Subject: Re: cyborg *
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 14:45:35 +0800



Shawn,

> > >Something which I have been thinking about is the apparent
irreconcilablity
> > >of an ethically sound perspective (informed, self-reflexive, etc), and
one
> > >that is indebted to immediate experience as pleasurable, painful, etc
like a
> > >young child for example, where the latter seems undenialbly more
'real'.
>
> Is this a real set of alternatives? On the one hand, if ethics can be
> "sound," then ethics are something other, i think, than what most of the
> poststructuralists - and Haraway, with her "non-innocence" which does not
> seem to preclude or devalue ethical choice - are talking about. As to the
> opposition of the "sound" with the "immediate," i wonder if we're not
> reintroducing a fairly simple, and not very useful, mind-body division.

Yes it does seem to be a version of  mind-body dualism around which I based
my question. However it only seems so, it is not as simple as the
reason/visceral (or similar) Cartesian dualism. I do not think that thought
exists amongst other thoughts alone, nor only feelings amongst other
feelings. That is thoughts can make us feel, feelings (obviously) can make
us think. I could provide an example but I am sure you can find plenty in
your own life.

Also what I mean by 'immediate' does not mean necessarily 'of the body', I
am trying to point towards experiences that do not place meaning in abstract
concepts, or rather in the lines of flight on which the meaning/concept
lays. If the event shears such lines of flight then the concepts must stand
on their own two feet within the specific context. Death itself would be
rewritten. Where they are not really concepts but processes.
>From my understanding of a cyborg-subjectivity (of which I agree with what
you also wrote) then you cannot help but be embedded in such processes. I
suppose what I am asking is, can we really refuse such processes?

Glen.