Abstract
This chapter sets forward the context, conceptual framework and cultural application of a new mode of viewing the contemporary subject as a cyborg. Emphasising the engaged role of consciousness, the cyborg is defined as the expansion of the human mind by digital technology. The split between physical and digital worlds that constitutes the hybrid nature of the cyborg is outlined as a parallax shift between two modes of thought and two realities. The nature of this shift is constructed by the relative alignments of four functions of consciousness: Existence, Meaning, Real and Virtual. This functional framework is applied to cultural depictions of the parallax split between physical and digital worlds as modes of thought, as a means of expressing the technologically mediated experience of the contemporary subject.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ascott, R. 2005. Syncretic Reality: Art, Process, and Potentiality. DRAINMAG 2(2).
Ashby, W. 1957. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall.
Banks, I. M. 2008. Excession. London: Kindle editionHachette.
Bard, A., and J. Söderqvist. 2012. The Futurica Trilogy: The Netocrats; The Global Empire; The Body Machines. Stockholm: Kindle editionStockholm Text.
Baudrillard, J. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
——— 2005. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. Oxford: Berg.
Bohm, D. 1994. Thought as a System. London: Routledge.
——— 2002. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge.
Bostrom, N. 2002. Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy. London; New York: Routledge.
——— 2003. Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? Philosophical Quarterly 53(211): 243–255.
Brown, J.R., and P.C.W. Davies, eds. 1986. The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Card, O.S. 1985. Ender’s Game. New York: Tor.
Cline, E. 2015. Armada. London: Kindle editionCornerstone Digital.
Creeber, G., and R. Martin. 2009. Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
DeLanda, M. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. 2004b. The Logic of Sense. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 2004a. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.
D’Ignazio, F. 1986. What is COMPUTE! Doing Here? Compute! Magazine, 079 December, 90.
Engelbart, D. 1962. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. Summary Report AFOSR-3233.
Everett, H. 1973. The Theory of the Universal Wave Function. In The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics, eds. B.S. DeWitt, and N. Graham. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gane, N., and D. Beer. 2008. New Media: The Key Concepts. New York: Berg.
Gibson, W. 1995a. Neuromancer. London: Voyager.
Gunkel, D.J. 2010. The Real Problem: Avatars, Metaphysics and Online Social Interaction. New Media & Society 12: 127–141.
Hansen, M. 2004. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
——— 2006. Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York; Abingdon: Routledge.
Haraway, D. 1985. Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review 80: 65–108.
——— 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Hayles, N.K. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——— 2005. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——— 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Ten Years on an Interview with N. Katherine Hayles. Paragraph 33(3): 318–330.
——— 2012. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heim, M. 1993. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heisenberg, W. 1949. The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory. New York: Dover.
Ihde, D. 2012. Can Continental Philosophy Deal with the New Technologies? Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26(2): 321–332.
Jameson, F. 2007. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso.
Kozel, S. 2007. Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lacan, J. 1977. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. London: The Hogarth Press.
——— 1988. The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Techniques of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Licklider, J. 1960. Man-Computer Symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1: 4–11.
Lister, M., J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant, and K. Kelly. 2003. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.
Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McLuhan, M. 2001. Understanding Media. London: Routledge.
Moser, M. A. (ed.) with D. Macleod. 1996. Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Munster, A. 2006. Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.
Murphie, A. 2002. Putting the Virtual Back into VR. In A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari, ed. B. Massumi. London: Routledge.
Negroponte, N. 1996. Being Digital. New York: Vintage.
Nusselder, A. 2012. Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Oxford English Dictionary—oed.com. 2015a. “Cyberspace.” Oxford University Press. Accessed 15 September 2015. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/240849. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/253795
Oxford English Dictionary—oed.com. 2015b. “Cyborg.” Oxford University Press.Accessed 15 September 2015. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/46487. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/253795
Sartre, J.P. 2004. The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination. London: Routledge.
Sholette, G. 2011. Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture. London: Pluto.
Siapera, E. 2012. Understanding New Media. London: Sage.
Sutton, D., S. Brind, and R. McKenzie, eds. 2007. The State of the Real: Aesthetics in the Digital Age. London: I.B.Tauris.
Tegmark, M. 2014. Our Mathematical Universe. London: Penguin.
Thurlow, C., and K. Mroczek. 2011. Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Turkle, S. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix.
Wheeler, J.A. 1990. Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, ed. W. Zurek. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
Žižek, S. 1991. Looking Awry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
——— 1999. Is it Possible to Traverse the Fantasy in Cyberspace? In The Žižek Reader, eds. E. Wright, and E. Wright. Oxford: Blackwell.
——— 2006. Interrogating the Real. London: Bloomsbury.
——— 2007. The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso.
——— 2008a. The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
——— 2008b. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
——— 2009a. The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
——— 2009b. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.
——— 2011. Living in the End Times. London: Verso.
——— 2012. Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. London: Routledge.
——— 2013. Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.
——— 2014. Keynote: What does it Mean to be a Materialist Today? In International Žižek Studies Conference, University of Cincinnati, 4–6 June 2014.
Cultural Artefacts
Ender’s Game. 2013. G. Hood (dir.).
Second Life. 2003. Online, Linden Labs.
The Matrix. 1999. The Wachowski Brothers (dirs.).
The Thirteenth Floor. 1999. J. Rusnak (dir.).
Tron. 1982. S. Lisberger (dir.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Benjamin, G. (2016). The Cyborg Subject: An Introduction. In: The Cyborg Subject. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58449-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58449-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58448-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58449-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)