I’ve just read Shields and, I have to admit, it’s got me quite excited about reading Haraway (who I’ve been putting off for reasons I’ve explained earlier).

http://altosdecibeis.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/
musica-para-o-prazer-nao-para-a-tortura/

I’m not sure what significantly new line Shields is articulating but it looks like a good introduction to Haraway and a clear explanation of the cyborg as “literary device” for exploring identity, power etc. in ways not dissimilar to the earlier literary antecedents (e.g. the flâneur).

Here’s Shields on this:

The inky cyborg is a hybrid subject of history offered as part of a new political myth. It is an immanent critique of the ‘constructed’ nature of a unitary womens’ identity, which was intended to subvert the foundational myths of socialist feminism, whose homogeneous prescriptions limited the political relevance and analytical purchase of academic feminism. Even though avowedly feminine, Haraway’s cyborg takes us beyond heteronormative notions of gender: she is a hybrid, trans-being without clear origins, fidelities or identity. (Shields 2006: 209)

Just as the flâneur can be seen to be a 19th-century literary device who sought the truth of the flux of public space, so the cyborg is a science fiction literary device that encapsulates truths of genetic space. (Shields 2006: 210)

Tales of the cyborg are less a matter of actual, concrete mechanical or even virtual humans. They are more a matter of stories, political mythologies and a form of writing that is concerned with ‘seizing the tools to mark the world’ and ‘recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control’ (1990: 175). The textual preoccupations that bracket the claims concerning the social relations of technologies in the ‘Manifesto’ are notable in that they are a language politics that speaks against colonization, hetero-normative identification and origin myths. ‘A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity . . . it takes irony for granted’ (1990: 180). (Shields 2006: 211)

In terms of taking Haraway a bit further, I thought Shields was really good on exemplifying some of the trends she identifies. I liked this line in particular which struck me as interesting in the context of recent government legislation on drugs, prostitution and, of course, the continued ‘war on terror’ (I prefer Borat’s “war of terror” as the more accurate description):

Terms such as ‘Empire’ and ‘militarization’ poorly capture the internal focus of the surveillant state on both bodies and biological processes (growing incarceration, extra-legal eavesdropping, regulation of substances). (Shields 2006: 214)

This afternoon, I’m gonna print it off, find a comfy chair in Starbucks (I’m thinking Haraway might disapprove of such chains?) and have a read. Will blog again later …

References

Shields, R. (2006). Flânerie for Cyborgs. Theory Culture Society, 23(7-8): 209-220.

Not sure where I’m going with this post. I’m going to start by copying some text from Hayles in which she defines the posthuman:

First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prothesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other protheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman view configures human being so that is can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism an biological organism, robot teleology and human goals. (1999: 2-3)

I’m not sure we’re on the same wavelength; I feel I need an example. Hayles unhelpfully mentions the ’six-million-dollar man’, apparently a “paradigmatic citizen of the posthuman regime” (1999: 4) and Robocop (whaaaaat …?).Real-life examples would be nice … .

I don’t feel such a definition – see earlier post – is sufficiently different to earlier critiques of the ‘liberal humanist subject’ or justifies any use of the term posthuman. Posthumanist yes, posthuman, no.

References

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Perversely, I started my reading with Allison Muri’s ‘Of Shit and the Soul’ (2003). I’m a sucker for a good title; I have a friend who wrote an article on WW1 French and German women’s writing called ‘Beyond the canon’. Brilliant title (don’t remember much of the contents of the paper though).

Anyway, I thought it was fantastic dismantling of discourses around disembodiment or corporeal irrelevance. Muri concludes that “extravagantly metaphorical claims about the disembodied post-human condition are offered as original contributions to academic discourse when in fact they reinforce the familiar old stereotypes of the baseness of the body distinct from, and opposed to, the elevation of mind or spirit (2003: 89-90).

So, such discourses rework centuries old beliefs about our vile bodies; the posthuman does, indeed, always ring twice (have I sort of justified my blog post title ?).

However, skim reading some of the other articles – e.g. Hayles – I think some theorists’ conceptualisation of the posthuman is less about disembodiment and more about a critique of the so-called ‘liberal humanist subject’ and its defining characteristics (e.g. rationality, free will, autonomy, consciousness as the seat of an identity or selfhood which is stable). This looks to me like the familiar poststructuralist and postmodernist critique of the ‘liberal humanist subject’. At the moment I can’t see any clear blue water between posthumanists and  postmodernists.

Anyone any thoughts?

References

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Hayles, N.K. (2006). Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere. Theory Culture Society, 23(7).

Muri, A. (2003). Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture. Body & Society, 9(3): 73-92

Apologies to all for my neglected lifestream which these last two weeks has been more stagnant pond. I got caught up in tsunami of new projects and deadlines (lots of liquid metaphors here). Anyway, I’m no longer drowning (or indeed Google Waving) but have a hour or so to catch up on some reading and write a post or two.

I must admit I’ve felt a bit hesitant about engaging with this bit of the module as the notion of the ‘posthuman’ (my spellchecker keeps converting to ‘postman’) turns me off a little. Everyday, as I check my junk folder for real mail amongst the spam (dolphins caught in tuna nets?) I delete messages advertising products that cure hair loss, weight gain, wrinkles and sexual dysfunction (the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Ageing). The digital, then, is constantly reminding me of this oh too solid flesh.

Here’s a picture (every blog post needs a pic) of my youngest son a moment after birth taken on my iPhone. It’s a combination of the ‘clean’ digital (the shinyness of All Things Apple) and the ‘messy’ corporeal (shit, blood, vernix etc.). I love this picture though for the squashed-face placidity of my minute-old, water-born son:

My next post will be about the set readings …