Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 23:48:22 +0000
Subject: Re: cyborg *


Eric
I like the sound/text of the proposal listed below.  It's late on sunday 
and I'm too tired to think straight, howvere I don't agree that your 
polemical framing was unhelpful... On the face of it the cyborg position 
is interesting and a way forward, just that the fervant proponents and 
the unthinking refuseniks just get us nowhere. I think that Lyotard was 
occupying a third position, one that questioned and refused the very 
idea of the posthumanist technogeeks and would have sensibly laughed at 
the reinvention of a religious humanism...

I'll think about the proposal and follow it up as I believe this could 
be interesting... as I think that all the four theorists mentioned are 
relevant to this discussion.

Check out the new Baudrillard Impossible Exchange - a curious text by 
turns very interesting and deeply tedious...

regards
steve

Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

>steve:
>
>I have read your comments in cyborg 1,2,3 and think you have done an
>excellent job of framing some of the central political and social
>issues.  I am in agreement with you in principle here. The specter of
>another so-called Master Race composed primarily of yuppie mall rats on
>the genetic equivalent of steroids scares the hell of me too.
>
>What I still find problematic is framing this dialectically between the
>transhumanism of the radical technogeek wing and the fundamentalist
>humanism of the the religiously dogmatic.  
>
>I recognize that my framing of the issues has been polemical and has
>unhelpful in the long run, but as this discussion continues have become
>aware that I really want to accomplish is a kind of philosophical
>anthropology, one that avoids the essentialism of either of the above
>forementioned groups. I would argue that Lyotard was groping towards the
>kind of anthropology I have in mind, even though I freely acknowledge he
>did not develop this, for a number of reasons. 
>
>I guess what I would like to ferret out is what this antropology might
>have been, had Lyotard lived to accomplish it.  Also, beyond Lyotard,
>what kind of antropology is necessary to avoid the false dilemma between
>either transhumanism or fundamentialist humanism.
>
>Unfortunely, today I don't have time to attempt going into the details
>of what I mean by this, but perhaps now that we are discussed Badiou's
>book in some detail (even though perhaps still not finished completely)
>we can explore this topic in greater detail, less in terms of the cyborg
>and more in terms of anthropology.
>
>It also occurs to me that Bateson and Deleuze as well as other might be
>useful in terms of this project.
>
>Does this sound like a viable approach to you?  
>
>eric
>
>