Webliography

The two most ironic words in the movie Frankenstein (1931) are “Its Alive!”. This passing exclamation implies a variety of problematic issues when dealing with cyborgs. Firstly, is it really alive? Is it alive as much as my laptop is alive? The fact that Frankenstein looks fairly human from the outside persuades us to believe that he is some kind of organism, just like us, and in that case, he is either alive or dead. But Frankenstein is half man, half machine, like many cyborgs that have come and gone, so technically, he can die and he cannot die. It is my understanding that all these problematic definitions between human and machine stem from one complex obsession, rather simplistic in its origins, the body. Issues such as death, biology, gender and the transcendental self, which are for the most part complete with clear limits and boundaries, are all multifaceted challenges that are redefined with each technological advance. It is the blurring of these boundaries, the pushing of these “limits”, the reinterpretation of the body itself that leads us to re-evaluate what it means to be human.

The first problem I encountered when thinking about how the body is reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human was a linguistic one. What exactly is a limit by nature? To my understanding I see a limit as a boundary, something beyond a limit is essentially unattainable. However, limits can be redefined and extended. But when one does come across a limit that has been extended one must also realise that fundamentally, the limit still exists. Advances in medical science and human biology have given us the means to extend many limits. The New Scientist clip [1] demonstrates how every tendon, artery and muscle in the arm can be replicated virtually. It can be deconstructed and reconfigured to show human movement as naturally as it would occur in a natural arm. Similar to the Human Visible Project [2] both of these experiments reinterpret the body as a sum of the parts. That is, to present the body as a congruent system of organs, arteries, electrical signals to the nth degree. It would be controversial to say that both of these expressions of the body have nothing to do with being human. But if one were to agree with this statement to a point, then one would have to assume that perhaps the transcendental self is what is socially and cultural agreed upon as giving us our humanness.

Alternatively, in the Cyborg Citizen [3] Grey attempts to address this question further by proposing that we view the body as a commodity. Using examples such as DNA deconstruction and the human genome project, along with the blood trade he draws similarities between the ownership of the parts of the body with the human slave trade. This is an interesting argument and one that would suggest again that we see the body as something to be owned, dissected, and fractional by nature. There are distinct ideological differences between the organic human body and the body can be assembled and dissected much like a machine.

In keeping with the transcendental self, one must consider art as something that is by nature a physical expression of a metaphysical self. Or is it? Australian artist Stelarc [4] uses the idea of the cyborg extensively in his body performance art. The most fascinating statement made on his website is simply “the body is obsolete”. This is a two part predicament when considering how Stelarc is reinterpreting the body as a limit to what it means to be human. Firstly it suggests the body is a type of machine, for we usually ascribe the world ‘obsolete’ to technological hardware or mechanisms. And secondly it implies that the body is outdated and its use has reached a limit. But what exactly are the limits that Stelarc sees in the human body? Surely one can recognise that the body as we know it, aside from evolution, has been similar structurally from the days of the hominid. Stelarc’s work includes use of a virtual arm, an exoskeleton and on a sensory level he has also wired his blood pressure and breathing patterns to audio frequencies. I believe that his work emphasis the limits of technology and the infinite ways that our body as a living, breathing organism is essentially a means to exploring the limits of technology. Instead of reinterpreting the limits that are present within the human body, Stelarc is showcasing the endless possibilities of our creative expression using a medium that most would regard as cold, dull and mechanical.

If we interpret the body as a sum of the parts where does gender lie? This is just one of the questions that Balsamo’s book [5] attempts to answer. She argues that if the body is deduced to fractional parts that can be replaced by machine or enhanced by machine what does this say about our concept of humanity and gender. I believe it also says a lot about the way we view technology, as a cold, genderless, unhuman medium. Balsamo proposes that through cultural and social means, we not only dictate the terms of sexuality and gender but that we also reinterpret them as times change. In this respect, the transgender person could possibly be interpreted as a cyborg of sorts. But does this not imply some kind of pseudo-humanness to the transgender person who would undoubtedly be human, as opposed to a cyborg whose humanness is unclear?

When considering the body as a limit to what it means to be human, one is posed with a logical proposition. All humans have bodies, but are all things with bodies human? If one answers this with a resounding ‘no’, then the question must be asked, how essential is the body to ones humanity at all?


Bibliography

[1] New Scientist (2008) ‘Virtual Arm Gets Under the Skin’ [video file] (14th August 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLIBzkUR5l8&feature=user (23rd August 2008)

[2] National Library of Medicine (2003) The Visible Human Project® Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html (accessed 23rd August 2008)

[3] Grey, Chris Hables (2001) ‘The Rhetoric of life: DNA and Dr Frankenstein’s Dreams’ in Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. London: Routledge, pp 113-120. Available from http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2Mw5srL_bAUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=cyborg+death&ots=Za4l9fB0xP&sig=Ph_Nqyp9omIPwSeadYdYqoPYYzc#PPA112-IA7,M1 [23rd August 2008]

[4] Stelarc (1994) Available from: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au (accessed 22nd August 2008).

[5] Balsamo, Anne Marie (1999) Technologies of the gendered body: Reading Cyborg Women. Duke University Press, pp 1-17. Available at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lkr11mXPYKEC&pg=PA7&dq=cyborg+death&lr=&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=0_1&sig=ACfU3U1w8Lk-HLJx7bDKd1OTXw6PWmXqqQ#PPA7,M1