the cyborgs in the Garden

...Seeking a way to articulate an answer to this question, I dare to imitate Haraway’s use of provocative figures to shape an answer that flatly contradicts her assertion that the cyborg does not belong in the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve as cyborg.[1] The Genesis narrative of humanity’s first parents need not be read in the organic, originary, heteronormative, naturalized and universalizing mode that has given us both a problematic original innocence and an even more problematic original sin. As interpreters of this biblical narrative of our cyborg origins, in which Adam is not born of Woman but is manufactured of material elements not unlike those of the flesh of humanity’s monstrous cousin the golem, and in which Eve, too, is manufactured in a strange foreshadowing of our own emergent biotech capabilities, how can we read such a myth as one of Nature, Man, and Woman in perfectly ordered, natural existence? The elements of relationality as definitive for a posthuman ontology are also undeniably present: God marks this creature, the human, as unique in no way other than God’s own choice to relate to it; the human dwells, walks and talks with the nonhuman—God, but also the animals; the human is not left “alone in the world” but created with another human. In the Garden of Eden, all manner of human and nonhuman creatures exist. Embedded within a nexus of strange boundaries of human and nonhuman relationships—human and divine, human and animal, human and human—the cyborg pair in the Garden are what they are because of the construction and contestation of these boundaries. What does it mean to be made a cyborg in the imago dei? Simply to have been made a creature who is simultaneously kin and other: to God, to other humans, and to nonhumans. The boundaries do not disappear in our acknowledgment and negotiation of them—but they become conditions of relationship, and not obstacles preventing it.

            This cyborg reconstruction suggests further that the Fall represents, not a loss of original innocence (which does not exist) nor a loss or deformation of the imago dei (which, as relationship, continues), but a poignant renegotiation of the ontological boundary between the human and the divine. Van Huyssteen suggests that Genesis 3:22 provides a “rather dramatic new dimension to the image or likeness of God,” but a negative dimension, one which stands in tension with God’s intent of divine and human closeness. Yet, further, this new dimension is one which questions the presumed boundary between human and divine: “the ultimate focus on this thin line between the divine and human worlds finally culminates in the breaking down of the necessary boundaries between these two worlds, and results in the symbolic first sinful act that leads to divine punishment.”[2]

Van Huyssteen suggests that nothing in the biblical narrative reconciles the contradiction between the created likeness and the epistemological likeness; yet he himself, in defining the human, makes a postfoundational notion of rationality central. This pair of moves leads us to the question, must we assume that this renegotiation of ontological boundaries is wholly negative? In our cyborg parents’ bid for greater understanding and closeness to the divine, for greater incorporation of the divine into themselves (eating, after all, being a material act), what is there that seems strange, or even necessarily blameworthy? Transgression of categorical boundaries in the living out of material embodied reality is, after all, what cyborgs and (post)humans are all about. Van Huyssteen’s own work on human uniqueness suggests that the very element of our humanness lamented in this text is the means by which we come to know, and relate, to each other and our nonhuman kin, including God. This is not to suggest that this element of our humanness is unproblematic, an entirely “happy fault;” but the cyborg has always been an ambivalent figure, capable of good and evil, and is no less so here...

---

[1] Donna J. 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), 151.

[2] J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, The Gifford Lectures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 123.

Top Ten Wish List Now that I'm Actually Finishing this Degree

1. set of new business cards made by the one and only Virgil O. Stamps LetterPress Laboratory (a.k.a., the indomitable Sarah Coffman)
2. that this year's NaNoWriMo will be different...and guilt-free
3. tennis shoes...now that I will hopefully have time to play some tennis!
   
4. a bottle of champagne, thank you very much
5. Here Comes Science!
   
6. that Cyborg Feminist Mom mug TKP designed for me...very reasonably priced, too (or, alternatively, my superhero cape, please? a great addition to the ridiculous academic regalia...)
   
7. speaking of, anyone wanna help with buying some ridiculous academic regalia?
8. Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, edited by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, et al.
9. roadtrip to Canada! (already covered! yay!!!)
10. ....well, I'll leave this one blank (but Brent, you know what goes here).
11. France!
    

Conclusion: Cyborgs for Earthly Survival

CONCLUSION

CYBORGS FOR EARTHLY SURVIVAL

The concluding scene of the SciFi Channel’s revival of the short-lived 70’s TV series Battlestar Galactica shows a line of defeated but indomitable human beings, shouldering packs and trudging slowly but determinedly into a wilderness, away from their spaceships, their computers, their technologies. The scene visually tropes an earlier one, in which these spacefaring refugees from a nuked planet observe a primitive hominid family group moving single file across the plain in much the same way, unknowingly the objects of a technologically mediated, curious vision of alien kindred.

What could prompt such a dramatic and counterintuitive conclusion to a narrative of remnant humanity’s exodus from ruin, led by a faithless Moses and a dying Miriam, whose existence had depended so intimately for so long on the technologies now being decisively repudiated? What message lies in this conclusion for us, as we ponder the various possibilities, both frightening and liberatory, of the posthuman future?

The complexity of the narrative universe of Battlestar Galactica belies such a simplistic ending. For these human beings, the posthuman future has already arrived, and with a vengeance—literally. The opening scene of the series gives us a question posed by a sexy blonde machine to a middle aged, befuddled soldier/diplomat: “are you alive?” she asks. Yes, is the stuttered answer, but the machine doesn’t care, or perhaps, does not believe this answer—after all, this must have been the very question put to it, in the years that sowed the seeds of the conflict that would shortly destroy not only this man, but his whole civilization as well, in a retributive genocidal impulse.

The problem goes far beyond the pragmatic difficulties caused by the fact that “the Cylons look like us now.” The problem, in short, is that the Cylons are us: down to our very blood. And not just “us” in biological facsimile, but in nature. Violent, retributive, obsessive, sinful, human nature.

This is where the story begins: with an ontological confusion, a question of humanness not simply in terms of status but fundamental nature, and a question of what constitutes the difference between person and machine, when machines can also think and feel. The only difference seems to be, frankly, that the machines are determined to kill the humans. One can only speculate why; but, after all, machines made in imago hominis are likely to be pretty dangerously untrustworthy.

Things get more complicated when it turns out you can have sex with those machines, and get them pregnant. Beyond begging the question of the definition of species, interbreeding produces a more obvious hybrid, a child who is simultaneously threat and promise. Named for a goddess and literally a savior, this miracle child becomes blood sisters with the dying Miriam and saves the prophet’s life; revived, the leader of the human remnant rescinds the savior’s imminent execution but fakes a death to remove her from her Cylon mother’s care—machines can’t be trusted.

Things get more complicated still when it turns out that the Cylons themselves are a stratified society: Cylon fighters are bred like animals, “toasters” take orders from “skin jobs,” and everyone alike is conveyed through space by sentient ships piloted by those whom the Cylons themselves refer to as hybrids—human brains hardwired into their ships, simultaneously pilot and vehicle.

But things only get really weird when it turns out that there really are angels walking among us.

How to make sense of this strange, unsystematic, non-taxonomy of unclassifiable creatures, none of them natural, and all of them, somehow, kin? There’s no certain path through this wilderness, no telos, no heaven, and no real Earth; the only thing certain, in this narrative, is that it has all happened before, and it will all happen again. The final, looming question is, simply, will it happen the same way? Or will we, somehow, construct a path through the wilderness that aims toward making that new world a liveable world, in which anthropoids, humans, Cylons, hybrids, and angels alike, dwell?

(almost) done, done, done!

Below is the table of contents for the entire dissertation. What's left to write is an introduction and a conclusion, and there are a few sections in Part Two (anthropology) which are sketchy and need a bit more work. But, it's now possible to view the project as a whole, and, at the moment, I am quite pleased with myself.

The outline form didn't paste in very well, so the structure of my sections and sub-sections is a little unclear, sorry. But I'm assuming no one will really care. I'm just posting this as a little bit of unashamed self-congratulation.

Introduction

Part One: The Posthuman: Two Manifestos

Chapter One: The Cyborg Manifesto
Of This and/or That: the cyborg as transgressor of boundaries
Human/animal
Organism/machine
Physical/nonphysical
Of (Mother?) Nature: nature and the posthuman
Of God the Father: religion and the posthuman
Of Mice and Men: politics and the posthuman

Chapter Two: The Transhumanist Manifesto
On Being Better than Well: Transhumanism
Extropianism
Democratic Transhumanism
The Hedonistic Imperative
Singularitarianism
On God the Father: transhumanism and religion
On (Mother?) Nature: transhumanism and nature
On Mice and Men: transhumanism and politics

Part Two: Theological Anthropology and the Posthuman

Chapter Three: Post-anthropologies
Heart & Soul: materialism/dualism
All Heart?
No Soul?
FemaleMan: gender
Know Thyself: epistemology
Thy Sister’s Keeper: kinship

Chapter Four: Theological anthropologies
Imago Dei: the plastic image of God
The Bible tells me so
Thing, Action, Relation?
Human Nature, Mind, and Soul: substantive interpretations
We are what we do: functional interpretations
Not I, but We: relational interpretations
Human Uniqueness: Alone in the World?
Human Agency: Sin and Redemption

Chapter Five: Transversing: theologians engaging posthumans
Cyborg and theology
Anne Kull: TechnoNature
Elaine Graham: Theological Anthropology On the Edge
H+ and theology
Elaine Graham: Transcendence into an ‘Imaginary of Death’
Brent Waters: Just Say No
Ted Peters: Techno-optimism and the Doctrine of Sin
Steven Garner: The Hopeful Posthuman

Chapter Six: Constructing a Theological Post-anthropology
Relational, Embodied, Hybrid
The Turn to Relationality
(Post)Human Embodiment
Hybridity
“Medical Cyborg” Theologies
Queer Cyborg Theologies
Postcolonial Cyborg Theologies
Everybody Counts

Part Three: Christology and the Posthuman

Chapter Seven: Christology and the Posthuman
The Cyborg Christ
A Little Talk about Jesus
Trickster Figure and Hybrid Creature
Quest for the Hybridized Jesus
The Mestizo Future
The FemaleMan and the GodMan
The Ultimate Human

Conclusion

dissertation update

So, this is the home stretch, crunch time, the race to the light at the end of the tunnel...or wait. Maybe I shouldn't go toward the light...maybe the light means the dissertation's actually killed me in this process which I thought was interminable but turns out to be in fact terminal. Don't. go. toward. the. light.

I finally reorganized the thing, and now my three chapter dissertation is 7 chapters, not counting intro and conclusion. It makes things a lot more readable. "Chapter two" was nearly 200 pages on its own, even after taking out a whole section (which will go in the intro instead), and that's just dumb. So now it's four chapters, and things are a lot more even, all chapters being 30-40 pages or so.

I'm halfway done with my last substantive chapter. When I finish it, I will have only an intro and conclusion to write, and a general overhaul of filling in weak spots and proofing and finalizing. The plan is to send off a complete draft to all committee members by the beginning of September. This means finishing this current chapter and sending it off to my advisor ASAP, so that he can give it a read through, hopefully sign off on it, and then the whole thing can go to my second and third readers. That gives them plenty of time to read it (and love it! and find that there are no necessary major revisions!) and schedule a fall defense date before W leaves on his sabbatical in January. (I need to start finding out about this part of the process, and also get on top of getting my dossier in order before AAR interviews...sigh. I hate it that just when you have to be singleminded about finishing a writing project, the imminent prospect of finishing means at the same time you have to start thinking pragmatically, a multitasking situation I find hard to juggle.)

To help make this happen, Brent and Clare are taking a Clare-and-Daddy-trip to Grandmom and Grandad's in TX for three weeks in August. I am grateful, and totally dreading it. I don't say this to people often, but please, seriously, pray for me. Endurance, stamina, focus, basic sanity. Me and the dissertation alone in a big ol' house for three weeks with no relief...this could be a sort of horror movie scenario. And if you're local, consider it a Christian duty to give me a call if you realize I'm not online for, say, a period of 24 hours. Probably something dreadful has occurred, like my brain finally exploded, and intervention of some sort is necessary.

(Page count to date: 284, though this is a little inflated due to the way Endnote generates bibliographies.)

thinking ahead

Trying to be practical puts me in danger of seriously straining the ol' gray matter, and since it is the gray matter by which I eventually propose to make a living, I usually try to avoid practicality at all costs.

Today however I am trying to think practically about several different things.

1) Clare's parent-teacher meeting. The most important practical question was about potty training. She's got all the skills she needs, and the concepts, the bottom line is--she's just totally not interested in going all the way. I wanted advice from toddler experts on how to cross the finish line here.

2) I meet with my advisor tomorrow. A lot of the meeting I expect will be feedback on the chapter, but I also want to chat about my timeline, set some concrete goals, and maybe even hammer out a prospective date for defending (sometime in the 2009-10 school year).

3) Thinking about next year, and the need to pick up some adjunct work. Gathering info about local schools, writing emails, networking, reworking the CV, reviewing and finetuning my list of teaching competencies. This is the part of academia I hate. I mean, despite the hum-drum routine of sitting in front of a computer, thinking and writing all day--this is really what I like to do. Interrupting real work with the ugh-work of job-hunting is...blah. But utterly necessary. As is the long-term thinking ahead, and networking. Which I--in all honesty--do my best to avoid.

4) Thinking about money. I'm a reluctant spender of money, to be honest. I am fanatical about menu-planning and grocery-list making. (Whether preaching or shopping, I follow a script. To the letter.) And I will stand in a grocery aisle and stare and stare until I find THE cheapest can of tomatoes on sale that day (if you have done this, you know this takes some time. There are always a bajillion different brands and sizes and sales on canned tomatoes.) Beyond that, I normally don't think twice about money. But all the economy scare talk has me, well, scared. So I'm thinking about where to cut corners. And that's kind of hard, when you generally try to live without corners to cut already. I'm sure there is plenty of unnecessary expenditure going on, but it's not intentional--so the question is, how to catch it and stop it.

5) thinking about what practical steps to take in the coming year to green this household. I've gotten good at remembering my tote bags when shopping. We take full advantage of Summit's amazing recycling opportunities. We do little things, like the swirly light-bulbs and laundering in cold water, turning lights off, etc. I have found that the Ideal Bite emails are pretty helpful (especially the new "Mama Bites")...and as always in this matter, Marti Stanley is my guru. I'd like to 1) drive as little as possible; 2) eliminate ziplock bags from my life; 3) do some sustainable gardening in the spring; 4) look into joining a CSA.

All this practicality has interfered with doing any writing today on personhood theory, philosophy of identity, postgender posthuman stuff, or epistemology. But I did do some good practical thinking about the larger structure of the dissertation and how to communicate that to my professor, and that's certainly good. One of the struggles I constantly have while writing is keeping that larger structure and purpose firmly in view while digging down into the nitty-gritty of each individual section in a satisfyingly thorough way. Sometimes you get lost in that stuff, and when I get lost, my writing loses focus and direction. That's when I start hitting the delete key as often as I complete a sentence. And that's just maddening.

for the unsung heroes of Endnote tech support

a moment to express my thanks for the technical support available for Endnote software. Wow.

After a couple weeks of almost total hiatus from actual work, I sat down to open up my dissertation files and lo and behold, Word and Endnote were no longer talking to each other. At least not very satisfactorily. Communication breakdown. I'm not completely dumb with computer programs, but neither am I a wiz, and my knowledge is limited to what it is strictly necessary. So unexpected Endnote issues put me in a panic. Those files are important--Endnote enshrines the totality of my dissertation research to date. I don't want to monkey around with that. But the whole point of Endnote is to CWYW. Footnoting while writing text means a break in the composition process, and Endnote not only minimizes that to manageable blips in the thought process, it relieves me of having to parenthetically document inside the text and go back later and convert to footnotes AND keep all the bibliographic info updated and ordered somewhere accessible. It's an amazing thing and after two years I am completely dependent on it. If I had to create footnotes and bibliography on my own without this tool, it would add a whole 'nother year to the dissertation process. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but still. It saves me a hell of a lot of work.

When it works.

Which it didn't, but now it does again.

I don't know why things got jacked up, but now that they're okay (with the help of a friendly tech support guy who did not make fun of me and told me which things to go click and unclick), it's all good, and at 2:32 p.m., I can finally try to get some actual writing done today.

If I knew the guy's name, I would totally include him in my acknowledgments.

4:32 p.m., November 13

chapter 1 sent to advisor.

on to chapter 2.

eschewing our gender, yet again

Now dissertating in earnest, it is time to read N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman again.

Hayles begins her story with a prologue on the Turing test. What everyone knows about this test is that it has become the litmus test for identifying the moment when machines become "intelligent" (intelligent=ability to fool human beings, which, all things considered, is a pretty poor benchmark but, zenme ban). What no one remembers is that there were two versions of the test in Turing's proposal, the first being that one would interact via computer terminal with two unseen entities, and depending solely on the electronically transmitted responses to your questions, you would determine--not which was human, and which machine--but which one was a woman, and which a man.

"If your failure to distinguish correctly between human and machine proves that machines can think," Hayles asks, "what does it prove if you fail to distinguish woman from man?"

Andrew Hodges, a biographer of Turing, argues that the intent for inclusion of gender test is to show that gender, unlike intelligence, is in fact dependent upon unalterable physical reality. Hayles disagrees; the cases as presented are parallel, and point to a willingness to define gender in terms of symbolic manipulation similar to intelligence.

All of this reminds me of the hermits' marvelous diversion, the “gender genie” test, a kind of variation of the Turing gender test. What does this say about gender and identity? I fooled it successfully, and rather grandly—now I am a man? No; but it does tell you something interesting about my identity, that is, I am a woman who can successfully represent myself through verbal/semiotic markers as a man. And perhaps that is interesting.

The crucial move, as Hayles points out, is “distinguishing between the enacted body, present in the flesh on one side of the computer screen, and the represented body, produced through verbal and semiotic markers constituting it in an electronic environment.” And this, BTW, is the advent of the cyborg... Why? Because technology is the bridge connecting the physical and represented body/ies. The test requires disjunction, therefore: “What the Turing test 'proves' is that the overlay between the enacted and represented bodies is no longer natural inevitability but a contingent production, mediated by a technology that has become so intertwined with the production of identity that it can no longer meaningfully be separated from the human subject.”

And, of course, Gender Genie's verdict on the above:

Female Score: 428/Male Score: 701
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male! (and in any case, definitely cyborg)

the first day

So, this was it.

Clare's first day at The Children's Garden. And my first Dissertation Day.

How did we do?

Well, Clare didn't notice when I left, being engrossed in some new fascinating toy she'd never seen before. There was no agonizing tearful scene or anything. She loved playing outside, they said, and ate all her strawberries and most of her crackers right when I said she would get hungry. But she wouldn't go down for her nap. And she's got a runny nose. (I don't think this was childcare cause and effect--I have a runny nose too.)

I did not do quite so well. I did re-read my proposal and was pleasantly surprised at how organized my thoughts seemed, and how intelligent it sounded overall. Oh yeah, I thought, this is what it's about--good thing I read this thing again so I could jog my memory. And then I covered about 40 pages of Andy Clark's Natural-Born Cyborgs, which I'm finding quite congenial so far.

Then I took a shower--something I still find quite difficult to schedule in on a regular basis. It's amazing what a baby does to the logistics of personal hygiene. (Not to mention the motivation--after all they don't care if your legs are hairy or your armpits smell.) Then I went to the grocery store because there was nothing for Clare to eat for lunch, and bought lots of bananas and stuff. Then I picked her up. And that was that.

So, I think I'll give myself a C- for today. But Clare gets an A-. Maybe Thursday she'll nap, and pull it up to an A.