Becoming Cyborgian

Abstract

This article explores new frameworks with which we can engage novel intimate relationships that develop between humans and emerging technology. Specifically, this article begins to examine developing cybernetic engagements, and suggests ways we might inform anthropological and bioethical debate on cyborgs in society. I will examine some brief ethnographic case studies on researchers who create manipulations of human sensory perception through cybernetic implants such as the ability to ‘hear’ colours, ‘see’ sonar, or perceive infrared heat signatures. While current bioethical and political debate on cybernetics often centres on a dualism between therapy and enhancement, I argue that these categories might belie the act of becoming cyborgian. Instead, I propose a framework that explores cyborgian becoming through lived experience, focusing on ‘technique’ rather than ‘technology’. It proposes that the human use of technology in and on the body is often a way of feeling the world. In these cases, crossing cyborgian boundaries becomes less a manipulation of the body, or transgression of sacred bodily space, and more of visceral aesthetic experiment, a creative way to attempt emotional perspective through shifting scales.