| dc.description.abstract | Discussions revolving around cyborgs seldom include aesthetics, let alone propose
aesthetics as an inextricable part of the phenomenon of the cyborg. Rather, the term
“cyborg”, a contraction of “cybernetic organism”, evokes a figure of the (hu)man-
machine. In the field of social and political sciences, the cyborg is designated a
human-machine hybrid, a metaphor of humans becoming machinelike, or a
portrait of (political) agency in an era of high technology. These approaches
promote a figure of technologized bodies, that is, the cyborg as a figure of
technologically dominated and altered bodies. I will sustain that the cyborg
contributes to our understanding of agency in the age of high technology.
However, in contrast to the general view, I assert that viewing high technology
solely as a more efficient version of “modern technology” is an insufficient
position. Rather, contemporary technology should be termed high technř: recent
developments indicate the re-emergence of an aesthetic component in the
conception of technology. Following this conception, the understanding of the
phenomenon of the cyborg is altered. My aim is to bring to the fore the theme of
aesthetics in order to portray cyborg(ed) agency without the prejudice of the “man-
machine”.
The effort to advocate the value of the cyborg as a prevalent form of agency
requires exploring aspects commonly shared in cyborg studies. First, the body is
presumed the basis of the cyborg; second, cyborg is considered to consist of
contradictory elements; and third, the cyborg is related to the age of high
technology and cyberspace. In other words, corporeality, oxymoron, and novelty form
the cyborg condition. My investigation of these conditions, carried out by applying
both classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, and Julian Offray de La
Mettrie) and contemporary philosophy (Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel
Foucault) in an updated manner, reveals astonishing requirements. First, the body
is in need of a reconceptualization; second, the contradictory elements must be
reconsidered; and, third, it is necessary to identify a difference between man-
machines and cyborgs. Within this philosophical investigation, undertaken from
the entry point of fluctuation between technology and aesthetics, cyborg(ed)
agency is portrayed as a phenomenon of the aestheticization of technologized bodies. | |
