本文是一篇英语论文，本文揭示了技术异化对人类主体性、社会关系及日常生活的全面侵蚀，指出了现代性困境的核心矛盾：技术本为解放人性而生，却在晚期资本主义框架中异化为囚禁主体的铁笼，这一批判为反思当代社会的工具理性霸权提供了重要启示。
Chapter OneTechnological Alienation and the Erosion of Criticality
1.1 The Bounty Hunter:The One-Dimensional Man
In Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory,the“one-dimensional man”refers to a stateof existence thoroughly tamed by the technological rationality of advanced industrialsociety:individuals lose their critical,negative,and transcendent capacities,becoming tools dependent on the social system.Their needs and desires aredominated by“false needs”manufactured by technology,ultimately making themaccomplices in the control of social totalitarianism(Marcuse 11).In Philip K.Dick’snovel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,the protagonist Rick Deckard,abounty hunter in a posthuman society,serves as a concrete projection of this theorywithin a science fiction context.His survival state and behavioral logic profoundlyembody the“one-dimensional”alienation mechanism revealed by Marcuse.They are thoroughly domesticated by technological rationality,losing their critical andtranscendent capacities,and becoming tools for maintaining systemic violence.
Deckard’s dependence on the mood organ epitomizes Marcuse’s concept of“false needs”—technologically imposed desires that masquerade as self-actualization.The use of the mood organ permeates every aspect of Rick’s life:he adjusts themachine’s current to ensure he wakes up happy every day;he chooses to use a“thalamic suppressant to abolish his mood of rage”or a“thalamic stimulant to winthe argument”when he argues with his wife;most of the time,he schedules hisemotions,such as setting himself to a“businesslike professional attitude”onworkdays(Dick 4).Proceduralized existence reduces daily life to a puppet showcontrolled by technology,exemplifying Marcuse’s assertion that“technologicalrationality colonizes the lifeworld”(Marcuse 97).The abuse of the mood organreconstructs the human language system.
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1.2 Post-Nuclear Earth:The One-Dimensional Society
The systemic alienation analyzed in Deckard’s individual psyche finds itsmacrocosmic counterpart in the techno-totalitarian regime of post-nuclear Earth.In Do Androids?,the technocratic system(UN government and corporations)constructsa hierarchical one-dimensional society under the guise of“colonization plans”and“human survival,”through android production,immigration policies,andphysiological classification systems.
Marcuse argues that one-dimensional society transforms oppression into naturallaw by manufacturing“survival crises”and“false choices”(Marcuse 92).Thepost-nuclear urban landscape of Earth—empty apartments,decaying buildings,andthe roar of government propaganda machines—is the ultimate embodiment of thistheory.In the post-apocalyptic Earth,humans live in empty apartment buildingswhere they can hear their own echoes,reflecting the system’s strategy of isolatingmarginalized groups.When individuals are atomized by physical space,thepossibility of collective resistance dissipates.The decaying apartments,“day by day,into greater entropic ruin”(Dick 20).The irreversible decay of urban spaces mirrorsthe spiritual desertification of one-dimensional society.As Marcuse warns,thesystem’s control solidifies when individuals lose the capacity to imagine alternativesto technocratic domination(Marcuse 92).
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Chapter TwoCommunicative Alienation and the Crisis ofIntersubjectivity
2.1 Human-Android Relations:Reification and Enslavement
In the communicative practices of posthuman society,the relationship betweenhumans and androids exhibits profound characteristics of alienation.Whentechnology creates androids with human-like consciousness,the communicativerelationship that should be established between equal subjects is systematicallydistorted into a one-sided,instrumental manipulation.The core of this alienation liesin the reduction of androids to“functional objects,”making them mere technologicalappendages for fulfilling material needs and psychological projections.As seen inthe novel,where humans refer to androids as“it”but use“she”for animals(Dick 39), this linguistic violence not only reveals the denial of android subjectivity but alsoreflects the reification of communicative relationships in the technologicalage—where the value of life is simplified to instrumental efficiency,and the mutualrecognition and dialogue between subjects are replaced by power relations of controland domination.
Interaction between humans and androids exhibits a typical form ofinstrumental alienation.United Nations laws designate android ownership as astandard welfare benefit for immigrants,claiming that‘every immigrantautomatically owns an android’(Dick 15),reducing androids to commodified laborand transforming intersubjective relationships into a technical means for capitalaccumulation.Repurposed from“synthetic freedom fighters”to“mobile donkeyengine”(Dick 15),androids literalize Marx’s warning of labor’s alienation into‘analien object opposed to itself’(Marx 77)”.Some androids’self-perception is alsoalienated by technological violence.Luba declares,“I really don’t like androids,”and considers imitating humans as“a higher form of life”(Dick 135).Thisself-deprecation is an internalization of the technological hierarchy—when humansset themselves as the standard of value,androids can only seek legitimacy throughself-negation.
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2.2 Human-Human Relations:Media Discipline and Emotional Void
In the post-apocalyptic landscape after nuclear war,technological mediationsystems have thoroughly penetrated the realm of human communication.When the pulse signals of electric sheep replace real vital signs,and the digital codes of moodorgans substitute for organic emotional flows,the communicative network betweenhuman subjects exhibits multiple forms of alienation.This alienation is not onlyreflected in the functional transformation of communicative objects but alsoprofoundly alters the intrinsic nature of communicative actions,such that“the realrelations between people are increasingly obscured by the illusory relations betweenthings”(Marx 102).
The marital relationship between Rick and Iran,as a paradigmatic case ofcommunicative alienation under technological domination,reveals howtechnological rationality thoroughly colonizes intimate relationships.The close bondbetween the couple becomes cold and estranged due to the abstraction ofcommunicative subjects.In their daily lives,Rick and Iran heavily rely on moodorgans and empathy boxes,lacking genuine emotional exchanges and experiences.Their daily interactions are entirely controlled by the mood organ,with Rickpre-setting his wife’s mode to“admire her husband’s supreme wisdom”(Dick 6),reducing the marital relationship to a unidirectional power device.This“abstraction”of communicative relationships manifests as follows:the intimate relationship thatshould be based on mutual understanding is quantified into a technical procedure ofparameter adjustment;the richness of emotional exchange is compressed into abinary code of“depression-elation”;and intersubjectivity is alienated into a verticalcontrol structure of“human-machine.”
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Chapter Three Alienation of Everyday Life:The Collusion of Technologyand Capital....................................44
3.1 Mercerism and Media:Technological Control of Ideology............44
3.2 Commodification of Animals:Capitalist Disintegration ofBioethics..........................50
Conclusion...........................56
Chapter ThreeAlienation of Everyday Life:The Collusion of Technologyand Capital
3.1 Mercerism and Media:Technological Control of Ideology
In the posthuman society dominated by technological rationality,everyday lifehas become an invisible battlefield for power struggles.In Philip K.Dick’s DoAndroids?,the alienation of daily existence in a technocratic society is not anaccidental phenomenon but an inevitable result of the collusion between media andreligion.
In Do Androids?,Mercerism emerges as a post-nuclear-war religious ideology,which employs the“Mercer Resonance Box”as a technological tool to sanctify anddeeply control everyday life.The character Slote declares Mercer to be a“prototypicalentity from the stars”(Dick 69),imbuing this entity with the attribute of atranscendental order.The so-called“transcendental order”refers to a cosmic law ordivine existence fabricated by the power system,one that transcends human empiricalreality.In the novel,Mercerism grafts this attribute onto the technological apparatus(the Mercer Resonance Box),transforming it into an object of worship for adherents.Through this discursive construction,Mercerism successfully packages the coldtechnological tool as a vessel of cosmic truth,thereby granting the power system anunquestionable legitimacy.
英语论文参考
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Conclusion
Philip K.Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?presents a dystopianvision of a society dominated by technological rationality,where alienation permeatesevery layer of human existence.The novel systematically dissects how technologyand capital collaborate to erode individuality,distort social relations,and colonize thelifeworld,forming a self-reinforcing cycle of dehumanization.Through the lens ofRick Deckard’s experience,the narrative unveils three interconnected dimensions ofalienation:the subjugation of human agency to technocratic systems,the collapse ofauthentic intersubjectivity,the religious salvation manipulated by political discourse,and the commodification of life under capitalist hegemony.These layers collectivelyexpose the existential crisis of a world where humanity’s essence is reduced toprogrammable functions.
The erosion of criticality begins with the individual’s surrender to technologicalapparatuses.Characters like Rick and Phil Resch exemplify the internalization ofsystemic logic,where reliance on mood organs and occupational identities dissolvesmoral autonomy.Technology,initially a tool for efficiency,morphs into anomnipotent force that dictates emotions,labor,and self-worth.This mechanization ofexistence extends to societal structures,where nuclear devastation and propagandamachines atomize communities,replacing collective resistance with programmedcompliance.The hierarchical oppression of“specials”and androids furtherunderscores the system’s need to pathologize difference,naturalizing exclusion as asurvival imperative.
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