Narrative Conflict and Implied Value Conflict: An Analysis of Aspects of the Implied Worldview of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (2002) and Hanif Kureishi's the Body (2002)

Abstract

This essay examines the narrative conflicts in the cyberpunk novel Altered Carbon and the neo-gothic novella The Body. The theoretical assumption of the analyses is that narrative conflict can serve as an indicator of aspects of a text's implied worldview: more specifically, narrative conflict is presumed to be indicative of an implied value conflict. Resorting to a spatial conflict model based on Jurij Lotman's concept of border crossing, the essay argues that both texts differ substantially regarding the values they negotiate despite both deploying the transhumanist concept of body swapping. Whereas Altered Carbon places a socio-economic conflict at its core, The Body negotiates a metaphysical conflict. Accordingly, Altered Carbon discusses the construction of self-worth in view of an economically and socially overpowering opponent, whereas The Body emerges as a search for a value which can fill the void created by the dwindling relevance of religious notions of eternity in a secular world.