Libby's Pokel's Preface
It seems all too often one addresses the self through the other: the Cyborg Project has been no different. In trying to contend with constructedness, impracticality, and unpredictability; to answer questions of agency, self, identity, and purpose; to understand implications of community, cultural, and collaboration in relationship to our cyborg, we have consistently reflected on our inability to answer these same questions about ourselves and our lives. We have fluctuated between identifying the tedious fragility and the awesome power with which we may be endowing our cyborg. We've pieced together texts of various authors, the words of each other, and, here, my own disembodied comments. I feel we are pursuing a new kind of "re-membering," a la Kathleen Stewart in "A Space on the Side of the Road." I particularly like this phrasing, as its highlighting of "membered" always provides me with a moment of rather visceral reaction when I see it in print: It calls to mind physicality, embodiedness, limbs and mobility, severed and sutured. The idea of making words "work" seems very strong to me. We have all put texts to work this year. There is an animism here that reminds me of Frankenstein - doctor or monster, your choice. In this (Fe)Man/ual, our words become like cyborgs once they enter cyberspace: they are beyond are control, operating and performing functions beyond our control - perhaps they will turn on their master. We will see how this re-membered archive of our work will be put to different tasks and altered chores. |
