PowerPoint Presentation Lecture

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cyborgs fdm 20c introduction to digital
media lecture 01.05.2003
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• who is marshall mcluhan?
• the video mcluhan v 1 (1958-1964)
• theses of mcluhan
• hot and cool media
• media as extensions of man
• the ratio of the senses
• the medium is the message

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outline

• midterm teaching evaluation
• description of the midterm examination
• a definition of media studies
• digital media studies
• what is a cyborg?
• a comparison of identity and cyborg politics
• who is donna haraway?
• a video haraway on paper tiger television
• a reading of the cyborg manifesto

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midterm teaching evaluation

• please respond to the 25 questions and return the
  completed forms to nathan or lindsay today, in
  class

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description of the midterm examination

• rough drafts of 12 possible midterm questions can
  be found here
• http//artstream.ucsc.edu/film20c/Midterm/possible
  -midterm-questions.rtf
• all of the lecture slides can be found online
  indexed off of the course schedule
• http//artstream.ucsc.edu/film20c/schedule.html

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a definition of media studies

• media studies is the theory and practice of
  exploring how people and things are connected,
  reflected, extended, reconfigured, and separated
  by technologies and techniques
• media as mirrors
• media as prostheses
• media as machinations
• digital media studies is a kind of media studies
  that pays especial attention to the techniques
  and technologies of computers and computer
  networks

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mediation how are we connected/separated?

• hypertexts
• networks/rhizomes
• documentary method
• identification
• prostheses/extensions
• haraways proposals
• human-animal
• machine-organism
• physical-non-physical (e.g., molecular-scale
  machines of electromagnetism and light)

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background questions of identity

• gender who is a woman? who is a man?
• race who is black? who is white?
• sexuality who is straight? who is gay?
• class who is rich? who is poor?
• the problems of dichotomies (i.e., the problems
  of opposites)
• what happens to identity and politics if we fit
  into multiple categories or we do not feel
  comfortable in any category?

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questions about identity politics

• do these exclusive categories define ones
  identity?
• do these categories constitute political groups?
• e.g., what happens to these divisions when all of
  the categories are invoked at once? (e.g., for
  the purposes of feminism is one always first,
  primarily defined by gender and only secondarily
  defined by race and class, or is the order
  inverted?

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non-essentialist alternatives to identity

• non-essentialist definition by negation rather
  than separation according to essential criteria
• examples
• queer (e.g., not straight)
• women of color (a la chela sandoval e.g., not
  white and not male)

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biopolitics biology as connection

• biopolitics is a term coined by the philosopher
  michel foucault
• who is carbon-based? who is silicon-based?
• who breathes oxygen? who breathes
  carbon-dioxide?
• who reproduces sexually? who reproduces
  asexually?
• does this escape the problems of dichotomies?

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what is this?
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chimera identities of mixtures fusions

• definition of chimera (Oxford English Dictionary)
• Mythology A fabled fire-breathing monster of
  Greek mythology, with a lion's head, a goat's
  body, and a serpent's tail (or according to
  others with the heads of a lion, a goat, and a
  serpent), killed by Bellerophon.
• Painting, Archicture A grotesque monster, formed
  of the parts of various animals.
• Literature An unreal creature of the imagination
• Biology ad. G. chimäre (H. Winkler 1907, in
  Ber. d. Deut. Bot. Ges. XXV. 574). An organism
  (commonly a plant) in which tissues of
  genetically different constitution co-exist as a
  result of grafting, mutation, or some other
  process.

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definition of cyborg

• A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid
  machine and organism, a creature of social
  reality as well as a creature of fiction. ... By
  the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic
  time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
  fabricated hybrids of machine and organism in
  short, we are cyborgs.
• Haraway, p. 516

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a cyborg world from one perspective

• From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the
  final imposition of a grid of control on the
  planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a
  Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of
  defence, about the final appopriation of womens
  bodies in a masculinist orgy of war.
• Haraway, p. 519

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a cyborg world from another perspective

• From another perspective, a cyborg world might be
  about lived social and bodily realities in which
  people are not afraid of their joint kinship with
  animals and machines, not afraid of permanently
  partial identities and contradictory standpoints.
• Haraway, p. 519

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who/what is a cyborg?

• do you wear a prosthesis? e.g., do you wear
  contact lenses or eyeglasses?
• do you take any medications?
• have you ever had an immunization?
• do you depend upon any form of technology for
  transportation?
• how would your life be affected if the power grid
  was shut off permanently?
• do you ever eat food or drink water that has been
  processed?
• in short, how intimately tied are you to
  technology?

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who is donna haraway?

• Experience
• Professor of the History of Consciousness, UCSC
• Assistant Professor of the History of Science,
  Johns Hopkins University
• Lecturer, Women Studies and History of Science,
  University of Hawaii
• Education
• Ph.D., Biology, Yale University
• B.A., Zoology B.A., Literature B.A., Philosophy
• Personal
• Irish American
• raised Catholic
• four adult household

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who donna haraway?

• My work has always been about what counts as
  nature. Haraway, p. 51 of How Like a Leaf
• Publications
• Crystals, Fabrics and Fields
• Primate Visions
• Simians Cyborgs and Women
• Modest_Witness
• The Companion Species Manifesto Dogs, People and
  Significant Otherness

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what is paper tiger television?

• Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) is an open,
  non-profit, volunteer video collective. Through
  the production and distribution of our public
  access series, media literacy/video production
  workshops, community screenings and grassroots
  advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the
  corporate control of mainstream media.
  www.papertiger.org
• Since 1981, Paper Tiger Television has appeared
  across the country on public access cable
  channels the noncommercial, uncensored channels
  available for public use. The series is produced
  by a volunteer collective of media producers,
  educators and activists.
• Low Budget TV is a correllary to the commitment
  that TV production should not be limited to the
  rich.
• From PPTV to the Independent Media Centers
  (www.indymedia.net)

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video

• donna haraway reads national geographic

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the cyborg manifesto

• what is a manifesto?
• compare to the manifestos of art and politics
  (e.g., surrealism and marxism)

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why was it written?

• DH In 1982, the editors of the Socialist Review
  gave me an assignment Write five pages on what
  socialist-feminist priorities are in the Reagan
  years. So I started writing and what came out
  was A Cyborg Manifesto.
• TNG So your cyborgs origins are in this modest
  proposal?
• DH Yes. I think the moral of the story is,
  dont give me an assignment!
• p. 39, How Like a Leaf

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the breakdown of three dichotomies

• human/animal
• machine/organism
• physical/non-physical
• why?
• cf., biology and the sciences and technologies of
  communication and information

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the cyborg as organizing myth

• There is nothing about being female that
  naturally binds women.
• No objects, spaces or bodies are sacred in
  themselves any component can be interfaced with
  any other if the proper standard, the proper
  code, can be constructed for processing signals
  in a common language.
• The cyborg is a kind of disassenbled and
  reassembled, post-modern collective and personal
  self. This is the self feminists must code.
• Haraway, p. 519

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cyborgs and networking

• I prefer a network ideological image, suggesting
  the profusion of spaces and identities and the
  permeability of boundaries in the perosnla body
  and in the body politic. Networking is both a
  feminist practice and a multinational corporate
  strategy -- weaving is for oppositional cyborgs.

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regeneration not reproduction

• I would suggest that cyborgs have more to do with
  regeneration and are suspicious of the
  reproductive matrix and of most birthing.

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next time

• midterm examination
• see
• http//artstream.ucsc.edu/film20c/Midterm/pos
  sible-midterm-questions.rtf