In Katherine Hayles article “Towards Embodies Virtuality”, Hayles discusses the topic of dualism, or the separation of the body and mind. She believes that this shift in perspective comes from the creation of intelligent machines and the possibility of a population of cyborgs. In the episode of Black Mirror and in the film Stepford Wives, the idea of embodied virtuality is portrayed through the cyborg wives and through Ash, showing the disconnect of the mind and the body through the idea of disembodiment.
The definition of embodiment is “a tangible or visible form of an idea, quality, or feeling.” In Hayles article, she describes information “as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-based organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a Single system” (Hayles 2). This concept of embodiment, or rather disembodiment can be found in the episode of Black Mirror titles “Be Right Back.” When the main character Ash dies, his girlfriend Martha uses an online chatroom that uses the information found on Ash’s social media and emails to type like he would. This information about Ash helps to display the separation of mind and body, by showing how a majority of a man’s thoughts can still exist without a body for them to reside in. Things like his opinions, his voice, strange terms that Ash has used are analyzed and used by this program to recreate a person’s mind. And he can be carried everywhere with Martha. He is on her phone for when she is hiking, at the doctor, and driving. And when she is at home, he is on her computer. The information found online is a disembodied object, after his body has died, parts of his mind can be recreated and formed into a new machine. This information becomes a “single system” when Martha decides to buy a cyborg version of Ash to put this information into. The cyborg looks exactly like Ash, talks like Ash, and can evolve to act like him using the information from the internet and Martha. This cyborg is the perfect representation of dualism, showing that how the information put into the machine is a separate entity from the machine itself.
This concept of disembodied information can also be seen in the film Stepford Wives. The film is based around a town whose men replace their wives with cyborgs that looks and acts as a stereotypical house wife would. This idea of disembodied information can be seen through the wives and their behavior. Once a wife has been replaced with a cyborg, they act the same as the rest of the other women. For example, they only talk about cleaning, spend all their time in the kitchen, dress the same, and only try to please their husbands. The cyborgs have all been programmed to act like a housewife, and nothing like themselves. The mind and body are separated in this process. While the body may look the same as the original house wife, the mind is completely altered, wiped clean of any of their previous personality and replaced with one that the men find suitable.
The idea that the mind and body are separate is a concept that can be found throughout fiction. Dualism helps to show how cyborgs and human are different, and the future for humans if cyborgs become part of the population.