I am trying to explore ways to support “the cyborg is a transgressive figure that are neither wholly technological nor completely organic.” Referring to Balsamo’s assertion “the cyborg has the potential not only to disrupt persistent dualisms but also to refashion our thinking”, I have done a research of 5 related online articles.
Magnus Ramage’s article [1] “Information System – a cyborg discipline?” argues cyborgs as the model of information systems, which can be substantiated from personal experiences within a disciplinary context with its ambiguous and boundary-crossing nature.
The focus of this concept is to blur the boundaries between the cyborg and its different parts, including complex relationships of individual, mechanical, natural, synthetic and cultural activities that would lead to indeterminant identity and dynamic interaction. He says, “Given the prevalence of technological imagery and concerns within information systems, and its constant confusion with information,” we should beware of reification.
As our discipline is neither precisely technical, nor social, cyborgs cannot derive their identity from academic fields while it’s on-going. Then a new way to perceive the world develops - A CYBORG DISCIPLINE, that goes beyond the technology and the society.
Magnus assumes that to portray oneself is to set oneself up as a cyborg entity, so it’d better to gain institutional acceptance of cyborgs (as individuals or disciplines) as a general category. Whether to grasp the fluid nature of such interdisciplinarity or to avoid getting one single perspective but ignoring the politics of, and conflict between, multiple points of view, he suggests we keep on asking ourselves who we are.
Magnus Ramage’s article [1] “Information System – a cyborg discipline?” argues cyborgs as the model of information systems, which can be substantiated from personal experiences within a disciplinary context with its ambiguous and boundary-crossing nature.
The focus of this concept is to blur the boundaries between the cyborg and its different parts, including complex relationships of individual, mechanical, natural, synthetic and cultural activities that would lead to indeterminant identity and dynamic interaction. He says, “Given the prevalence of technological imagery and concerns within information systems, and its constant confusion with information,” we should beware of reification.
As our discipline is neither precisely technical, nor social, cyborgs cannot derive their identity from academic fields while it’s on-going. Then a new way to perceive the world develops - A CYBORG DISCIPLINE, that goes beyond the technology and the society.
Magnus assumes that to portray oneself is to set oneself up as a cyborg entity, so it’d better to gain institutional acceptance of cyborgs (as individuals or disciplines) as a general category. Whether to grasp the fluid nature of such interdisciplinarity or to avoid getting one single perspective but ignoring the politics of, and conflict between, multiple points of view, he suggests we keep on asking ourselves who we are.
In response to Donna Haraway’s assertion “we are cyborgs”, Dongshin Yi’s article [2] “Toward a Posthuman Ethics” admits “the cyborg is our ontology”. He strives to examine the very presence of the cyborg to the extent of a cyborg ontology, finding a possibility of a new relationship to deal with the antagonism of regarding cyborgs as a threat. Besides, he defends the cyborg should “equally share ontology with humans, and affects it”.
He supposes posthumanism and ethics should reach together as cyborgs are almost considered singular in unity, given no sense of difference between them. Or else, neither possibility of plurality nor companionship will be in result.
From his point of view, “the posthuman does not really mean the end of humanity.” Instead, “it signals the end of a certain conception of the human.” As posthuman involves not only humans but also non-human beings, he thinks we have to understand posthumanism is “an act of posting humanism next to cyborgs that with their own ontology and ethics”. Consequently, we, including cyborgs, are ready to make toward a posthuman ethics in order to resolve how we should relate each other.
Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake’s article [3] “Cyborgs Then and Now” describes the transitional identity of cyborgs that have been recognized as a metaphor, for “the spaces between natural and constructed, human and machine.” They mention this idea has been adopted for much longer than the name “human/machine interfaces” in science fictions for over eighty years. And now, cyborgs can be found in contemporary science fiction, which ramp up the unusual aspect of the modification.
They assert while the extent to make a human protagonist as a “cyborg” has been enlarging, at the same time, it varies widely. On one end of the spectrum “there are such figures as the superman or bionic man”; on the other end, “humans modified minimally for a specific job or environment.” In their opinion, manipulation often has to do with the mind, so theoretical and philosophical implications of the cyborg are understandable.
Sometimes the cyborg gets confused with androids, which are humanoid machines rather than mechanized humans. Thereby, the concept of the man-machine hybrid is approached. Yet, the contradiction behind the machine-human interface of the cyborg is, “consciousness or soul is understood to be altered by technological changes to the body but is also seen as distinct as it is detachable from the body” Regarding this, Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake propose we see the cyborg as two different ways of examining the same topic. Anyway, the development of identity and human being is essentially a product of cyborgs.
Rob Shields’s article [4] “Flânerie for Cyborgs” argues for the cyborg as “a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality” and as “an imaginative resource suggesting some fruitful couplings”. He regards the cyborg is a literary figure, as if flâneur, which shares the lineage of Centaurs, Amazons and the Minotaur while limiting human capacity for action and power and disrupting the purism of patriarchal relationships, confusing the image of the warrior with “animality and woman”.
But this extended metaphor shares another lineage: “the figure who, exaggerated, functions as a conceit.” He claims there is a certain relationship between “flâneur” and those “exaggerated figures”. Like the flâneur, the cyborg is also engaged in a relational exercise, which, “if only quasi-political, could be acknowledged to be ethical in its gestures and spaces.” That means, “the cyborg is a situated figure of contingency and differentiation”, and we are directed toward local possibility, ethnographic detail and heteroglossia rather than abstract totalization and hegemony.
In short, “cyborgs sensitize us to model necessary practices of making-sense of the present while hybrids and syncretism are not outside the norms.” Both flâneurs and cyborgs mobilize and take over conventional notions of embodiment and our going-about-everyday-life. Henceforth, new understandings, new worlds are formed.
Cyborg analysis suggests the body as a lived site and surface, the processes of regeneration and the nano-scales of biotechnology as a potential counter-space. This challenges the privilege given to the social, the identity of world historical actors and the traditional locales and practices of politics and justice.
As the modernist paradigm sees a dualism between humans and the objective world while recent philosophical and neuroscientific developments are challenging the modernist assumptions, suggesting the image that humans are principally cyborgs, Taede A. Smedes’ article [5] “Being Cyborgs: On Creating Humanity In A Created World Of Technology” argues cyborgs are not creatures that inhabit the imaginary space of science fiction, but that we are in a sense all cyborgs.
As he mentions, it is not always clear how human and machine are exactly related. Using the example of a blind person with a long stick, he finds that the stick is used as a tool that assists her accessing the world, so this “subsidiary awareness of tools and probes can be regarded now as the act of making them form a part of our own body.” On the other hand, there may still be a demarcation between body and the tool physically. But when using the tool, that demarcation disappears as it “becomes an extension and hence part of the body.” And that is the concept of cyborgs.
Finally, Taede A. suggests us actively think about our own discourse and refine the instruments and tools used to structure our world, so that we can promote, support, and extend our own cognitive achievements.
He supposes posthumanism and ethics should reach together as cyborgs are almost considered singular in unity, given no sense of difference between them. Or else, neither possibility of plurality nor companionship will be in result.
From his point of view, “the posthuman does not really mean the end of humanity.” Instead, “it signals the end of a certain conception of the human.” As posthuman involves not only humans but also non-human beings, he thinks we have to understand posthumanism is “an act of posting humanism next to cyborgs that with their own ontology and ethics”. Consequently, we, including cyborgs, are ready to make toward a posthuman ethics in order to resolve how we should relate each other.
Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake’s article [3] “Cyborgs Then and Now” describes the transitional identity of cyborgs that have been recognized as a metaphor, for “the spaces between natural and constructed, human and machine.” They mention this idea has been adopted for much longer than the name “human/machine interfaces” in science fictions for over eighty years. And now, cyborgs can be found in contemporary science fiction, which ramp up the unusual aspect of the modification.
They assert while the extent to make a human protagonist as a “cyborg” has been enlarging, at the same time, it varies widely. On one end of the spectrum “there are such figures as the superman or bionic man”; on the other end, “humans modified minimally for a specific job or environment.” In their opinion, manipulation often has to do with the mind, so theoretical and philosophical implications of the cyborg are understandable.
Sometimes the cyborg gets confused with androids, which are humanoid machines rather than mechanized humans. Thereby, the concept of the man-machine hybrid is approached. Yet, the contradiction behind the machine-human interface of the cyborg is, “consciousness or soul is understood to be altered by technological changes to the body but is also seen as distinct as it is detachable from the body” Regarding this, Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake propose we see the cyborg as two different ways of examining the same topic. Anyway, the development of identity and human being is essentially a product of cyborgs.
Rob Shields’s article [4] “Flânerie for Cyborgs” argues for the cyborg as “a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality” and as “an imaginative resource suggesting some fruitful couplings”. He regards the cyborg is a literary figure, as if flâneur, which shares the lineage of Centaurs, Amazons and the Minotaur while limiting human capacity for action and power and disrupting the purism of patriarchal relationships, confusing the image of the warrior with “animality and woman”.
But this extended metaphor shares another lineage: “the figure who, exaggerated, functions as a conceit.” He claims there is a certain relationship between “flâneur” and those “exaggerated figures”. Like the flâneur, the cyborg is also engaged in a relational exercise, which, “if only quasi-political, could be acknowledged to be ethical in its gestures and spaces.” That means, “the cyborg is a situated figure of contingency and differentiation”, and we are directed toward local possibility, ethnographic detail and heteroglossia rather than abstract totalization and hegemony.
In short, “cyborgs sensitize us to model necessary practices of making-sense of the present while hybrids and syncretism are not outside the norms.” Both flâneurs and cyborgs mobilize and take over conventional notions of embodiment and our going-about-everyday-life. Henceforth, new understandings, new worlds are formed.
Cyborg analysis suggests the body as a lived site and surface, the processes of regeneration and the nano-scales of biotechnology as a potential counter-space. This challenges the privilege given to the social, the identity of world historical actors and the traditional locales and practices of politics and justice.
As the modernist paradigm sees a dualism between humans and the objective world while recent philosophical and neuroscientific developments are challenging the modernist assumptions, suggesting the image that humans are principally cyborgs, Taede A. Smedes’ article [5] “Being Cyborgs: On Creating Humanity In A Created World Of Technology” argues cyborgs are not creatures that inhabit the imaginary space of science fiction, but that we are in a sense all cyborgs.
As he mentions, it is not always clear how human and machine are exactly related. Using the example of a blind person with a long stick, he finds that the stick is used as a tool that assists her accessing the world, so this “subsidiary awareness of tools and probes can be regarded now as the act of making them form a part of our own body.” On the other hand, there may still be a demarcation between body and the tool physically. But when using the tool, that demarcation disappears as it “becomes an extension and hence part of the body.” And that is the concept of cyborgs.
Finally, Taede A. suggests us actively think about our own discourse and refine the instruments and tools used to structure our world, so that we can promote, support, and extend our own cognitive achievements.
While some of the sources might be more practical than others, together they provide a strong basis for critically assessing dualisms as well as mind-refashioning of cyborgs. After this research activity I find that sourcing decent material is uneasy but quite important for academic purposes. I hope we all can form our own opinions after scanning so many works.
Reference
[1] Ramage, M. (2004). “Information System – a cyborg discipline?”
http://oro.open.ac.uk/2669/1/IFIP82_Manchester.pdf
(accessed 27 February 2009)
[2] Yi, Dongshin. (2004). “Toward a Posthuman Ethics.” Reconstruction: Posthumanous,
Summer 2004. 4 (3), ISSN: 1547-4348
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/yi.htm
(accessed 27 February 2009)
[3] Nestvold, R., & Lake, J. (2008) “Cyborgs Then and Now.” The Internet Review of Science
Fiction: Feature, February 2008. V(1).
http://irosf.com/q/zine/article/10394
(accessed 28 February 2009)
[4] Shields, R. (2006). “Flânerie for Cyborgs.” SAGE Journals Online: Theory, Culture &
Society, 23 (7-8), 209-220. UK: The TCS Centre, Nottingham Trent University.
http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/23/7-8/209.pdf
(accessed 1 March 2009)
[5] Smedes, Taede A. (2005). “Being Cyborgs: On Creating Humanity In A Created World Of
Technology.” Science & Theology 3, London: T&T Clark
http://www.tasmedes.nl/Documents/Smedes_Cyborg_ESSSAT.pdf
(accessed 3 March 2009)
Hi Kathy~
ReplyDeleteI think your webliography was well structured and was easy for readers to understand. There were a few paragraphs for each online source. You opened a new paragraph for a new idea and provided a summary for each paragraph. This helped the readers to follow easily. Also, I could see clearly that the online source that you used could support essay question 1.
It would be even better if the idea of how cyborg can refashion our thinking was stated. You could tell us in a more direct way for how the online sources you found could support this idea.
It is overall a nice essay. Thank you!
By the way, I am a bit surprised that we both used the online source “Being Cyborgs: On Creating Humanity In A Created World Of Technology.” Haha..