“Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?”
(C.G. Jung; Sabini, 2008)
This essay started life as a reflection of Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (2000). Trying to make sense of her work in my own life resulted in the presentation below drawing out themes she raised in her work.
The “posthuman” is a biotech chimera, blurring the boundaries between the dualisms I encountered while researching this work (nature/culture, online/offline, work/life, global/local, transmissive/transformative, utopia/dystopia) (Haraway, 2000; Sterling, 2009; Usher & Edwards, 1998).
What are the implications of the term “post-“? (Badminton, 2003) Can the “post-human” think beyond “human”, cease to think only of “our” selves and instead think of others (humans and non-humans, places and plants)?
What are the implications of “responsibility”? Is Western education enabling us to be “response-able”? (Sterling, 2009)
We stand on the threshold, each of us individually more than the sum of our parts, Haraway’s “mosaic”. Our “posthuman responsibility” is what we choose to do with the gifts we have been given. What am I doing with mine?
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