1 post tagged “katherine hayles”

Reading: Hayles, N. K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  pp 248 - 282.



i have read katherine hayles before and found her vaguely interesting.  the notion of post-humanism sounded very star trek (think the borg or the Q collectives).  in my first stab at graduate school i would often use star trek as a way of highlighting pop cultural applications of the age of enlightenment, the humanist project.  the idea of a human race (and lets face it the vast majority of the federation was organized around humanist ideals and post humanist cultures were looked on with fear, or would be asked to become backwards compatible - think commander data) was foregrounded as an ideal for not only humanity to ascribe to, but all other forms of organic and inorganic life forms.  the aforementioned omnipotent Q would earnestly study humanity, and revel at our evolutionary and righteous struggle to not only espouse humanist ideology but to exemplify it through action governed by the federation's prime directives.  after two semester of writing about sociological theories such as the enlightenment,  structuralism, and  post structuralist and relating them to star trek and other popular culture programs i was engrossed in, the excercise proved to have a dual purpose: exemplifying how far humanity had progressed in star trek as well as how limited humanism ideology was.  i would often be vexed at the replication of structural racism (the ferengie resembled and were often played by men of arab decent, klingons were african-esque in physiology and traded on stereotypes of an aggressive and savage diaspora), sexism, heterosexism, etc. as a result much of my work pointed to how humanism, as i understood it and highlighted by star trek, simply replicated these social chasms. 

what intrigues me about post-humanism is that it has offered a number of ways out of what many in society insist isthe natural order of things. post-humanism calls into question the corporeal body, its necessity, the tension between the physiological limitations breed into the species and the "soul"'s potential for intellectual, metaphysical and spiritual evolution/mutation (unsupported or incompatible with naked flesh) .  katherine speaks to the anxiety of this line of questions, for without the living flesh and its materiality, what then constitutes the "person", how will the person relate to/connect with the other, now disembodied, post-human "beings".  as she teases these ideas out in the chapter we read she uses two dialectics to highlight the tension between the humanist project and the post humanist subject.  these dialectics are presence/absence and randomness/pattern (see picture 1). 

• presence/absence - i am intimately acquainted with this dialectic.  it makes me think of george hagel's lordship and bondage dialectic.  the tension between one's self perception, how they are perceived by others and how they would like to be perceived.  in the hagelian dialectic to fully possess an other or be fully possessed by an other is what is at stack, a form of recognition, replication & death.  from what i can deduce from the chapter we read, presence/absence speaks to an experience of embodiment (hayles uses the world materiality see picture 2). humanism at one pole speaks to a certainty about the role of the corporeal body, and its ability to determine what it is to be human.  at the other pole is post humanism and the potential to evacuate the body, become something "other" than what the breed corporal body dictates. 
  
• randomness/pattern - this dialectic (as hayles uses it) is less clear for me.  upon encountering it (and her second semiotic square) brought to mind one of the tensions i experience with religion.  my parents insist that the bible, wrote thousands of years ago, can still order modern life.  beyond the moral implications.  materially i have always struggled with this assertion.  the idea that the randomness (inventions, which freed humanity to respond to their environment and each other differently, begot inventions which freed humanity to respond to their environment and each other differently, begot. . . ) of ever flowing and unfolding life can be explained and held in place with patterns from 100 a.d.  what i am not able to connect with is how this dialectic is related to information.  i understand that she talks about the codes by which we understand/perceive/relate (i am thinking specifically to language) and the idea that these codes once executed/assembled create something (pattern).  i am just not sure what point she is trying to advance on that pole.

What is truly exciting for me about this chapter of hayle's book is her ideas of how replication, disruption, mutation, and hyperreality are related.  of particular interest is mutation, unintended consequence of random events encountering a human/humanity (who must be present for the event) and creating a new form (materiality).  much of my research interest, writings, and ways of living in life focuses on the materiality, post-mutation.  and how new, albeit somewhat familiar forms (in the cases i look at) are experienced by others.  this hybridity or remix to me exemplifies the idea of presence and absence.  the mutant must relate to the world both as something that others longs for them to be, the familiar, as well as a new unrecognizable form. 

for those who have watched the x-men cartoon or read the comic book this seems to be a no brainer.  even as mutants offered new and exciting ways for "humanity" to relate to their environment there was a tacit call within society for them to revert, to signify a past (recognizable pattern) that no longer exist (absence).  hayles believes that this (the tension between absence and pattern) creates a hyperreality.  where the original item (humanity) which is "spoken of" (signified) is no longer present (or even necessary) but is related to as if it did indeed still exist, in a fixed time, space and form (simulacra). 

as i close this entry i am lead to wonder about the anxiety "humanity" has about the post-human (or the implied end of the human) and simulacra.  for perhaps the past 5 years the word and the ideal of authenticity has been part of the way i understand the world.  i search it out, zealously. i long for it with quite a deal of passion.  without knowing it, i have eschewed simulacra.  but more and more as i grapple with my relationality to people, and the matrix of connections that shoot off from them, i begin to wonder if "humanity" has not moved (mutated) into something we are failing/resisting to recognize.  while many people probably approach star trek, x-men, and katherine hayles as mere science fiction and theory, i am obsessed with their prescient qualities.  their ability to perceive a distant horizon(s) even as we careen madly towards it(them).

ps. one day ask me about my evolving thought that our planet is colluding in the emerging post-human project and may very well be in its own process of mutating to support whatever form emerges.