This article critique will examine the prologue, Computing Kin, in Katherine Hayles book, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. In her prologue, Hayles argues that there are multiple interpretations of posthumanism and that in the views of posthumanism there is no longer a connection between the view of the disembodied self and the the idea of embodiment associated with new materialism. The idea of the disembodied self refers to the mind body Cartesian dualism where the body is regarded as a container for the mind. This is being challenged by the idea of embodiment attributed to post humanism that asserts that we think with the objects that are in our environment (distributed cognition) and thus as humans we cannot exist without material aspects. Hayles defines materiality as, “an emergent property created through dynamic interactions between physical characteristics and signifying strategies. Materiality thus marks a junction between physical reality and human intention.”(Hayles, 3). In other words, her definition of materiality includes physical matter and forces but also the human social and cultural practices influenced by material. She uses the example of the industrial revolution to show how material (fossil fuels) have caused the evolution of a society and created a society that is dependent upon that material. This too shows that the nonhuman world is affected by human behavior. Our class has also identified the virtual Internet as materiality because it too is comprised of physical matter (electricity, cables, computers). Therefore, in utilizing this idea of embodiment and materiality as aspects of posthumanism, Hayles argues that we have began to change the ways in which we think about ourselves and how we describe ourselves.
She supports her argument by using metaphors of kinship ties. For example, the title of her book, My Mother Was a Computer can have multiple significations. Firstly, it can have the meaning that it did in the 1930s and 1940s - that of her mother's actual occupation - a clerical laborer that performs calculations. Today, the computer is seen as a machine that provides information and does calculations. This, "...mark[s] a shift from a society in which the intelligence required for calculations was primarily associated with humans to increasing delegation of these labors to computational machines.” (Hayles, 1). For example, many white-collar data collecting jobs have been replaced by computers. This reliance on computers has changed our relationships and Hayles uses the metaphor of the mother to illustrate this change. She says, “Just as mother nature was seen in the past centuries as the source of both human behavior and physical reality, so now the Universal Computer is envisioned as the Motherboard of us all.” (Hayles, 3). The computer has taken on the role of the mother and educator. Using literacy as an example, children once learned how to read by listening to their mothers' voices telling stories and sounding out words themselves. Today, literacy and reading instruction have been replaced by digital stimuli in the forms of e-mails, instant messaging, and blogging with the mother's voice replaced by the pings and beeps that indicate a new message. Furthermore, the computer has taken the role of the mother in giving sound advice. Users can search message boards and websites on the internet for advice on everything from relationships, to health, to cooking, etc. Hayles argues that blurring the definition of the computer's actual operation and attributing human-like characteristics to the machine, "...creates a cultural Imagery in which digital subjects are understood as autonomous creatures imbued with human-like motives, goals, and strategies.” (Hayles, 5). We have imposed anthropomorphic qualities to the computer because we use it to regulate our lives and manage the complexity to reach our goal and without the computer the complexity theory would not have been formed.
To define the complexity that the computer copes with for us, Hayles argues that we need narrative explanations rather than mathematical calculations that can only explain simulations and the physical laws of the world. She feels that narratives are more beneficial to explain complexity and self-organized systems - like the Internet - because stories and narratives are the oldest forms of knowledge that date back to human existence and as a result, easier to understand. She also explains how there are dynamics between narratives and simulations that dispute the previous dualistic notions and show how complexity overcomes these dualisms to promote interaction. For instance, she shows how the dualisms of language and code, print and electronic text, and analog and digital have co-evolved to interact, "Together, these three dynamics can be parsed as making (language and code), storing (print and electronic text), and transmitting (analog and digital). (Hayles, 6-7). Thus, this issue is important because it shows that there are other ways to think about posthumanism that are not negative and that the complexity attributed a posthuman world can help breakdown the dualisms showing interaction and changing the way we think about humans and nonhumans.
I am convinced by Hales argument that there is no longer a binary between the disembodied self and the embodied self because it is true that we cannot exist without certain material aspects and we have become dependent on these aspects. I also agree with her definition of materiality that includes nonhuman forces because they too can affect our everyday lives,we can control and manipulate some but other self-organizing forces are out of our control and can have repercussions on our everyday lives. I do not agree with Hales idea that computer metaphors are surpassing mechanical metaphors to describe the body. Many of today's institutions still heavily rely on the body as a machine metaphor. For instance, the health care system constantly sees the body as a malfunctioning or broken down machine that needs medical intervention to fix certain parts and make the whole work better. Thus, my question would be what kind of stories/metaphors would you use to describe the posthuman world? Mechanical? Computer? or any other metaphor? and do you see the posthuman world as a positive or negative change?
Teaching aids:
A piece on body metaphors
A nice short article on the fundamentals of posthumanism
