File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0112, message 123


Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 00:31:34 +1000
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Homo Prosthesis


eric,

Thanks,  this message I can understand, and am in agreement with most of it.
You have pretty much described what you mean when you write the term
"cyborg", using useful explanatory references. .

After all its the ideas, concepts, the content of the words that we send
each other that are important - not necessarily who first said it, or the
source of his/her authority.  Galileo accepted the authority of the Church,
but in his last moments is supposed to have said "still it moves".

I am suspicious of authority, and you have rightly accused me of skepticism.
I am skeptical of what (think it was Dewey) called "trafficking in
absolutes"

There are also some words, like immanent that, no matter how many times I
look up the definition, I almost never understand.  I never seem to know
whether its in me, or thee, or God or the immeasurable cosmos/universe, or
maybe all the above.   I usually think "yeah its immanent" without knowing
with any accuracy what "it" is, what properties make it knowable.etc.

Going back to your text, I'd say the following is an example of philosophy
which comes close to traffickin in absolutes.

> We all bear the mark of cyborgian inscription and must testify to the
> suffering this imposes on us. Paradoxically, by refusing to identify
> with the process of humanism, by speaking for that which remains silent,
> the figure hidden within the triumph of discourse, we also irrevocably
> bear witness to our own indeterminate humanity.

I respect L. and others who take such a view, but there are other views of
such philosophical concepts - which may or may not be true to one's own
experience.

Yes, language and much else is readymade when we arrive helpless and feeble.
The idea that you have no alternative  to learning your native language is
something I encountered several years ago, and there is a book by Douglas C.
Candland about clever animals, wolf-children etc.which reports on
well-documented cases.  He also tells of an experiment in which a couple
cared for their child and a baby chimp of similar age for a year or two.

I have known children who learned only a few words before age 4 or 5, and
once saw an interesting video which was made to help parents of children
with that problem.  It showed how daunting the situation could be,
especially if pressure was put on the child.

best regards,
Hugh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





> Hugh wrote,
>
> > So back to your question.  Yes for culture,  if that's the way you >
want to define prosthesis.  Sticks and stones are tools for >
hunter-gatherers. No, for language, unless there is some prosthetic  >
device that makes a baby's first words.
>
> Hugh,
>
> My task is twofold here. One is exploring the meaning of the concept of
> the cyborg in a more immanent fashion. For me that means we are always
> already cyborgs once language and culture come to predominate. Yes, the
> neolithic is already a cyborg and not only in the sense of Kubrick's
> 2001, although this provides a striking image.
>
> The other task is attempting to understand this concept within the
> context of Lyotard's philosophy.
>
> Regarding the first sense, yes I consider language to be just such a
> prosthetic device. To speak in a banal way, Chomsky and others have
> argued that there is a critical period in an infant's development when
> he or she is ready to receive the implant of language. If this window
> passes, as in the case of rare creatures like the "wolf boy", the
> faculty of language may never be acquired.
>
> Furthermore, while this genetic set for the acquisition of language may
> appear to be general, in practice it is always embedded in a specific
> time, place and culture.  Thus it is simply not true to say we learn a
> language. We always learn English, French, Chinese, Arabic etc. This
> learning is prosthetic because it inscribes the infant with the
> indelible marks of a tatoo and out of this linguistic matrix emerges a
> "human" subject. To paraphrase Levinas, like the Hebrew Torah, this is
> always done before we understand.
>
> Consider what Lyotard says about this process.
>
> "It is not "I" who is born, who is given birth to. "I" will be born
> afterwards, with language, precisely upon leaving infancy.  My affairs
> will have been handled and decided before I can answer for them - and
> once and for all: this infancy, this body, this unconscious remaining
> there my entire life.  When the law comes to me, with the ego and
> language, it is too late,  Things will have already taken a turn. And
> the turn of the law will not manage to efface the first turn, this first
> touch.  Aesthetics has to do with this first touch: the one who touched
> me when I was not there."
>
> This group has already discussed the concept of the cyborg as not merely
> signifying the glitzy "Wired" standpoint of an uncritical masturbatory
> technophiliac consumption or master race fantasies of transhumanism.
>
> Another way to regard the cyborg, aside from the celebratory "I'd rather
> be a cyborg than a goddess" is to see it in a somewhat more alienating
> context as well.
>
> We all bear the mark of cyborgian inscription and must testify to the
> suffering this imposes on us. Paradoxically, by refusing to identify
> with the process of humanism, by speaking for that which remains silent,
> the figure hidden within the triumph of discourse, we also irrevocably
> bear witness to our own indeterminate humanity.
>
> To be a cyborg also means to bear witness to the alien thought that
> remains untamed within the global space of our megalopolis. The alien is
> already us before we were born.
>
> eric
>



   

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