Abstract

EXPANSIVE REALITY AND RESTRICTED DESIRE IN THREE NOVELS BY PHILIP K. DICK

Joshua H. Lind, M.A.

George Mason University, 2004

Thesis Director: Dr. Amelia Rutledge

Philip K. Dick is well known for crafting novels in which narrative reality is tenuous, uncertain, and shifting. These narrative realities are important explorations of contemporary social changes, especially the economic transformation from industrial capitalism to consumer capitalism. Rather than the restriction of human energy and desire required by labor-intensive industrial capitalism, consumer capitalism requires expanded desire. This expansion results in a supra-real world that operates by offering desirable images and representations while residual restrictions remain. The Dickian protagonist is caught between these two modes in an indeterminacy that characterizes contemporary subjectivity. Analyses of Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? will examine the struggle and subtlety of human subjectivity in a time of expanding reality.