Rhizomatic cyborgs: hypertextual considerations in a posthuman age

Abstract

Recent work in the theoretical humanities has given increasing importance to what has been termed posthumanism and hypertextuality. For many within the humanities, posthumanism and hypertextuality have become accessible as a result of studies which have interdisciplinarily explored concerns that have evident implications for the humanities interest in aesthetics, ethics, politics, mind, cognition, identity, subjectivity and language. The work of Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Elaine Graham, George P. Landow and others has been at the forefront of these initiatives. What perhaps needs to be looked at now is the extent to which the interdisciplinary work that has been built up in this new field (which has been called new cultural theory) is a developing episteme, and how it might affect future ways of writing and thinking in the humanities. The paper proposed attempts to explore how new cultural theory, and especially the digitalist strain in the theoretical humanities, might profitably explore ways of integrating certain key concepts and practices in posthumanism and hypertextuality. Familiarity with the literature of both discourses reveals that while the two have obvious affinities, these have not always been approached in ways which would allow the conceptuality of one field to productively merge with those of the other. What seems to be particularly pressing is some speculation on how thought itself is reshaped through interaction with the new modalities of writing and language, and through attunedness to the potentialities of new posthuman ways of being. For this reason, some reflections will be offered on the implications of present and futuristic practices involving Internet culture and cyborg studies.