The Censored Voice: Redefning Agency in Stanislaw Lem’s The Mask - Ellen Grace Parsons

In his paper “Nation-Building as a Communist Rational Planning Strategy,” sociologist Marian Kempny describes the methodology of identity control by the ruling party in Communist Poland. “The offcial propaganda forged the reality of one, indivisible nation and promulgated the idea of the superiority of a single-nation state over a multi-national one” (Kempny 350). Kempy also emphasizes the importance of storytelling in nation-building. He notes that narrations of individual experience “provide versions of reality that contribute to the fow of meaning which rests at the heart of any society” and “allow the members of a particular community to challenge the metanarratives of ‘great’ national tradition” (Kempny 360-361). Stanislaw Lem began his career as a writer of science fction in Soviet-occupied Poland, a time and place where selfexpression was hindered by the regime’s censorship of all published materials. This control centered curation of Lem’s Poland led to a diffcult habitat for identity building. Scholars wonder what drew Lem to science fction– the rise of Science fction is often attributed to countries engaged in imperialist projects and fast technological advancement, which lead to the necessity of its citizens imagining what this industrialized future might bring. While the Soviet Union as a whole may have ft into this theory, Poland did not. The experience of the average polish citizen did not demonstrate the ideal post-war industrialized life. Scholar Istvan Csicsery-Ronan in his paper “Lem, Central Europe, and the Genre of Technological Empire” poses this question: “ What could have inspired a man living in a famous medieval city, forbidden to write about the leading edge of science at the time by the forced mythology of Soviet science, to write the most infuential science fction to come out of non-techno-imperial culture?” (144). He argues that the purpose of Lem’s science fction was “to mediate Polish national culture from an insular national role to that of a global culture” (Csicsery-Ronay 144). Lem was drawn to science fction because it was a place for world building – a place to speak what was unspeakable, so that he could begin to create his own narratives. Throughout his career, Stanislaw Lem wrote countless novels, short stories, and in the latter part of his lifetime, focused on essays and non-fction. I’ve focused here on his short story The Mask, simply because it demonstrates the necessity of agency in identity building – the narrative that the Polish people were attempting to grasp. I posit that The Mask aims to prove that being able to

understand what is infuencing you and how you are being infuenced is a crucial step to forming your own identity. The Mask tells the story of a robot who is programmed by a corrupt society as she tries to understand her own identity independent of those who made her. By exploring the issues that arise as the robot pieces together her own narrative, we can begin to divulge the issues that come when forming identity in a place which actively tries to form it for you, such as Communist Poland. Lem wrote The Mask in 1974, and it was frst published in 1976 in a book of short stories, Mortal Engines. It tells the story of a female robot created by the King of this fctional kingdom to kill a man named Arrhodes, who is described as “a wise man who had dared to raise his hand against the throne” (Lem 221). The robot is programmed to love Arrhodes as a methodology of getting close to him in order to kill him, therefore, creating a problem of identity for the robot: does she love him and want to be with him, or does she want to kill him? While the narrative at the forefront follows the robots’ mission to kill Arrhodes, a more thorough analysis demonstrates her self-progression as she comes to understand her own identity, where she comes from, and what motivates her. As we follow her on the mission she has been programmed to do, we also witness her independent mission to understand herself and her place in the world. Emphasis is put on the fact that authority in the land where the action takes place is corrupt. When the robot fnds out that Arrhodes has been abducted, she asks what she should do in order to help him. She is told that she “cannot appeal to the law for help, for the law is the King’s” (Lem 227). The story begins as the robot awakes as a conscious being in this universe. From the start, we see the emergence of competing forces within her selfhood. Before she refers to herself directly, she refers to herself as “the me” (Lem 182), combining both frst person and third person. She speaks as if she is both inside and outside of herself. She doubts that she possesses any features within herself that are incompatible with each other. Upon realizing her physicality, she feels something hard underneath her skin and thinks “impossible, not in keeping with my beauty, its absoluteness” (Lem 205). This is the start of her inquiry into her own narrative. She has trouble conceiving of her identity as she recognizes there is knowledge about her origins that is censored from her. When she frst meets Arrhodes, she notes that she “did not tell him that night who I was, not wishing to lie to him and not knowing the truth myself” (Lem 192). She does not feel as if she has enough knowledge to defne herself. Her lack of knowledge directly affects her sense of agency in this situation, as it deprives her of identifcation and self-assertion. She only has the agency necessary to understand that she, for unknown reasons, has not been given this knowledge. For the robot, a sense of agency is required in order to understand

her own identity. When she realizes that the outside world offers her no proof of her internal selfhood, she must go deeper into herself to defne her identity. This comes through in a literal shedding of skin, as she attacks herself in order to fnd what lies beneath. After cutting off her human-looking exterior and seeing the mechanical robotic structure underneath, she reiterates the language of being outside herself. Looking in the mirror, she thinks “I understood that it was not it, a foreign thing, different and other, it was again myself” (Lem 213). The tension she felt existed inside her is not “foreign” from her but is part of what makes her who she is. These competing identities prompt the robot’s desire to escape her own reality and circumstances. Not knowing whether her desires for Arrhodes come from a place of good or evil makes her unsure of her ability to control her own actions. She tries to take blame away from herself by positing that she is suffering from some sort of sickness or madness. She thought that if she “were a madwoman, then everything would end well. From insanity, as from a dream, one could free oneself – in both cases there was hope” (Lem 192). The wording that Lem uses here, “insanity” “dream” and “madwoman”, all show her desire to take away her own culpability in relation to the desire she feels to kill Arrhodes. If she were merely dreaming, there would be an easy solution: to simply wake up. If she were insane, then reality would be unable to hold her accountable for her actions. To cope with this desire for removal of guilt, she concludes that this life and mission were forced upon her; she did not choose them. She determines that she is “a mind imprisoned, chained at birth, born into bondage, but a mind still” (Lem 208). Through the use of “birth” and “born into”, Lem reminds us that the robot was thrust into a situation she had no control over. Whereas the conclusion of illness or dreaming seem to fght directly against fate. This example shows her acceptance of her fate and how she can use it to her advantage. The change comes in this example when she concludes that she is “but a mind still”. Even though she knows that there are many external forces controlling and manipulating her, she realizes she still retains some sense of agency. Questioning her own situation and motivations in a sense prove her agency, as she is able to conclude that there is something wrong within her that must be explored. The robot’s ultimate conclusion ends up being that the dualities that exist within her can be a part of her identity. When she fnds Arrhodes neatly dead, as he has been killed by his captors before she got the chance, she realizes that both her “love and the venomous prick were from the same source” (Lem 209). She learns that there are multiple narratives that have been implanted within her. A physician who examines her describes the driving mechanisms of her machinery as “a multiple memory of things superfuous to a hunting machine” (Lem 229) which is made up of “recorded feminine histories” (Lem

229). The King implanted in her mechanism the lives of multiple women, whom he believed each provided her with valuable skills and expertise for conducting her mission. Her motivations are not driven by the history of one woman, or even simply the commands of the King, but a combination of all these infuences. The robot’s creators end up achieving the exact opposite of their desired outcome. In an attempt to create the perfect narrative for weaponization, they take apart multiple narratives and splice them together. What we realize by examining the suffering the robot endures, is that lack of agency in identity building is impossible to bear. Picking and choosing from the pasts of others and imposing them on a subject as a singular narrative only creates further mental unrest and confusion, instead of fusing together to create an ideal past. “Lem’s science fction represents the unique voice of the witness in the belly of the beast: the witness who has given up interest in the outcome of the collisions between competing political-technical forces”. (Csicsery-Ronay 149). Just as the robot is a witness who has gone to the depths of herself to create identity, Lem seems to have done the same for us. While the setting of The Mask is drastically different than Soviet Poland, there is a way in which this works in its favor. Lem’s imaginary world takes away outside context and creates a new scenario in which readers can immerse themselves. Without all the external connotations that would have been present in a story set in Communist Poland, Lem is able to focus solely on exploring the confict of forming one’s own identity against the one that the state has forced upon them. In “Understanding Dual Identities in Poland”, national identity is described as something that “should properly be considered part of the individual’s imagination – a choice not a given, but a choice that is responsive to contemporary as well as historical infuences” (Markowski, McManusCzubinska, Miller and Wasilewski 125). A person should have the right to decide which sources to be infuenced by, and to understand where these infuences come from. When agency is involved in interpreting the various infuences of society, the individual can choose how to relate to their own country without fear of being reprimanded. Without the freedom of choice and uncensored self-expression, people suffer because they cannot feel secure in their identity. This is what Lem is attempting to prove in The Mask. The robot suffers precisely because she does not understand her identity. She does not trust those who made her, nor is she able to trust herself, as she does not know how she is being infuenced. Through the lens of science fction, Lem was able to circumvent the structures of censorship, and tell a compelling story that effectively represents the cultural struggles of the time period in which it was written. The robot’s desire to escape, her desire to know herself and gain knowledge, and her desire to design her own identity are all displayed as constraints which actively cause

her suffering. Only when she begins to understand her own duality and how her mechanisms operate is she able to feel agency. For citizens to feel like they have the right to create their own national identity they must be given freedom and agency to create their own narratives.

Bibliography

Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. “Lem, Central Europe, and the Genre of Technological Empire.”The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem, edited by Peter Swirski, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006, pp 130-151. Kempny, Marian. “Nation-building as a Communist “Rational Planning Strategy” Subverted by Local Narratives.The Case of Identity Politics in Cieszyn Silesia”. Polish Sociological Review 4:349-365. Lem, Stanislaw. “The Mask,” in Mortal Engines, trans. Michael Kandel (New York: Avon, 1982): 181-239. McManus-Czubińska, Clare, et al. “Understanding Dual Identities in Poland.” Political Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, Mar. 2003, pp. 121–143.