Critical Annotated Webliography
Guiding Question: "From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human".
Looking at various online sources I choose to research the guiding question from the viewpoint that if we continually integrate machines with our bodies when do we stop being human? By filtering through many articles and taking into account those of scholarly standard, I discovered that through reconceptualising the body as a new ‘techno-body’, including the likes of Frankenstein and the Visual Human Project (VHP), the status of human ontology appears to become increasingly complicated.
It is hard to analyse the idea of the body and its analysis of what it means to be human without first attempting to define 'humanness'. On Being Human, by Dr Sam Vaknin argues that the concept of human rests on many assumptions including the belief that men and women are identically human despite obvious differences genetically and environmentally. The online resource focuses on behaviour as an indication of humans as a distinct species acknowledging Frankenstein and other similar 'monsters' as behaving more 'humane' then the humans around them. Vaknin mentions human identity without body and the existence of the soul as separate from and a part of the physical being. Although the review thinks critically concerning what satisfies the definition of personhood, it fails to provide a detailed analysis to support its proposals. However, it makes a good starting point suggesting, "Man was born without a form and can mould and transform - actually, create himself".
It seems pointless in discussing the interplay between human identity and the implications technology has on the boundaries that map our bodily reality without making reference to Donna Haraway. Haraway states that we are all cyborgs, hybrids of machine and organism transgressing the dimensions between human, animal and machine. A Cyborg Manifesto explains that neither biology nor nature is an appropriate measure of what it is to be purely human. Instead, the text assumes we have progressed as a combination of the technical and the organic, distorting the limitations of human classification. From this perception the body is not fixed but open to manipulation, a product of its context. The article would prove most useful in acting as background knowledge for how the human cadaver is constantly redefined by technology, established in the notion of morphing and transforming the physical and cultural self. Although a predominant figure in this research and thus an authoritative voice, Haraway's work is rather overwhelming and difficult to follow. Most notably the text provides a foundation for what the future may hold for our conceptions on what it means to be human.
Andy Miah a lecturer in media, bioethics and cyberculture looks favourably upon technology and its ability to blur our post human future and our post human present. Miah provides examples of transhuman technology advocating that alteration of the human subject, or artificial enhancement must necessarily take place in order to allow man to reach his maximum capacity. Be Very Afraid disregards the thought that humans should be repaired but not enhanced, proposing that the integration of new technologies will shift what is normal and challenge ‘humanness’. The paper embraces 'superhuman' practices such as cosmetic surgery and sport whereby patients and athletes are ambassadors of transhumanism. Miah makes evident that the body is a highly complex issue, addressing ethnical concerns and challenging transhumanism sceptics. Although a rather one-sided text, the article is informative and very effective at highlighting the conflict surrounding the indefinite organism and machine divide.
Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny by Catherine Waldby explains in a simple yet insightful manner the construction of the VHP, or the transformation of the fleshy body in genuine space into a digital body in cyberspace - the supernatural. Waldby discusses how digital technology or machines are currently a subject of fascination as well as anxiety, altering our thoughts on our bodily limits and merging the distinction between the living and the dead. The article tells how moving bodies across the computer screen exercises a power of eternal preservation, noting the benefits as well as the drawbacks of medical technology and the possible outcomes of witnessing the technical reorganisation of the human form. Interestingly, the VHP is associated with the biblical story of the Garden of Eden referring to the Visible Man and Visible Woman as virtual models of Adam and Eve. Considering Waldby is a tertiary teacher specialising in the areas of technology and feminist theory her work presents itself to be reliable and unsurprisingly useful in answering the guiding question. The text expands on the body and its reconstruction by demonstrating the capacity of the internet to dissect and animate the everyday world, including man into a series of data.
Jonathan Marshall is a research fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney. His paper has grown out of his fieldwork, a project in the construction and use of gender online and is thus a relevant and credible resource. The Online Body Breaks Out? confers ways people create and use bodies from within Western cultures both offline and online. Marshall explores the lack of boundaries online that lead to the cyber body being categorised as immaterial in comparison to the offline active body, "We do not see the body while computing, so we don't see its removal". Online communication can thus be considered as body less, therefore redefining human identity as it exists in real life. This perception of online disembodiment presents the potential possibility for human unity with machines and is supported by the representation of minds as software warping the distinction between the computer and the spirit, thought to reflect the essence of the human being. Importantly, the journal article comments on gender and tendency of cyber bodies to elaborate masculinity or femininity to an exaggerated extent in order to render the online body as authentic. Fortunately Marshall provides a simplified conclusion summarising his main ideas which are otherwise expressed in a complex manner.
From the research conducted it appears the body is increasingly perceived and redefined as a limit to human potential and identity with new technologies offering to make the living body more productive, more manipulable and more ambiguous. From Frankenstein to the VHP, all the resources consulted seem to be in agreement with the idea that humans in the present era are a product of the merging of the biological and technological. It appears that the definition of the human - machine boundary is an issue that is broadly discussed and debated online.
Bibliography
Haraway, Donna. 'A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century', in Simians Cyborgs and Woman: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), p.149-181.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html (accessed 20 August 2008).
Marshall, Jonathan. 'The Online Body Breaks Out? Ascence, Ghosts, Cyborgs, Gender, Polarity and Politics', in Fibreculture Journal, 1.3, (2004), p.15.
http://www.journal.fibreculture.org/issue3/issue3_marshall.html (accessed 23 August 2008).
Miah, Andy. 'Be Very Afraid: Athletes, Transhuman Ideals and Posthumanity', in Journal of Evolution and Technology, 13.2, (October 2003).
http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/miah.html (accessed 20 August 2008).
Waldby, Catherine. 'Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny'
http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/Uncanny.html (accessed 22 August 2008).
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