One of the threads that I see uniting the texts is the notion of hyper-textuality (and its sensory properties of speed, simultaneity, anonymity, and seeming im-mediation) as repositioning subjects within desires for control and performance optimization, side-by-side with conflicting desires for community and transcendence. These texts seem to wrestle with different issues stemming from the idea that identities (subjectivities, selves, socialities) have become fundamentally compromised by the intensification of these contradictory human uses for digitality.
Haraway writes: “Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a system architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statistical. …Furthermore, communications sciences and modern biologies are constructed by a common move—the translation of the world into a problem of coding, a search for a common language in which all resistance to instrumental control disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disassembly, reassembly, investment, and exchange” (‘Cyborg’ in Sex Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology, 446-447). This is a kind of ontology of control. These intensifications are not merely quantitative orders of magnitude but represent qualitative shifts in what it means to be human—engendering new pleasures and desires, while also (re)producing states of stigma, abjection, depletion. In any case, these digital systems clearly circulate far more than information; far more than ‘immaterial’, they are productive of a variety of processes of materialization, whether these be ‘queer’, ‘vanilla’, or otherwise.
There are so many ideas in Haraway’s text, which is part of the benefit and frustration of her aphoristic writing style. I found it interesting and productive how Hayles and Haraway show how their ideas of the ‘cyborg’ and the ‘posthuman’ emerge as feminist projects in contrast to ‘humanistic’ notions that enroll ideologies of possessive individualism and phallogocentrism. In turn, of course, this leads us to question other categories of normative subjectivity and experience including disability and able-bodiedness, faking and authenticity, manipulation and intimacy, play and work.
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Thoughtful observations, Anders. I was particularly struck by your statement: “I found it interesting and productive how Hayles and Haraway show how their ideas of the ‘cyborg’ and the ‘posthuman’ emerge as feminist projects in contrast to ‘humanistic’ notions that enroll ideologies of possessive individualism and phallogocentrism.” This thought is definitely worth pondering further. And you’re the third person in the last few days who has recommended Herzog’s new film on the Internet. Maybe we can make that an additional class assignment over the next couple of weeks, especially given our readings on the history of the Internet.
I second that, Lo and Behold looks excellent!
Anders: Your mention of the circumstances encouraging the current impulse toward “entrepreneurial selfhood” reminded me that Haraway devotes a whole section of her manifesto to delineate what she terms the “feminization” of labor or “homework economy.” During this semester, I would be particularly interested in having more in-depth conversations about how the culture of cyborg/cognisphere/networked/info- labor informs the participatory and collaborative endeavors that characterize the digital/networked classroom today. What are, for instance, the key issues surrounding the fragmentation of work time/space and the fusion of work and play?