‘What   is   a   cyborg?     Contrast   the   way   the   body   is   depicted   in   the   cyborg  
literature   with   the   conceptions   of   classical   neo-­platonism,   cartesianism,  
(empiricism),  Freud  (and  Foucault).’  
 

                                                         Themis  Argyropoulos  (s0972409)                                                              

                                                                     Media  And  Culture  Essay  

                                                         Design  and  Digital  Media  student  

December
2009
  

Name: Themis Argyropoulos

DDM Student

Student ID: s0972409

Course: Media and Culture

Subject: ‘What is a cyborg? Contrast the way the body is depicted in the cyborg literature
with the conceptions of classical neo-platonism, cartesianism, (empiricism), Freud (and
Foucault).’

Note regarding the subject: I’ve chosen to criticize the dualist premises (pertaining
especially to cartesianism and neoplatonism) underlying the depictions of the body in
cyborg literature from an empiricist (‘embodiment and embeddedness’) and
psychoanalytical perspective. Foucault and empiricism are only mentioned on the flow.

Abstract: Contemporary cyborg literature has established a series of widely accepted mental prototypes and
cultural stereotypes regarding a cyborg’s physical apparatus. In this paper, the core dualist premises of such
standard depictions are addressed and criticized, especially from the viewpoint of the philosophy of
‘embodiment and embeddedness’ and psychoanalysis. In the end, some ideological functions of such
mainstream conceptualizations are discussed.

Introduction

Irrespectively of the quality (e.g., Hollywood film production) of the literary products in
which it might be found, the very way in which the bodily apparatus of a cyborg is depicted
deserves to be critically assessed as another contemporary cultural artefact. In other words,
no matter their mass consumption, such cultural products rely on strong philosophical
premises, and have concrete (yet latent) ideological functions, both deserving description and
discussion.

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Wires, implants, and folk dualism

Let us begin with an important clarification: It would certainly be over-simplifying for one to
assume a ‘transmitter-receiver’ model of literary production and claim that the depictions
we’re interested in here are unidirectionally transmitted. In other words, assuming that a
‘transmitting end’ influences a passive ‘receiving end’ is certainly a dangerous abstraction:
On the contrary (and this especially goes for low-level literary products), folk assumptions
are projected to literary production; the latter asserts or (especially for products qualitatively
deviating from the norm) revises the expectations of this ‘receiving end’ of this cultural
practice. Therefore, the description and the criticism of these depictions to follow pertain
equally to both the ‘producing-transmitting’ minority, and to the ‘receiving’ majority (if one
is to stick to the terminology of this compromised ‘transmitter-receiver’ model); it is this
majority that projects those expectations to the producing minority, and, according to those
expectations, it understands, or even misunderstands the initial intentions of the ‘transmitting
end’- see especially the work in the framework of ‘hermeneutics’ (Gadamer, 1976)- no better
way to explain what ‘hermeneutics’ stands for than Eco’s phrase of the ‘opera aperta’, i.e., a
literary work open to interpretation by its reader/consumer, independently, to a big extent of
the author’s initial, desired ‘message’.

It is no secret that, in its greatest part, the cyborg-related literature seems to unhesitantly
adopt a clear-cut distinction between the ‘cognitive’ and the ‘physical’ implementation of the
replicated ‘human prototype’. The simplistic way in which the human body and its relation
with both affect and reason are approached in the contemporary literature is quite
characteristic in the Hollywood film industry, which has by far the most suggestive examples
on the subject:

In the recently filmed ‘Bicentennial man’ (Asimov, 1976), the ‘cyborgification’ and,
ultimately, ‘humanization’ process that the robot undergoes is carried out in a componential,
‘building-blocks’- like manner: the robot experiences emotions in a piece-meal fashion, has
robotic parts replaced for its human equivalents, and is ultimately humanized: In the end of
his life, he states the following, assuming a very entrenched, vertical man/ machine
distinction:

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“As a robot, I could have lived forever. But I tell you all today, I would rather die a man,
than live for all eternity a machine”. (Asimov, 1976).

Another characteristic glorification of human emotion by a cyborg is found in ‘Terminator 2’

(Cameron & Wisher, 1991): The cyborg, miraculously transcending its physically
constraining lack of emotions, before diving into its heroic annihilation, throws the following
line:

‘I know now why you cry’ (ibid.)

The folk commonplace of romanticizing human affect in the cyborg literature mystifies to a
great extent the intimate link between body and affect, and presupposes a number of
simplistic dissociations among those components, i.e., body, reason, affect: Kyle Reese,
bringing his ‘from-the-future’-mentality, uses a componential metaphor, taken from the
cybernetic field, to encourage his protégé, Sarah Connor:

”Pain can be controlled – you just disconnect it” (Cameron, 1984)

Such a radical separation assumes a retreat to dualist premises of Cartesian (e.g., Jorge
Secada(2000) for an introduction) and even neo-Platonic (R.T.Wallis, 1972) philosophy: The
Cartesian proof of existence on the basis of pure thought (crystallized in his ‘cogito, ergo
sum’), and the neo-Platonic belief on the transcendent properties of the eternal mind over the
hosting, temporary and dispensable physical apparatus have (long before the emergence of
the ‘cyborg’ concept) promoted such a radical dualism. The intimate relationship between
folk dualist ontology and the good old mental prototype of a cyborg is made explicit by Clark
(2003):

‘…the word cyborg once conjured visions of wires and implants, but…the use of such
penetrative technologies is inessential. To focus on them is to concede far too much to the
ancient biological skin-bag.’ (ibid.)

A cyborg would thus be defined, in those contexts, as an integration of biological and

mechanical components achieved via technological invasive enhancements (replacements),

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simply hosting an implementation of (or an actual one, depending on the case) cognitive
apparatus. Modern literature on cyborgs is certainly monopolized by such invasive mergers
of technological enhancers and the human physical apparatus (see next sections for extensive
discussion).

Such a Cartesian/neo-Platonist heritage should not come as a surprise at all, given the
survival of such systems within the western European/American Christian religion. In
particular, neo-Platonism had a fundamental role in constructing Christian theology in the
first place: for the Christian West, the philosophical system of St. Augustine is by far the
most suggestive example (e.g., Rist, 1994). Eric Dodds (1965) shows precisely how the neo-
Platonist philosophy and the Christian religion, among other philosophies and religions,
interacted and competed in the Hellenistic World that the early Roman Empire came to
inherit. Christian dualism, similarly, has provided a strong base for the subsequent Cartesian
one.

Let us also remind ourselves, of course, that it would be a far-fetched endeavour to directly
associate dualist philosophical systems with cybernetic literary production; folk expectations
on the subject are not based on any kind of philosophical education of the cyborg-film-
watching / book-reading masses, but rather, on the Christian religious contexts in which they
are brought up. It is similarly unsurprising, then, that the Christian West, which has both the
technological ‘authority’ to conceptualize ‘a cyborg’, and the cultural pervasiveness to
informally impose it on a global scale, reflects, reproduces and further corroborates such a
depiction.

A conceivable counterargument of yet a limited strength might as well be that the ‘wires and
implants’ (Clark, 2003) default in modern cyborg literature is justified by some
‘methodological simplicity’ in its ‘production’, and by some, let us call it here ‘perceptual
salience’ in its ‘consumption’: That is to say, a ‘half-human half-metal’ body, as often found
in a ‘cyborgified’ human body or a ‘humanized’ robot skeleton is more convincing an
artificial state-of-existence than a subject with a ‘pure’ human body. In other words, the
prominent image of a cyborg is as justified as the often ‘excused’ abstract dichotomy between
mind and matter, body and soul employed in everyday practice.

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However, such a counter-argument would be, to a certain extent, begging the question of how
exactly the ‘hermeneutic’ properties (Gadamer, 1976), i.e., the very predispositions in the
reception of the cyborg literature, are conditioned by the socio-cultural context-atmosphere.
In other words, such depictions are by their very definition formed within a certain context of
socio-cultural practice. So, to justify a mental prototype/ a cultural stereotype as ‘perceptually
salient’, or more ‘easily digestible’, amounts, pretty much, to hiding away the very
mechanisms that shaped such depictions.

Embodied and embedded cyborgs

Adopting the perspective of the philosophy of ‘embodiment’ and ‘embeddedness’ (Clark,

1999), one may argue that this dualist trend leaves insufficient space to capture the richness
of the subtle interactions among the physical-social environment of the cyborg and its
cognitive apparatus, in other words, to ultimately ‘put brain, body and world together again’
(Clark, 1997). Instead of conceptualizing the cybernetic body as only the host and the object
of control of a dualist, disembodied mind, it is instructive to conceptualize it as shaping to a
large extent the very manner in which the cognitive capacities of the cyborg are built.

A very characteristic case is made in the work of cognitive scientists Lakoff and Johnson
(e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, ), where ‘schemata’ of human reasoning and language are shown to
be grounded on the very physical properties of the human body and the on the way it interacts
with its environment. This perspective would introduce a finer-grained perspective on (in
fact, it would add some realistic complexity in) the interactions between a cybernetic body
and its cognitive capacities. For the revision, of course, of such a conceptualization to bear
fruit, folk expectancies on interactions between physical and cognitive dimensions need to be
revised (see last section).

However, there remains another revision of mind-matter relations to be presented here. In his
recent work (Clark, 2003), Clark offers a radical re-evaluation of the way the human physical
and cognitive apparatus interact with the technological one to produce a ‘cyborg’: Invasive
technological enhancements/replacements of the human physical apparatus is shown to be
only one (and, crucially, not the most interesting one) conceivable way of a bio-technological
merger: Most importantly, the human mind seems to be evolutionary shaped so as to employ

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and (non-invasively) incorporate technological products in order to amplify its own
efficiency:

‘It is our basic human [emphasis in the original with italics only] nature to annex, exploit,
and incorporate nonbiological stuff deep into our mental profiles’ (ibid., p. 198)

Adopting this perspective on the cybernetic physical apparatus, a dynamic, interactive

relationship is admitted between the ‘mind’ and the physical properties, biological or
mechanic, of a cyborg:

‘in embracing our hybrid natures, we give up the idea of the mind and the self as a kind of
wafer-thin inner essence, dramatically distinct from all its physical trappings. In place of this
elusive essence, the human person emerges as a shifting matrix of biological and
nonbiological parts.’ (ibid.).

Psychoanalytic criticism

Long before the development of the philosophy of embodiment and embeddedness, of course,
psychoanalytic theory has characteristically emphasized a number of critical aspects of
physical embodiment and social embeddedness of the human mind.

Considering Freud’s work, one can easily identify psychological mechanisms that tightly
bind physical properties with affective conditions, modes of thinking and mental states: for
example, the early ‘anal’ and ‘oral’ modalities of the organization of libido and their cathexis
(e.g., Hall, 1954) are held in psychoanalytical theory to be the ultimate explanation of
neurotic and psychotic conditions. Both the content of thoughts, as well as their very
modality (e.g., the highly repetitive thoughts in obsessive compulsive disorder) are explained
on the basis of physically grounded events and properties of the erotic experience of the
individual. It is hard not to consider such explanations as cases of an ‘embodied cognition’
approach. However, the concept of a ‘libidinally grounded’ cybernetic condition remains far
too radical, especially if compared with the sci-fi classics of a-libidinal ‘Terminators’ and
‘Robocops’.

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In the same vein, psychoanalytic theory incorporates explanations of human cognition by
factoring in properties of the individual as a unit embedded in certain social environments:
For example, maternal and paternal authority, and the relation of the individual with those
have a determining force on the nature of the neurotic/psychotic condition. Ideology and
human institutions are shown, especially in Foucault’s work (especially Foucault, 1990; to
mention him only en passant here) to be inextricably intertwined with (being both reproduced
by as well as reproducing) aspects of the mechanisms of repression and sublimation of
physically-grounded drives.

The work of modern Marxist-Freudian (or, even better, neo-Marxist-Lacanian) philosopher

Slavoj Žižek provides us with another relevant insight of psychoanalytical criticism, as he has
often touched motifs of contemporary popular culture, including (alas, not extensively), the
modern conceptualization of cyborg-figures. Žižek (1991 ) takes on the cyber-punk cult film
Robocop (Verhoeven, 2002), a futuristic story of a police officer shot to death and subsequently
revived after replacement of all of his body parts by artificial substitutes, who finds himself
"between two deaths"—both clinically dead and provided with a new, mechanical body—
and starts to remember fragments of his previous, "human" life. This process that Robocop
undergoes is, for Žižek, one of ‘resubjectivation, changing gradually back from pure
incarnated drive to a being of desire’. (ibid.). It belongs, for Žižek, to the "fundamental
fantasy of contemporary mass culture," i.e., ‘the fantasy of the return of the living dead’.
(ibid.). And the reproduction of such fears-fantasies, as I would like to argue, is anything but
devoid of ideological significance (see next section).

The ideological functions of misplaced post-future fears

I would like to end this paper by discussing some rather latent ideological functions that the
currently most prominent fashions in depicting the cybernetic body perform.

Quite apparently, this radically dualist depiction of a cyborg is concomitant with a post-future
techno-fear: The image of invasive physical enhancements, the lurking threats of a future
where physical enhancements abolish fundamental cognitive components such as free will
and affect involves, at the same time, the profoundly attractive character of some mystifying

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processes underlying such invasive mergers: With the advent of highly specialized scientific/
technological disciplines (genetics, unified string theory, artificial intelligence, quantum
physics, etc.), such advancements have been made increasingly inaccessible to average
people- the notion of a technocrat elite, equally applied to politics, identified and criticized by
many (e.g., Foucault, 1990; Marcuse, 1964). Ascribing to the un-known exaggerated
properties (e.g., deification) is a common cultural/psychological human practice.

Such post-human fear is in fact identified by Clark (2003) in his last chapter:

‘a kind of technologically incubated mind-rot, leading to loss of identity, loss of control,

overload, dependence, invasion of privacy, isolation, and the ultimate rejection of the body.’
(Clark, 2003, p. 198).

Clark identifies such a fear as a quite misplaced one, insisting, rather, that ‘…it is our shape-
shifter minds, not our space-roving bodies that will most fully express our deep cyborg
nature’. (ibid.). He goes on to counter-propose that explaining that one should instead be
aware of the non-invasive bindings that the future may bring:

‘and we do [emphasis in the original with italics] need to be cautious, for to recognize the
deeply transformative nature of our biotechnological unions is at once to see that not all such
unions will be for the better…‘By seeing ourselves as we truly are, we increase the chances
that our future biotechnological unions will be good ones.’ (ibid.)

However, what about our very contemporary bindings? And what of the ideological functions
of such dualist fears of invasive bindings with respect to the contemporary, non-invasive ones
that we confront in our daily practice? I would like to argue that the current depiction of the
cyborg’s physical apparatus promotes fear of and aversion towards forms of control that
future invasive biotechnological bindings would bring, yet, crucially, in doing so, it silently
pushes out of the critical spotlight the very forms of control that already apply in our current,
non-invasive bindings. And, ultimately, that identifying an obsolete dualist perspective is
only half the story; the truly latent and critically important part is the ideological function of
this regurgitation of such dualism.

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The cybernetic literature is full of mentions of the ‘purely’ human, the inherently
‘unpredictable’, the ‘free-will’-operating human- similarly with ‘leitmotifs’ of the logic-
governed, mind-controlled cyborg that romantically - miraculously exceeds the physical
foundations of its cognitive apparatus and acts upon ‘free will’, or is overwhelmed in verbal
or physical battle by its free-will human rival, companion etc, or desires to transcend its
physical apparatus (by having it replaced with a human one), so as to experience the miracles
of ‘free will’ and ‘the mysterious soul’- Needless to say, in reproducing such literary motifs,
the explanatory strength of psychology and cognitive science are thrown out of the window,
while religious, mystical undertones are always welcome in the interpretation of the
film’s/book’s take-home lesson.

What is at stake here then is the latent glorification, even ‘de-crimination’ of a certain form of
control (in our current, non-invasive, hybrid, ‘cybernetic’ modality) by means of the
demonization of a conceivably ‘yet to come’ form of control of human cognition (the
stereotypical, hard-core image of physically invasive cybernetic enhancement). This, then,
provides us with yet another instance of ‘paralyzed criticism’ (Marcuse 1964) towards the
contemporary forms of control.

Conclusion

Discussing the way a cyborg is depicted in literary production involves far more than an
innocent scan of sci-fi literature: In all such cultural artefacts, philosophical premises are
assumed, and ideological functions are performed. In this paper, I argued that an embodied
and embedded perspective on human cognition should replace the folk dualist premises that
underlie the prominent depictions of the cyborg; I supported the re-assessment of the
conceivable bio-technological bindings that define a cyborg, following Clark (2003); finally,
I argued that the prominent depictions of cybernetic bodies incite a deeply subliminal techno-
fear which, in its turn, promotes a conservative, un-critical stance against the forms of
control involved in the contemporary, seemingly less dreadful biotechnological mergers: If
the fear of an a-libidinal cyborg of dry, ‘predicate logic- like’ cognitive apparatus is the best
seller in this sector of today’s ‘culture industry’ (Adorno, 1991), then a ‘de-sublimated’
(Marcuse, 1973), yet, ‘thank goodness’, ‘full-fledged’ human of dried-out, ‘paralyzed
criticism’ (Marcuse, 1964) might be a future to be rightfully earned.

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