Guiding Question:
“Why should our bodies end at the skin?” asks Donna Haraway. Discuss the idea of the skin in relation to how we might imagine our future embodiment.
Gane, Nicholas. “Interview with Donna Haraway: What we have never been human? What is to be done” Theory, Culture & Society. SAGE Publications, 2006. 135-138.[1]
Source 1 is an interview with Donna Haraway, 21 years after her Cyborg Manifesto was first published in 1985. The interview begins with the question “What were your aims and motivations for writing this essay?”[2] This is useful to the extent that if Haraway’s aims and motivations can be understood then it serves as a good starting point for understanding why she might ask “Why should our bodies end at the skin?” In her response, we learn Haraway has earned a PhD in biology, which immediately highlights her interests in the details of the human body. However, Haraway expresses “but I have also always been inhabited biology from an equally powerful academic formation in literature and philosophy… I was extremely interested in the way the organism is an object of knowledge…”[3] Such information allows an understanding of how Haraway has approached the notion of the body and skin from a biological as well as philosophical perspective.
The source page is from a freely available international journal; Theory, Culture and Society, which covers topics in sociology, cultural theory and social theory. It is 25 years old and is established at Nottingham Trent University, England. Thus the resource is deemed appropriate for research at university level and relevant to the topic as it is a researched interview with whom the current guiding question is influenced by. A list of references accompanies the interview which can be used for further inquiry, accessible via a link to the full PDF version of the interview.
Author Unknown. “The line that runs between.” Animals/interspecies/Chimeras. Concordia University, 2010.[4]
Source 2 is a page from the website Art, Science and Technology which is weblog featuring work and essays from students taking COMS642 at Concordia University, Canada. COMS642, taught by assistant professor Tagny Duff, studies the changing representations of bodies in what is referred to as, the post- biological era[5]. The article of interest[6] argues about the general state of becoming and the author proposes that “natural history is about reproduction, evolution, the forming of patterns and continuations; becoming is about transformation, transmutation, symbolism and magic.[7]” While it would be difficult to cite this argument with scholarly authority since the author is both student and unknown, the argument itself is an interesting one, directly relevant to the present guiding question. If the body could extend past the skin with machine into cyborg, for example, it would require this process of becoming, because the merging of the skin and machine would not be a natural evolution, or reproduction of the skin but a transformation into something other else.
The webpage is useful so far as it is a freely available site of university student research and directly relevant to the issues being explored in WOMN2205: Self.Net. Regrettably, the page is considered inappropriate (for citation purposes) and the article does not have references available to investigate perspectives of the argument.
Paasonen, Susanna. “Thinking Through the Cybernetic Body: Popular Cybernetics and Feminism.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 4 (2002).[8]
Source 3 is an article from the free online journal Rhizomes in which Susanna Paasonen explores cyberfeminism and the notion of rethinking embodiment by considering feminist theory, gender interconnections and technology, specifically the internet. The article surveys what Paasonen terms “the apparent tensions between ‘cyber’ and ‘feminism’ and how ‘cyber’ has become part of discussions on feminism.”[9] The author is a researcher at the University of Turku, Finland and is finishing a PhD on the popularizing and gendering of the internet[10] and thus the webpage (article) is considered appropriate for university level research.
The subsection of the article most relevant is titled Cyborg Figurations and the Notions of Skin[11] which explores Donna Haraway’s argument that incorporating technology to extend the body past the skin might disintegrate the boundaries (of skin) that separate male and female, because cyborg figuration might open up a space to project fantasies of a non-gendered world[12]. It is a useful source because the skin is also part of what defines gender, in that the skin frames gender in different ways both in texture and physical arrangement of the skin and the article lends support to the argument that extending the body beyond the skin would not lessen the cultural, social and political issues associated with gender. Even if the body transformed into something more, something other than human, gender issues would be transferred because the transformation would be made with human, and therefore gendered, intentions.
Dixon, Steve. “Metal Gender.” Ctheory.Net, a128 (2003).[13]
Source 4 is similarly as useful as Paasonen’s article in source 3 in that it lends further support to the argument that AI Metal (cyborgs)[14] would not be without gender issues because “machines, like genders are not neutral.[15]”At first Dixon provokes the idea that metal has gender, which seems absurd, but describes that AI Metal (cyborgs) are gendered by virtue in the way that they are programmed to live(by humans). Dixon also provokes the idea that AI Metals are tri-gendered; they are male, female and machine which could ideally disintegrate the male/female boundaries and lessen the cultural, social and political issue that arise from gender. However, Dixon concludes that cyborgism is a paradox because it is an extension of the real implanted in the real, illustrating this with examples of ultimate masculine and feminine[16] cyborgs from science fiction films that depict gender ideals.
The page is from the freely available peer-reviewed online journal Cthoery.Net published by the University of Victoria since 1996 and focuses on the topics of technology and media theory. The article of interested is accompanied by a reference list and the page contains links to other articles useful for further research. Up until 2007, Jean Baudrillard; a prominent postmodern theorist was included on the editorial board. Considering all of the above, the source is relevant for both university level research and to the present guiding question.
Warwick, Kevin. “Cyborg 1.0: Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.” Wired, 8.02 (2000).[17]
Source 5 is an article by Kevin Warwick, who is recognized as the first real cyborg and is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England[18]. The article describes the ideas and processes Warwick has, and will be, undergoing to transform him. By using himself as his own experiment in his research, Warwick attempts to demonstrate how the principles of cybernetics can be applied to real-life and is transforming himself into a cyborg by means of surgical operations. Ultimately he aims to connect his human nervous system to a computer. The implications of his successful outcomes are both interesting and frightening as they range from curing cancer to creating beings (cyborgs) which he describes as more powerful than humans[19].
The source is useful and relevant as it describes the activities of an acclaimed Professor of Cybernetics literally extending his body beyond the skin and merging it with machine, illustrating what future embodiment is. It suggests too that if cyborgism had the potential to disintegrate gender issues as Donna Haraway argues, cyborgism brings with it its own, and potentially threatening , issues as suggested by Warwick’ s notions of “more powerful than humans.” If cyborgs more powerful than humans are created, then what becomes of ordinary humans?
[1] Accessed from; http://www.sagepub.net/tcs/default.aspx?page=interviewee2 (on 5/9/10).
[2] Nicholas Gane. “Interview with Donna Haraway: What we have never been human? What is to be done” Theory, Culture & Society. SAGE Publications, 2006. 135-138
[3] Nicholas Gane, p. 135-136
[4] Accessed from http://www.fluxmediaresearch.ca/wordpress/?p=236 (on 5/9/10).
[5] For further information about COMS462 visit; http://www.fluxmediaresearch.ca/wordpress/?page_id=4
[6] Author Unknown. “The line that runs between.” Animals/interspecies/Chimeras. Concordia University, 2010. Accessed from http://www.fluxmediaresearch.ca/wordpress/?p=236 (on 5/9/10).
[7] Author Unknown. “The line that runs between.” Animals/interspecies/Chimeras. Concordia University, 2010. Accessed from; http://www.fluxmediaresearch.ca/wordpress/?p=236 (on 5/9/10).
[8] Accessed from; http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/paasonen.html (on 6/9/10).
[9] Paasonen, Susanna. “Thinking Through the Cybernetic Body: Popular Cybernetics and Feminism.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 4 (2002). Accessed from; http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/paasonen.html (on 6/9/10).
[10] For further information on the Author visit: http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/contrib.html
[12] Paasonen, 2002 references the argument of non-gendered fantasies to Donna Haraway’s original 1985 Cyborg Manifesto; http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/paasonen.html
[13] Accessed from http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=384 (on 6/9/10).
[14] Dixon (2003) refers to cyborg’s as AI Metal (intelligent metal); http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=384
[15] Dixon (2003); http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=384
[16] Dixon gives the example of the ultimate masculine cyborg; Metal Man from the Japanese horror SciFi Testou (1989), depicting ideal masculine strength and the ultimate feminine cyborg Maria from the film Metropolis(1927),depicting ideal feminine sexuality and desirability. Dixon, Steve. “Metal Gender.” Ctheory.Net, a128 (2003).
[17] Accessed from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick.html (on 6/9/10).
[19] For further information on Warwick’s claims in addition to the his article visit http://www.kevinwarwick.com/ICyborg.htm and to hear Warwick speak of “more powerful than human” visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_l7SY_ngI
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