{"id":7064,"date":"2006-10-31T22:20:27","date_gmt":"2006-10-31T22:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/hayles-how-we-b-1\/"},"modified":"2006-10-31T22:20:27","modified_gmt":"2006-10-31T22:20:27","slug":"hayles-how-we-b-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/hayles-how-we-b-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayles, How We Became Posthuman<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 6<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>\n

Hayles,
\n Katherine N. How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
\n Literature, and Informatics<\/i>. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1999.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this extended effort to explain the events and conditions leading up to
\nposthumanism<\/b>, Hayles manages to protect the flesh (defending embodiment and
\nbodies from dispersing into information constructs) and plucking the thorns from
\nposthumanism’s rep as dehumanizing or anti-human (this plays especially in the
\nconclusion on terror<\/i> and pleasure stemming from pohu). The story of
\nposthumanism, for Hayles, dates back to WWII; she accounts for three narrative
\nstrands: how information lost its body, how the cyborg was created as a
\ntechnological artifact and cultural icon, and how a historically specific
\nconstruction called the human is giving way to a different construction called
\nthe posthuman (2). How We Became Posthuman<\/i> accounts for the
\ntheoretical tides<\/b> (information theory, autopoiesis, the Macy conference),
\ntechnological shifts<\/b> (the audio tape and various wares–wet, soft, hard),
\nand the narrative undercurrent<\/b> (literary parallels and influences). <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Basically, the emergence of posthumanism is traced through three periods that
\nconstitute the episteme of cybernetics<\/b>:<\/p>\n

Wave One<\/b>: (1945-1960): chiefly characterized by homeostasis<\/b> and
\na focus on information as the primary key operating in the human-machine
\nequation (51). The basic arguments pursued at the Macy Conference on Cybernetics
\nwere information, information dynamics in human neural activity, and rendering
\ninformational flows observable and, therefore, real (50). Reflexivity<\/b>
\nbecame a factor late in this wave and carried over into the second wave.<\/p>\n

Wave Two<\/b> (1960-1985): characterized by an interest in reflexivity<\/b>
\nand focus on the observer in situ<\/i>. Autopoiesis<\/b>, or self-making,
\nkeeps the focus on the autonomous individual whose boundaries are complicated,
\nbut autopoeisis accomplishes relatively little in rel. to language and enaction
\n(development, impact on environment, etc.). Second wave, in part, responded to
\nhumanist tradition’s skepticism of mathematical pronouncements (Weiner’s
\ncontention that cybernetics is fundamentally mathematical).<\/p>\n

Wave Three<\/b>: (1985-present): the observer shifts from center to
\nperiphery and narrates (223); The spiral best represents this wave for the way
\nit indicates an ability to evolve in new directions. Emergence<\/b>, as
\na concept, bridges (blurs the distinction between) humans and intelligent
\nmachines. Though embodiment remains a distinction, virtuality<\/b> has
\naltered what it means to be human. <\/p>\n

Posthuman<\/b> point of view (suggestive rather than prescriptive):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. "the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material
    \n instantiation<\/b>, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an
    \n accident of history rather than an inevitability of life" (2);<\/li>\n
  2. "the posthuman view considers consciousness<\/b>, regarded as the seat
    \n of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he
    \n was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon<\/b>, as an evolutionary upstart
    \n trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor
    \n sideshow" (3);<\/li>\n
  3. "the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis<\/b>
    \n we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other
    \n prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born"
    \n (3);<\/li>\n
  4. "the posthuman view configures human being<\/b> so that it can be
    \n seamlessly<\/b> articulated with intelligent machines<\/b>" (3).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Incorporating practices<\/b> (198-205) <\/b>and five characteristics
    \n(205):<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. retains improvisational elements<\/li>\n
    2. deeply sedimented into the body and highly resistant to change<\/li>\n
    3. partly screened from conscious view<\/li>\n
    4. able to define the boundaries within which conscious thought takes place<\/li>\n
    5. often linked with new technologies that affect how people use their bodies
      \n and experience space and time. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      ^Hayles ends by suggesting connections to what Latour<\/b> does in WHNBM<\/i>
      \n(291): we have always been posthuman (based on the "seriated history"). How does
      \nthis work with Hayles’ extensive use of dialectics (25, 247)?<\/p>\n

      Definitions<\/b>
      \nvirtuality<\/b>: "Virtuality is the cultural perception that material objects
      \nare interpenetrated by information patterns" (13).
      \nskeuomorph<\/b>: "a design feature that is no longer functional in itself but
      \nthat refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time" (17).
      \ninformatics<\/b>: "the technologies of information as well as the biologics,
      \nsocial, linguistic, and cultural changes that initiate, accompany, and
      \ncomplicate their development" (29).
      \nautopoiesis<\/b>: "the circularity of its organization that makes a living
      \nsystem a unit of interactions"; "self-making" (136)<\/p>\n

      Key terms: cybernetic unit (xiv), distributed cognition system (xiv),
      \npossessive individualism (3), liberal humanist subject (4), postbiological (6),
      \nthree epochs: homeostasis, reflexivity, virtuality (7), Platonic forehand and
      \nbackhand (12), informational patterns (14), material objects (14), seriation
      \n(14), information theory (25), virtual reality (26), presence and absence (27),
      \nmedium’s materiality (28), informatics (29), flickering signifiers (30), tools
      \n(34), information narratives (35), Kittler’s medial ecology (48), neural nets
      \n(58), embodied complexity (61), singing condition (65), structural coupling (85,
      \n100, 138), purpose and teleology (94), organization (138), enaction (155),
      \nincorporating practices (199, 205), subvocalization (207).<\/p>\n

      "To the extent that the posthuman constructs embodiment<\/b> as the
      \ninstantiation of thought\/information, it continues the liberal tradition<\/b>
      \nrather than disrupting it" (5).<\/p>\n

      "Rather, I view the present moment as a critical juncture<\/b> when
      \ninterventions might be made to keep disembodiment<\/b> from being rewritten,
      \nonce again, into prevailing concepts of subjectivity<\/b>" (5).<\/p>\n

      "In a sense, autopoiesis<\/b> turns the cybernetic paradigm inside out. Its
      \ncentral premise–that systems are informationally closed–radically alters the
      \nidea of the information feedback loop<\/b>, for the loop no longer functions
      \nto connect a system to its environment. In the autopoietic view, no information
      \ncrosses the boundary separating the system from its environment" (10).<\/p>\n

      "My strategy is to complicate the leap from embodied reality to abstract
      \ninformation<\/b> by pointing to moments when the assumptions involved in this
      \nmove were contested by other researchers in the field and so became especially
      \nvisible" (12). <\/p>\n

      "The contemporary pressure toward dematerialization<\/b> understood as an
      \nepistemic shift toward pattern\/randomness<\/b> and away from
      \npresence\/absence<\/b>, affects human and textual bodies on two levels at once, as
      \na chance in the body<\/b> (the material substrate) and as a chance in the
      \nmessage<\/b> (the codes of representation)" (29). <\/p>\n

      "Using tools<\/b> may shape the body (some anthropologists have made this
      \nargument), but the tool nevertheless is envisioned as an object that is apart
      \nfrom the body, and object that can be picked up and put down at will" (34). <\/p>\n

      "Homeostasis<\/b> won in the first wave largely because it was more
      \nmanageable quantitatively<\/b>. Reflexivity<\/b> lost because specifying and
      \ndelimiting context<\/b> quickly ballooned into an unmanageable problem<\/b>"
      \n(57). This, the problem of complexity, plentitude, and a method’s
      \nlimitations.<\/p>\n

      "Of all the implications that first-wave cybernetics conveyed, perhaps none
      \nwas more disturbed and potentially revolutionary than the idea that
      \nboundaries of the human subject are constructed<\/b> rather than given.
      \nConceptualizing control, communication, and information as an integrated system,
      \ncybernetics radically changed how boundaries were conceived" (84). <\/p>\n

      "The flip side of drawing analogies<\/b> is constructing boundaries.
      \nAnalogy as a figure draws its force from the boundaries it leapfrogs across"
      \n(93). <\/p>\n

      "One of the most frequent criticisms<\/b> made of cybernetics during this
      \nperiod was that it was not really a new science but was merely an extended
      \nanalogy<\/b> (men are like machines)" (97).<\/p>\n

      "The danger of cybernetics<\/b> from Wiener’s point of view, is that it can
      \npotentially annihilate the liberal subject<\/b> as the locus of control. On
      \nthe microscale, the individual is merely the container for still smaller units
      \nwithin, units that dictate actions and desires; on the macroscale, these desires
      \nmake the individual into a fool to be manipulated by knaves" (110). <\/p>\n

      "In first-wave cybernetics, questions of boundary formation<\/b> were
      \ncrucial to its constructions of subjectivity. Boundary questions are also
      \nimportant in autopoietic theory" (141). <\/p>\n

      "[In the advanced stage of second-wave cybernetics] A status report, then:
      \ninformation’s body is still contested, the empire of the cyborg is still
      \nexpanding, and the liberal subject, although more than ever an autonomous
      \nindividual, is literally losing its mind as the seat of identity" (149). <\/p>\n

      "This chapter suggests a new, more flexible framework<\/b> in which to
      \nthink about embodiment in an age of virtuality. This framework comprises two
      \ndynamically interacting polarities. The first polarity unfolds as an
      \ninterplay<\/b> between the body as a cultural construct<\/b> and the
      \nexperiences of embodiment that individual people within a culture feel and
      \narticulate<\/b>. The second polarity can be understood as a dance between
      \ninscribing<\/b> and incorporating practices<\/b>" (193). <\/p>\n

      "But the posthuman does not<\/b> really mean the end of humanity<\/b>. It
      \nsignals instead the end of a certain conception of the human<\/b>, a
      \nconception that may have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity who had
      \nthe wealth, power, and leisure to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings
      \nexercising their will through individual agency and choice. What is lethal<\/b>
      \nis not the posthuman as such but the grafting of the posthuman onto a liberal
      \nhumanist view of the self" (286). <\/p>\n

      "In this account, emergence<\/b> replaces teleology<\/b>; reflexive
      \nepistemology replaces objectivism; distributed cognition<\/b> replaces
      \nautonomous will<\/b>; embodiment replaces a body seen as a support system for the
      \nmind; and a dynamic partnership between humans and intelligent machines replaces
      \nthe liberal humanist subject’s manifest destiny to dominate and control nature"
      \n(288). <\/p>\n

      "Rather, the distributed cognition<\/b> of the emergent human subject
      \ncorrelates with–in Bateson’s phrase, becomes a metaphor for–the distributed
      \ncognitive system as a whole, in which ‘thinking’ is done by both human and
      \nnonhuman actors<\/b>" (290). <\/p>\n

      "Writing in another context, Hutchins arrives at an insight profoundly
      \napplicable to virtual technologies: ‘What used to look like internalization<\/b>
      \n[of thought and subjectivity] now appears as a gradual propagation of
      \norganized functional properties across a set of malleable media’<\/b> (p. 312)"
      \n(290). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      \u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 6<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>Hayles, Katherine N. How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[175],"tags":[1478,1479,267,1480,1477,435,274,1481,1482,1448,936,1483,436,987,1484,981,1458,1485,1025,841,1069,210,1486,667,1158,962,1487,1488,1489,1490,1491,963,1492,1493,819,1131,507,1494],"class_list":["post-7064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toolsinuse","tag-absence","tag-analogy","tag-autonomy","tag-autopoiesis","tag-bateson","tag-body","tag-books","tag-boundaries","tag-coupling","tag-cybernetics","tag-cyborg","tag-disembodiment","tag-embodiment","tag-emergence","tag-enaction","tag-gender","tag-haraway","tag-homeostasis","tag-humanism","tag-information","tag-literature","tag-narrative","tag-observer","tag-organization","tag-pattern","tag-posthuman","tag-presence","tag-prosthesis","tag-randomness","tag-reflexivity","tag-robots","tag-science","tag-seriation","tag-skeuomorph","tag-subjectivity","tag-tools","tag-virtual","tag-virtuality"],"yoast_head":"\nHayles, How We Became Posthuman - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/hayles-how-we-b-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hayles, How We Became Posthuman - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 6 minsHayles, Katherine N. How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. 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How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. 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Rather than lumping posthumanism with the other post-isms, Brooke draws on frameworks pursued by Hayles in How We Became Posthuman and Latour in We Have Never Been Modern as a way\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tools-in-use"","block_context":{"text":"Tools-in-use","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/toolsinuse\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7016,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/22\/hayles-writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":7064,"position":1},"title":"Hayles, Writing Machines","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"August 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Hayles combines personal anecdotes, theoretical lines of inquiry into materiality and the embodiment of literary texts, and related analytical applications concerning the materials-based signifying practices involved in Lexia to Perplexia, A Humament, and House of Leaves. 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Inman's monograph is structurally rugged in the sense that he is explicit about the function and form of each section.\u00a0 The book begins with a definition of computers and writing that stacks up according to real\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing Technologies"","block_context":{"text":"Writing Technologies","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/writing_technol\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6851,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/09\/today-i-read-ed\/","url_meta":{"origin":7064,"position":3},"title":"Narrative, Database","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"November 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I read Ed Folsom's PMLA article, \"Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives,\" and the better part of the five responses to the piece and even Folsom's response to the responses. 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In his contribution to the College English symposium on \"What Should College English Be?\", Rice answers \"new media\" and, more precisely, the aspect of networks as connective, associative phenomenon proliferating throughout the digital, informational orders. \"College English has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Networks"","block_context":{"text":"Networks","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/networkacy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6999,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/08\/haraway-a-cybor\/","url_meta":{"origin":7064,"position":5},"title":"Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"July 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"*Haraway, Donna. \"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.\" Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181. Hawaray's famous essay winds, triple-helix-like, around three politically-inflected considerations: feminism, socialism and materialism. 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