Over at The Atlantic, Tim Malay does a quick genealogy of the term “cyborg.” It’s quite interesting: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/the-emancipated-cyborg/63995/ He focuses on the “emancipatory” potential of the cyborg. However, I do think he misses the critical function of the term–that is…
From io9: http://io9.com/5662383/richard-kadrey-trash-culture-is-more-subversive-than-art-could-ever-be I am a very big believer in the power of trash: trash pop culture, trash literature. I really have a lot of affection and belief in that stuff, because art scares people. Trash, pop culture doesn’t. You…
Ever since I adopted a pit bull, I have had suspicions and half-grounded intuitions that there was some sort of connection between the vilification of pit bulls and anti-black racism. I just lacked a coherent way of making that connection…
So, Taylor Swift is generally pretty uninteresting to me because her music, her image, and her lyrics all shore up normative white heteropatriarchal gender roles. And, her songs may be OK, musically, they’re more meh than not. Although I would…
Annalee Newitz has posted a piece over on i09 about why we humans love (both Biblically and Platonically) cyborgs. Here’s the link: http://io9.com/5648537/why-do-we-keep-falling-in-love-with-cyborgs Most of it is really good. I particularly appreciate her complication of the “natural human” vs. “synthetic…
So, Madonna chooses humanism, whereas Beyonce chooses Afrofuturist posthumanism. In this post, I’ll discuss Gaga’s post-goth sometimes posthuman-ism. Gaga chooses the robot, sometimes. For example, in this David LaChapelle photo, her “Paparazzi” costume clearly references Lang’s robo-Maria (note too the…
So over on his blog, my partner Christian, who is an artist, has been thinking about the difference between the practice of robot-making and the practice of making cyborg prosthetic devices. Here’s the link to his post, but I”ll reproduce…
My book, The Conjectural Body: Gender, Race, and the Philosophy of Music, is being released this month by Rowman & Littlefield. Due to some permissions issues, I was not allowed to print lyrics to “Swagga Like Us” in the book….
So, when Madonna is presented with the choice “human or posthuman”?, she clearly chooses humanism (and reproductive futurity). Beyonce, on the other hand, always chooses the posthuman (and a futurity that is not necessarily “reproductive” in the way hetero-whiteness wants…
Recent Comments