Re[2]: nomads, cyborgs, personnes

John,
     Thanks for your response... (Graham, i'll get back to "The
     New Nomadism" shortly, and last nights muddlings, and then some.)
>
>The following is my understanding of D&G, which may be fairly idiosyncratic.
>
>The double articulation of Technology (body on body) and Language
>(incorporeal transformations) constitute the anthropomorphic stratum.
>Though they are inseparable, thinking in these terms (this opposition--we
>now have _types_ of agency) introduces a bifurcation (produced by this
>abstract machine).  The abstract machine producing it is a Modern one (or
>one could call it The Modern, the Modern as abstract machine that
>differentiates self-other, society-nature, etc.)  And I think that this
>modern machine is what D&G end up discussing in ATP (whichever plateau
>this is, my book is at work).  An interesting comparison on this is

Actually, my quote from ATP about the abstract machine is from the
Regimes of Signs plateau, or plateau 5, and it is dated 587 B.C.-
A.D. 70!!  However, this same quote is succeeded by a footnote
mentioning  how the content/expression articulation works in Foucault,
content and expression being two types of multiplicities, that are
somehow autonomous, but not independent, joined as they are, or
enveloped as they are by the abstract machine.  So, there is arelation
of reciprocal presupposition but not of causality, etc.  It may have bee
n the Foucaultian resonances which made this sound 'modern' to you and
my examples were all certainly to do with man-in-society.  In footnote
39 Deleuze gives a brief rundown of his points of disagreement with
Foucault.  As for your next point,

>Bruno Latour's discussion in _We Have Never Been Modern_ on the functioning
>of the modern--the double process of purification and hybridization.
>
afraid I don't know Latour, but it sounds promising, especially the
hybridization, which leads us to cyborgs.

>The problem I find with cyborgs (as they've been discussed by Haraway et
>al) is that though they "blur categorical distinctions" they recognize
>and reinstate them in the act of blurring.  Haraway's "border war" still
>posits a border.  (This is a problem I have with Latour, too)
>
Well, reading Linda Hutcheon's _Politics of Postmodernism_, it seems
that this blurring & reinstating is a salient feature of postmodern
politics, which Hutcheon calls complicity and 'de-doxification', the
latter being a word i abhor but am trying to feel neutral towards,
the former a concept that makes me uneasy.  I once tried to explain
to myself how certain perceived dichotomies, like male/female were
just illusions, because what underlies physical gender is just a conti-
nuum of sexual hormonality, or rather what is the flipside of the
two kinds of statistical sexes is just a continuum of degrees of
maleness and femaleness: thousands of combinations of maleness and
femaleness.  The same with hot and cold (a continuum of temperature),
rich and poor (a continuum of wealth), white and black (a continuum
of pigmentation), and as for animal and machine, well, perhaps it has
to do with a certain organization...ha, cyb-organization (how do
i squirm out of this one?)

>If we think of cyborgs in terms of agency (corporeal or
>incorporeal--human agency is the articulation of Technology and Language)
>they become minoritarian deterritorializing machines.  Quite useful to
>have around, actually.
>
Why would human agency as the articulation of technology and language
necessarily produce minoritarian deterritorializing machines.  I've
missed the point.

>Also, thinking in terms of agency (corporeal and incorporeal) tends to
>get us out of the modernist trap of identity (i.e., what is human, what
>is technology, is technology determining humans, do humans determine
>technology, ad neaseum).  In thinking of technology, then, it is not
>"humans _and_ their retinue of technology" but "humans _as_ their retinue
>of technology").  Something like that.
>
That does seem like a useful idea.
>What we then need are convivial cyborgs.
>
>just my thoughts, and not sure if this is making sense.
>
>greg
>
>J. Macgregor Wise
>Clemson University
>
>p.s.  Haraway's piece, "The Promises of Monsters" is in the edited volume
>Cultural Studies (edited by Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler, with
>Baughman and Wise), NY:  Routledge.

Thanks. Couldn't find a copy yesterday, but  promise to soon.
 Monstrously,
  Karen
>

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