four hour period. The established men of science denounce this as an absurdity. Hedging the topic round with various Latin phrases, their objection amounts to the fact that no known erection could be maintained for that long; no member aroused to tumescence so many times in such a short span. "It is the very absence of this indispensable phenomenon that will always prevent man from exceeding numerically what is in fact human capacity," they declare. To this, Marcueil retorts that a certain threshold might be breached, beyond which an over-utilized tissue becomes permanently rigid: "sclerotic," in his term—and that precisely the existence of such a phenomenon is reported among the ancients.
The book is a parody, of course (Jarry was the inventor of the tongue-in-cheek branch of pseudo-science, 'pataphysics—and the book is imbued with the 'pataphysical spirit)—and so, Jarry's hypotheses are always a touch more ludicrous than those of the true Wellsian scientific romance. And yet, he always includes just enough reasoning and erudition to evoke something of the same wonder that Wells's speculations inspire. Jarry's characters do not defend their belief in the "Supermale," capable of astounding feats of sexual endurance (and who turns out of course to be Marcueil himself) in any but the most learned terms. The woman who ultimately joins the Supermale in his implausible experiment, and with whom he falls in love, is the first to put her faith in the innovator's vision—and she does so by articulating a kind of ontological argument for the Supermale's existence. Her reasoning in this regard is as impeccable as that of any scholastic theologian: "The Absolute Lover must exist, since woman can conceive of him[.]"
Part of what continues to delight one about the novel, then, is that—in addition to its humor and absurdism—it also still conjures something of the same optimism with which the other, more serious, scientific romances of the era were imbued: a belief in the possibility of limitless human progress; the unbounded potential of the species. The novel, then, is—among other things—part of a much longer tradition of progressive and optimistic literature. Indeed, Marcueil's contention that the human body is capable of performing an infinity of sexual labors within a single day reminds one of the words of an earlier generation's quintessential optimist and believer in human progress, writing almost a century before.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his notes to "Queen Mab," suggests that human beings might obtain a kind of temporal immortality—an eternal existence within the limits of this life and this world—purely through the development of their intellectual capacities. If the subjective experience of the passage of time is not absolute, Shelley writes, but rather varies with the number of thoughts that pass through one's brain during a fixed period, then it stands to reason that, as the human intellect becomes ever more sophisticated, and as universal education fills each mind with more and greater thoughts, then—he reasons—eventually each of us will subjectively experience immortality within our lifespans. If the capacity of the human mind for thought is indeed unlimited, then there is no ultimate cap on the number of thoughts we each can think, and therefore no upper bound on the amount of subjective time we can experience.
Marcueil's belief in the possibility of unlimited numbers of sexual encounters within a day's span is another version of the same optimistic thesis. He even defends it against his scientific doubters by a process of reasoning similar to Shelley's. Over the course of the human lifespan, he contends, the heart muscle alone performs a near-infinite amount of work: "The number of diastoles and systoles in a human lifetime, or even in a single day, surpasses all imaginary figures." Why could not other organs of the body reach a similar potential? (Does not the bicycle—he reasons—tying in another of Jarry's obsessions—offer a similar model for how one part of the body can be resting and the other at work at the same time, each taking turns with the other, such that a greater net propulsion is possible than if both were exerted at once? And does this not in turn prove the possibility of a form of perpetual motion?)
Here, Jarry's visionary protagonist might invoke Zeno's shade for assistance. For, if we take the paradox of the continuum seriously, we have to concede that any human body in motion—if movement is possible at all—must pass, in traversing even the smallest distance, through an infinite number of points in space. This seems to be part of what Marcueil is getting at, in his example of the heart. We know already that human muscular movement is achieving the impossible—it is traversing the infinite. Why, then, could there not be other infinities that the human body and brain might yet achieve? If enough thoughts packed into one brain could yield a subjective experience of immortality; if enough muscular spasms approach an infinity of movement; why could not the same occur in the sexual domain?
Of course, the Supermale's experiment ultimately ends in tragedy—he is electromagnetically crucified by the same scientific pharisees who had doubted his work. Jarry's parodistic account, therefore—if we choose to read it as saying anything at all—can be interpreted as much as a Frankenstein-style warning against scientific hubris as a work of techno-optimism about the limitless potential for human progress (it may at last be more Mary Shelley, that is to say, than Percy Bysshe Shelley). The Supermale's experiment is Icarian in its daring, after all—and, like Icarus, he ends up getting fried.
But every age of scientific and technological progress contains this same fundamental ambivalence. The boundaries of what is possible have shifted. Who knows, we start to think—maybe humankind can achieve immortality? Maybe we can transcend our own fixed boundaries. And yet, as we test these limits, we fear the wrath of the gods. We fear that fate may punish us for our excess.
Certainly, it is hard to take seriously Percy Shelley's contention today that universal education would eventually make us all universally wise. The human brain's capacity does not in fact appear to be infinite—even if that capacity was undoubtedly far more expansive than the narrow limits in which the premodern class system tried to confine it, and which Shelley rightly protested against. Likewise with the Supermale's experiment. Just as there is an upper limit to thought, there is probably some upper limit to human muscular athleticism (even if we have not yet reached it decisively). The novel's love interest is right then, to opt in the end for returning to a lover who is "capable of containing his love within the prudent bounds of human capacities."
So too, in our present era, we find it hard to be purely optimistic about the unprecedented technological changes happening around us. As much as the new technology seems destined to expand our potential as a species—we also fear it will underline our limits. We worry that the creations of humankind—our machine inventions—will prove more powerful and capable than ourselves—that, rather than exulting ourselves through our technology, we will cede what limited power we had to our machine creations. We fear we will be replaced; rendered otiose.
The strain of techno-optimism running through Jarry's book, then—as through the more famous (and serious-minded) scientific romances of the era—is therefore a refreshing counterweight to our sense of dread and futility. As much as we fear the changes ahead, it is worth holding out some hope that they might ultimately be for the good. They may yet increase the potential of human beings, and not just of the machines we have made in our image. "In these days when metal and machines are all-powerful," as one of Jarry's characters proclaims, "man, if he is to survive, must become stronger than the machines, just as he became stronger than the beasts." One is reminded of the stirring cry that André Gide's protagonist utters in The Immoralist—a more serious exploration of the "superman" theme that was published in the same year—1902—as Jarry's novel: What more can man do, what else can man be? (Alpin trans.)
Such is the question, and the promise, of our era too. Our moment of technological change is another belle époque. The first led into an age of war and fascism. The new machines that had unlocked human potential became used primarily for killing people. Our era contains some of the same seeds of destruction. But maybe—we should at least allow ourselves to entertain the possibility—seeds of progress too?
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