Societies that accept the expression
of all types of identity in each of their members nurture in them a strong
sense of self. By contrast, unique individuals within communities that
encourage uniformity will develop defensive selves whose identities are defined
only in relation to each society’s status quo. Using a comparison of the two
very different societies that are represented in the short stories “Wang’s
Carpets” by Greg Egan and “The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight, I will
demonstrate how each of them embodies one of the above mentioned outcomes. I
will show that it is the exile of the narrator’s genetically anomalous body in
“The Country of the Kind” that causes him to identify with his uniqueness and
isolation, thus compelling him to identify as being both special and superior
to those around him. I will illustrate with the example of “Wang’s Carpets”
that on the other hand, when individuals have the freedom to express through
their bodies all the many facets of identity into which they feel the desire to
refract, it will encourage a more complete self-understanding.
The narrator’s sense of self in “The
Country of the Kind” is derived from his genetic uniqueness in relation to
those who inhabit the world around him. On the face of the utopian society that
produced him he exists as a living scar because he is, from their perspective,
the only flaw in a flawless world. He is a mutation that resulted from an
oversight in DNA selection that did not weed out a predilection for violence.
Because this tendency has compelled him to commit murder he has been socially,
though not physically exiled from this world spanning community. Citizens of
this utopia have been ordered, “not
to speak to him, touch him willingly, or acknowledge his existence.” (Knight,
348) thus denying him any sense of belonging and thereby further aggravating
his negatively aggressive compulsions. Perhaps this reaction was anticipated when
those in charge manipulated his body in such a way as to cause him to suffer an
epileptic seizure whenever he felt the urge to be violent to those around him;
and as a warning to those he might harm they also instigated “a careful
alteration of his body chemistry … to make his exhaled and exuded wastes emit a
strongly pungent and offensive odor.” (Knight, 348) Such extreme manipulations
of a violent individual’s body only compel him to find less direct ways to
cause suffering to the society that denies him membership. This excommunication contributes to a strong sense of self because
he can do anything he wants to those who have rejected him, as long as it isn’t
physically painful. Such autonomy causes him to identify himself as, “the king
of the world” (Knight, 346) and to ironically think that a world where he does
not belong belongs to him.
The narrator’s
sense of privilege is further accentuated by his self-identification as the
only “man to carve the portrait of the Age of Reason.” (Knight, 346) This
belief stems from his understanding that he is the only
artist on the planet. In this world
there is a chromosomal connection between violent tendencies and artistic
creativity, so that when the genetic planners deselected for one, the other was
eliminated as well. Of this removal art from human civilization he says, “I don’t suppose the genetic planners wanted to
get rid of it, but they would have shed almost anything to make a homogeneous,
rational, sane, and healthy world.” (Knight, 346) But on one occasion certain
“genetic and environmental accidents … combined to produce” him, a mutant
possessing those same destructive tendencies and creative urges that had been
bred out of the population. (Knight, 348)
The narrator’s sculptural creations are extensions of his identity, and unlike him,
they do not produce an offensive odour, they can be touched, they can be held
and he hopes that through them he can reach out to find someone like him or
someone who he can convince to become like him. He installs these works of art
in various outdoor settings throughout the world with a message attached; “To you who can see … I offer you a world ...
You can share the world with me. They can’t stop you. Strike now — Pick up a
sharp thing and stab, or a heavy thing and crush. That’s all. That will make
you free. Anyone can do it.” (Knight, 350-351) This message can have two
possible meanings. If it is one of violence then perhaps he believes that if he
can convince others to strike and stab, he will have community with them. He is
also convinced that there is a historical correlation between art and war, and
so he may believe that if violence is returned to the world then so as well
will art and beauty. But it is possible that this message is not one of
violence. The narrator does not specify in his message who or what he is urging
the potential reader to stab or crush. From his perspective as a sculptor he
may be attaching to his installations a message to “those who can see” and
appreciate these pieces as works of beauty that they too can “share the world”
of artistic expression with him. They can pick up “a sharp thing” such as a
chisel, “or a heavy thing” such as a hammer to “stab … and crush” a sculpting
medium such as stone to achieve freedom through art. The narrator’s hope is that someone in the world will find his sculptures beautiful
and in appreciating them will consequently appreciate him, thereby satisfying
his frustrated need for community.
The narrator’s need to be physically
near the other humans who reject him gives shape to two identities. One is a
vengeful identity and the other is his artistic one. He could go somewhere to
be alone but that is clearly not a choice for him. He needs some kind of human
interaction for self-definition. The problem with the narrator’s sense of self
in relation to the population that surrounds him is that others react to him
with revulsion, fear and disgust. A sense of self that is derived from the
reactions of others, positive or negative, is highly subjective. Interaction as
opposed to reaction is a better way of arriving at a sense of self, but he has
been denied such communication except for one time while wearing scuba gear
that serves to conceal his identity. On this occasion he encounters a young
woman underwater, “Her cool body
was in the bend of my arm; behind two thicknesses of vitrin—a world away … her
eyes were friendly and kind. There was a moment when, two strangers, yet one
flesh, we felt our souls speak to one another across that abyss of matter.”
(Knight, 347) In this situation he is able to experience aspects of himself
that would be attractive to another human being because he has circumvented the
imposed limitations that would otherwise keep him from interacting with her. He
has shown her with his interactive underwater dancing, another artistic
expression of his identity, that he is beautiful. This interaction takes place
not only below the surface of the water but also symbolically below the surface
of the world of appearances where they can both experience one another’s inner
selves. Unfortunately they cannot live long underwater and, perhaps in this
world, not even for long under the surface of one another. When they emerge
from below and unmask she sees who is and he is reminded that she belongs to
the world that excommunicated him, and he understands their kind.
The
word “kind” in the title of the story “The Country of the Kind” can be read
with more than one meaning. It holds in it the implication that it is out of
the desire for a common kindness that violence has been genetically removed
from the gene pool that is the source from which new babies are born into this
utopian world. Another reading of the title, which certainly corresponds to the
perspective of the exiled narrator, is that the citizens of this utopia are “of
a kind”, meaning they are all alike. In what way though are they alike? If we
read the narrator’s descriptions of those he encounters in this society they
are neither physically identical, nor alike in personality. The only two ways
that the population of this utopia are shown to be alike are in their
non-violence and in their lack of any extreme predisposition for creativity
that would result in high art. The narrator, having traveled widely in this
world has found no displays of public art. He is because of this under the
impression that he “had invented sculpture and drawing” until he finds
historical examples in “a storeroom full of old printed books.” (Knight, 346)
It is because everyone other than himself is lacking in a serious creative urge
that he identifies them all of a kind, as “Dulls”. (Knight, 343)
In
Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind”, the artistic creations that the
narrator plants around the world are all extensions of his own identity
distributed towards
the purpose of arriving at some sense of community in his world. Similarly in Greg Egan’s “Wang’s Carpets”, the thousand clones each
transhuman citizen of the Carter-Zimmerman Polis, including Paolo Venetti has
sent out into space from Earth are also extensions of each of their identities in order “to find alien life”, or
in other words, to achieve a sense of community in their universe. (Egan, 8)
They “need to find aliens who've faced the same decisions—and discovered how to
live, what to become.” They “need to understand what it means to inhabit the
universe.'' (Egan, 8) What the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” as an
individual and the transhumans of “Wang’s carpets” as a group have in common is
that they are both looking for friends. The “Country of the Kind” narrator
wants a sense of community or at least one other person in the world to
understand him. The Transhumans of the Carter-Zimmerman Polis, having been
completed as a collective entity on Earth, nonetheless feel incomplete in the
universe. They have evolved far beyond the disrespect for the diversity of
identities that was common when humans existed. From their perspective the
narrator of “The Country of the Kind” may seem typically, and as Paolo says,
“Humans, clearly, would have benefited from a good strong dose of each other's
inner life, to keep them from slaughtering each other—but any civilized
transhuman could respect and value other citizens without the need to have been
them, first hand.” (Egan, 13) Looking back over human history then, the narrator
of “The Country of the Kind” when compared to other humans overall would not
seem particularly violent to a transhuman.
In
“Wang’s Carpets”, each clone of a transhuman is the extensions of an original
self on Earth but they each also have the power to wear any body they imagine
because bodies are no longer flesh based but rather mentally projected. When
for example Paolo finds himself suddenly under water he has “his exoself convert him into an
amphibious human variant—biologically and historically authentic, if no longer
the definitive ancestral phenotype. Water flooded into his modified lungs, and
his modified brain welcomed it.” (Egan, 3) Each transhuman has an external self
that enables its mind to experience any given environment with whatever type of
body and brain that is most conducive to doing so. If as in this case the body
is “biologically authentic”, the consciousness of the clone wearing it will be
affected and influenced by the instincts of that body. “Paolo flicked water
onto her face, affectionately; the impulse seemed to come with the amphibian
body.” (Egan, 4) Unique impulses independent of the self that has created the
body shows that each body has its own identity.
Each
clone has an independent consciousness but can also access information from the
original self if he or she chooses to share it, but new experiences in a
separate body, even with the same consciousness will cause a different identity
to form. Paolo thinks on this in relation to the death of one clone on his way
through space, for whom, “after the first fifty years, his Earth-self had begun to hold things
back; by the time news reached Earth of the Fomalhaut clone's demise, the
messages had become pure audiovisual linear monologues. Paolo understood. It
was only right; they'd diverged, and you didn't send mind grafts to strangers.”
(Egan, 8) The clone has the potential and the freedom to develop its own self,
far different from the original.
When
bodies can change at will every individual is potentially an artist, as is
shown in this description of the transhuman, Liesi, who had appeared as “a
green-and-turquoise butterfly, with a stylized human face stippled in gold on
each wing” (Egan, 6) she in this case identifies as a butterfly to communicate
her concerns about a potential environmental disaster. Then after her pleas are
not heeded, she comes “in mourning, as a giant dark bird.” (Egan, 11)
In the world of “Wang’s Carpets” all expressions of self are valid,
including the merging of two selves permanently into one or even selves
choosing to cease to exist altogether.
Hermann, for example had over the centuries of his existence “wiped most
of his episodic memories, and rewritten his personality a dozen times.” He
thinks of himself as his “own great-great-grandson.” (Egan, 11) Identity is
clearly a variable in this world of transhumans. People can choose to be alone
which stands in stark contrast to the Country of the Kind narrator who has no
such choice.
The freedom to express one’s
consciousness into multiple identities allows for a stronger sense of self and
a better sense of community than that of one whose body is fixed in a singular
uniqueness. If one can make changes to suit each mood, opinion or environment
one finds oneself experiencing, then how better to understand other
individuals? The society in which Paolo lives allows for such free expression.
The world in which the narrator of “The Country of the Kind” lives has, in
cutting itself off from creativity does not have the ability to express that
which dwells beneath the surface of the self. No one in transhuman societies
wishes harm on others, no one is shut out and no one is alone unless they wish
to be. Each individual lives in their own utopia, which is frequently shared
with others. The world of “The Country of the Kind” is in its absence of
creativity, as its narrator says, “Dull.”
Works Cited
Knight, Damon. The Country of the Kind. The Science Fiction
Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.pdf. Robert Silverberg. New York. Tom Doherty Associates. 2003
Egan. Greg. Wang’s Carpets. https://worldtracker.org/media/library/English%20Literature/E/Egan,%20Greg/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Wang'%20s%20Carpets.pdf.
September 23, 2014
