From: "Diane Davis" <ddd-AT-mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: RE: what is the posthuman ?
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 05:32:49 -0600


Steve,
We're talking about this very thing in my Cybercultures class--do you
mind if I forward your post to my students' listserv? I'd never heard of
Doyle's book--"postvital living"!!  Yeowee. Thanks for this.

Best, ddd

___________________________________________
  D. Diane Davis
  Division of Rhetoric & Department of English
  1 University Station B5500
  University of Texas at Austin 
  Austin, TX 78712-0200 

  Office: 512.471.8735; Dept: 471.6109; FAX: 471.4353
  ddd-AT-mail.utexas.edu
  http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU [mailto:owner-
> lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU] On Behalf Of steve.devos
> Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 3:02 AM
> To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: what is the posthuman ?
> 
> In Richard Doyle's Wetwares: experiments in postvital living - which
> functions as an interesting review of the current status of aspects of
> development - there is an interesting discussion of the ELAMS
> (electronic laboratory animal monitoring system) application. An
> application which is used to monitor and then to encode in a sense who
> and what an observed mouse is. "ELAMS allows the mouse to become code
> and yet remain distinguishable - It can link any animal to any
computer
> database, allowing you to individualize your animal using your study
> number... Simply put it replaces the complexities of toe clipping, ear
> tagging and tattooing with a foolproof, fast and economical way of
> positive identification..." It is claimed then that within the closed
> space of the laboratory that ELAMS replaces the traditional practices
of
> discipline and surveillance, observation, handling with marking of the
> toe, ear and body - with the operations of coding. The lab animal is
> transformed into an object of code.
> 
> It is at this point that this becomes interesting- for N. Katherine
> Hayles is then introduced with the description that the posthuman as
the
> informatic pattern becomes more interesting than its material
> instantiation. "First, the posthuman view privileges informational
> pattern over material instantiation..."
> 
> As such then - what precisely is the posthuman ? In this understanding
> it plainly isn't a thinking which is
> post-the-humanism-of-the-enlightenment, that is aiming to redefine and
> go beyond the restricted and excluding humanism that has cursed
western
> societies and thus the world since the 17th and 18th Centuries.
Instead
> we are back in the restricted utopia/dystopia of a certain area of
> western societies, placing over the complex socials in which we live
yet
> another restricted metaphor which is plainly not acceptable on a
global
> or extra-global scale, and there have been so many of these, which
once
> again displays the tendency to place the human at the centre of
things....
> 
> So can anyone justify and clarify Hayles version of the posthuman ?
> 
> I have restricted time this morning - sorry -
> 
> regards
> steve
> 
> 
> 
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