Cyberpunk's Commodification of Bodies

Schmeink, Lars. "A Future of Exterminism: Cyberpunk’s Commodification of Bodies." SFRA Review 327 (Winter 2019): 25-29.[1]

Important "lens" (our term) for this essay: Peter Frase, “Four Futures,” Jacobin, 13 December 2011[2]; Four Futures. Verso, 2017.

Now, taking into consideration the depiction of futures in science fiction, especially in the subgenre of cyberpunk, one could argue that an oft depicted and not quite so unlikely scenario is the one described by Frase as “exterminism,” in which workers are no longer needed, as they are replaced by automated processes. But since the scarcity of resources limits the ability for all humans to be wealthy, those with money will face more and more people that cannot participate in society. Frase poignantly calls these people “superfluous from the standpoint of the ruling elite” (“Four Futures” n.p.).

In this, he echoes Zygmunt Bauman, who argued that the progression of the capitalist economy —meaning, for example, automatization and globalization — produces “surplus population” (37), people that are no longer needed in economic production. (p. 26)

Deals with "exterminism" in Neil Bloomkamp's ELYSIUM (2013),[3] starting with a powerful sequence in which Max, the protagonist, does manual labor in a factory producing robots — "the irony of manually producing automated labor is" clear — and when a the process is halted because of an equipment blockage, Max's "precarious job position does not allow him to refuse an order [to] retrieve the piece from the radiation chamber. He goes in, gets locked in the mechanism and receives a fatal dose of radiation. When he wakes up, a robot is standing over him, informing him in a mechanical voice that he has been lethally poisoned and will die in five days" (p. 26; cf. and strongly contrast Charles Chaplin's Charlie trapped in a giant machine in MODERN TIMES).

Schmeink interprets this important sequence for its economic insight: "Max is an unskilled worker, doing a job that is repetitive, has little complexity, and is in a hazardous environment — a job that in today’s economy seems destined to be automated. Yet, in the future of Elysium, the economy clearly says it is more productive to use human labor than cost[-]intensive automation" (p. 27).

Notes also that ELYSIUM applies the logic of exterminism to the idea that automation won't work with jobs involving definitely human interaction: "Here, police and security forces as well as social caretakers such as Max’s probation officer are automated." And Schmeink points out in terms of the commodification of bodies the important motif of implants and invasive technology: "His dying is the necessary motivation for the extreme transformation of Max into a weapon and data storage tool. Max is forced to be fitted with technology invading his dying body, an exoskeleton and a data port in his head" (p. 27).

Also deals with the independent Mexican production SLEEP DEALER and the television series Altered Carbon (pp. 27-28). Schmeink's conclusion:

All three examples show, how digitized and automated sovereign systems remain rooted in inequality. Contrary to Silicon Valley’s utopian ideals, automatization does [not?] simply free up human labor, but further entrenches the socio-economic disparity of social class. Access to technology becomes a valuable resource that the elite will wield as a weapon. Peter Frase’s concept of exterminism thus is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Instead, it provides a valuable extrapolation of how technology can be used to secure social strata and move along the commodification of human bodies until they ultimately lose all value except for their value as biomass—which would ultimately leave us with another cyberpunk future. (pp. 28-29)

For other considerations of labor in SF: here.[4]

RDE, finishing, 7Aug20