Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age

by Gray,Chris Hables

• ISBN13: 9780415919791
• ISBN10: 0415919797
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-02-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The growing synergy of humans and technology--from dialysis to genetically altered foods to PET scans--is transforming how we view our minds and our bodies. But how has it changed the body politic? How can we forge a society that protects the rights of human and cyborg alike? The creator of the cult classicCyborg Handbook, Chris Hables Gray, now offers the first guide to "posthuman" politics, framing the key issues that could threaten or brighten our technological future. For good or ill, politics has already been cyborged in ways that touch us all: On-line voting promises to change who participates. Wars are won on video screens. Biotechnological advances-- cloning, sexual prostheses, gene patents--are redefining life, death, and family in ways that strain the social contract. In the face of these advances, visions of the cyborg future range from the utopian to the nightmarish, from a spiritual super-race transcending the body's confines to a soulless Borg consuming human individuality. Onlywith a broad, historically rich and ethically grounded understanding of these issues, Gray argues, can we combat the threats to our freedom and even our survival. A work of vision and imagination,Cyborg Citizenlays the groundwork for the participatory evolution of our society.

Author Biography

Chris Hables Gray is currently Associate Professor of Cultural Studies of Science and Technology at the University of Great Falls in Montana and Core Faculty for the Union Institute

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
A Note on Texts	xiii
SLOUCHING TOWARD THE POSTHUMAN---DOES PARTICIPATORY EVOLUTION REQUIRE PARTICIPATORY GOVERNMENT?	1	(202)
The Crippling of Superman	1	(2)
The Proliferation of Cyborgs	3	(6)
postmodern politics
The Cyborg Body Politic	9	(12)
The Possibilities of Posthumanism	9	(3)
Postmodern: The Times We Live In	12	(6)
The Importance of the Cyborg Idea	18	(3)
Citizenship in the Age of Electronic Reproduction	21	(18)
Who or What is a Citizen?	21	(5)
The Cyborg Bill of Rights	26	(6)
Cyborgian Justice: Panopticons versus Cyborg Death Cults	32	(7)
Cybocracy, Mobocracy, and Democracy	39	(16)
The Manufacturing of Consent	39	(2)
Technofixes: From Televised Community to Electronic Voting	41	(6)
Bioregions, Infospheres, Nets, Webs, TAZ, and Community	47	(8)
Cyborg Warriors	55	(14)
Postmodern War and Peace	55	(2)
Human-Machine Weapon Systems	57	(2)
Future Conflicts: Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, Informational, Nano	59	(10)
promulgating cyborgs
Infomedicine and the New Body	69	(18)
The Digital Body	69	(3)
The Medically Modified	72	(4)
The Artificial Heart	76	(4)
Natural Transplants	80	(7)
Cybernetic Human Reproduction	87	(12)
Cyborg Conceptions	87	(4)
Postmodern Pregnancy	91	(4)
Programming Cyberchildren	95	(4)
Enabled Cyborgs, Living and Dead	99	(14)
(Dis)Abled Cyborgs	99	(5)
Penile Prosthetics	104	(3)
Neomorts, Living Cadavers, and Immortals	107	(6)
The Hopeful Monsters of Genetic Engineering	113	(18)
The Rhetoric of Life: DNA and Dr. Frankenstein's Dreams	113	(7)
Cloning: A Multiplication of Mes	120	(4)
Brave New World...Order?	124	(7)
cyborg society
Prosthetic Territories: Cybercolonializations	131	(12)
Cyberspace: Disembodied or Deconstructed?	131	(4)
Tiny Sex	135	(3)
Outer Space and Aquaspace	138	(5)
Cyborg Families	143	(8)
The Technologically Mediated Family	143	(2)
Surrogate Families	145	(3)
Cyborg Family Values	148	(3)
Sex Machines, Human Beings, In-Betweens	151	(10)
Dildonics	151	(3)
Transsexuality	154	(3)
Future Sex	157	(4)
Taylored Lives: Microserfs and Superheroes in the Age of Semiintelligent Machines	161	(16)
Lone Eagles or Sitting Ducks?	161	(3)
Revolt of the Microserfs against the Sociotechs	164	(2)
Human-Machine Learning Systems	166	(3)
'Borging the Professional Athlete	169	(8)
cyborgology
Sciences of the Third Millennium	177	(10)
The Gaze of Science	177	(1)
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics	178	(3)
Small is Powerful: The Nano Revolution	181	(2)
The Sciences of the Artificial and the Reflexive Turn	183	(4)
Posthuman Possibilities	187	(16)
Cyborg Epistemologies, Ethics, and Epiphanies	187	(3)
Subjectivities of Posthumanity	190	(3)
Carnival Cyborg	193	(3)
The Future is Not Yet Written	196	(7)
Notes	203	(12)
Bibliography	215	(10)
Index	225