Cyborg
Do
Cyborgs
Have
Bodies?
Between Cybernetics And Embodiment
------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS
I. Introduction: Cyborg-Being---------------------2 II. Cybernetics: A History----------------------------8 III. Embodied Subjects and Spatiality--------------12 IV. Between Cyborgs and Posthumanity-----------17 V. Traversing Desire----------------------------------24 VI. Conclusion: Future Bodies ----------------------29 VII. Bibliography-----------------------------------------31
Do cyborgs have bodies? Drawing on the works of Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles and other Feminist writing on Technology, discuss the relationship between cybernetics and embodiment.
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
I. Introduction: Cyborg-Being
A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generates antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); its takes irony for granted. (Haraway, 1991:180)
The post-human subject is an amalgam, a collection of the heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction. (Hayles, 1999:3)
This essay will discuss feminist perspectives of post-human and cyborg body theory, as it relates to conceptions of affectivity, subjectivity, materiality, incorporeality, and dis/embodiment. Cybernetics theory suggests that the body is a communications network, a system of feedback mechanisms whereby information patterns can be exchanged and circulated independent of material substrates. In shifting attention from the material to the immaterial, cybernetics deems an equivalency between machine and organism whereby: ‘the sociologic of human identity [is] transformed into an
Cyborgs
Have
Bodies?
Between Cybernetics And Embodiment
------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS
I. Introduction: Cyborg-Being---------------------2 II. Cybernetics: A History----------------------------8 III. Embodied Subjects and Spatiality--------------12 IV. Between Cyborgs and Posthumanity-----------17 V. Traversing Desire----------------------------------24 VI. Conclusion: Future Bodies ----------------------29 VII. Bibliography-----------------------------------------31
Do cyborgs have bodies? Drawing on the works of Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles and other Feminist writing on Technology, discuss the relationship between cybernetics and embodiment.
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
I. Introduction: Cyborg-Being
A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generates antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); its takes irony for granted. (Haraway, 1991:180)
The post-human subject is an amalgam, a collection of the heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction. (Hayles, 1999:3)
This essay will discuss feminist perspectives of post-human and cyborg body theory, as it relates to conceptions of affectivity, subjectivity, materiality, incorporeality, and dis/embodiment. Cybernetics theory suggests that the body is a communications network, a system of feedback mechanisms whereby information patterns can be exchanged and circulated independent of material substrates. In shifting attention from the material to the immaterial, cybernetics deems an equivalency between machine and organism whereby: ‘the sociologic of human identity [is] transformed into an
Bibliography: Braidotti, R. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Polity Press: Malden, MA. Castandi Cardenas, M. 2010. Trans Desire. Atropos Press: New York Deleuze, G Fornssler, B., 2010. Affective Cyborgs. Atropos Press: New York. Grosz, E. 1995. Space, Time, and Perversion. Routledge: London. Haraway, D., 1991. ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, pp. 149-81in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routelage. Hayles, K., 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Stone, A.R., 1995. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA and London, England. Sofoulis, Z., 2002. ‘Cyberquake: Haraway’s Manifesto’. In D. Tofts, A. Jonson, and A. Cavallaro eds. 2002. Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA and London, England. pp. 84-101. Tomas, D., 1995 Weiss, D., 2000. Posthuman Pleasures: Review of N. Katherine Hayles’ How we Became Posthuman, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, [online] Available at: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/01.3/weiss.shtml. [Accessed 20 April 2012].