Subject: Re: cyborg *
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:07:14 +0800


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Steve,

The strength of Badiou's approach is it's foundation on a situational, event based and deeply polemical ethics and associated socio-political positions. I would not accept that a universally valid ethical position can even exist, though the shorthand 'informed, self-reflexive etc.' is attractive. Where Glen suggests  that a 'a cyborg subjectivity, because of its mediation of experience'  cannot occupy an ethical position. I was surprised but interested for it suggests that a postmodern cyborg position can never be ethical... unless it works from a  situational perspective. Do you mean to suggest that an ethical position must return to a pre-cultural state? (Perhaps there is hope for my volcanic rock after all).

I would suggest it would return there first, like a boomerang;). The return gives meaning in a truth sense (but definitely not in a reason sense), and inertia to the differing perspectives, choices, etc. Pre-cultural does not necessarily mean pre-that-thing-which-is-I. However ethics is certainly only a human trait (or a trait which is only capable to be performed by those capable of abstract thought), don't you think? We apply it to include other things. I did not mean that a pomo, cyborg subjectivity can never be ethical, but I created an opposition between mediation and meaning.

An example of what I mean is when you return from the country to the city and the noise is deafening but after a while it loses its impact and your experience of the noise of the city returns to how it was pre-country. The filters that you created to hear in the city are of perception, somewhere between mind and body. The horror (angst, anxiety) you might have felt with the constant horns, shouts, motors, etc upon your return, recedes, and the peace and tranquility of the country becomes another imagined line of flight, just as the horror (angst, anxiety) becomes a parallel.

Glen.

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