Reconfiguring Silence: Technological Mediation and Human Finitude in Ted Chiang’s Post-Cyborg Fiction

Subject Areas : Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation

Samira Rezvan ¹ , Hossein Moradi ^{2 *} , Fatemeh Bornaki ³

1 - Postgraduate Student, Department of Language and English Languages and Literature, Ka. C., Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
2 - Assisstant Professor, Department of Language and English Languages and Literature, Ka. C., Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
3 - Department of International Languages and Cultures, K. C., Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran

Received: 2025-03-11 Accepted : 2025-07-27 Published : 2025-08-03

Keywords: Martin Heidegger, Post-cyborg, Silence, Technology, Ted Chiang,

Abstract :

Ted Chiang’s science fiction short stories Exhalation and The Great Silence formally reconfigure silence as an active, technologically mediated space for confronting fundamental existential conditions within the post-cyborg age. Moving beyond notions of silence as mere absence, the analysis demonstrates how Chiang’s literary strategies—including narrative structure, perspective, imagery, and science fiction tropes—construct silence as a critical site for engaging with human finitude and the limits of knowledge (Exhalation) and for issuing an ethical demand to recognize the overlooked non-human other (The Great Silence). Drawing critically on Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of authenticity and finitude, the article contends that Chiang’s work fundamentally subverts Heideggerian ideals of unmediated encounter. Instead, Chiang presents a technologically mediated authenticity emerging from collective confrontation with cosmic entropy and interspecies ethics. Defined through Katherine Hayles’s posthumanism and Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory, the post-cyborg condition is shown to be essential for enabling Chiang’s unique literary exploration. Through close readings, this analysis positions Chiang’s fiction as a significant intervention in literary studies, illustrating how science fiction formally challenges philosophical frameworks and redefines silence as a crucial category for understanding subjectivity, technology, and ethical engagement in the contemporary world.

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