Cyborg Theory

Last year, at this conference, I discussed how distinctions between nature and culture, and humans and animals, can arise from the technical processes of food production (see "Food as an object of cultural technical study "). Drawing on the work of cultural techniques (e.g. Siegert 2015; Vismann 2013) and Levi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked (1970), I argued that the relationship between humans and food is primary to how the human understands itself and forms part of the ground of human ontological systems. I'd like to take this argument further today, to a system-level perspective of food production and beyond, to a posthuman future where food no longer resembles what we know it as today, and because of this, where the human as such arguably ceases to exist, as the ground upon which it has defined self and species is transcended. I'm responding both to fictional future food visions and aspirations towards technical solutions to our current food-related crises.

Mankind’s dependence on artificial intelligence and robotics is increasing rapidly as technology becomes more advanced. Finding a way to seamlessly intertwine these two worlds will help boost productivity in society and aid in a variety of ways in modern civilization.

Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society is an essential scholarly resource that delves into the current issues, methodologies, and trends relating to advanced robotic technology in the modern world. Featuring relevant topics that include STEM technologies, brain-controlled androids, biped robots, and media perception, this publication is ideal for engineers, academicians, students, and researchers that would like to stay current with the latest developments in the world of evolving robotics.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

La loi sur l'adaptation de la société française au vieillissement de 2015  se veut porteuse d’un changement de regard sur la vieillesse. La loi propose d’abord une redéfinition de la population visée : des vieux aux personnes vieillissantes. Ce n’est plus la vieillesse, fraction des classes d’âge élevés, paupérisée, féminisée, mal logée, en mauvaise santé, désocialisée et à la citoyenneté palliative qu’il s’agit prendre en charge économiquement, socialement et médicalement et d’accompagner jusqu’à la mort dans la dignité par des politiques spécifiques. À présent le gouvernement du grand âge concerne tous les secteurs d’action publique et toute la population. Le secteur associatif à but lucratif ou non et les entreprises qui commercialisent des produits issus des biotechnologies sont invitées à développer de nouveaux services et produits marchands en direction des âgées. Le nouveau référentiel entend s’adresser aux personnes âgées d’aujourd’hui et surtout à celles de demain. Ce n’est pas tant un groupe d’âge qu’une collection d’individus asexués et sans condition socio-économico-culturelle définie, présentée comme des personnes aux parcours de vie différenciés qu’il vise. La nouvelle politique de la vieillesse leur demande d’adapter, leurs conduites, celles de leur entourage, leurs logements, à leur condition de minoritaires inhérente à l’âge et à préparer leur fin de vie, en les accompagnant dans ce processus. Le nouveau dispositif entend infléchir le référentiel des politiques socio-sanitaires de lutte contre la perte d’autonomie/dépendance pour amplifier les retombées du modèle bio-médico-technique économiquement porteur du « bien vieillir » qui s’est progressivement instauré depuis la fin des années 1990. Il s’agit désormais non seulement de mieux compenser les incapacités mais surtout de repousser le moment de leur apparition.

While popular with the gallery‐going public, the hyperrealistic sculpture
of contemporary Australian artist Ron Mueck rarely attracts the attention
of prominent visual art theorists. This art theoretical neglect seems to
hinge on the microscopic verisimilitude of Mueck’s figurative sculptures,
for while some art critics venerate the virtuosity of his technique others
diagnose his hyperreal style as populist and conceptually impoverished.

This study forges a nexus between Mueck’s oeuvre and Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory of the uncanny in order to ascribe deeper
conceptual import to the artist’s work. Employing Freud’s renowned
concept of ‘the return of the repressed,’ as well as his ideas about how the
(con)fusion of categorical divisions between the familiar and foreign, the
real and imaginary triggers uncanny feeling, I examine how Mueck’s art
generates uncanniness on two distinct levels. Firstly, I investigate how
certain formal, aesthetic and symbolic aspects of the works cultivate
uncanny feeling in the spectator. The second stratum of uncanniness in
Mueck’s work is tied to a much broader socio‐cultural field, inhabiting the
vicissitudes of the human body in contemporary posthuman culture. I will
argue that Mueck’s oeuvre can be read as a reaction to and a reflection of
the technologised, progressively unnatural being that is the posthuman
subject, carving an uncanny space wherein the familiar and unfamiliar, the
natural and the artificial, are in constant communion.

Two key aims have motivated this project. First, I sought to investigate
possible reasons for my own fascination with Mueck’s hyperrealist
sculpture, an attraction to his work echoed by its popularity with the
gallery‐going public. I also aimed to develop new knowledge on the work
of a contemporary artist who has achieved a relatively high profile in the
international art world but whose practice has received little serious or
sustained art historical and theoretical analysis.

ABSTRACT In the article, we make an attempt at discussing what it means that our reality is commodified, what the consequences of this are, how we commodify our bodies and what role in this process is played by cyborgization, as well as what the relation between commodification and disembodiment is. These issues seem to be significant, because when the consumptionist and neoliberal discourse is reconstructed, the aspect of commodification of a human through cyborgization is omitted or marginalized. And such a context of commodification seems to be especially important, as it constitutes the idea of radical questioning of a biological body as a commodity of high market value. Thus, it constitutes the paradox of the commodification of body, i.e. a situation when the most attractive (from the consumer’s point view) body is a body that is disembodied to the maximum.

This presentation shall have an essay type form, and I will talk about my painting-work and the circumstances that influenced it to look the way it does. Therefore, many of the ideas I am going to write about, came from theorists and artists who meant a great deal to me, who helped me understand why I do this kind of painting, but those ideas were interpreted and contextualized through my experience. Therefore, I shall not list them in footnotes and literature. First of all, I would like to thank theorists such as

Currently the prospect of technological development regarding robotics looks in two directions. On one hand there is a development of creating humanoid robots, which ultimately will house the capacity for human-level sentience, consciousness, and intelligence. On the other hand there is a development of mechanizing the human being, resulting in a cyborg, which refers to the belief that the human being can evolve beyond the current physical and mental limitations through the use of technology. Now, the cyborg is found to be philosophically identical to the Homo Sapiens regarding their status as human being. However, in ontology, they are regarded to not be equivalent, as the Homo Sapiens has an ontological status of As(x) and the UC and ontological status of C(x,y). The automata, on the other hand, is regarded not to be identical to the Homo Sapiens, but equivalent to the UC, wherein both entities hold the ontological predicate of C(x,y). Discourse has led to the discussion of a shif...

The relationship between humankind and technology is fundamental, but also a longstanding source of unease, particularly as that relationship has become ever more intimate and irreversible. In this paper, I connect this age-old anxiety with the age-old figure of the giant, a monster similarly intertwined with ancient questions on the boundaries of humanity. I focus on two examples: the Human-Reaper larva in Mass Effect 2 and Liberty Prime in Fallout 3 and 4. Although different in approach, these examples demonstrate a use of a phenomenon I call the 'techno-giant' to explore and reflect the powerful anxieties in our cultures to do with the future of the human-technology relationship. In particular, both examples expose the human-nonhuman boundary as being exceeding difficult to define and place, despite a constant desire to. The figure of the giant offers a powerful focal point for these representations.

The article is about the self-agency relation of a player and perspectives of view in computer games. The ability of an action "on" the screen and inside the game world is that what makes the player to be both the consumer and creator. The Ability of operating on avatar, direct navigating in the virtual space and a controlling over camera are reshaping the perspective of the view which is known from visual narrative media. Technological extenses of the screen so as cameras, are looking at the player and scanning himself and the space around him by electronic sensors. It makes possible to complement visual contents with details from reality. However, the player thanks to prime mover given to him by mechanic and graphic interfaces, can react on the content in the real time and manipulate at the same time.

Produced for FALL/OUT programme, curated by Pluck Projects (Sarah Kelleher and Rachel Warriner), at Cork Midsummer Festival 2021. Five artworks — by Jessica Akerman, Pádraig Spillane, Anne Ffrench, David Mathuna & Andrew McSweeney, and Vicki Davis — were selected, with this catalogue consisting of individual textual responses to each.

Individual essay titles:
+ Pattern Recognition; response to Jessica Akerman's Cork Caryatids
+ Hyperaesthetics; response to Pádraig Spillane's Define Silver Lining
+ Time's Inhuman Nature; response to Anne Ffrench's To Hold Still
+ Cosmic Systems; response to David Mathúna & Andrew McSweene's As Above, So Below
+ A Machine, Just Like Me; response to Vicki Davis' Meatàn

SUMMARY
The ubiquitous use of digital technology in all aspects of daily life has opened up unprecedented possibilities such as immediate access to information, (tele)presence at any place on the planet, multiplication and modification of identity, as well as rearticulation and reconstruction of embodiment. In cyberpunk literature, new media art practices, cyber theories, SF films and comic books, and scientific research, there is often a tendency to leave the mortal physical body, behind in order to upload the immortal mind into the vast realm of the digital where one can be whatever or whomever s/he wants. In relation to modern technology,
the biological body is often regarded as obsolete for not being “equipped” to cope with the exponential speed of technological development. Hence, it is not surprising that many studies ignore the problem of embodiment by focusing more on the issues of identity, consciousness and disembodiment in digital worlds. Therefore, this book will attempt to highlight those theories that focus on embodiment in technologically mediated environments, thus reintegrating the physical body into discussions of new media phenomena and the ways they affect social reality today. In this book I will start from the hypothesis that without the physical body there is no virtual or real. The aim is to underline the significance of physical body in biotechnological interfaces, and to discuss and analyze the
ways in which the role of body and embodiment changes in ubiquitous virtual environments, as well as to map the ways in which technology alters bodily functions thus affecting ontological survival of humans as biological species.
The issues of constructing identities and identification processes will be observed through an anti-essentialist theoretical framework and mapped through two different but mutually intertwined phases in the evolution of global networks – Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 platforms. While Web 1.0 platforms were based on textual representations and identity play allowing us to become everything we are not
and can never be in the physical reality, Web 2.0 platforms that are specific to social networking delegate identities of physical reality in the virtual domain. However, presumed “real” identities manifest themselves as constructs in a virtual environment since they are based on a selective representation of an idealized self. Through feedback loops, this phenomenon further highlights the question of not only the quality of interpersonal relationships and communication, but also the way that we perceive and define ourselves in the physical environment. Dispersion
of boundaries between real and virtual, private and public, entails a fundamental question that this book will attempt to answer: What does it mean to be human in today’s world of digitalization when the explosion of digital imagery and interactions into the physical environment has so profoundly affected social, cultural and political activities, interventions and subversions, turning both the distinction between “real” and “virtual” spaces and dualistic ways of defining the self into rather obsolete concepts. Is anything at all “virtual” in cyberspace, i.e. can cyberspace be defined as virtual at all when, for example, because of an activity such as posting on Facebook, one can lose a job or has to let corporations dictate and define what is and what is not appropriate in the one’s digitally constructed identity? Nevertheless, we are still comforted by the illusion that our screen as an interface separates the real and the virtual, functioning as the boundary or line marking the end of real and the beginning of virtual. Everything situated on the other side of the screen, like a distorted mirror, allows us to rationalize and simplify the existence of the boundary between what defines us in physical reality and what we are as constructs in online interactions. However, what happens when the screen, that black mirror, breaks into pieces, thus enabling the body as interface to become responsible for the other Self or the digital alter ego? In this regard, special attention will be given to the concept of abandoning the screen and turning to the emerging new interfaces that rearticulate the relation between corporeality and virtuality. Gestural interfaces as a new “mouse” or a new touch screen without a screen will, coupled up with holographic projections that have already found their way into the physical public spaces, open up a multitude of far-reaching questions of psychosomatic nature: If, for example, we are present/telepresent to one another via holograms animated via corporeal gestures, would it mean the differentiation of degree of corporeality in terms of valuation and hierarchy of embodiment? How will we be able to determine what is more valuable, more present and real – projection or materiality of the body? And finally, will there be any difference at all between gesturally manipulated projection and the real body that is already deeply caught in the process of cyborgization? In William Gibson’s words, the future is already here - it is just not very evenly distributed.

Essayet bruker Harry Potters fiksjonsunivers som en linse for diskusjon av forholdet mellom teknologi, identitet og autensitet. De ulike casene; bioteknologi og sosiale medier, er begge eksempler på teknologier som oppleves å "gå under huden", med heftig debatter om konsekvensene av bruk. Forfatterne konkluderer ved hjelp av Harways kyborg at et søk etter rene kategorier av menneskelig og ikke-menneskelig er et forståelig, men feilslått prosjekt.

Posthuman Suffering investigates the core assumptions of posthumanist discourse via philosophy, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, and close textual and filmic readings of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Steven Spielberg's film, AI: Artificial Intelligence, bringing the more ontological and epistemological implications of posthumanism to the forefront. In the age of technology our own limitations are legitimized as unique to the human condition.

To understand what digital democracy is, this article suggests looking at the individual level of democratic subjectivity. Who is the democratic subject and how is it constituted in digital democracy? It revisits the poststructuralist-inspired debate about cyberdemocracy in the 1990s, which conceptualized the democratic subject as disembodied discursive self, reifying through textuality in cyberspace. In contrast, current debates on new materialism offer novel perspectives with attention to the materiality of bodies and things. New materialist thought has been fruitfully incorporated for social interaction online, but they have yet to be applied to political participation. By discussing three examples of political online participation in which users materialize their classed, raced, and gendered bodies, this essay contributes to a novel understanding of embodied democratic subjectivity in the digital age.

Valve Software's first Portal game (2007) provides a locus for a variety of concerns about the potential implications of AI and games as they impact on notions of embodiment and artificiality. Portal disrupts and intermingles the three distinct categories of player, player character (avatar), and artificial intelligence by deploying subtle self-referential cues and parody which call attention to the game’s artificiality. At the same time, this technique draws the player into an affective relationship with GLaDOS, the scripted AI construct who acts as the game’s villain. Moreover, the game repeatedly points to the fact that interacting with the game constitutes a cyborgic relationship. As the game proceeds, the player’s perspective is repeatedly shifted and reconstructed by these lines of rhetoric, and by the eponymous portals which form the game’s core mechanic. The cumulative effect is to cause the player to question what it means to be an embodied subject interacting with the game, to wonder what qualifies as “intelligence” (whether “artificial” or not), and to interrogate the extent to which our relationship with the game world makes us something more (or less) than human.

Lorsque Donna Haraway rédige son Cyborg Manifesto en 1984, elle propose un nouveau modèle de penser à la fois la femme et les rapports entre êtres humains, la condition féminine mais aussi les dualités de genre dans une dynamique autorisant une réflexion post-genre et technologique. Choisissant la figure hybride du cyborg, être autonome, entre humain et mécanique, symbole d’indifférenciation, la théoricienne pose les jalons d’une allégorie culturelle, esthétique et artistique du corps féminin. Influencée par l’aspect féministe et sociologique des propos d’Haraway, l’artiste contemporaine coréenne Lee Bul s’empare de cette figure cyborgienne dans ses créations artistiques et plus particulièrement dans ses performances et sculptures. Née en 1964, lors de la dictature militaire dans la Corée du Sud (1953-1987), l’artiste sort diplômée de l’Université Hongik de Séoul en 1987. Dès cette époque, elle exprime son intérêt pour les dérives de l’idéalisme porté par les rapports entre humain et technologie. Il s’agit pour elle de construire un discours esthétique à partir de la représentation et de l’incarnation d’un corps féminin renouvelé. Les œuvres de Bul témoignent de l’évolution de ce corps, dans ses images, ses fonctions et ses appréhensions, dans une société empreinte d’inventions robotiques et d’innovations bio-technologiques. La créature cyborgienne est définie par Donna Haraway comme : « un organisme cybernétique, un hybride de machine et d’organisme, une créature de la réalité sociale et une créature de fiction » (Haraway, 2007, 268). Cette définition correspond à de nombreuses œuvres de Lee Bul, notamment dans les séries Cyborgs1 et Monsters réalisées à partir de 1997, et permet d’élaborer un discours féministe alternatif grâce à cette figure artistique mythique et iconographique. À travers ses performances, sculptures et installations, Lee Bul dénonce les conséquences d’une société patriarcale dans laquelle l’image de la femme est construite par et pour le regard masculin, dans un idéal de perfection corporelle biaisé, imposé par la circulation du pouvoir au sein d’une société post-industrielle. L’artiste fait du cyborg un symbole de la différence et de l’altérité permettant une réflexion sur la notion de post-genre qui, jusqu’à présent ne définissait que des réalités marginales émergeantes, mais qui désormais s’impose dans les différentes disciplines des sciences humaines et sociales. En analysant ces représentations artistiques du corps féminin cyborgien au prisme des questions féministes et post-genre, il s’agit d’essayer de répondre à la question posée par le philosophe Thierry Hoquet : « À travers cette figure s’ouvre une question ou un paradoxe : comment cette figure produite au XXe siècle par le complexe militaro-industriel, amplifiée par l’industrie culturelle hollywoodienne, transpirant le néofordisme et l’idéologie néo-libérale reagano-thatchérienne, peut-elle se trouver investie, au XXIe siècle, dans des pratiques d’émancipations ? » (Hoquet, 2011, 47-48). Il sera donc nécessaire de revenir sur l’émergence de la figure du cyborg, avant d’étudier sa place dans les théories féministes de Donna Haraway. L’analyse des œuvres de l’artiste Lee Bul, ses premières performances, puis ses sculptures et installations de cyborgs et de monstres, permettront de comprendre l’inscription de la représentation du corps féminin au cœur de la société et des théories post-genre.

In a cyborg society where people exist both organically and via technology, sexual expression and interaction via technology has become 'normal'. The controversy surrounding sexting stems from contemporary literature and media portraying it as coercive, harmful and unacceptable, with particular reference to young females. Qualitative data on this phenomenon is extremely limited and biased, potentially resulting in unjust limitations and restrictions. This study investigates Millennial sexting behaviour by considering general and gendered perceptions of sexting to better understand the phenomenon; its risks, benefits, and the practice itself. An exploratory mixed methods study amongst university students (N = 579) revealed expected and unexpected findings. Respondents acknowledged sexting's risks, while the benefits of and motivations for sexting were emphasised with little evidence of negative pressure. It is argued that the benefits of sexting greatly outweigh the potential risks, but moreover, that sexting is a primarily feminist practice that holds much promise. The need for sextual education and awareness of sext-consent is examined, as theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Reintroducing the Cyborg Concept to Explain Internet-Related Safety Issues Tommaso Bertolotti ([email protected]) Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section University of Pavia, ITALY Lorenzo Magnani ([email protected]) Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section University of Pavia, ITALY Abstract we will later return on its recent use, it is worth sparing a few words on the Haraway’s contentions. As presented by Haraway herself, the theory is deeply embedded in Feminist arguments. Nevertheless some of her takes may be discussed and accepted regardless of one’s sharing the ideology they are meant to support. Haraway inserted in her definition of cyborg a trait that was seminal (or concerning an elite) at the time of her writing, but that is fully developed now: the strict dependance of our cyborgean nature on social cognition. This paper advocates a re-introduction of the notion of cyborg in order to acquire a new perspective on studies concerning the development of human cogn...

Resumen Este artículo parte del análisis de dos obras, una filosófica y otra cinematográfica, de Donna Haraway y Kōbō Abe respectivamente. A partir de éstas, se propone una reflexión sobre los conceptos de cyborg y máscara que se utilizan en dichas obras. Se defenderá una vinculación de dichos conceptos, vinculación que es tanto estética como ética y ontológica, ya que permite reflexionar acerca de los límites de lo femenino y lo humano. Abstract This article starts from the analysis of two works, one philosophical and the other cinematographic, Donna Haraway's and Kōbō Abe's, respectively. Based on these two works, a reflection on the concepts of cyborg and mask that appear in them will be proposed. A union between these concepts will be defended, as an aesthetical, ethical, and ontological union, because it allows a reflection on the limits of femininity and humanity.

This essay studies the covert, market driven forces at work in our choices of images for the avatars inhabiting cyberspace, in order to understand the dangers of the exchange of self-images for advertisements. To forge a set of alternative resistant and forceful conditions for imaging what SherryTurkle has termed "the second self," tactics based in imaging, language, and psychology can be opposed to the insidious and covert co-optation of the self by commodities. This essay is an attempt to examine the construction of alternative figures as models of resistance. The Manifesto for Avatars offers a formal set of oppositional strategies for constructing unconsumable self-images. The apparent freedom of identity and gender enjoyed by the participants in multi-user domains and the Internet in general (Langley, Stone) is a dangerous illusion, masking the corporate agendas dominating the nature and spirit of the construction of cyberspace and avatars. Imagine an internet chat room wherew e are all represented by the commodity of our choice. Much like the large, recognizable logos that corporeal jackets, sneakers, tee-shirts, and hats model, in this virtual environment our veryr epresentation, our self image, becomes an emblem of the production and accumulation of goods. The irony in the physical world is that we choose to wear these commodities and we willingly pay multi-national corporations for the privilege of advertising their products. Through this transaction we express personal fantasies, achieve a fleeting sense of democracy and individual expression, and fulfill various levels of desire.

Die Cyborgisierung des Menschen erzwingt eine „innere“ Disziplinierung, die ganz direkt auf der Ebene des Nervensystems wirkt. Die Institution, welche die Körperdisziplinierung trägt, setzt nicht mehr an der leiblichen Oberfläche an – sie ist keine gesellschaftliche Institution im klassischen Sinne mehr. Diese Institution ist nunmehr der Leib selbst.
Denkbar sind eine ganze Reihe verschiedener technisch-organischer Hybridmenschen. Der Essay schlüsselt das Feld des Techno-Körpers auf und versucht in kritischer Absicht den inneren Motiven nachzuspüren, die vielen Phantasmen der Technisierung des Leibes zu Grunde liegen.

When designing target architectures for organizations, the discipline of enterprise architecture has historically relied a set of assumptions regarding the physical, cognitive, and social capacities of the human beings serving as organizational members. In this text we explore the fact that for those organizations that intentionally deploy posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies among their personnel, such traditional assumptions no longer hold true: the use of advanced neuroprostheses intensifies the ongoing structural, systemic, and procedural fusion of human personnel and electronic information systems in a way that provides workers with new capacities and limitations and transforms the roles available to them.

Such use of neuroprostheses has the potential to affect an organization’s workers in three main areas. First, the use of neuroprostheses may affect workers’ physical form, as reflected in the physical components of their bodies, the role of design in their physical form, their length of tenure as workers, the developmental cycles that they experience, their spatial extension and locality, the permanence of their physical substrates, and the nature of their personal identity. Second, neuroprostheses may affect the information processing and cognition of neurocybernetically augmented workers, as manifested in their degree of sapience, autonomy, and volitionality; their forms of knowledge acquisition; their locus of information processing and data storage; their emotionality and cognitive biases; and their fidelity of data storage, predictability of behavior, and information security vulnerabilities. Third, the deployment of neuroprostheses can affect workers’ social engagement, as reflected in their degree of sociality; relationship to organizational culture; economic relationship with their employers; and rights, responsibilities, and legal status.

While ethical, legal, economic, and functional factors will prevent most organizations from deploying advanced neuroprostheses among their personnel for the foreseeable future, a select number of specialized organizations (such as military departments) are already working to develop such technologies and implement them among their personnel. The enterprise architectures of such organizations will be forced to evolve to accommodate the new realities of human-computer integration brought about by the posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies described in this text.

Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field--where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one's score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

In decine di migliaia di anni il nostro corpo non ha subito modifiche biologiche. L’homo sapiens ha intessuto una storia fatta di processi simbolici, culture, rappresentazioni, abitando sempre lo stesso corpo che ha segnato il confine tra il dentro e il fuori. Nell’era del postumano, però, il corpo sembra essersi smaterializzato, disseminato. È l’insetto kafkiano, l’androide di Dick, il cyborg di Ballard e Haraway. Eppure continua a essere il braccio a muovere il pennello dell’artista, l’occhio a guardare il foglio bianco, la mano a digitare le lettere sulla tastiera. Il corpo è ancora rivoluzionario.
Con l’ingresso del Metaverso e del fashion nft sulla scena, oggi Il corpo virtuale di Antonio Caronia diventa una lettura profetica. Ma è anche una guida per guardare il presente con le lenti di un futuro passato, uno squarcio nell’immaginario, tra ciò che siamo stati e ciò che potevamo diventare, come società e come corpi.

Il 21° secolo ha inaugurato una ridefinizione del corpo attraverso gli sviluppi cibernetici e biotecnologici. Come vedremo in questo articolo, il concetto di “umano” è stato ampiamente contestato, mentre “postumano” e “transumano” sono diventati termini di ricerca filosofica e scientifica. Tali cambi stanno inducendo un cambio paradigmatico nella percezione ontologica ed epistemologica del corpo umano. Questo articolo presenta una riflessione originale sulla tematica della corporeità nell'era postumana, ponendo domande quali: gli esseri postumani avranno bisogno di qualche forma di corporalità? Per rispondere, analizzeremo concetti chiave come “umano”, “corpo” e “sé incarnato”, e poi presenteremo le risposte che danno il postumanesimo e il transumanesimo a tali quesiti, in modo critico e generativo.

Questo testo è la traduzione di Francesca Ferrando, The Body, in R. Ranish, S. Lorenz (eds.), Post-and Transhumanism: An Introduction , Peter Lang Publisher, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 213-226.

Abstract (in English)

The 21st century has ushered in a redefinition of the body by cybernetic and biotechnological developments. the concept of "human" has been broadly challenged, while "posthu-man" and "transhuman" have become terms of philosophical and scientific enquiry. These scenarios are inducing a paradigm shift in the ontological and epistemological perception of the human body. this article presents an original reflection on the topic of embodiment in the posthuman era, by asking questions such as: will posthumans need any embodiment at all? Posthumanism and transhumanism offer different answers to these questions. before presenting them, we will analyze key concepts such as "human", "body" and "embodied self", in critical and generative ways.

Paris, Garnier Flammarion. Sortie en librairie le 29 août 2018.

Pixellence - 20-07-18 14:55:10
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Traite de l’homme - GF - Dynamic layout 108 × 178 mm

    TABLE
Avertissement ............................................................ 7
Présentation .............................................................. 9
L’HOMME
Préface ...................................................................... 71
Extrait du privilège du roi........................................ 123
L’Homme de René Descartes................................... 125
La Description du corps humain ............................. 227
Remarques de Louis de La Forge ............................ 289
Préface de M. Schuyl ............................................... 489
Chronologie............................................................... 525
Bibliographie sélective commentée............................. 531 Table......................................................................... 535

No d’édition : L.01EHPN000126.N001 Dépôt légal : août 2018