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Article Excerpt
Larissa Lai uses fantasy, myth, realism, and speculation to highlight the generational divides between first-generation immigrants and their children, and to explore the alienation of living in a society which questions your authenticity and your claim to a cultural heritage. She draws on her experience of living in Canada:
Growing up in Pierre Trudeau's supposedly multicultural Canada, which promised but never defined equality, was an alienating experience. We grew up in the wake of the Korean and Vietnam wars, the children of a generation traumatized by unspeakable violence that they did not wish to pass on. That generation thought we were innocent. They thought they were keeping us safe. But all along we knew. And all along we carried the violence, all the more potent because it was buried and unspoken. ("Afterword" 253-54)
In her short story "Rachel" (2004), Lai highlights conflicts between family legacies and personal identities within the figure of the racialised android. She questions one of the most iconic memes of science fiction--the android--by asking where racial identity is located in this supposedly neutral humanoid construction. Her story opens up the gaps and assumptions in two of sf's most canonical texts: Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) and Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982).
Lai's story depicts the famous meeting between a bounty hunter and an android in both novel and film from the android's perspective, following a well-known strategy of postcolonial literature: writing back to the centre. This strategy involves questioning and parodying official colonial texts from skewed and marginalised perspectives. However, a re-writing does much more than simply "fill-in" the gaps in a source text; it "enters into a productive critical dialogue" with the canonical version (McLeod 168). Writing back is a process of resistance not supplement. Just as Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) does not merely tell (he story of Jane Eyre (1847) from the perspective of the "mad woman in the attic," neither does "Rachel" simply show the android's side of Blade Runner.
The correspondence between Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre is complicated by a number of disjunctions such as the relative dates of the stories. Rhys' novel begins in 1838 with her protagonist growing up in the turmoil following the Emancipation Act of 1833, which encouraged resistance to Creole landowners. However, in Bronte's novel, she has been imprisoned in the attic of Rochester's English house before 1810. In addition, Rhys' protagonist is known by her original name, "Antoinette," while in Jane Eyre she is always called "Bertha," the name Rochester has given her. Consequently, Wide Sargasso Sea emphasises not only the differences between the two texts, but also the tensions between the different identities and contexts that Antoinette / Bertha must negotiate as a Creole heiress, the wife of an English landowner, and a prisoner in colonial England.
In a similar way, Lai opens up many disjunctions between her short story "Rachel" and the novel and film source-texts. In Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?, the android is always known as "Rachael," yet in Lai's text the name becomes "Rachel." This small, but crucial, change emphasises the difference between the two protagonists. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that Lai's narrator is not the novel's android who lives with her "uncle," Eldon Rosen, owner of the Rosen Corporation. Instead this Rachel is a different version of the same model, living with a scientist whom she thinks is her father. On the one hand, condensing the name "Rachael" to "Rachel" suggests something has been lost between iterations. On the other, "Rachel" is the original Hebrew version of the name, with "Rachael" being a later variation, hence complicating ideas of origins and identity.
The difference between the two spellings of Rach(a)el poses the question of which is the most authentic. However, the origins of the name are not as important as the fact that there is a difference between them; both are valid names and identities, but the difference in spelling emphasises that Dick's Rachael is not the same as Lai's Rachel. The concept of authenticity is redundant when discussing the identity of androids, as they are defined as endless manufactured copies without a biological origin. Yet, despite this lack of conventional biological "authenticity," both Rachael and Rachel have separate, individual identities. Lai's use of the name Rachel builds on how androids subvert ideas of authenticity, because they show that difference and variation are potentially more meaningful forms of individuality.
The use of the name Rachel also comments on the postcolonial process of writing back. Just as Rhys' use of names raises questions about the relationship between Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, so Lai's naming of Rachel shows her story does more than simply rewrite Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from the replicant's perspective. If Lai's narrative provided only the other side of Dick's story, it would close both texts down and confirm--not complicate--the binary of human versus machine.
Postcolonial writers who write back to canonical Western texts are open to the criticism that they are adopting the language and cultural values of the centre; they are confirming their source text's place in the Western literary canon by suggesting it is notable enough to subvert. However, the aim of writing back is not to fill in the omissions and silences in the Western canon, but to open new gaps and slippages in meaning. Lai's "Rachel" shows us the perspective of a different android in order to make us see both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner differently.
In contrast to the difference implied in Rachel's name, the Deckard character in Lai's story is never named, but is only known as "the policeman." He is on a mission to retire escaped replicants, a task almost identical to Deckard's in the novel. He also acts in the same hard-boiled manner as Dick's bounty hunter. However, it is never explicitly stated that he is Deckard,...
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