Cyborg Readings
Oct. 18th, 2023 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: I have been working on an essay about being a cyborg, and it's led me to a lot of interesting readings! So since I am sick and don't have a lot to do, nonfiction cyborg linkdump! (With bad citations because I am dumb with plague right now.)
"Cyborgs and Space," by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, from the September 1960 issue of Aeronautics. This is where the term "cyborg" got coined, specifically in the contexts of using meds (including psych meds) to allow humans to adapt to the rigors of space, both emotionally and physically.
"The Mulatto Cyborg: Embracing a Multiracial Future," by LeiLani Nishime, from 2005 in Cinema Journal Volume 44 Issue 2. Available on LibraryGenesis. Applies the literature of passing to cyborgs in movies, discussing them from a mixed-race perspective and how "passing for human" can mean passing for WHITE.
"Going Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from New York Magazine in 2010. Weise becomes a cyborg when she gets a new computerized leg. It doesn't like her.
"Meatsuit Realness: Vocality, Gender, Sexuality, and Cyborgs in Glee" by Xavia Publius for her thesis in 2012. "The cyborg, to be allowed to exist by the dominant culture, also needs to reinscribe human gender and sexuality norms, but cannot utilize the traditional drag strategy of announcing its gender play because its intersectionality as queer and inhuman marginalizes it from this discourse. It therefore relies on fish to accomplish its drag project. It appropriates and plays with the gender and sexuality cues used by humans but hides the technologic production of these methods as a fish aesthetic. The success of this project relies on the ability of a cyborg to pass as human, or to give the illusion that there is an unmediated body ('meatsuit') performing: 'meatsuit realness.'"
"Disability and Poetry" a conversation between Jennifer Bartlett, John Lee Clark, Jim Ferris, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise for Poetry in 2014. "In his nifty 1827 poem 'The Music of Beauty,' the Deaf speaker [James Nack], luxuriating in the visual glories of nature and the charms of his blue-eyed maid, says, 'I pity those who think they pity me.' He goes so far as to jeer at hearing people’s 'marble eyes.' What a marvelous beginning to Deaf poetry! Since then, though, protest has remained the primary mode. [...] Protest is a worthy, logical response, but it can also be limiting. Instead of the full range of our realities and imaginations, we get drawn into arguments we did not choose for ourselves."
"The Dawn of the Tryborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from 2016's the New York Times. "Most cyborgs are disabled people who interface with technology. We depend on a computer for some major bodily function. The tryborg — a word I invented — is a nondisabled person who has no fundamental interface. The tryborg is a counterfeit cyborg. The tryborg tries to integrate with technology through the latest product or innovation. Tryborgs were the first to wear Google Glass. Today they wait in line for Snapchat Spectacles. The tryborg adopts the pose of a cyborg. But no
matter how hard they try, the tryborg remains a pretender."
"Common Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from Granta Magazine in 2018. "When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it. The manifesto, published in 1985, promised a cyberfeminist resistance. The resistance would be networked and coded by women and for women to change the course of history and derange sexism beyond recognition. Technology would un-gender us. Instead, it has been so effective at erasing disabled women that even now, in conversation with many feminists, I am no longer surprised that disability does not figure into their notions of bodies and embodiment."
How to Draw Manual Wheelchairs Properly, by Calvin Arium on tumblr in 2019. Exactly what it says on the tin, and boy howdy did I download it for my own use. (Comes with text transcription!)
"Episode 66: Cyborgs" from the Disability Visibility Podcast in 2019 with Alice Wong, Ashley Shew, and the Cyborg Jillian Weise. Three disabled cyborgs talk about it and technoableism. Available in original audio or textual transcript.
"Transmobility: Possibilities in Cyborg (Cripborg) Bodies" by Mallory Kay Nelson, Ashley Shew, and Jennifer Stevens. Art and discussion between three cyborgs about how they get around. Also how I learned what a rotationplasty is, which I can't believe I never heard of before this point and is amazing: it turns an ankle into a knee!
"My Brain is Already Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jilian Weise in 2021. “So at some point I need a way to distinguish btw ‘old leg’ and ‘new leg’ and how does Aimee Mullins do it with 13 legs? Ahhh, they all look different. But these two legs look exactly identical and it is effing UNCANNY to me and I never thought I would say that b/c I do not find my own legs, even prosthetic, uncanny. But when there are two of me-legs [why not pirate voice, sure] then yes, I am uncannied. What should I call them? Am I going to need to become a we pronoun? Plz dear god no.”
This "You are already a cyborg" twitter thread, mostly by Calvin Arium/@DeadlegCyborg in 2021. Wow, okay, it looks like one of the conversators in the thread has deleted, which is too bad, since I like how @DeadlegCyborg pushing back a little about the cyborg/tryborg binary, which I agree with.
"Anima Ex Machina: Meatsuit Realness and Transformative Reenchantment" by Xavia Publius in 2021, which only exists in some paper-only overseas book about digital performance art (go figure), so I had to ask the author for my copy. Article about extending self through technology during COVID isolation, electric ontology, and trance/possession through machinery.
"We Other Fairies" by Xavia Publius for the winter 2021 issue of Intonations. "Consider the ontology of possession; there is something queer about another being taking up residency in your body. Deprived of their own bodies, these ghostly beings may only return to our plane in someone else’s, and if there’s anything cisheteropatriarchy can’t stand, it’s the sex which is not one. [...] This uncanny doubling creates a gap between the corporeal body and the body politic, between reality and imagination, between identity and performance (Kobialka 1999;Roach 1996). Whether or not these possessing spirits ever had literal bodies of their own or whether these creations we call fictional were indeed created by artists is another matter, though an interesting one."
"Cyborgs and Space," by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, from the September 1960 issue of Aeronautics. This is where the term "cyborg" got coined, specifically in the contexts of using meds (including psych meds) to allow humans to adapt to the rigors of space, both emotionally and physically.
"The Mulatto Cyborg: Embracing a Multiracial Future," by LeiLani Nishime, from 2005 in Cinema Journal Volume 44 Issue 2. Available on LibraryGenesis. Applies the literature of passing to cyborgs in movies, discussing them from a mixed-race perspective and how "passing for human" can mean passing for WHITE.
"Going Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from New York Magazine in 2010. Weise becomes a cyborg when she gets a new computerized leg. It doesn't like her.
"Meatsuit Realness: Vocality, Gender, Sexuality, and Cyborgs in Glee" by Xavia Publius for her thesis in 2012. "The cyborg, to be allowed to exist by the dominant culture, also needs to reinscribe human gender and sexuality norms, but cannot utilize the traditional drag strategy of announcing its gender play because its intersectionality as queer and inhuman marginalizes it from this discourse. It therefore relies on fish to accomplish its drag project. It appropriates and plays with the gender and sexuality cues used by humans but hides the technologic production of these methods as a fish aesthetic. The success of this project relies on the ability of a cyborg to pass as human, or to give the illusion that there is an unmediated body ('meatsuit') performing: 'meatsuit realness.'"
"Disability and Poetry" a conversation between Jennifer Bartlett, John Lee Clark, Jim Ferris, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise for Poetry in 2014. "In his nifty 1827 poem 'The Music of Beauty,' the Deaf speaker [James Nack], luxuriating in the visual glories of nature and the charms of his blue-eyed maid, says, 'I pity those who think they pity me.' He goes so far as to jeer at hearing people’s 'marble eyes.' What a marvelous beginning to Deaf poetry! Since then, though, protest has remained the primary mode. [...] Protest is a worthy, logical response, but it can also be limiting. Instead of the full range of our realities and imaginations, we get drawn into arguments we did not choose for ourselves."
"The Dawn of the Tryborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from 2016's the New York Times. "Most cyborgs are disabled people who interface with technology. We depend on a computer for some major bodily function. The tryborg — a word I invented — is a nondisabled person who has no fundamental interface. The tryborg is a counterfeit cyborg. The tryborg tries to integrate with technology through the latest product or innovation. Tryborgs were the first to wear Google Glass. Today they wait in line for Snapchat Spectacles. The tryborg adopts the pose of a cyborg. But no
matter how hard they try, the tryborg remains a pretender."
"Common Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jillian Weise, from Granta Magazine in 2018. "When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it. The manifesto, published in 1985, promised a cyberfeminist resistance. The resistance would be networked and coded by women and for women to change the course of history and derange sexism beyond recognition. Technology would un-gender us. Instead, it has been so effective at erasing disabled women that even now, in conversation with many feminists, I am no longer surprised that disability does not figure into their notions of bodies and embodiment."
How to Draw Manual Wheelchairs Properly, by Calvin Arium on tumblr in 2019. Exactly what it says on the tin, and boy howdy did I download it for my own use. (Comes with text transcription!)
"Episode 66: Cyborgs" from the Disability Visibility Podcast in 2019 with Alice Wong, Ashley Shew, and the Cyborg Jillian Weise. Three disabled cyborgs talk about it and technoableism. Available in original audio or textual transcript.
"Transmobility: Possibilities in Cyborg (Cripborg) Bodies" by Mallory Kay Nelson, Ashley Shew, and Jennifer Stevens. Art and discussion between three cyborgs about how they get around. Also how I learned what a rotationplasty is, which I can't believe I never heard of before this point and is amazing: it turns an ankle into a knee!
"My Brain is Already Cyborg," by the Cyborg Jilian Weise in 2021. “So at some point I need a way to distinguish btw ‘old leg’ and ‘new leg’ and how does Aimee Mullins do it with 13 legs? Ahhh, they all look different. But these two legs look exactly identical and it is effing UNCANNY to me and I never thought I would say that b/c I do not find my own legs, even prosthetic, uncanny. But when there are two of me-legs [why not pirate voice, sure] then yes, I am uncannied. What should I call them? Am I going to need to become a we pronoun? Plz dear god no.”
This "You are already a cyborg" twitter thread, mostly by Calvin Arium/@DeadlegCyborg in 2021. Wow, okay, it looks like one of the conversators in the thread has deleted, which is too bad, since I like how @DeadlegCyborg pushing back a little about the cyborg/tryborg binary, which I agree with.
"Anima Ex Machina: Meatsuit Realness and Transformative Reenchantment" by Xavia Publius in 2021, which only exists in some paper-only overseas book about digital performance art (go figure), so I had to ask the author for my copy. Article about extending self through technology during COVID isolation, electric ontology, and trance/possession through machinery.
"We Other Fairies" by Xavia Publius for the winter 2021 issue of Intonations. "Consider the ontology of possession; there is something queer about another being taking up residency in your body. Deprived of their own bodies, these ghostly beings may only return to our plane in someone else’s, and if there’s anything cisheteropatriarchy can’t stand, it’s the sex which is not one. [...] This uncanny doubling creates a gap between the corporeal body and the body politic, between reality and imagination, between identity and performance (Kobialka 1999;Roach 1996). Whether or not these possessing spirits ever had literal bodies of their own or whether these creations we call fictional were indeed created by artists is another matter, though an interesting one."
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Date: 2023-10-21 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-21 10:30 pm (UTC)