Back to the Future: The Humanist Matrix

Bartlett, Laura.
Byers, Thomas B. (Thomas Beall), 1950-

Cultural Critique, 53, Winter 2003, pp. 28-46 (Article)

Published by University of Minnesota Press

DOI: 10.1353/cul.2003.0018

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cul/summary/v053/53.1bartlett.html

Access Provided by Fordham University Library at 12/03/12 9:52PM GMT

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 28

BACK TO THE FUTURE

THE HUMANIST MATRIX
Laura Bartlett and Thomas B. Byers

he purported demise of the unitary, coherent humanist subject

of the modern era has been widely celebrated by postmodern theorists who welcome a radically new subjectivityfragmented, Xuid,
and Xexible. Donna Haraways cyborg, deWned initially in A Manifesto for Cyborgs as a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine
and organism (1985, 65), is perhaps the most famous image or
myth (the terms are Haraways own [65, 92]) of this happily postmodern and posthumanist subject. This subject is also poststructuralist in the sense that it seems to be more a node in a network of texts
and codes than any kind of reiWed self; it is based, as Haraway suggests, on the reconceptions of machine and organism as coded texts
through which we engage in the play [in a Derridean sense of that
term] of writing and reading the world (69). In political terms, the
cause for celebration is the belief that the postmodern reconWguration
breaks down or deconstructs the oppressive boundaries of (phal)logocentricismblurring the border between binary terms such as
self and other, male and female, organism and machine, ontology and
textuality, science Wction and social realitythus posing a powerful threat to patriarchal capitalism (66).
In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles argues that a
deWning characteristic of the present cultural moment is belief in the
notion that virtual reality technology will permit human consciousness to transcend the body and function as data in the circuits of a
computer (1999, 1). This notion helps propel us toward a construction
of subjectivity that sees no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation and in
Cultural Critique 53Winter 2003Copyright 2003 Regents of the University of Minnesota

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 29

BACK TO THE FUTURE

fact privileges informational pattern over material instantiation (3).

To assume that consciousness can become disembodied, Hayles
argues, is to assume that it is not dependent on the body, and hence
that artiWcial systems can achieve it. By the same token, this assumption also conWgure[s] human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines (3). Finally, this posthuman view
also may imply that human dominance is not an inherent or essential
attribute, but a negotiated position within a system, a position that
can be overturned. The challenging of the human/machine (nature/
culture) boundary, both theoretically and practically with advances in
biotechnology, has propelled a contradictory battery of discourses
deWning the posthuman condition.
One strand of thought suggests that the posthuman constitutes a
radical, subversive break from the Western tradition of liberal humanism, with its subject who has been historically interpellated by
and for the forces of patriarchal capitalism. But another school of
thought, a critical posthumanism, has come to question, as Hayles
does, our open-armed embrace of the posthuman subject and has
suggested that the posthuman may be an extension of liberal humanism rather than a break from itor that, as discourses of postmodern
subjectivity are appropriated by the popular media for the production of a contemporary style, the subject may exhibit a sexy patina
of postmodernism while still not differing in any fundamental way
from its liberal humanist predecessor. Moreover, while postmodern
subjectivity itself may at Wrst seem strikingly radical, it bears uncanny similarities to the structures of global capitalism. Fluidity,
Xexibility, boundary dissolution, and border crossings describe both.
In sum, these developments raise a number of questions that are crucial for our comprehension of both present and future in the new
world order of late capitalism. Is the posthuman necessarily posthumanist or postmodern, and if so, to what degree? Is the cyborg,
deWned as a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism (Haraway 1985, 65) or a human being . . . seamlessly articulated
with intelligent machines (Hayles 1999, 3), necessarily any sort of
threat at all to the contemporary reWguration of patriarchal capitalism? Indeed, is Haraways metaphorical or mythic (as opposed to
more literal) cyborgthe fragmented, Xuid, Xexible, deconstructive,
boundary-transgressive postmodern subjectnecessarily a threat to

29

04Bartlett.qxd

30

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 30

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

the new world order? Or is it recuperable by, or even produced by,

late capitalism for the latters own ends?
In what follows we do not intend to propose any deWnitive
answers to these questions. Our much more modest goal is to see
what light may be cast on them by examining the ways in which they
are addressed (and/or repressed) in one extremely popular Hollywood blockbuster, The Matrix (dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry
Wachowski, 1999). In our view this Wlm, like many Hollywood texts
whose style is conspicuously postmodern, is nonetheless ultimately
pomophobic. While it is in many ways a cinematic example of the
cyberpunk genre, it is as much an affront as a homage to that movement, as it repudiates the genres antihumanist stance and seeks to
reinscribe the nature/artiWce binary that cyberpunk generally deconstructs. The Matrix places posthuman subjects at the center of its
action and Xirts with a theoretical postmodernism only to reject the
posthumanist conWguration of subjectivity in favor of resurrecting a
neo-Romantic version of the liberal-humanist subject. While it raises
the question of the reality of disembodied consciousness, it does
so largely in order to express our anxieties concerning this possibility, and indeed it initially converts disembodied to falsein the
sense of ideology as false consciousness. It acknowledges that artiWcial intelligence has the potential to become autopoietic, but the Wlm
rejects the human-machine articulation and seeks to preserve, as
natural, the organic humans dominant outside position.1 Even at
the end, when the virtual world as transformed by the individual
hero becomes an acceptable Weld of experience and action, it becomes
so precisely because it now ostensibly answers to the needs and
desires of the humanist subject/agent.
The Wlm depicts a future world in which humanity has been
enslaved by artiWcial intelligence (AI). With only a few exceptions,
the human beings of the future are simply an energy source. Biotechnologically produced in a kind of nightmare version of a corporate
farm, they lie in rows, fed by tubes, and drained of electricity by
cables, providing battery power to run the machines that dominate
them. They are kept docile by the disembodiment of their consciousness, which perceives and experiences not the abject world where
they are stored (and where the dead are fed to the living), but rather
a virtual world called the Matrix that duplicates a reality much like

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 31

BACK TO THE FUTURE

the Wlm audiences own. The Matrix is the hallucination or illusion

of a late-1990s America that, according to the AIs minion Agent
Smith, was the peak of human civilization, a time, the heros mentor
Morpheus tells us, when we marveled at our own existence as
we gave birth to AI . . . a singular consciousness that spawned an
entire race of machines. While this technological euphoria and selfsatisfaction may sound familiar, so is the aimless, alienated life of
the hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) in the Matrix. He is a single twentysomething living alone in a city where by day he works in a high-rise
building, cordoned off in a cubicle identical to the hundreds around
him. By night he assumes an idealized cyber-identity. Most of his
social interaction takes place on-line, where he is known as Neo,
hacker extraordinaire. He is dissatisWed, vaguely depressed, looking
for answers to questions he doesnt quite know how to ask.
If all of this sounds somewhat oppressively familiar, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind that Neos virtual Gen-X existence
seems far less bleak than the material reality it is designed to mask.
While the condition of life in the future is completely passive for all
but the select few who have escaped the state of battery inXicted on
them by the AI, the virtual world at least gives the illusion of freedom
of choiceif not a real resistant agency, then at least some digital
wiggle room. Sci-W fans will recognize matrix as William Gibsons
term for cyberspace, deWned in Neuromancer as a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions (51). For Gibson this hallucination is merely a sensory and spatial representation of stores of
information. In the Wlm, however, the hallucination is thematized; it
is not only an electronic illusion, but also an ideological one. It is perhaps in pinpointing societys need to buy into the illusion of free
agency and individual autonomy that The Matrix is most disturbingly
accurate. The Matrix metaphorizes our willingness to fantasize that
the freedom rhetoric of e-capitalism accurately reXects our reality
and our propensity to marvel at our technological innovations even
in the face of mass alienation and social malaise.
Indeed, the Wlms entire vision of the future invites a more detailed allegorical reading. Anyone familiar with the elementaryschool science experiment in which a potato powers a light bulb will
be less than amazed by the notion that the AI has Wgured out how to
make batteries out of the inert bodies of passive consumers of virtual

31

04Bartlett.qxd

32

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 32

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

realityotherwise known as couch potatoes. And indeed, the

Matrix is something very like an advanced form of television; in fact,
when Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is revealing the truth of the
Matrix to Neo, he says, This is the world you know, and shows it
to Neo on a (distinctly 1950s) TV. Morpheuss creed is that human
beings cant be free as long as the Matrix exists, so the efforts of his
small band of revolutionaries are, in effect, intended to carry out the
imperative of the popular bohemian bumper sticker: Kill Your Television. For the revolutionaries themselves, the Matrix resembles a
video game, and their experience is much like that of video gamers.
At will, they jack into an adventure where they Wght bad guys and
attempt to free their leader while, back in the real world, their bodies
remain conWned to their chairs even as they writhe with the excitement and tension of virtual combat.
To the degree that all of this can be seen thematically as a take
on the present, the Matrixs neural simulation serves as a metaphor
for the entertainment culture of the late capitalist system. Moreover,
it partakes of the sort of judgment on mass culture that, according
to Fredric Jameson,
loosely derives from the Frankfurt School . . . but whose adherents number radicals as well as elitists on the Left today [as well, we might
add, as some radicals and elitists on the Right]. This is the conception of
mass culture as sheer manipulation, sheer commercial brainwashing
and empty distraction by the multinational corporations who obviously
control every feature of the production and distribution of mass culture
today. (1992, 21)

If such mass culture has the effect of creating a false consciousness

that serves as the chief contemporary opiate of the masses, Morpheus
and his happy few seem to have something in common with the
Frankfurt School critics themselves (or with Althussers scientiWc
socialists), in that they are a vanguard that has somehow, inexplicably or magically, emerged from within the closed system to drop the
scales from their eyes and free themselves.
They are also an active revolutionary cell, living collectively and
trying to bring down an oppressive system that enslaves and exploits
the common citizen for its own ends. As such, they may be seen as representing a Marxist-humanist alternative to the individualist liberal

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 33

BACK TO THE FUTURE

humanism that the Wlm Wnally, in our view, afWrms. To the degree
that this is so, and to the degree that they seek the destruction of the
Matrix, their project seems radical in terms of class, but actually in
one sense reactionary, in terms of their time, in that their solution to
the oppressions of the posthuman world is simply to try to unmake
it. Thus they are very much at the other end of the spectrum from
Donna Haraway, who explicitly states that [t]he inheritance of
Marxian humanism, with its pre-eminently Western self, is the difWculty with traditional socialist feminism for her as a postmodernist
feminist (1985, 76).
Finally, however, the terms of opposition on which the Wlm is
structured are neither capitalist ideology versus scientiWc socialism
nor Marxist humanism versus postmodern cyborg socialism. Rather,
it boils down to a struggle between human beings and machines over
human subjectivity. That the AI prevails only by virtue of its capacity
to separate consciousness from the materiality of the body suggests
that in this world human enslavement occurs only when, and by
virtue of the fact that, subjectivity is conWgured as posthuman. In
order to exploit the body, the AI must create a simulacrum in which
the human mind can interact and in which it is duped into believing
that it still inhabits and senses bodily reality. But the fact that the
mind must be so engaged for the system to work suggests that
human beings have the potential to regain an outside position with
relation to the Matrixto recognize the constructedness of their reality and change it. Thus, the Wlm suggests the ultimate autonomy and
supremacy of human consciousness, intimating that the artiWcial system is still essentially allopoietic or subservient to a humanity that
remains in essence (if not in its existence at this historical moment)
autopoietic.
The conXict of the subject with the system thus reXects a kind of
neo-Luddite formation wherein rage against the machine is not
understood as a metaphoric imperative of resistance to the system
served by the machines, but rather is focused on the literal machines;
the means of production become the target in place of their owners.
In that sense the struggle between Neo and the agent of the AI is not
far from being a late-capitalist repetition of the struggle between John
Henry and the steam drill of classic capitalism. (Indeed, in both cases
the question is largely whether the human or the machine can work

33

04Bartlett.qxd

34

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 34

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

faster; no human being until Neo has ever triumphed over an agent
because the latter are too fast in their processing of data.)
Ultimately, the triumph of Morpheuss band depends on a fantasy whose afWnities are more fascist than socialist: the fantasy of the
coming of a single, superior, chosen strong leader. That leader is
Neo, whose difference from his allies is not merely a matter of degree
(as was John Henrys, who represented the laborers on the railroad
simply because he was the strongest of them). Rather, Neo is different
in kind from other human beings; he is not merely the representative,
but the apotheosis, of the subjectivity that is threatened by the AI. His
name not only rhymes with hero but also is an anagram for the key
word of his honoriWc title: the One, with all its resonances of the
messiah (of which more later). As is so often the case in Wlms of this
sort, his story closely Wts the paradigm of the hero myth (Hollywoods consciousness of which is succinctly outlined by Linda Seger
in her how-to book for screenwriters, Making a Good Script Great).
More important, both in action, in his pursuit by the mysterious
agents of the AI, and in dialogue, in Morpheuss revelations about his
true heroic identity and central importance and about the AIs systematic deceptions as to the nature of reality, Neos story also neatly
embodies the structure of paranoid fantasy.
This invocation of paranoia has at least two major signiWcances.
On the one hand, it once again suggests how the Wlm Xirts with critique of the system of late capitalism. It exempliWes Fredric Jamesons
comment that contemporary narratives of conspiracy and paranoia
are themselves but a distorted Wguration of something even deeper,
namely, the whole world system of a present-day multinational capitalism. This is a Wgural process currently best observed in a whole mode of
contemporary entertainment literaturehigh-tech paranoiain which
the circuits and networks of some putative global computer hookup are
narratively mobilized by labyrinthine conspiracies. . . . [C]onspiracy theory (and its garish narrative manifestations) must be seen as a degraded
attemptthrough the Wguration of advanced technologyto think the
impossibility of the contemporary world system. (1991, 38)

Jameson goes on to say that the genre of cyberpunk, of which The

Matrix is a cinematic example, is fully as much an expression of
transnational corporate realities as it is of global paranoia itself (38). To
say this is to say, in effect, that postmodern paranoia is not paranoia

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 35

BACK TO THE FUTURE

at all, but simply a way of talking about the material conditions of

postmodern life. It is far from accidental that the agents of the enslaving AI who chase Neo throughout the Wlm appear in the Matrix
as white men in business suits, or that the chief of them bears a striking resemblance to Neos tight-assed boss at the megacorporation
where he works at the beginning.
But there is another way of looking at such paranoid narratives.
They can be seen as a further extension of the displacement of class
conXict into a conXict between humanist and posthumanist subjectivitiesor into anxieties about the postmodern dissolution of
humanist subjectivity. Thomas Byers has argued elsewhere that such
narratives are reactions against the nomadic schizophrenia produced
by late capitalist economic arrangements (1995, 1013). This schizoid
subjectivity is particularly evident in the disembodiment of the
cybersphere, and, as we have seen, this disembodiment is one of the
themes of The Matrix. In this world, the villains are those who side
with the pleasant virtual against the gritty real, such as the traitor
Cypher, or those who despise anything at all bodily, even if it is illusory, such as Agent Smith. While meeting with Agent Smith in the
Matrix and enjoying his virtual steak, Cypher (whose name suggests
both that he is a moral zero and that he is happier as disembodied
code in the Matrix), explains his motivation: You know, I know this
steak doesnt exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix
is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you
know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss. Later, as he prepares to murder his compatriots, he argues with Trinity about freedom and reality,
both of which he maintains are to be found in the Matrix rather than
in Morpheuss ship. Since Cypher is portrayed as the most reprehensible human character in the Wlm, it is clear that the Wlm is inviting us
to reject his unprincipled choice of virtual pleasure over materiality
and authenticity.2 Further implications of his character are revealed
as he outlines his demands for compensation: I dont want to remember nothing. Nothing. You understand? And I want to be rich.
You know, someone important, like an actor . . . I get my body back
into a power plant, you insert me into the Matrix, Ill get you what
you want. The snapper here is that the betrayer of the real in favor
of the second-order simulacrum, he who wants to be a rich actor who
remembers nothing, is called Mr. Reagan by Agent Smith.

35

04Bartlett.qxd

36

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 36

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

Smith himself, a fully posthuman subject in that he is actually a

part of the AI, goes even further in his rejection of the material real:
as we have already mentioned, he cannot stand even the illusion of
the body. At one point while in the Matrix he wipes sweat from the
captured Morpheus, holds his Wngertips to Morpheuss nose, and
says, I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever
you want to call it, I cant stand it any longer. Its the smell, if there is
such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every
time I do, I fear that Ive somehow been infected by it. The body as
stinking threat of infection is the body as abjection, cast out from the
purebut purely viciousmind of the AI. And indeed Neos body
brieXy becomes exactly such a site of abjectiona corpse, in fact. Yet
through the power of love (in perhaps the weakest moment in the
script), he is literally corporeally resurrected, and it is at this point
that he becomes the One, the prophesied messiah, who can defeat
the minions of the evil AI. This deiWcation of a unique, embodied,
and romantically/erotically loved subject asserts the triumph of one
form of traditional humanist subjectivity over the posthuman.
It should be noted in connection with the strong leader fantasy
that the heros natural and supernatural superiority go along with a
certain disturbing sense of elitism and droit de seigneur. The movie
suggests that those who remain under control of the Matrix do so
only because they have an inferior consciousness, susceptible to AI
colonization and unable to recognize, as Morpheus says, the world
that has been pulled over [their] eyes. As Morpheus explains to Neo,
the businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters . . . the people we are
trying to save . . . are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them
are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will
Wght to protect it. For that reason, we need not mourn the numbers
of them who constitute Neos body count in the Wnal action sequence.3 It seems clear by this point that this is no fantasy of socialist
revolution (or, for that matter, of the coronation of a prince of peace),
but rather something much closer to the triumph of the bermensch.
In this regard, The Matrix bears a signiWcant relation to any number of Hollywood Wlms about bourgeois-liberal heroes who must
save their communities. An interesting example, precisely because
pairing it with The Matrix seems so counterintuitive, is Frank Capras
Its a Wonderful Life. This Wlm, too, containsin a dual sense of that

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 37

BACK TO THE FUTURE

verba critique of the capitalism of its time, and at Wrst seems to

offer a rather pointed political commentary. It hinges on a hero who
must be awakened to his true identity and role in life, and who must
suffer annihilation as part of his process of personal and community
salvation. And Wonderful Life, for all its egalitarian populist rhetoric,
Wnally boils down to a kind of battle of the titans in which the fate
of everyone hinges on the capacity of one exceptional and exceptionally good man to defeat an individual embodiment of evil. Only
George Bailey can prevent Bedford Falls from becoming Pottersville;
in his absence the evil individual can vanquish the entire community.
Only Neo, the One, can save Zion from the AI or show the benighted
masses a new world. That world where, as Neo says in the Wlms
last speech, anything is possible can come into being only through
the auspices of the one who makes all things possible: the individualist hacker messiah.
What Wnally sets Neo apart from the machines, and uniquely
above them, is the formers capacity to operate outside the rules of
given structures. As Morpheus explains to him, What you must
learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer
system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? He explains that while the AIs agents are bound by the
artiWcial rules of the system they have created, human consciousness
is not: Free your mind. Ive seen an agent punch through a concrete
wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air.
Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is
built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast
as you can be. Neos gift, as Morpheus calls it, is natural and
organic, not artiWcial and instrumental, and it is Wnally grounded not
in rational intelligence but in mystical intuition: Ive watched you,
Morpheus tells Neo. You do not use a computer like a tool. You use
it like it was part of yourself. What you can do inside a computer is
not normal. I know. Ive seen it. What you do is magic. And all he
has to do to realize his magical potential is free his mind of the mindforged manacles of the Matrix, which Morpheus calls the world that
has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. In sum,
Neo is an icon of neo-Romanticism, and the Wlms ideology turns
out to be a version of natural supernaturalism, in which the superiority of human nature to artiWce, and of humanist to posthuman

37

04Bartlett.qxd

38

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 38

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

subjectivity, is guaranteed by the investment of the human hero with

the value of the divine.
Indeed, the deck is stacked in favor of the human. As Morpheus
explains, When the Matrix was Wrst built, there was a man born
inside that had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the
Matrix as he saw Wt. It was this man that freed the Wrst of us and
taught us the truth. . . . After he died, the oracle prophesized his
return, and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix,
end the war, bring freedom to our people. By suggesting the spontaneous generation of such a subject even in the most oppressive of
circumstances, the Wlm implies the supremacy of human consciousness, despite its temporary eclipse by the AI. It also suggests a
messianic religious paradigm that escapes and transcends the rationality represented by the machinesa paradigm of which Neo is the
fulWllment. From the very beginning of the movie, he is presented to
us as a Christ Wgure. Accepting contraband software from Neo, Choi
tells him, Youre my savior, man. My own personal Jesus Christ.
Morpheus and his band of hackers on the Nebuchadnezzar (all except
the Judas-like traitor Cypher) also believe that theyve found their
savior when they Wnd Neo. When Neo accepts the truth, he joins a
holy family along with Morpheus, the father Wgure, and Trinity(!), the
feminine incarnation of the Holy Spirit. He is then sacriWced and
raised from the dead to liberate the Matrix and transform it from the
city of destruction to the city of God.
The positioning of the humanboth Neo and his spontaneously
generated prior incarnationoutside the rules not only restores the
human to the autopoietic position as deWned by Maturana, but also
suggests that it is the real grounding center of the system. According
to Jacques Derrida:
[I]t has always been thought that the center, which is by deWnition
unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought
concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within
the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality,
and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of
the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. . . . The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a play based on a fundamental
ground, a play constituted on the basis of a fundamental immobility

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 39

BACK TO THE FUTURE

and a reassuring certitude, which itself is beyond the reach of play. And
on the basis of this certitude anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is
invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game,
of being caught by the game, of being as it were at stake in the game
from the outset. (1978, 279)

The AI may appear to be in the position of the center, but,

because it can never stand outside the rules, never escape structurality, it is revealed as in some sense an impostora poor substitute for
a humanity that can spontaneously generate, even within the apparently closed system, the power to stand outside it and change its
reality. The AI is a temporary stand-in, not the real ground (as is
also suggested by the fact that the human is the origin of the AI).
The story of Neo is a story of an eschatology, [which] is an accomplice of th[e] reduction of the structurality of structure and always
attempts to conceive of structure on the basis of a full presence
which is beyond play (Derrida 1978, 279). The story of The Matrix,
like the Christian story of Earth after the fall, is basically the story of
an interregnum coming to a predestined end with the (re)appearance of the messiah, the real central Wgure of history. As such, it provides relief from the anxiety of the human subjects being caught by
the game of posthumanism, a system, as we indicated at the beginning, wherein the human is but one of a number of equally valid and
substitutable sites for consciousness, where nature is not superior
to artiWce, where human dominance is not an inherent or essential
attribute, but a negotiated position within a system. Neos story is a
story of salvation; as such it runs directly contrary to the postmodern
posthumanism of Haraways cyborg for, as Haraway says pointedly,
The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history (1985, 65).
The eschatological quality of The Matrix is also the Wlms solution
to the conXict between freedom and agency on the one hand, and
external control and fate on the other. Initially the resonance of this
opposition is basically Marxist, as Morpheus and his cadre are rebelling against the enslavement of humanity and trying to destroy
the Matrix because it is an ideological instrument of oppression. But
again the problem is displaced into one of individual subjectivity and
autonomy. When Morpheus and Neo Wrst meet, Morpheus asks him
if he believes in fate, and Neo responds, No, because I dont like the
idea that Im not in control of my life. His resistance to control and

39

04Bartlett.qxd

40

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 40

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

its implication that on some level he feels that he may not be in

control are seemingly the result of a superior human consciousness,
one that can defy or transcend artiWcial consciousness. Morpheuss
response, I know exactly what you mean, admits Neo to the happy
few constituted by the other freed hackers. And at the end, when
Neo promises to show the AIs slaves a world without rules and
controls, without borders and boundaries, a world where anything is
possible, the notion of total freedom is celebrated.
Yet a great deal of the Wlm focuses on Neos fulWllment of a mystical, preordained destiny, seen by the Oracle but at Wrst unknown to
Neo himself. The savior of humanist freedom is thus the instrument
of a purpose and plan higher than his own. We suggest that the clash
between freedom/autonomy and external control/fate is defused
and depoliticizedwhen fate is not economic but metaphysical. Thus,
Neos lack of control ceases to signify his status as a subject of the
Matrix (or global capitalism) when he is revealed as the instrument in
a divine plan, one that sets him apart from and raises him above the
machine. Moreover, though Morpheus has told us that human beings
can never be free as long as the Matrix exists, it seems that Neos sacriWce has redeemed it for them. His resurrection symbolically stages
the resurrection of the liberal humanist, and at the moment of his
ascension, the Matrix is converted into a realm of inWnite possibility.
It is important to note that the Wlm does not end with any indication
of change in, or even any continuing concern about, the real material
conditions for which the Matrix earlier served merely as an opiate.
This comes as something of a surprise given not only that
destruction of the Matrix had been the goal, but also that so often
throughout the Wlm the interface of human beings and machines
results in horror, and the images of biotechnology are monstrous or
abominable. The Wrst such image is a gothic-looking power plant
comprising row after row of towers, each one trellised with mechanical wombs where human bodies are stored. The horror of the human
in the grips of the machines is literally depicted in this scene when
Neos body is clutched in the pincers of the attending AI. The abomination of biotech infancy is melodramatically emphasized in another
gothic image. As the camera surveys a scene in which mechanical
tentacles pick baby eggs, Morpheus explains to Neo that There are
Welds, endless Welds where human beings are no longer born. We are

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 41

BACK TO THE FUTURE

grown. His comment is punctuated by dramatic music as the scene

shifts to oily black liquid Xooding a compartment containing an artiWcially produced baby attached to long black cords, and Morpheus
tells us that the AI liquefy the bodies of the dead and feed them to the
living. In a third important, although less dramatic scene, Neo realizes that outside of the Matrix his body is scarred by implants, and
he reacts in shock and revulsion. In his hesitant gesture to touch the
plug in the back of his head, one can almost see the Wlm version of
Frankensteins monster touching the sprockets on the sides of his
head and realizing that he is not human. Finally, we may note the
pride with which Tank proclaims the purity of his human origins
when he tells Neo that he (Tank) and his brother are both 100 percent pure old-fashioned home-grown human, born free right here
in the real world. A genuine child of Zion. These images and words
are not surprising in a Wlm that seems to want to police the nature/
artiWce boundary that biotechnology puts into question. This overwhelmingly negative presentation of biotechnology, and particularly
Tanks invocations of purity and native rather than immigrant status,
are suggestive of Donna Haraways comments: I cannot help but
hear in the biotechnology debates the unintended tones of fear of the
alien and suspicion of the mixed (1997, 218), and It is a mistake
in this context to forget that anxiety over the pollution of lineages lies
at the heart of racist discourses in European cultures as well as of
linked gender and sexual anxiety (217).
In images such as these, as in Morpheuss take on the real, The
Matrix is more closely aligned with a previous generation of science
Wction than with cyberpunk. While the latter is generally antihumanist in its celebration of the breakdown in the nature/culture
binary, traditional science Wction may problematize this boundary,
but generally upholds the sanctity and superiority of the human subject (Hollinger 1990, 30). According to Hollinger,
[Bruce] Sterling, one of the most proliWc spokespersons for the Movement during its heyday, has described cyberpunk as a reaction to standard humanist liberalism because of its interest in exploring the various scenarios of humanitys potential interfaces with the products of its
own technology. For Sterling, cyberpunk is post-humanist science Wction which believes that technological destruction of the human condition leads not to futureshocked zombies but to hopeful monsters. (31)

41

04Bartlett.qxd

42

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 42

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

Such hopeful monsters are not really offered as a possibility

until the endings retreat from what seemed to be the goal of destroying the virtual in favor of the material real. In the Wnal scene Neo
does not pull the plug on the Matrix, but voluntarily jacks back into
it. The key, of course, is that it has been putatively refashioned by his
defeat of an AI agent, so that it has become the world of inWnite
potential, with no center, no boundaries or controls. It is no longer a
trope for TV as an instrument of corporate capitalism, but rather a
Wgure for the computer geeks fantasy of the Internet as free and subversive spacea space of individualist self-realization. And in this
space, Neo says at the end, Where we go . . . is a choice I leave to
you. Notice how close this is to what is perhaps the most famous
question of our era: Microsofts Where do you want to go today?
Now, it may be that the Internet carries certain real potentials for
decentering and subversion. But the notion that it is an egalitarian
space where the rules of capital dont apply is just silly. In fact, it
seems increasingly obvious that this collapse of boundaries is more in
the interest of the globalization of corporate capital and its economic
triumph over the modernist nation-state than it is about the creation
of a world of Donna Haraway cyborgs. After all, it is Bill Gates who
is asking where we want to goand we all know how much freedom
of choice he wants us to have.
Equally important is what Neos return to the Matrix says about
the relation of subjectivity to the body. In the end what is chosen is
precisely the sort of boundless, disembodied subjectivity that the text
seemed to be repudiating. And this may lead us to recall that, for all the
spectacular physical stunts that help make The Matrix an eyepopper,
the reality of Neos heroism is both cybernetic and amazingly passive.
He is the One not because he is a karate kid, but because he is a
supreme hacker. All his amazing deWances of gravity and dodges of
death come while he is, in fact, strapped and wired into a chair in a
kind of trance. In addition, during his training when he is Wrst proving how exceptional he is, what is exceptional is how long he can lie
still and receive data: when Morpheus asks how he is doing, Tank
responds, Ten hours straight. Hes a machine. In a text where the
human/machine opposition is key, and the whole point seems to be
to reassert the ascendance of the former, what makes the hero superhuman is precisely his posthuman, cybernetic, information-machine-like

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 43

BACK TO THE FUTURE

qualities. Moreover, the difference between Neo and the human batteries Wnally turns out to be no greater than the difference between
the couch potato who watches TV all day and the video gamer for
whom virtual recreation offers a fantasy of agency.
Thus a resistant reading of The Matrix suggests that the opposition that is really at stake may Wnally be a generational one, concerning how technology interpellates the passive consumer subject of late
global capitalism. Is Neos superiority to those who passively have
the world pulled over their eyes Wnally a Gen-Xers fantasy of the
superiority of their Internet surWng to their parents and grandparents channel surWng? Is the question of who is the One simply a
question of who has, or lacks, a joystick?
On the other hand, Neos Wnal speech does capture the spirit of
the hackers ethic of free information and decentralization:
I know youre out there. I can feel you now. I know that youre afraid.
Youre afraid of us. Youre afraid of change. I dont know the future. I
didnt come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell
you how its going to begin. Im going to hang up this phone and then
Im going to show these people what you dont want them to see. Im
going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and
controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

The speech serves the function not only of preparing the audience for a sequel (which is now in production) but also of contrasting
two versions of possibility for virtual realityone conservative, the
other anarchic. The you addressed here is, grammatically, the AI
and what it stands for: the forces of domination before whom the
gauntlet is thrown down for a struggle over who is to control the
Matrix (read, the Internet). The Wnal line, however, also may strike
the audience (at least, it struck both of us) as a rallying cry addressed
to us as subjects who may wish to follow the path of liberation that
Neo has blazed. Then as the credits roll, we are exhorted, as Neo was
by Morpheus and Trinity, to Wake Up, a song by Rage Against The
Machine about conspiracy and paranoia that rails against the land
of hypocrisy and the networks at work, keeping people calm.
But here, as elsewhere, the messages of resistance resonate with
echoes that place it rather disturbingly close to the order it seeks to

43

04Bartlett.qxd

44

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 44

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

subvert. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you is rhetorically extremely close to such famous e-commercial messages as
Microsofts Where do you want to go today? and Nortel Networks
What do you want the Internet to be? The movie and song that
urge us to see the world that has been pulled over [our] eyes to blind
[us] from the truth are, respectively, an exceptionally high-tech
special-effects spectacle and a song that comes to us on a CD or as
an MP3 Wle. Rage Against The Machine exists for us as a machine.
The irony of this digitized Ludditism points to the irony that both
Wlm and song themselves exemplify the capacity of late capitalism
and its mass media to commodify everything, including messages of
subversion.
No doubt this is why Neos Wnal return to the Matrix ultimately
suggests that human liberation does not require radical change or the
destruction of the system, as Morpheus had suggested. Rather, it
requires only self-actualization and an assertion of autonomythe
very deWning characteristics of the liberal humanist selftogether
with state-of-the-art technological know-how. Information technology is not the instrument of a more advanced form of capitalism or
the evolutionary extension of and heir to industrial machinery, but is
the liberating medium. Our use of the new technologies is not the
indoctrination necessary to creating the consumers of late capitalism,
whose consumption of commodiWed information fuels the global
economy. Rather, our utilization of the technology is our pathway to
freedom. Neos realization that he doesnt need to change the system,
but only learn to make it work for him, invokes the oldest of capitalist myths and once again exposes the complicity of liberal-humanism
with capitalism.
The Matrix begins by tapping into the alienation and suspicion of
those subjected to late capitalism in the technologically advanced
nationscordoned off in your cubicle you process data, you pay
your taxes, you have contact with other human beings only through
the ones and zeroes that constitute the graphic interface of a computer network. But ultimately, the very conditions that alienate Neo
from his labor and lead to his malaise and discontentthe isolation
of both work and social life in a technological worldbecome the
conditions of his salvation. All the time that hes been slugging away
at his keyboard, staring at a computer, wondering what difference

04Bartlett.qxd

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 45

BACK TO THE FUTURE

any of it makes, life has actually been preparing him for the ultimate
showdown when he will don a (virtual) cool leather coat, take up the
(virtual) automatic weapon of his choice, and, with the loving support of a devoted, sexy female sidekick, virtually decimate all the
suits in the world. Whoa! Dja vu!

Notes
1. Working in the Weld of cybernetics in the 1960s, Humberto Maturana
theorized the relationship between living and artiWcial systems. Maturana suggests that power struggles often take the form of an autopoietic (or self-making)
system forcing another system to become allopoietic, so that the weaker system is
made to serve the goals of the stronger rather than pursuing its own systemic
unity (Hayles 1999, 160).
2. The problem with this, however, is that the reality of the real is so bleak
that it is hard to imagine why anyone would choose it. Moreover, even though in
terms of plot the Matrix is fraught with peril, it is visually the site of exhilarating
fantasy. Yvonne Tasker (1993, 6) has pointed out the dangers of reading action
Wlms in a way that overemphasizes both dialogue and narrative closure at the
expense of downplaying the pleasures of spectacle. In a sense The Matrix as a text
itself interestingly embodies the split that Tasker locates primarily in audiences
ways of seeing, for the Wlms overt ideological stance, as revealed primarily
through dialogue spoken by the villains, is at odds with the pleasures it delivers.
The Wlm may ethically champion the cause of the authentic, but it delivers aesthetically primarily in the spectacle it creates, and in this regard the scenes in the
reality of the alien ship are far less interesting than those in the virtual reality of
the Matrix or the programs that train Neo for it. While we may be asked to identify with Morpheus in his belief that only liberation from the falsehood of the
Matrix will truly liberate us, as consumers we think we resemble Cypherdrawn
more to the sensual satisfactions of artiWce than to the rectitude of harsh reality.
3. It is interesting to imagine this sequence from the perspective of
the security guards and clerical workers in the building that Neo and Trinity
enter. While our heroes may see themselves as great liberators, to the working
stiffs they encounter they probably look more like black-coated mass murderers
on the order of the Trench Coat MaWa killers at Columbine High School eighteen days after the Wlm was released in the United States.

Works Cited
Byers, Thomas B. Terminating the Postmodern: Masculinity and Pomophobia.
In Postmodern Narratives. Special issue, Modern Fiction Studies 41 (1995): 533.

45

04Bartlett.qxd

46

3/5/03

12:59 PM

Page 46

LAURA BARTLETT AND THOMAS B. BYERS

Derrida, Jacques. Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, 27893, 339. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984.
Haraway, Donna. A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65108.
. Mice into Wormholes: A Comment on the Nature of No Nature. In
Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and
Technologies, ed. Gary Lee Downey and Joseph Dumit, 20943. School of
American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of
American Research Press, 1997.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hollinger, Veronica. Cybernetic Deconstruction: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism. Mosaic 23 (spring 1990): 2944.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
. Signatures of the Visible. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema. London:
Routledge, 1993.