I was recently invited to contribute to a friend’s blog. When I tried, Google Blogger seemed to think I was trying to set up my own blog, and led me step by step in that direction. I gave it the first title that came to my mind.
The title is taking from Donna Haraway, whose book “Simians, Cyborgs, and Women” happened to be at my feet. For Haraway, the cyborg is an image of strength which doesn’t rely on an assumption of edenic innocence or organic unity. She wanted to laud the coalition building that was typified by the phrase “women of color,” which makes no nod to an assumed shared biological identity, but instead formed around existent socio-political realities. By contrast, she, a feminist and lesbian, presents the cyborg as an alternative to the “earth is our mother” / “back-to-the-garden” / “goddess” feminism that emerged at the same time–precisely because the latter assumes a transcendent essence. Cyborgs are not images of innocence; they are images of strength.
What is a cyborg? A man with an artificial leg. A woman writing stories on the computer. A lesbian/poet/cancer survivor/mother. One of her great examples of cyborgism is drawn from Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, which features the melding of the human race with a very alien species in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The cyborg is “post-human,” and “post-gender” in that it cedes no special value to identity determined by reference to traditional markers of identity (i.e., race, sex, humanity). “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess,” she says.
Written within a context when mainstream feminism was more likely than not to extol the virtues of “natural” and shun the “artificial,” Haraway’s work is an attempt to move the discussion of feminism a little bit further down the “post-modern” road. Of course the problem with being post-modern is that you can be right, influential, and widely cited without ever being heard, which in some respects has happened to Haraway. More directly, her work has been co-opted as part of a large “post-human” “cyber- “ school of cultural studies. As she put it, “as an oppositional figure, the cybory has a short half life.”
In her more recent writings, she has turned to the image of “companion species.” Writing of the relations between dogs and humans, she points out that’s not exactly a relation of equals, but its also not exactly reducible to a “pets.” The most remarkable part of the dog / human story, she suggests, is the way dogs have trained us to be baby sitters for their offspring. Though dogs might treat us as members of a pack in some ways, just a humans often treat dogs as children, fundamentally, we are all quite aware of the differences which define our relationship. A human/dog/human/dog/dog household is not exactly a “family” or a “pack.” It’s a chimera of sorts (“an organism of genetically different tissues”). The companion species model has the same sort of intimacy as the cyborg model, but it is first and foremost a social model–but again, like the cyborg model, one founded on differences, not similarity. Cyborg is to companion species as metaphor is to metonym–I think. Both are figures of a social unity which respects difference.
What this means to me.
I am fascinated by science fiction, and especially by SF that redefines what it means to be a self.
What are the problems with the word “human”? Let me do something more or less post modern here, and quote Wikipedia:
Humanism ... claims that human nature is a universal state which ... is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence.
That’s a good summary. The problem is that we are not “autonomous” or “unified.” We exist in complex relationships to one another and to the world at large, and we change
Thus, the posthuman recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, instead understanding the world through context and heterogeneous perspectives while maintaining scientific rigor and a dedication to objective observations of the world. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities.
"Posthuman (critical theory)." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. 13 Jul 2007, 05:07 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 19 Jul 2007
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Posthuman_%28critical_theory%29&oldid=144336280>.
Got that? We exist in relations. In flux. In networks with the decidedly non-human.
This brings me to vampires.
Vampires
I am somewhat less interested in vampires as such, than I am with interest in vampires. It is not that vampires are necessarily figures of the post-human. It’s that vampire fiction and movies necessarily posit ways of being sentient and alive that are not necessarily human.
I expect to have a lot to say on this. Big fan of the Southern Vampire series.
Daleks and Cylons.
Interesting, isn't it, that the best two SF series ever, Dr. Who and Battlestar: Galactica feature archvillians that are cyborgs? No doubt the Cylons are more fully realized than the Daleks, but I like the way way the newer seasons (i.e., series) have played the hand they were dealt with the Daleks.
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