Science fiction, ecology of mind and the uncanny in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick

Abstract

This article analyzes the interdiscursive relations between Philip K. Dick’s science fiction, the ecology of mind by Gregory Bateson, and the Freudian concept of the uncanny. Gregory Bateson differentiates primary and secondary anthropological processes or, in other words, unconscious and language, and Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? reflects this inner interdiscursive relation. Finally, the Freudian concept of the uncanny demonstrates how androids produce an uneasy feeling due to their psychology, which seems very different from that of humans, but which is actually much more similar than expected.