"a defining characteristic of the present cultural moment is the belief that information can circulate unchanged among different material substrates." (Hayles p.1)
Hayles traces the path to the present through three paths-
One path lead information to lose its body
Another created the cyborg as a technological artifact and cultural icon post WWII
A third created a narrative which shifted the human to the posthumanAnd one may ask - what is the post-human? Is it the end of humanity? Is it something even worse? Hayles traces the construction of the post-human to unveil the apocalyptic and utopic descriptions of post-humanity and show its all - so human essense.
Back to the question what is the post-human?
--"privileges informational pattern over material instantiation..
...embodiment in a biolegical substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life.
......considers conciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition
...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
...the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate....
the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines."p.2
the liberal subject - critiqued from many sides-
feminist - @white european male-universality
postcolonial-universality of white male liberal subject -
Deleuze&Guattari-p.m. theorist - Link w/Cap - liberatory potential of dispersed subjectivity -'body w.out organs'-
Embodiment in cybernetic literature has not shared the same critique of liberal human subjectivity as seen in other literature because cybernetics has tended to view information as already disembodied - but as Hayle points out the erasure of embodiment is seen in the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman subject -
"Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as a being a body"
...embodiment in a biolegical substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life.
......considers conciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition
...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
...the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate....
the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines."p.2
the liberal subject - critiqued from many sides-
feminist - @white european male-universality
postcolonial-universality of white male liberal subject -
Deleuze&Guattari-p.m. theorist - Link w/Cap - liberatory potential of dispersed subjectivity -'body w.out organs'-
Embodiment in cybernetic literature has not shared the same critique of liberal human subjectivity as seen in other literature because cybernetics has tended to view information as already disembodied - but as Hayle points out the erasure of embodiment is seen in the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman subject -
"Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as a being a body"
----Only through claims to a universal that is not dependent on the body of its claimer does the liberal human subject get to claim universaility - -----
Hayles Dream is..."a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrate finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is iembedded in a materail world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival"
-------------------------------Fast Forward---------------------------------
"we can no longer simply assume that conciousness guarantees the existense of the self. In this sense, the posthuman subject is also a postconcious subject"
---Hayles posthuman subject achieves conciousness through recursive feedback loops cycling - what she terms ***flickering singifiers****
FlicKerInG SiGniFieRs...
(based off Lacan's floating signifiers)
Lacan viewing print based language ----signifiers defined by networks of relational differences b/t themselves rather than by their relation to signifieds ---signifieds do not exist in themselves excepts insofar as they are prodeuced by signifiers---The catastrophe in Lacan psychoanlytic language development occurs when a subject (male) symoblically confronts the realization that subjectivity, like language is founded in absense ----What is understood (present) is only understood in relation to what is not (absent)
With Electronic Text - Words -Signifiers- Fonts - videos - symbols - Are understood through a multilitide of chains that make them visible - displayed - understood - through the mutation of information - when something changes its original meaning through transmission - the sytsem can evolve in a new way - "mutation is the catastrophe in the pattern/randomness dialectic analogous to castration in the presence/absence dialectic"
-----------------------More Later.
---
"we can no longer simply assume that conciousness guarantees the existense of the self. In this sense, the posthuman subject is also a postconcious subject"
---Hayles posthuman subject achieves conciousness through recursive feedback loops cycling - what she terms ***flickering singifiers****
FlicKerInG SiGniFieRs...
(based off Lacan's floating signifiers)
Lacan viewing print based language ----signifiers defined by networks of relational differences b/t themselves rather than by their relation to signifieds ---signifieds do not exist in themselves excepts insofar as they are prodeuced by signifiers---The catastrophe in Lacan psychoanlytic language development occurs when a subject (male) symoblically confronts the realization that subjectivity, like language is founded in absense ----What is understood (present) is only understood in relation to what is not (absent)
With Electronic Text - Words -Signifiers- Fonts - videos - symbols - Are understood through a multilitide of chains that make them visible - displayed - understood - through the mutation of information - when something changes its original meaning through transmission - the sytsem can evolve in a new way - "mutation is the catastrophe in the pattern/randomness dialectic analogous to castration in the presence/absence dialectic"
-----------------------More Later.
---
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