reading haraway i constantly feel like asking whom do we call cyborgs
and who remains outside of it?
whether the cyborgs wear burkas or not i agree with roger in that what
matters is what becomes visible. and in what becomes vsibile i guess
what matters is what federica calls ontological status. I agree with
her when she writes: 'if "we are all cyborgs", this doesn't mean that
we all share the same ontological status, but that we are non unitary,
hybrid formations experiencing multiple connections across different
boundaries.'
what matters then for instance building on ekmel's suggestion to think
on protocols may be the ontological status of that connectivity. our
constant inclination to think of a totally integrated cyborg and the
invisibility of (to put it simply) poorer cyborgs. a kurdish or
afghani kid who is the victim of a landmine but is left out of our
digital protocols as well as our social proptocols to see her as such.
or a child who cannot become a cyborg because does not have the money
for the prothesis. our dream of all those who need to become cyborgs
must be becoming one.
our constant thinking in lines such as ' it cannot be that bad, there
must be internet cafes down there too' in a world where one in seven
people are sturggling with hunger ( according to UN numbers) our dream
of an all encompassing connectivity. constant neglect of the fact that
one in seven people is reduced to the status of a hungry animal
spending her life searchign for food. and this together with
forgetting about all the violence. our dream of equation of violences.
big armies that turn soldiers into cyborgs, soldiers wearing seventy
pounds of tehcnology and covering themselves with technology, becomign
cyborgs vis-avis guerillas and civilians. documentaries shot in green
light. is it a surprise to see what these cyborgs are doing to the
civilians? yes guerillas have arms too but is this really the way it
needs to be?
children with stones facing israeli tanks or turkish combat cars.
maybe the soldier in the tank or the combat car at that moment when he
is scanning the street with that long-range lens is a cyborg and the
child not. What do we say about that? when one is so vulnerable and
the other hyper-invulnerable. when the existing legality adjudicates
them as is the case in Turkey by making up a crime as 'acting for the
purposes of helping the aim of the organization' . throwing a stone to
the police in a city where there is dirt level poverty and an
undending war and unkept promises for eighty years. chronic poverty
feeling of no hope. and a rising racism. and a child throwing a stone
. the law recognizes that they are not helping the organization. but
still these children who are rebelling probably against the poverty
around them more than all else- are adjudicated in terror related ways
so this strange article is used. how do we judge them when
situations where cyborgs meet non-cyborgs are often also sites of
unfair legalities?
how do we theorize or at least talk about the ineqaulities in the
status of becoming cyborgs. can we come up with norms for all cyborgs
without discussing the unequal ontological status of these and
different ways of becoming cyborgs? and the hierachies in the ways in
which we see and judge them?
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 2:29 AM, ekmel ertan<eertan@forumist.com> wrote:
> Federica says:
> "Thus, I believe that
> speaking about ethnic cyborgs makes sense as soon as ethnicity is seen as
> tactically articulating the boundary condition of cyborg bodies together
> with
> other differences, rather than being considered as an essential property
> used
> to perpetuate discriminatory as well as neocolonizing strategies."
>
> Yes, I believe this is why we come with this topic.
> But, when we repeat the phrase that "we are all cyborgs" , we point out
> another ethnicity
> above all the existing / -politically-accepted ones. I now realized that
> this was an
> attempt to omit the differences and re-unite in another definition (another
> ethnicity).
> Hence the core problem exist in such sayings, which starts with "we are all
> ...".
> Therefore as Federica referred to Anna Munster's approach 'engagement with
> differences inside connectivity' is opening a new door...
> This made me think on protocols. Even if we take the differences positively
> and try to
> eliminate them, we still use the same 'protocols' to communicate. May be not
> our perceptions
> but the protocols are forcing us to create the 'other'. Hence can we
> think on "ethnic cyborg"
> -ethnicity and cyborgs- in relation with protocols and -furthermore-
> interfaces?
>
>
> ekmel ertan
> eertan@forumist.com
> +90.532.4738971
> www.forumist.com
> skype id: ekmelertan
>
> On Jul 6, 2009, at 6:12 PM, fmarineo@libero.it wrote:
>
> Although I am usually in the position of a reader of the posts on this list,
> this time I really feel the need to take part in this extremely interesting
> discussion, since I have been working very much on feminist cyborg theory
> for
> my research.
> I think that if we want to "properly" talk about the cyborg -
> that is as the "inappropriate/d other" -, we need to retrieve the political
> and
> ethical implications of the cyborg figuration in Donna Haraway's theory, as
> well as to consider the recent developments of cyberfeminist theory and
> practice in their encounter with postcolonial theory and transcultural
> feminism.
>
> The figuration of the cyborg emerges from Haraway's situated
> critique of technoscience. In fact, the cyborg is a situated and political
> figuration, whose articulation happens to be linked with the very
> possibility
> of a politics of location. The harawaian cyborg can be seen as a figure of
> connection and connectivity, but only inasmuch as it is also considered as a
> figure of partiality. Technofeminist connection is partiality, since it
> implies
> the encounter with otherness, in/appropriatedness, differentiality.
> Connectivity, in this context, is not a inclusive, inevitable or
> "evolutionary"
> process of trascendental communion of subjectivities eventually taking place
> in
> every corner of the planet, to paraphrase Raquel Paricio, but a situated
> practice of networking dealing with contradictions and disjunctures (and
> fighting against corporate powers' connections).
>
> Feminist search for
> commonalities has gradually been accompanied by the recognition and
> articulation of differences within and without, rather than their inclusion.
> Moreover, as Maria Fernandez points out, feminist incorporation is based on
> acknowledging the "power and the legacy of embodied practices", rather than
> overcoming them. For this reason, if "we are all cyborgs", this doesn't mean
> that we all share the same ontological status, but that we are non unitary,
> hybrid formations experiencing multiple connections across different
> boundaries.
>
> Lanfranco Aceti writes: "The new nature of the cyborg should have
> been that of revolutionizing the status quo, overcoming differences,
> surpassing
> and moving beyond human differences and even beyond human nature."
> But
> according to Haraway, cyborg bodies move across differences, rather than
> overcoming them. Here is what Trinh T. Minh-ha
> interviewed by Marina Gržinić
> affirms in this respect:
> "For me, the question of hybridity or of cultural
> difference has never been a question of blurred boundaries. We constantly
> devise boundaries, but these boundaries, which are political, strategical or
> tactical-whatever the circumstance requires, and each circumstance generates
> a
> different kind of boundary-need not be taken as an end in itself. The notion
> of
> the migrant self, which has taken on a new lease in our times, is very
> relevant
> here. The self-in-displacement or the self-in-creation is one through which
> changes and discontinuities are accounted for in the making and unmaking of
> identity, and for which one needs specific, but mobile boundaries. For
> example,
> when do you call yourself a feminist, when you do not call yourself a
> feminist,
> when do you see yourself as part of the East, and when do you when you tell
> people the West is also in me? When I am speaking about the West I am not
> speaking about a reality outside myself. It is not a question of blurring
> boundaries or of rendering them invisible. It is a question of shifting them
> as
> soon as they tend to become ending lines." (Inappropriate/d Artificiality,
> 1998, http://arch.ced.berkeley.
> edu/people/faculty/bourdier/trinh/TTMHInterviews002.htm).
>
> Thus, I believe that
> speaking about ethnic cyborgs makes sense as soon as ethnicity is seen as
> tactically articulating the boundary condition of cyborg bodies together
> with
> other differences, rather than being considered as an essential property
> used
> to perpetuate discriminatory as well as neocolonizing strategies. Combining
> cyborg feminism and Thirld World feminism, for instance, Chela Sandoval sees
> connectivity as a "crossing network of consciousness", based on the
> traversing
> of sexual, cultural and national boundaries, rather than on their erasure;
> her
> approach allows both the dominant and the oppositional power forces that
> flow
> through the networks to be dealt with. Anna Munster also adopts an ethico-
> aesthetic approach to digitality; reading the digital through the social,
> she
> foregrounds the engagement with differences inside connectivity, rather than
> the elision of differences through it.
> I agree with Ekmel Ertan's statement
> that "there is no place for ethnicity in utopias because utopias are
> uniform".
> That is why I rather consider the cyborg as a techno-topic - neither utopic
> nor
> dystopic - figuration that combines imagination and responsible praxis,
> allowing to account for the contradictions and fragmentations of networks
> from
> the inside and, at the same time, to produce alternative forms of
> technopoiesis.
>
> Federica Timeto
>
> Ph.D. Candidate
> University of Plymouth, UK
>
> Planetary Collegium/M-Node
>
> fmarineo@libero.it
> federica.timeto@plymouth.ac.uk
>
> http://plymouth.academia.edu/FedericaTimeto
>
>
>
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