DOCSLIB.ORG

UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Race of Machines: A Prehistory of the Posthuman Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/90d94068 Author Evans, Taylor Scott Publication Date 2018 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Race of Machines: A Prehistory of the Posthuman A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Taylor Scott Evans December 2018 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson Dr. Mark Minch-de Leon Mr. John Jennings, MFA Copyright by Taylor Scott Evans 2018 The Dissertation of Taylor Scott Evans is approved: ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments Whenever I was struck with a particularly bad case of “You Should Be Writing,” I would imagine the acknowledgements section as a kind of sweet reward, a place where I can finally thank all the people who made every part of this project possible. Then I tried to write it. Turns out this isn’t a reward so much as my own personal Good Place torture, full of desire to acknowledge and yet bereft of the words to do justice to the task. Pride of place must go to Sherryl Vint, the committee member who lived, as it were. She has stuck through this project from the very beginning as other members came and went, providing invaluable feedback, advice, and provocation in ways it is impossible to cite or fully understand. Without her support this project’s arguments would be much less complete and the dissertation itself much more not-actually-written. My thanks to Emma Stapely, for serving on my exam committee and turning me on to a perfect and obscure little story of Poe’s. My thanks to Jayna Brown, Erica Edwards, and Fred Moten for also serving on the exam committee (and for a time on the dissertation committee) and providing valuable feedback at critical stages of the work. My thanks to Mark Minch-de Leon and John Jennings for stepping in at the eleventh hour when everyone but Sherryl left for greener pastures, and for reading a long project they had little chance to shape: it is an act of academic generosity I won’t soon forget. Elements of the introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 2 have appeared in American Literature 90.3 (2018) under the title “The Race of Machines: Blackness and Prosthetics in Early American Science Fiction.” An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared in The v Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 27.1 (2016) under the title “The Technology of Race: White Supremacy and Scientifiction.” My thanks to both journals for their reprint policy. Aaron Roberts, Jeshua Enriquez, Miranda Butler, Irene Morrison, Stina Attebery, and Josh Pearson are the most prominent of a large group of graduate students who have read and commented on drafts of this project, and whose work inspires me daily. My thanks to John Ganim for rather improbably setting off this whole project with his suggestion that: first, I write my seminar paper for his Sovereignty and Medieval Romance class on nineteenth century dime novels; and second, for noting that I still had something to say about the cover images of said novels. Special thanks to Susan Zieger for two incredible seminars which seeded big chunks of my methodology, and for her generous support in years after even though I was no longer her student. Many civilians contributed to this project too. Thanks to Linda, Nya, and the whole team at Cellar Door Books for creating a community outside the university that almost made grad school bearable. Thanks to Franklin Farago, David Rogers, and Jesse Clark for doing the same (only different) over the phone, through messenger, and sometimes even on PlayStation. Thanks to Tyler the trainer for proprioception, and thanks for the Panera Bread in Corona for months of a small table, stable Wi-Fi, tasty food, and no questions asked. Thanks especially to Dr. V, for fixing me so I could actually write. Thanks to all the staff at the UWP, who employed me as a student and employ me still, for the financial security to actually chase this mad dream. Finally: Mom, Dad, and Sarah. Maria Barrios. For you, no words: only love. Thank you all. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Race of Machines: A Prehistory of the Posthuman by Taylor Scott Evans Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, December 2018 Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson In this digitally saturated age, the cultural influence of technology has seeped into all areas of social, political, and individual life. At the same time, discourses of technology have long proceeded as if matters of social, political, and individual identity are incidental to technological development. Specifically, themes of technology and themes of race have long been understood as separate and unrelated. I contest this understanding through a sustained examination of the occluded, repressed, and otherwise forgotten truth that American technology arose in a society in which some people were once legally—formally—things, and that these legal forms are nothing other than race. To that end, I read broadly across American cultural production, examining canonical fiction, genre science fiction, and a wide range of ephemera to argue that the culture of the machine age, including the emergence of genre science fiction, was always already a racial project. vii This dissertation begins by theorizing the racial history of the human. It builds on the work of Sylvia Wynter, Saidiya Hartman, and Fred Moten, who have explored the way modernity depends on blackness for coherence and power, and applies these approaches to the intersection of science, technology, and fiction, putting these scholars in conversation with scholars of speculative fiction and cultures of technology like Leo Marx, N. Katherine Hayles, Mark Seltzer and John Rieder. The first chapter, “The Machine in the Garden was Black,” for instance, focuses on the place of slavery in Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden, reappraising many of Marx’s own sources to expose a foundational conflation of slavery and machines in early American culture. Later chapters focus on the figure of the Steam Man, on racial passing in early pulp science fiction, on the emerging post-racial ideologies of John W. Campbell, and on the critiques and anxieties of agency that followed. The dissertation ends with an epilogue posing the question: what if science fiction was always black? This epilogue reframes what came before, dwelling in the Alternative, aiming to clear some ground for a newer set of genres—genres of science fiction and the human alike. viii Table of Contents Introduction - The Race of Machines, or, A Racial Prehistory of the Posthuman ......1 Racism and the Emergence of Science Fiction ............................................................... 7 A Racial Prehistory… ................................................................................................... 14 …of the Posthuman ....................................................................................................... 23 A Radical Aesthetic of Whiteness ................................................................................. 31 How’d We Get Here? A Methodology and Literature Review ..................................... 43 A Brief Bit of Structure ................................................................................................. 52 Chapter 1 – The Machine in the Garden was Black .....................................................57 Pastoral Slaves............................................................................................................... 70 Critical Whiteness ......................................................................................................... 83 Mere Machine ............................................................................................................... 93 Delusions of Mastery .................................................................................................. 101 Chapter 2 – Racializing Prosthetics, or, Blackness and the Edisonade ....................107 Birth of a Genre ........................................................................................................... 116 Technological Blackness ............................................................................................. 124 Generalizing Mastery .................................................................................................. 138 Teaching Techno-Supremacy ...................................................................................... 148 ix Chapter 3 – White Supremacy and Scientifiction, or, The Technology of Race ......153 Passing in Early Genre-SF .......................................................................................... 159 The Technology of Whiteness..................................................................................... 167 Race as Technology .................................................................................................... 178 Chapter 4 – Post-hu(e)man, or, Race and Rigor .........................................................186 The Spectacle of Logic ...............................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Note to Users
    NOTE TO USERS Page(s) not included in the original manuscript are unavailable from the author or university. The manuscript was microfilmed as received 88-91 This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo­ graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the original text directly from the copy submitted. Thus, some dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from a computer printer. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyrighted material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re­ produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page is available as one exposure on a standard 35 mm slide or as a 17" x 23" black and white photographic print for an additional charge. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. 35 mm slides or 6" X 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. AccessinglUMI the World’s Information since 1938 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi 48106-1346 USA Order Number 8820263 Leigh Brackett: American science fiction writer—her life and work Carr, John Leonard, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Myth, Metatext, Continuity and Cataclysm in Dc Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths
    WORLDS WILL LIVE, WORLDS WILL DIE: MYTH, METATEXT, CONTINUITY AND CATACLYSM IN DC COMICS’ CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS Adam C. Murdough A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2006 Committee: Angela Nelson, Advisor Marilyn Motz Jeremy Wallach ii ABSTRACT Angela Nelson, Advisor In 1985-86, DC Comics launched an extensive campaign to revamp and revise its most important superhero characters for a new era. In many cases, this involved streamlining, retouching, or completely overhauling the characters’ fictional back-stories, while similarly renovating the shared fictional context in which their adventures take place, “the DC Universe.” To accomplish this act of revisionist history, DC resorted to a text-based performative gesture, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This thesis analyzes the impact of this singular text and the phenomena it inspired on the comic-book industry and the DC Comics fan community. The first chapter explains the nature and importance of the convention of “continuity” (i.e., intertextual diegetic storytelling, unfolding progressively over time) in superhero comics, identifying superhero fans’ attachment to continuity as a source of reading pleasure and cultural expressivity as the key factor informing the creation of the Crisis on Infinite Earths text. The second chapter consists of an eschatological reading of the text itself, in which it is argued that Crisis on Infinite Earths combines self-reflexive metafiction with the ideologically inflected symbolic language of apocalypse myth to provide DC Comics fans with a textual "rite of transition," to win their acceptance for DC’s mid-1980s project of self- rehistoricization and renewal.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rediscovery of Man Free Download
    THE REDISCOVERY OF MAN FREE DOWNLOAD Cordwainer Smith | 400 pages | 29 Mar 2010 | Orion Publishing Co | 9780575094246 | English | London, United Kingdom The Rediscovery of Man Sure, I can say it has pages of acclaimed stories—every short story that Cordwainer Smith ever wrote. After defeat, after disappointment, after ruin and reconstruction, mankind had leapt among the stars. The Rediscovery of Man Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith. The majority of these stories take place 14, yeas into the future, and The Rediscovery of Man this day, present a The Rediscovery of Man worldview, and an astounding examination of human nature. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe and other beings around us and ultimately what it means to be human. Cordwainer Smith is a writer like none other. These stories were written in the late 50s, early 60s, and are so intelligent and forward thinking, I'm still stunned. Underpeople do all the hard work, police is made up of robots and telepathic mind control checks that everybody is thinking happy thoughts, or they are sent for re-education. A Cordwainer Smith Panel Discussion. That said, when I said last time that I was relieved that Tiptree's radical feminism never crossed the line into open transphobia, a finger on the monkey's paw curled up and delivered me Smith's "The Tranny Menace from Beyond the Stars" "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," about which I have absolutely nothing positive to say.
    [Show full text]
  • Steam Engine Time 5
    Steam Engine T ime PRIEST’S ‘THE SEPARATION’ MEMOS FROM NORSTRILIA CENSORSHIP IN AUSTRALIA POLITICS AND SF Harry Hennessey Buerkett James Doig Paul Kincaid Gillian Polack Eric S. Raymond Milan Smiljkovic Janine Stinson Issue 5 September 2006 Steam Engine T ime 5 STEAM ENGINE TIME No. 5, September 2006 is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough VIC 3088, Australia ([email protected]) and Janine Stinson, PO Box 248, Eastlake, MI 49626-0248, USA ([email protected]). Members fwa. First edition is in .PDF file format from eFanzines.com or from either of our email addresses. Print edition available for The Usual (letters or substantial emails of comment, artistic contributions, articles, reviews, traded publications or review copies) or subscriptions (Australia: $40 for 5, cheques to ‘Gillespie & Cochrane Pty Ltd’; Overseas: $US30 or £15 for 5, or equivalent, airmail; please send folding money, not cheques). Printed by Copy Place, 415 Bourke Street, Melbourne VIC 3000. The print edition is made possible by a generous financial donation. Graphics Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) (front cover). Photographs Covers of various books and magazines discussed in this issue; plus photos of (p. 5) Christopher Priest, by Ian Maule; (p. 24) Roger Dard, supplied by Kim Huett; (p. 25) Roger Dard fanzine contributions, supplied by Kim Huett; (p. 32) Nigel Burwood, Martin Stone and Bill Blackbeard, by John Baxter; (p. 39) David Boutland. 3 EDITORIAL 1: 32 Letters of comment ‘Dream your dreams’: A meditation on Babylon 5 John Baxter Janine Stinson Rosaleen Love Steve Jeffery 4 EDITORIAL 2 E. B. Frohvet Bruce Gillespie Steve Sneyd Sydney J.
    [Show full text]
  • Views That Barnes Has Given, Wherein
    Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2018 Darker Matters: Racial Theorizing through Alternate History, Transhistorical Black Bodies, and Towards a Literature of Black Mecha in the Science Fiction Novels of Steven Barnes Alexander Dumas J. Brickler IV Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES DARKER MATTERS: RACIAL THEORIZING THROUGH ALTERNATE HISTORY, TRANSHISTORICAL BLACK BODIES, AND TOWARDS A LITERATURE OF BLACK MECHA IN THE SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF STEVEN BARNES By ALEXANDER DUMAS J. BRICKLER IV A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Alexander Dumas J. Brickler IV defended this dissertation on April 16, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were: Jerrilyn McGregory Professor Directing Dissertation Delia Poey University Representative Maxine Montgomery Committee Member Candace Ward Committee Member Dennis Moore Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Foremost, I have to give thanks to the Most High. My odyssey through graduate school was indeed a long night of the soul, and without mustard-seed/mountain-moving faith, this journey would have been stymied a long time before now. Profound thanks to my utterly phenomenal dissertation committee as well, and my chair, Dr. Jerrilyn McGregory, especially. From the moment I first perused the syllabus of her class on folkloric and speculative traditions of Black authors, I knew I was going to have a fantastic experience working with her.
    [Show full text]
  • Prototype of Sunken Place: Reading Jordan Peele’S Get out Through Octavia Butler’S Kindred As Black Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Narratives
    Prototype of Sunken Place: Reading Jordan Peele’s Get Out through Octavia Butler’s Kindred as Black Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Narratives BRITNEY HENRY Science fiction and speculative fiction have imagined new worlds, species, and technologies that have influenced individuals and societies. These genres have a significant space within American popular culture as “popular culture is woven deeply and intimately into the fabric of our everyday lives. While it may be tempting to imagine such amusements and attachments as apolitical, popular culture reflects and plays a significant role in contouring how we think, feel and act in the world for better and often for worse” (Mueller et al. 70). Science fiction and speculative fiction are not apolitical. These genres within the space of Black culture have illustrated forgotten or distorted historical events within American culture. America has a history of othering the Black body and the alterity of this body comes in the form of systematic oppression and racism. History has inflicted serious trauma and damage mentally and physically on Black bodies. I use “body” instead of “person” here because of the objectification of the body without regards to personhood which Hortense Spillers refers to as, “a territory of cultural and political maneuver” (67). Furthermore, the flesh and body are conceived as being separate. The body can become an object and dehumanized whereas the flesh takes the impact of the pain being inflicted. Black flesh has been abused, sexually degraded, and scientifically exploited throughout history. Mark Dery furthers this notion stating: in a very real sense, [Black people] are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what BRITNEY HENRY is doctoral student of English Literature at The University of Delaware.
    [Show full text]
  • PEN (Organization)
    PEN (Organization): An Inventory of Its Records at the Harry Ransom Center Descriptive Summary Creator: PEN (Organization) Title: PEN (Organization) Records Dates: 1912-2008 (bulk 1926-1997) Extent: 352 document boxes, 5 card boxes (cb), 5 oversize boxes (osb) (153.29 linear feet), 4 oversize folders (osf) Abstract: The records of the London-based writers' organizations English PEN and PEN International, founded by Catharine Amy Dawson Scott in 1921, contain extensive correspondence with writer-members and other PEN centres around the world. Their records document campaigns, international congresses and other meetings, committees, finances, lectures and other programs, literary prizes awarded, membership, publications, and social events over several decades. Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-03133 Language: The records are primarily written in English with sizeable amounts in French, German, and Spanish, and lesser amounts in numerous other languages. Non-English items are sometimes accompanied by translations. Note: The Ransom Center gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided funds for the preservation, cataloging, and selective digitization of this collection. The PEN Digital Collection contains 3,500 images of newsletters, minutes, reports, scrapbooks, and ephemera selected from the PEN Records. An additional 900 images selected from the PEN Records and related Ransom Center collections now form five PEN Teaching Guides that highlight PEN's interactions with major political and historical trends across the twentieth century, exploring the organization's negotiation with questions surrounding free speech, political displacement, and human rights, and with global conflicts like World War II and the Cold War. Access: Open for research. Researchers must create an online Research Account and agree to the Materials Use Policy before using archival materials.
    [Show full text]
  • Afrofuturism: the World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture
    AFROFUTURISMAFROFUTURISM THE WORLD OF BLACK SCI-FI AND FANTASY CULTURE YTASHA L. WOMACK Chicago Afrofuturism_half title and title.indd 3 5/22/13 3:53 PM AFROFUTURISMAFROFUTURISM THE WORLD OF BLACK SCI-FI AND FANTASY CULTURE YTASHA L. WOMACK Chicago Afrofuturism_half title and title.indd 3 5/22/13 3:53 PM AFROFUTURISM Afrofuturism_half title and title.indd 1 5/22/13 3:53 PM Copyright © 2013 by Ytasha L. Womack All rights reserved First edition Published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, Incorporated 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 ISBN 978-1-61374-796-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Womack, Ytasha. Afrofuturism : the world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture / Ytasha L. Womack. — First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61374-796-4 (trade paper) 1. Science fiction—Social aspects. 2. African Americans—Race identity. 3. Science fiction films—Influence. 4. Futurologists. 5. African diaspora— Social conditions. I. Title. PN3433.5.W66 2013 809.3’8762093529—dc23 2013025755 Cover art and design: “Ioe Ostara” by John Jennings Cover layout: Jonathan Hahn Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN Interior art: John Jennings and James Marshall (p. 187) Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 I dedicate this book to Dr. Johnnie Colemon, the first Afrofuturist to inspire my journey. I dedicate this book to the legions of thinkers and futurists who envision a loving world. CONTENTS Acknowledgments .................................................................. ix Introduction ............................................................................ 1 1 Evolution of a Space Cadet ................................................ 3 2 A Human Fairy Tale Named Black ..................................
    [Show full text]
  • Forte JA T 2010.Pdf (404.2Kb)
    “We Werenʼt Kidding” • Prediction as Ideology in American Pulp Science Fiction, 1938-1949 By Joseph A. Forte Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts In History Robert P. Stephens (chair) Marian B. Mollin Amy Nelson Matthew H. Wisnioski May 03, 2010 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: Astounding Science-Fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr., sci-fi, science fiction, pulp magazines, culture, ideology, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, American exceptionalism, capitalism, 1939 Worldʼs Fair, Cold War © 2010 Joseph A. Forte “We Werenʼt Kidding” Prediction as Ideology in American Pulp Science Fiction, 1938-1949 Joseph A. Forte ABSTRACT In 1971, Isaac Asimov observed in humanity, “a science-important society.” For this he credited the man who had been his editor in the 1940s during the period known as the “golden age” of American science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell was editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, the magazine that launched both Asimovʼs career and the golden age, from 1938 until his death in 1971. Campbell and his authors set the foundation for the modern sci-fi, cementing genre distinction by the application of plausible technological speculation. Campbell assumed the “science-important society” that Asimov found thirty years later, attributing sci-fi ascendance during the golden age a particular compatibility with that cultural context. On another level, sci-fiʼs compatibility with “science-important” tendencies during the first half of the twentieth-century betrayed a deeper agreement with the social structures that fueled those tendencies and reflected an explication of modernity on capitalist terms.
    [Show full text]
  • A Chronological History of Electrical Development from 600 B.C
    From the collection of the n z m o PreTinger JJibrary San Francisco, California 2006 / A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ELECTRICAL DEVELOPMENT FROM 600 B.C. PRICE $2.00 NATIONAL ELECTRICAL MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION 155 EAST 44th STREET NEW YORK 17, N. Y. Copyright 1946 National Electrical Manufacturers Association Printed in U. S. A. Excerpts from this book may be used without permission PREFACE presenting this Electrical Chronology, the National Elec- JNtrical Manufacturers Association, which has undertaken its compilation, has exercised all possible care in obtaining the data included. Basic sources of information have been search- ed; where possible, those in a position to know have been con- sulted; the works of others, who had a part in developments referred to in this Chronology, and who are now deceased, have been examined. There may be some discrepancies as to dates and data because it has been impossible to obtain unchallenged record of the per- son to whom should go the credit. In cases where there are several claimants every effort has been made to list all of them. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association accepts no responsibility as being a party to supporting the claims of any person, persons or organizations who may disagree with any of the dates, data or any other information forming a part of the Chronology, and leaves it to the reader to decide for him- self on those matters which may be controversial. No compilation of this kind is ever entirely complete or final and is always subject to revisions and additions. It should be understood that the Chronology consists only of basic data from which have stemmed many other electrical developments and uses.
    [Show full text]
  • Visions of Electric Media Electric of Visions
    TELEVISUAL CULTURE Roberts Visions of Electric Media Ivy Roberts Visions of Electric Media Television in the Victorian and Machine Ages Visions of Electric Media Televisual Culture Televisual culture encompasses and crosses all aspects of television – past, current and future – from its experiential dimensions to its aesthetic strategies, from its technological developments to its crossmedial extensions. The ‘televisual’ names a condition of transformation that is altering the coordinates through which we understand, theorize, intervene, and challenge contemporary media culture. Shifts in production practices, consumption circuits, technologies of distribution and access, and the aesthetic qualities of televisual texts foreground the dynamic place of television in the contemporary media landscape. They demand that we revisit concepts such as liveness, media event, audiences and broadcasting, but also that we theorize new concepts to meet the rapidly changing conditions of the televisual. The series aims at seriously analyzing both the contemporary specificity of the televisual and the challenges uncovered by new developments in technology and theory in an age in which digitization and convergence are redrawing the boundaries of media. Series editors Sudeep Dasgupta, Joke Hermes, Misha Kavka, Jaap Kooijman, Markus Stauff Visions of Electric Media Television in the Victorian and Machine Ages Ivy Roberts Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: ‘Professor Goaheadison’s Latest,’ Fun, 3 July 1889, 6. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden
    [Show full text]
  • A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist
    Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181. AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women's movements have constructed 'women's experience', as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind.
    [Show full text]