We Are Cyborgs

We Are CyborgsAre we? Thoughts on marge piercys he, she and It, as well as the posthumanist view of gender and sexualityPlus some other stuff: We are only beginning to realize the possibilities and limitations of virtual reality and of cyborg technology, both of which are key to our Understanding of our postmodern selves. June Deery

He, She and ItWinner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction in the United Kingdom (1991)Author Marge Piercy considers herself a political writer. She is a poet, novelist and memoirist; shes written 43 books (by my counting)Her novel, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) explores comparable science-fiction and feminist motifs

Cyborgs as a construct for exploring identityIn Donna Harraways essay, The Cyborg Manifesto, she defines the cyborg thusly:A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international womens movements have constructed womens experience, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind.

Lets look at popular culture/creature of fictionBladerunnerBladerunnerTerminatorEx MachinaWestworldStar Trek

The Voight-Kampff is a polygraph-like machine4

Lets Look at real lifeNeurobridge, a technology that allows a paralyzed man to move his hand by using his brain. Doctors implanted a microchip sensor in Ian Burkharts brain that creates a bypass to Burkharts spine.This was developed by Batelle, a company doing a bunch of things that I think we can safely file under posthumanism.

Meet a real EyeborgRob Spence, film-maker whose eye was damaged as a child, decided as an adult to replace it with a prosthetic eye that has a video camera in it.FYI, he did that 7 years agoRecharges his own eye with a USB. Camera not connected to brain, apparently.His next goal is to make one that looks like a real eye.

Bionicman/WomanRobotic exoskeleton already on the market/in healthcare to help rehabilitate peopleHelps everyone from stroke victims to people who have had spinal injuries walk again.Received first FDA clearance for stroke and spina cord injuries this year.Anyone want to make a dystopic kind of guess about the next generation of exoskeletons?

Biohacking, continuedAmal Graafstra is an example of the current biohacking movement. He has been inserting RFID chips (radio frequency identification) into his hands for more than a decade. His definition of biohackers DIY cyborgs who are upgrading their bodies with hardware without waiting for corporate development cycles or authorities to say its OK. (UK Guardian, The Real Cyborgs by Arthur HouseLets hear a little bit what he had to say a few years ago

From the telegraphhttp://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-androidThe Cybernetic Human1. Brain implants augment memory and provide access to the internet2. Wearable exoskeleton boosts strength and endurance3.Internet-connected spinal implant stimulates genitals for long-distance sex4. Interchangeble limbs match capabilities to tasks5. Access-control chips replace keys and passwords

Kevin Warwick, one of the more famous transhumanists, In the 1990s, Reading Universitys visiting professor of cybernetics started implanting RFID chips into himself. In 2002, he underwent pioneering surgery to have an array of electrodes attached to the nerve fibres in his arm. This was the first time a human nervous system had been connected to a computer. Warwicks neural interface allowed him to move a robotic hand by moving his own and to control a customised wheelchair with his thoughts. It also enabled him to experience electronic stimuli coming the other way. In one experiment he was able to sense ultrasound, which is beyond normal I was born human,, Warwick has said, but I believe its something we have the power to change.9

Cyborg manifestoHaraway discusses the value of considering the cyborg as a way of reading unity into the various fractures infor lack of a more complicated termidentity politics.She creates an infomatic scheme in which she compares traditional modes of being with (again for a lack of a better word) more transhumanist conditions. Lets compare a few of them.

comfortable old hierarchical dominations versus scary new networks/informatics of dominationRepresentationBourgeois novel, realismHeatBiology as clinical practiceEugenicsNature/culturesexSimulationScience fiction, postmodernismNoiseBiology as inscriptionPopulation controlFields of differenceGenetic engineering

Premodernism respected outside authority, the gods, the church. Modernism puts the emphasis on the individual creator, I think therefore I am, postmodernsim rejects that autonomy, looks at the self as a more fractured, diverse, being. Postmodernism can also be acriticalproject, revealing the cultural constructions we designate as truth and opening up a variety of repressed other histories of modernity. Such as those of women, homosexuals and the colonised.The modernist canon itself is revealed as patriarchal and racist, dominated by white heterosexual men. As a result, one of the most common themes addressed within postmodernism relates to cultural identity.

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Analyzing haraway in relation to he, she and itIn groups, please read together and discuss quotations from The Cyborg ManifestoFirst, make sure you have an understanding of the idea and then discuss it. You dont have to discuss it in a binary way, but see what you think and discuss its application to our current society/lives/worldThen see if you can find an application for the idea in He, She and It. Well then present each groups discussion to the class.

Cyborgs and womenJune Deery argues in part that cyborgs might resemble or identify with women and visa versa in the novel.Yods position in society is comparable to women in patriarchal society: he has to close read others reactions, he isnt paid for his work, hes compared to a sex toy by a characterHe ultimately rejects his own technological/weaponized role/ aka masculine role