alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

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Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

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Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order. Homer. Point: Homer does not distinguish between the psychological and the physical “psuche” (from which “psychology”) – an individual when one is alive and which departs at death (27) - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Page 2: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Homer

• Point: Homer does not distinguish between the psychological and the physical– “psuche” (from which “psychology”) – an individual

when one is alive and which departs at death (27)

– There is no real sense of the “I” which “takes decisions”• One’s thumos makes you do something “hot swirling surging

sensation produced by strong feeling (29)– No distinction between psychological function and organ

Page 3: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• Thumos: it can feel “on its own” but one can also “rejoice in one’s thumos.”

• “Soma” – does not mean body but corpse (from which the psuche has departed)

• What is body?

Page 4: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Body: Diplyon vase (c 800 BCE)

• No word for body as a whole.

Page 5: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Compare to 580 BCE: Kleobis and Biton

Page 6: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Compare to 350 BCE: Riace bronze (life size)

Page 7: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

SOciety

• The oikos – noble household under the leadership of a chief or agathos

• “Agathos (however) is not the title of the head of the oikos but the most powerful adjective available to commend a man in Homeric society” (37)– He has arete: “strength-and-bravery-and-wealth-

leading-or-preserving-success”

Page 8: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

conclusion

• Fragmented versus unitary self

Page 9: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Donna Haraway (1944--) and Cayenne

Page 10: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• Ph.D. in biology (Yale, 1972)• J.D. Bernal medal, 2000• Teaches in History of Consciousness, UCSC– A Cyborg Manifesto (1985)– Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the

World of modern Science (1989)– Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of

Nature (1991)– When Species Meet (2008)

Page 11: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• The question of objectivity– Not constructivist – leads to relativism– Not empiricist – leads to universalism

• For DG, subject is SITUATED, hence knowledge is always partial

• Metaphor for this is vision – necessarily limited– “Only partial perspective promises objective

vision.” (1991)

Page 12: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• We do not represent nature as scientists but interact with it: “conversations” with a trickster.

• The Question of Identity– Do not identify with a standpoint (including that

of gender)– DH not afraid that agency will be lost

Page 13: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

CYBORGS

• Beings who blur boundaries• Reaction against feminist distrust of

technologies• Undermines nature/culture distinction

Page 14: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• Resists:• 1/ “essentialism”: "any theory that claims to

identify a universal, transhistorical, necessary cause or constitution of gender identity or patriarchy”

• 2/ "a jurisprudence model of feminism” (e.g. Catherine Mackinnon)

Page 15: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• Rather: • "there is nothing about being female that

naturally binds women together into a unified category. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices" (MC 236-7)

• “Affinity rather than identity”

Page 16: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• The cyborg: hybrid of machine and organism• Why this image?– "Cyborg replication is uncoupled from organic

reproduction” (231)– The cyborg does not aspire to "organic wholeness

through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity”

– The cyborg "is not afraid of joint kinship with animals and machines...of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints"

Page 17: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• The "cyborg" resembles the identity of "women of color," which "marks out a self-consciously constructed space that cannot affirm the capacity to act on the basis of natural identification, but only on the basis of conscious coalition, of affinity, of political kinship"

Page 18: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Three changes

• 1. boundary between animal and human is breached– Creationism “is a form of child abuse”

• 2. The distinction between animal-human (organisms) and machine is leaky.– What counts as nature is undermined

• 3. Boundary between physical and non-physical is imprecise.– Miniaturization and fluidity (235)

Page 19: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

Changes• Representation Simulation• Bourgeois novel Science Fiction• Realism and modernism Postmodernism• OrganismBiotic component, code• Work Text• Mimesis Play of signifiers• Depth, integrity Surface, boundary• Heat Noise• Biology as clinical practice Biology as inscription• Physiology Communications engineering• Microbiology, tuberculosis Immunomodulation• Small group Subsystem• Perfection Optimization• Eugenics Genetic engineering• Decadence Obsolescence• Hygiene Stress Management• Organic division of labour Ergonomics, cybernetics• Functional specialization Modular construction• Biological determinism System constraints• Reproduction Replication• IndividualReplicon• Community ecology Ecosystem• Racial chain of being United Nations Humanism• Colonialism Transnational capitalism• Nature/culture Fields of difference• Co-operation Communications enhancement• Freud Lacan• Labour Robotics• Mind Artificial intelligence• Second World War Star Wars• White capitalist patriarchy Informatics of domination•

Page 20: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order

• Neither side is “natural”• The “cyborg is a kind of disassembled and

reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self.” (MC 246)

• Science is coming – what are we to do?– "Cyborg monsters in feminist science fiction define

quite different political possibilities and limits from those proposed by the mundane fiction of Man and Woman"

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STNG 7 of 9

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conclusions• 1. beware grand categories (sex, patriarchy, etc – go for the in

between• 2. seize the tools to mark the world that marks one as an

other (science, technology)• 3. be open to perspectives from other points of view (science

fiction useful)• 4. I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”• 5. Like Homer the self composed of multiple parts and not

limited to “nature”

Page 26: Alternative conceptions of the self and the political order