The Cyborg Consciousness: Human Reality and Virtual Reality: A Close Reading of Karel Capek’s Play R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) A Fantastic Melodrama and an Epilogue

Abstract

Garfield Benjamin in his book The Cyborg Subject: Reality, Consciousness, Parallax (2016) poses an important question regarding the issue of identity. He points out an intriguing relationship between cyborg consciousness and its relation to the human subject’s consciousness. He suggests that there is a rivalry relationship between the human and the cyborg. The conflicting relationship or rivalry as he describes it is a result of the “irreducible gap” between physical and digital reality. Therefore, he focuses on “parallax” or the shift in perspectives as an important process that defines both the human and the cyborg’s consciousness. This research paper is a close reading of R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) A Fantastic Melodrama and an Epilogue by Karel Capek. The paper attempts through a theoretical framework to define cyborgian consciousness and its relation to the human consciousness. It triggers questions about the nature and the construction of the cyborgian consciousness with its three stages. The paper also sheds light on the definition of the cyborgian condition and the possibility of embracing a dystopian reality with a futuristic version of a cyborgian consciousness. Moreover, it examines the work of authors who analyze the cyborg condition and the representation of cyborgs both in popular culture and in contemporary theory. Those authors include (Benjamin Garfield 2016, Adam I Bostic 1992, Donna Haraway 2006). The theoretical framework focuses on the stages of constructing a cyborgian consciousness, the relationship between the play’s main themes and the cyborgian condition as well as the power relations governing the relationship between humans and cyborgs. The research concludes that the cyborgian condition is not an either or one but is more of a complex state embracing contrasts in some cases and acknowledging diversity as well. It also finds out that the dystopic existence at the end of the play is not necessarily a negative state but could be considered as a different type of existence that has its own nature and condition.