Mind, Body, Imprint: Cyberpunk Echoes in the Dollhouse more

Thematic preoccupations about the connections between embodiment and technology appear in several contemporary television narratives, including the extensive debates about versions of “humanity” in Battlestar Galactica (2003-9), explorations of transformation through cybernetics in The Bionic Woman (2007), and questions about the nature and relationship of mind, body and soul in Dollhouse (2008-10). All these preoccupations can be found within texts of “classic” cyberpunk from the early 1980s onwards; for example, films such as Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999), science fiction novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Pat Cadigan’s Synners (1991), and more recent “mainstream” fiction such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004). This paper examines the connections between some key tropes of cyberpunk texts and the narrative of Dollhouse, including the exploration of the experience of embodiment and the relationship between body and mind.