Lecture 7: Selves - Educational Notes

**Lecture 7: "Selves"** Recap from Block 1 - Nation-state: Cultural organisation **based on the myth of nativity.** - Society: Cultural organisation **based on a relation of interdependency** - Civilisation: Cultural organisation **based on the claim to superiority** - Commu...

**Lecture 7: "Selves"** Recap from Block 1 - Nation-state: Cultural organisation **based on the myth of nativity.** - Society: Cultural organisation **based on a relation of interdependency** - Civilisation: Cultural organisation **based on the claim to superiority** - Community: Cultural organisation **based on the acceptance of obligation** - World: Cultural organisation **based on the desire for coherence.** **Central questions** *Korsten, Chapter 7\| Main questions* - 7.1: Why do people want to lose their selves, or sacrifice themselves - 7.2: How come people become alienated from their culture Identity and Self *Identity (as perceived by others)* - "'Identity' means that something or someone stays the same, which is also captured by the term 'identical'. \[\...\] - Identity is very much related, then, by what is given, by what is perceived by others, or by what is expressed." (Korsten, 89) *Self (as experienced by oneself)* - "'Self' is less a matter of how you are perceived or what someone expresses and more a matter of how people experience themselves internally." (Korsten, 90) *Quick Reflection:* Some remarks about construction your identity - How you construct your identity may be greatly influenced by others. Think about, for example, being rewarded or punished for certain types of behaviour by figures with authority, such as parents or teachers. Furthermore, your social perception is very important. In a culture you fit into and are close to, your social perception is more likely to coincide with your self perception. Vice versa is also the case. - Your peers may also have an influence in how you shape your own identity. Horizontal influences. - However, the answer to this question ultimately depends for everyone. There is no clear answer yet about whether our identity is already inside of our DNA or fully constructed by others. **7.1: Why do people want to lose their selves, or sacrifice themselves?** **7.2: How come people become alienated from their culture?** - Alienation = a state of depersonalisation or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal (Oxford Languages) -\> 7.2 rephrased: How do people lose their sense of self? Marx's theory of alienation - Criticism of capitalism - **To Marx, the essence of humans is work (as craft**, not labor) - Work-as-craft transcends survival - By perfecting our craft, we can find meaning... - In capitalist society: work-as-craft becomes work-as-labor (Example: the factory). Now, everyone has to work in a particular scheme making it **very hard to work in a meaningful way.** *For example, the factory or the office worker.* -\> Existence becomes alienated from essence. Your tired everyday but you do not feel fulfilled. Four kinds of alienation: 1. Alienation between people and their surrounding (nature/culture): What is our place in the bigger picture? How are humans connected to the world around us? *You buy food but you do not know where the food is coming from.* 1. Alienation between people. How are we connected? *In mass society it is really hard to see how everything works.* 1. Alienation between people and their work: What are we doing it for? 2. Alienation within people: Who am I, and why? **7.2: How come people become alienated from their culture?** Rephrased: How do people lose their sense of self? - Answer We can lose our sense of self w**hen our existence is alienated from our essence** = *When what we do is disconnected from what we want to do, or think we could/should do* "In current circumstances, identity has come to be connected to one's profession, which is also why it may be a terrifying thing when people lose their job, since it feels like losing part of their identity." (Korsten, 89 *Quick reflection: Remedies against alienation?* - According to Marx, bring the community back to the workplace to be able make your won decisions. Fight against exploitation. - Under capitalism? Ironically, spend money. For example, to take a break... - Acceptance. - **Human relations like friendships and love. The idea that you are not alone, realising that others are feeling the same way as you are.** Loss of Self as Affective Economy - The quest for regaining a sense of self/essence/meaning/purpose is an **industry.** Capitalism... - Affective economy: an industry is convincing you to pursue a particular emotion. In this case that would be feeling fulfilled. Feelings can also start from these advertisements, you may not even feel, for example, tired, but these kind of advertisements make you feel like that. ***Repressive tolerance: When companies give you really small spaces to breath. An illusion.*** **Central questions** *7.2: How do people lose their sense of self?* - We can lose our sense of self when our existence is alienated from our essence. We no longer have access to why we are doing what we are doing. -\> The quest for a sense of Self can be an affective economy *7.1: Why do people want to lose their selves, or sacrifice themselves?* "Lose yourself" or "find yourself"?? Quick reflection - You can lose yourself due to unhealthy life styles. However, this is not desirable (in the long term). - Wanting to lose yourself for your religion. Letting go of the everyday mundane things to reach enlightenment. Wanting to lose yourself to take a break from, for example, society. - You can lose yourself in your hobbies, your job, sport. Completely forgetting yourself **Lose yourself?** "Almost all religions throughout history \[\...\] have regarded the self to be a hindrance, precisely because it is too attached to reality, or everyday life. It is rather through a loss of self that people may get in touch with higher realities and spiritually different domains of life" (Korsten, 91) **Losing yourself & urban anonymity** "Modern life increasingly came to be determined by its massive scale. This can relate positively and negatively to a loss of self." (94) - **Positively** "in that urban life offers individuals the possibility of having a life of their own without anyone taking too much notice of it, which is a form of freedom." - **Negatively** "because the feeling of belonging to a living culture has evaporated in an atomised and massified society." (94) Quick Reflection: - In a strong community it may ironically be more difficult to discover yourself. Compare the strong communal rural places and the city where individualism is more encouraged. - However, this is all about experience and personal context. **Literally losing yourself: martyrdom** - Sacrificing oneself understood as the fulfilment of one's true potential. Quick Reflection: - Why? For a purpose that is bigger than yourself. Societal pressure. A sense of protection. Sacrificing yourself for someone else. Awards. Once again, "losing yourself" to "find yourself." **Personal choice vs. societal indoctrination.** - Parental sacrifices. Usually the role of the mother. Role of the daughter...People from the medical world sacrificing themselves during COVID-19. Voluntary work during crises. But why? Finding a sense of purpose. - Scientology. Having to stay silent towards the outside world. Sororities, sacrificing something from your daily life to proof your loyalty to the group. From alienation to self-sacrifice **Irony of the alienation theory:** - *Problem:* loss of self due to commodified society - *Solution:* transgress individual needs for the sake of the community - *New Problem:* easily abused in order to propagate uniformity (masses above individuals). Authoritarian logic of life. NO individualism. Everyone for the community. Quick reflection: - why? for **Answering our main questions** **7.2 How do people lose their sense of self? \| 7.1 Why do people want to lose their selves or sacrifice themselves?** - A stable sense of Self is often vital to our well-being (form-of-life). Compare with depression. Losing yourself to such an extent that you do not see a way out anymore. - Our sense of Sense is to great extent based on what you do and do not do (performative) - Our sense of Self is constructed in interaction with other people (communal) - Our sense of Self is much more a feeling than a rational conclusion based on face (affective) - Our sense of Self is to great extent based on existing perceptions of how life should be (transferable) - Losing yourself (temporarily) in meditation, prayer etc., can be an act of self-protection & certain acts of self-sacrifice (i.e. martyrdom) can be aimed at enforcing change (weapon/shield/shelter) **Lecture 8: "Others"** **Central Questions** - Korsten, Chapter 8\| Main questions → 8.1: Why do cultures construct an 'other' and what are the consequences? → 8.2: How are selves defined in intensified urban situations of cultural interactions Let's pause and reflect - Cultural Interaction: Conflict and Cooperation → The implicit fundamental question of interaction is: Who is the interaction between? - Interaction implies the construction of a Self and an Other - Who is who depends on perspective If different perspectives can tolerate each other, cooperation becomes possible → If not -\> conflict \ 💡 **The Self is an identification as the norm** \ -\> Individual + collective process *The Other is the identification of that which is not part of that norm or the collective self.* **Case study: Franz Fanon, *Black Skin White Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in a White World.*** - Topic: Cognitive dissonance between self and social identity -\> Identifying as the Other - Remember last week: alienation - now not due to capitalism, but to **institutional racism** *Fanon's legacy* - Fundamental source for postcolonial theory - Combination of psychiatric research with political and literary theory → Cultural Studies - Both speaking about and from the position of postcolonial subjects - His work focuses on the psychological and cultural effects of being Othered - -\> discrimination, marginalisation, self-alienation, cognitive dissonance, etc **Central Questions** **8.1: Why do cultures construct an 'Other' and what are the consequences**? - The Other is a more or less automatic consequence of constructing a Self - -\> In theory not a problem, but in practice often very much so **8.2: How are selves and others defined in intensified urban situations of cultural interactions?** - Whatever is deemed the **national self** can be the **regional other** within the same country. Think about Den Haag where "Others" are the minority - "Nation-states are confronted with new spaces, places, borders, and flows, due to which the notions of the Other and the stranger come to function differently. - We can specify these as new forms of territories(distinguishing between state, region, urban zones, cities, and districts, quarters or neighbourhoods); - borders that define such territories, routes across such borders or between territories, and the networks established by such routes. \[\...\] **In the light of these complexities, the juxtaposition of self and other, or self and stranger can no longer be maintained on the basis of simple dichotomies.**" (Korsten, 109) **Routes vs Roots** - "Capital cities in particular have developed complex relations to the country they represent: - they embody its nationalism, but since they attract disparate population, and immigration - -- cities are full of people who are the first generation to live there -- they produce a plurality threatening to undo all nationalism." (Korsten, 110) → "Multiculturality" as a positive **Answering our main questions** **8.1: Why do cultures construct an "Other" and what are the consequences?** **8.2: How are selves and others defined in intensified urban situations of cultural interactions?** - The Other is a consequence of constructing a Self, often leading to forms of discrimination/violence (form-of-life) - Fanon's alienation is the feeling of someone not knowing how to act (thus not knowing how to be) as a result of being Othered (performative) - Our identity as Self or Other is dependent upon how others see us (communal) - If one feels Othered long enough, it could start to become one's reality (affective) - Hierarchies of Self and Other are developed and kept alive through all the main institutions (transferable) - Self/Other dichotomies can justify oppression / maintain inequality, but: Celebrating shared Otherness can also be a counter-strategy to social exclusion (weapon/shield/shelter. **Lecture 9** **Central Questions** - 9.1. Translation: what is needed to understand other cultures? - (9.2. Does cross-cultural understanding have its limits?) - How can the attempt to understand the Other be used as a mechanism of power? **Communication vs. understanding** - Communication "connotes what we are able to share \[\...\]. - In terms of cultural interactions, we can communicate what we are able to share." - Miscommunication occurs "when people think they have communicated something, but their target audience has understood them differently." (Korsten, 115) - **The ideal of communication is mutual understanding** - Miscommunication happens when something is understood differently by different parties - Such miscommunication can be incidental, e.g. between friends - It can also be more structural, e.g. between different "cultures" - Structural miscommunication \| Example *Things deemed polite in one culture can be deemed impolite in other cultures* **9.1 Translation: what is needed to *understand* other cultures?** - "Cultures embody different styles and, equally fundamentally, different worlds. This implies political disparity, as opposed to universality or 'universal understanding'. \[\...\] - Cultural interaction implies that human beings need relentless attempts to translate \[\...\]. - Here, translation does not need to be a complete success. Yet, the untranslatable may still provoke the continuing attempt." (Korsten, 117) \ Translation is the process of diminishing the likelihood of miscommunication \ **Literal translation** - between languages ***Translation in a broader sense*** - between different personal/cultural contexts - between different systems of norms, values, expectations, etc. \ **9.1 What is needed to understand other cultures?** Answer: **An ongoing process of translation, aimed at improving communication.** \ **9.2 Understanding the Other as a mechanism of power** **The birth of ethnological museums** - "Academically, the comparison of the study of cultures in Europe originates from the nineteenth century, and was initiated in t**he context of the colonial empires.** - Implicitly or explicitly, the academic comparison between cultures was often based on scales of civilisation (cf. Chapter 5). - These were the times of the establishment of ethnological museums that intended to grasp the 'other', or to make the strange both exotic and nearby." (Korsten, 119) Case study: Museum Volkenkunde - Director Philipp Franz von Siebold publishes an article in which he emphasise "the importance of \[developing ethnographic museums\] in European states possessing colonies, - because these institutions could become a means for **understanding the subjected peoples,** - **and of awakening the interest of the public and of merchants -- all of which are necessary conditions for a lucrative trade which benefits all."** \ *Understanding other cultures in this context means: dehumanisation of the Other to emphasise the humanity of the Self. It is mechanism of perpetuating inequality/violence.* \ **Criticism of repatriation** - The countries to which the objects are returned did not yet exist when the objects were taken - European museums often claim to have better means to take care of these objects than museums in former colonies - By returning these objects, Europe loses the means to learn about other cultures ("understanding the Other") All nonsense meanings in my opinion. **Answering our main questions** **9.1. Translation: what is needed to understand other cultures?** **9.2. Does cross-cultural understanding have its limits?** - Because culture is something we live, different cultures indicate different life worlds, imaginations and experiences: can we really understand cultures? (form-of-life) - Translation is something you do: it is never neutral (performative) - Understanding can be a process of increasing or decreasing distance between Self & Other (communal) - (Mis)communication is affective: it happens before we understand what has happened (affective) - Can things be communicated one-on-one, or is meaning changed when communicated from one context to another? (transferable) - Understanding as a strategy to oppress, or to emphasise our shared humanity (weapon/shield/shelter) **Lecture 10: "(Dis)abled Selves"** **Central Questions** Korsten, Chapter 10\| Main questions - 10.1 How is disability historically and culturally determined? - 10.2 What are the cultural affordances in disabilities? Case Study: *Intermediate conclusion* (discussion statements) - Hard to draw a line between abuse/exploitation and compassion - Based on historical accounts, Merrick was rather happy with society's quasi-positive interest in him? - But these historical accounts are: the memoires of his two main exploiters, Treves and Norman - Merrick's disability was exploited, by medical science and the entertainment industry alike - Yet without this exploitation, he would not probably have survived as long as he did *How do we interpret his history?* - Good effects, bad intentions. - The agency to turn objectification in an opportunity. - Normality and its cultural context **10.1 How is disability historically and culturally determined?** The implicit question in the term "disability" is: unable to do what? - In Merrick's case: -Unable to speak in a way generally comprehensible, unable to sleep in a regular position, unable to walk or move about very long -Unable to find regular employment, hence unable to make a living/survive? -Unable to find social acceptance: unable to find love/friendship, unable to build a future? *Three Models* 1. Medical model: unable to full-fill daily life activities 2. Economic model: unable to work, to provide for yourself 3. Sociopolitical model: unable to find acceptance - So, disability is not something you are born with. It is about how society constructs you. Adding a fourth cultural model - Three "dominant models that have steered modern thinking about disability since the nineteenth century: - the medical model and the economic model, both of which consider disabilities in terms of *functional limitations*, - and the sociopolitical model, which considers disabled people in terms of them *being a (discriminated) minority.* - In dealing with culture as a form-of-life, another possibility arises \[\...\]: the cultural model of disability." This model implies "that we look at the definition within a given culture of what counts as normal, or what is considered to be the norm." (Korsten, 129-3 *Four Models* 1. Medical model: person is unable to full-fill daily life activities 2. Economic model: person is unable to work 3. Sociopolitical model: person is unable to find acceptance 4. Cultural model: society is unwilling to reconsider the norm. Responsibility shifts from the person to society around him. It is society's responsibility to adapt and give the person more opportunities. Depending on context, disability is that which keeps individuals from participating in society "normally" QUICK REFLECTION - Is someone's inability to perform in society "normally" a matter of individual responsibility? - Or is it society's responsibility to be more inclusive? - Examples of cases in which society made steps to "normalize" certain disabilities? -Public spaces becoming accessible for wheelchair users, which causes a change in cultural norm. "Using a wheelchair does not mean that one is not allowed to participate in society." Wheelchair accessibility shifts one's thinking to accepting that using a wheel chair could still allow you to participate. -Cultural representation in, for example, cinema. However, who does the representing? -Sign interpreters during official events. (To what extent does society feel like its their responsibility to cater to "disabilities"?) -Steps taken by society is never the end of the discussion. Society should not feel like their first step is the end. **Historical Context** - The development of medicine and technology over the last few centuries has reduced the effect of physical impairments on people's daily life Its has to do with medical approvement. **Cultural Context** - What is considered to be a disability depends upon norms and expectations in a particular cultural context *What is considered to be a disability depends on cultural context.* -\> Should psychological issues be considered disabilities? -\> Should we consider disability as intersecting with matters of racism and sexism? -\> These are questions of cultural affordance (see next slide) **10.2 What are the cultural affordances in disabilities?** Cultural Affordance - Korsten's adaptation of a term from biology (affordance) - "The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. \[Affordance\] implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment." (James Gibson, in: Korsten, 135) Does you society have wheelchair abilities? Does you school have the option of extra time? These are questions of cultural affordance. - "Transposed to our topic, any form of deficiency, impairment, or disability is not an objective given. - What matters are the affordances that are present in and allowed by a cultural or societal environment." (135) QUICK REFLECTION - Examples of cultural affordances in contemporary society? Braille. - Examples of cultural affordances that do no exist yet, but should exist? Universal health care including mental care. Bureaucracy in general. Cultural Affordances of disability representation - Merrick's story has been represented in multiple films and theatre plays - Generally, the role of Merrick has been played by able-bodied people such as David Bowie, Bradley Cooper and Charlie Heaton - In a 2018 version of the Elephant Man stage play, The Guardian interviewed AdamPearson, a British actor who has neurofibromatosis -\> Pearson calls the casting of able-bodied actors for parts portraying disabled people "cripping up", likening it to blackface *Quick reflection* - Using celebrities will likely reach a bigger audience which will divert more attention to the bigger issue in the movies. **Answering the main questions** **10.1 How is disability historically and culturally determined?** **10.2 What are the cultural affordances in disabilities?** - Disability is a circumstance that is dependent upon how one is perceived by one's environment (form-of-life) - Disability is about what can you do in which context: Merrick turned his disability into a degree of ability, *acting out his disability* (performative) - Depending on what is deemed "normal", perspectives may change on what is perceived "disabled" (communal) - Normality is not an objective but a subjective, "felt" category (affective) - In/exclusion is often based in how cultural norms are communicated/recorded (in the arts, education, laws, etc.) (transferable) - Constructing a norm that divides ability from disability may both harm and protect people (weapon/shield/shelter **Lecture 11: Animal Selves** **Central Questions** Korsten, Chapter 11\| Main questions - 11.1\*: How do **tropes** anthropomorphise animals, and animalise humans?\* - 11.2: Do people have sufficient understanding of animal culture? **Human vs. animal** What distinguishes humans from non-human living beings? *Two common arguments (Korsten, section 11.2)* 1. "Consciousness"? The capacity to develop a sense of Self. 2. "Culture"?. The capacity to develop of a sense of collective belonging. Whether that would be a sense of community, collective worlds, or societies. But, there is no definite answer. These 2 starting points are criticised. To what extent do we agree with these arguments? - Some animals do, in fact, have a sense of Self/ consciousness. Although it is difficult to measure this. You cannot really **prove** it, yet it is still relevant. - There is a system of hierarchy with animal kingdoms. - Not all humans fit within these two rules... So, are not all humans, human? 11.2: Do people have sufficient understanding of animal culture? - The question poses an epistemological problem: - it cannot be answered in a satisfactory way (Korsten, 150) - \*Epistemology = the theory of knowledge Basically, **we do not know.** Because we don't even know what we know. ***Why*** would we distinguish humans from non-human living beings? Why is this important to us? - It makes sense to "Other" other animals to strengthen our sense of Selves as humanity. - It justifies the mechanism of violence that surrounds this distinguishing of human from non-human living beings - The idea that human have dominion over this earth. For that to work, we need to define what falls out of the definition of "humanity" Which connects to slavery and how people were categorised to fit within the realm of "animals" - Taking care of the planet. Humans being different comes with the responsibility to take care of all life and live correctly. **The distinctions often *serves us.*** A someone at the top of a hierarchy it serves them to create a hierarchy. **Let's pause and reflect** - Intermediate conclusions for Block 2: Cultural Selves - The construction of **Selfhood** implies the construction of Otherness - This Self/Other dichotomy often implies a **hierarchy.** It is rarely a horizontal relationship between the Self and the Other. **Political hierarchy**: Strong vs. weak **Legal hierarchy**: Rightful vs. Unrightful **Moral (religious) hierarchy**: Good vs. Evil **Economical**: Modern/self-sustaining vs. developing/dependent **Cultural (culmination of all the above**): Better than vs. lesser than -\> More vs. less human? *It reminds of of the fact that it had been constructed and imagined and then turned into reality* **Central questions** 11.2: Do people have sufficient understanding of animal culture? - The question poses an epistemological problem: it cannot be answered in a satisfactory way -\> What is the difference between human and animal vs. -\> Why do we (try to) make the difference? - One answer: To justify the violence we commit against others **Case Study: the Meat Industry in the Netherlands** -The rhetorical strategy that this website is using, is giving personality to the cow and making it closer to being a human. "poor living conditions" "suffering" Gendering the animal. **Humanising the suffering of animals.** Comparing humanising animals vs. dehumanising humans. How do you feel about such comparisons? (similar question to the exam) - It could feel kind of disrespectful to compare the suffering of pigs to the suffering human being. It is a matter of perspective. How close are humans and animals to you? - A technical problems. Meat industry is for consumption, making it similar to burning down forest. E.g the Holocaust is about eradicating human from this planet. Maybe it is not a good comparison to begin with? - Measuring animal suffering just like we measure human suffering would end the meat industry. It would become a crime. What is the difference between human and animal? **Matter of perspective** Why do we (try to) make the difference?One answer: **To justify the violence we commit against others** How do we imagine creatures as human/animal?(De)humanization & (de)animalization **(De)humanisation & (de)animalisation** - "Scholars have been studying the combination of de-animalisation and dehumanisation. - The former term indicates that animals are no longer considered to be living beings, but objects to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. - Regarding those working in the meat industries, scholars have argued that their work is a matter of dehumanisation, - since it demands that humans deal with other creatures in a purely instrumental and industrial way. \[\...\] - "The Nazis used animalisation tropes\* to define those whom they wanted to destroy as plague animals, like mice or rats." (Korsten, 142) It worked because culture is affective. **11.1: How do tropes anthropomorphise animals, and animalise humans? *Blurring the line between human and animal*** 1. Personification: Imagining non-human entities to have human capacities (or vice versa). Does not have to be animals 2. Metaphorisation: Comparing humans to animals (or vice versa). More direct, and a step further than personification. It becomes structural and common. 3. Anthropomorphism/animalisation. Enacting it to behaviour. Starting to actually treat people as such. - Ascribing human behaviour to animals or vice versa - Treating humans as animals or vice versa Concrete examples? - 1. Personification: Imagining non-human entities to have human capacities (or vice versa) 2. Metaphorization: Comparing humans to animals (or vice versa) 3. Anthropomorphism/animalization: Treating humans as animals (or vice versa) The lines between these categories are blurry - When the Nazi regime started representing Jews as rats, - -\> did they mean it as a metaphor (trope 2), or: - -\> did they mean it literally (trope 3) If we can recognize human-like emotions/behaviour in (trope 1), - why don't we protect animal lives in the same ways in which we aim to protect human lives (trope 3)? - -\> Where do we draw the line between resembling humans, and being human?Daily Mail UK, 31 July 2015 **Lecture 12** **12.1 Mixtures of being: have humans always been artificial?** - Short answer: yes "There is no natural or proper state of man, as if humans would be separable from culture. \[\...\] When culture-as-technique is seen as a natural (evolutionary) phenomenon, this implies that humans have persistently been organizing themselves and their world by means of technologies. Such technologies are partly supplementary, but a better way of putting it is that technologies relate to humans in terms of the prosthetical." (Korsten, 153-154) - -\> From Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985) - -\> Humans have always been cyborgs: they have always combined their organic capacities with prosthetic add-ons Since this morning, students in my class have been dependent on prosthetic elements such as glasses and contacts, central heating, public transport, alarm clock, electricity, lights, laptops, language which is an aid that people have developed over centuries. **It is beside the point to consider humans as merely using technology. They rather live in symbiosis with it. As in-betweens of animal-like and artificial beings, humans are mixtures.** The prosthetic elements my daily life I could live without are tools, and therefore not prosthetics at all. Such as pencils, but we can write technologically. It is no longer essential to life. Air conditioning and an electric fan is another. Cutlery is another. It is preferable but not essential for survival. Physical maps and calculators and alarm clocks. Covid masks were prosthetics during the pandemic, but are otherwise a tool. The prosthetic elements that are fundamental for society are the everything from medical tools for diseases and life support as well as the wheel and the hammer are also prosthetics because these are essential for human survival these days because of the way society has developed. Today, if it is taken away, our society and life would collapse. We can no longer life our lives without it. For every prosthetic invented, society changes accordingly and integrates itself into the cultural logic in a way that it becomes impossible to go on without it. We can no longer go back and survive without it. CYBORG Cyborg is a fictional? or hypothetical? person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body, that is, prosthetics. - Oxford Languages. Haraway's two dominant prosthetic categories of daily life are **Tools and Language.** - Tools are supplementary and prosthetics are tools essential to survival. ***She argues that language itself is a prosthetic*** because it is a add on that people are not born with, but had actively and deliberately created to make our lives easier. There is a mechanism and set rules that people can learn and adapt. **Cyborg theory: 3 boundary breakdowns** - 1. Between human and animal -\> Many animals use prosthetic aids for survival too Animals use language too through both sounds and behaviour. They also use tools to make shelter and get food. - 2. Between organic and mechanic -\> Is life thinkable without technologies? Is life thinkable without technologies? Prosthetics are tools that have been integrated deep enough into daily life that society would collapse without them. - 3. Between physical and non-physical -\> How much of what defines us is in our physical bodies? How much of what defines us is in our physical bodies? The internet. Language. Credit money. **12.2. What are the multiple relations between culture and technology?** - 1. Technologization of culture "The ways in which forms of technology have influenced \[\...\] culture" (Korsten, 158) - 1. Culturalization of technology "The ways in which the same kind of technology operates differently in the context of different cultures" (Korsten, 159) Different cultures use language differently. The use of quiet and hand gestures is used differently in different cultures. - 3. Technological cultures "Technological entities that are capable of learning and transmitting knowledge to peers and further generations of technological entities." (Korsten, 159 **CASE STUDY - ChatGPT** ChatGPT has triggered enthusiasm and fear since its launch in November 2022. Some universities immediately banned students from using ChatGPT for essay writing since it outperforms most human students. Newspaper op-eds announced the end of education -- not only because students can use it to do homework, but also because ChatGPT can provide more information than many teachers. Artificial intelligence seems to have conquered another domain that, according to classical philosophy defines human nature: logos. Panic grows with this further loss of existential territory. Human beings were not upset when domesticated animals such as horses and cows replaced them as providers of energy. They instead welcomed the relief from repetitive and labour. The same happened when steam engines replaced animals. They were even more efficient and required even less human attention. - ChatGPT different from the above-mentioned prosthetic developments because it is a researching tool that does not create something from nothing. Any information or text that it writes can be made by a dedicated human with a few extra hours to google search. Although we have always been partly dependent upon prosthetic support, this has escalated over time. Our contemporary societies are entirely unthinkable without endless forms and levels of technology. The central chicken/egg question for our course - do we build technologies or do they "build" us? - Technology raised us as children, and we modify and develop new technologies as we grow. We affect each other equally. How much of our culture/identity is defined by our technological context? A lot. How much of our culture/identity would remain if we stripped that context away? These days, not much would remain. **12.1 Mixtures of being: have humans always been artificial?** **12.2 What are the multiple relations between culture and technology?** - We don't use technologies, we live them: our lives are not "helped" by technology, we live through our technologies (form-of-life) - "Technologization of culture": our cultures are deeply embedded in the technologies we use (performative) - There is no communal existence without technologies (communal) - Our affective relationships to the world and each other are based on technologies (affective) - The reach of our cultures through time and space is entirely dependent upon technology (transferable) - Technologies lie at the foundation of the violence we commit against each other, as well as the protection we offer each other and ourselves (weapon/shield/shelter) RECAP BLOCK 2 - How and why do people define their cultural identity with, against, or at the cost of, others? Selfhood Alienation, sacrifice. - Otherness. Cognitive dissonance, roots vs. routes. - Self and Other Communication vs. understanding vs. translation. - Dis/abled Selves & Others. Cultural affordance. - Animal Selves and Others. Tropes: personification, metaphorization, anthropomorphism/animalisation - Mechanic Selves and Others. Tools and language as prosthetics, technological cultures.