This week's reading "The Cyborg Mother: A Breaches Boundary" by Jaimie Smith-Windsor strikes a much more emotional tone to last week's Haraway piece. This weeks article and screenings (Sarah Connor Chronicles) have certainly raised the question on whether humans are already cyborgs, this has been addressed earlier in the course but now I truly feel the topic has come to the surface of our focus; and I have found the reading highly engaging in terms of the ideas explored.
Windsor writes of a highly personal moment in her and her baby's lives, I believe that the sincerity of the moment helped Windsor to explore the human cyborg beyond what she originally may have believed. Her maternal rights have been tested, and in essence nature has been brushed aside; one could argue that without today's technology would Quinn have survived? very likely not. "My daughter's birth was a post-human, cyborg moment. She became a cyborg [...] part human, part machine, never completely either". It is hard to come to come to terms knowing that your offspring is part machine, however despite the loss of biological consciousness and being, the human has been saved from death. This has certain comparisons with the Sarah Connor Chronicles whereby John suddenly feels empathy towards the Terminator, we ask ourselves why? From Windsor' argument we can conclude that when a machine has human emotional and physical features we sub-consciously gain an element of empathy, especially when the being in question is our offspring or has a close personal connection. What is more alarming in the SCC however is that Sarah Connor herself obviously feels the need to protect and nurture John, it is maternal and part of a symbiotic relationship. However as John becomes increasingly more involved with the terminator he becomes more pro-machine and starts to base his actions and feelings on a machine; one could argue he essentially becomes 'part-machine'. This threatens Sarah Connor's position in life, however we discover an interesting dualism. While technology improves or facilitates infancy it damages the natural bonds mother have with their children, yet without this technology there could possibly be no bond at all.
The article highlights the idea of the 'external' womb, we can see this in eXistenZ with the odd playpod being the organic device for future creation. As a mother Windsor becomes threatened and due to this suspicious of technology, what it effect it has on human offspring. She suggests that when allowing the womb to become external (through technology) the human body becomes subject to manipulation, you don't have to be a human rights activist to understand the highly controversial material that could arise from this; Genetic Engineering, Cloning, Bionic Advancement etc. They are areas that we have covered and by large panic society as we ever increasingly reach that state of the true 'cyborg', unable to distinguish ourselves not only from machine, but also from one another.
Sometimes a strange complex phenomena can arrive whereby humans or juveniles, because of their increased exposure to technology and machinery cannot distinguish between human/machine or themselves/machine.
"What happens when technology begins to work itself into the infantile discourse, severing the symbiosis between mother and child? What happens when the infant, instead, becomes incapable of distinguishing between itself and - the machine?".
Some argue that this is the way human's advance themselves, Warwick would certainly agree as his research facilitates these ideas, however Windsor is extremely negative, and like many people, is concerned for the lack of humanity in beings subjected to the morphology resulting from cyborg creations. "To become a cyborg is to commit suicide". This quote presents for me the final line in the argument, Windsor is strongly disturbed by the level of machinery applied to assist human beings, but she can't help feeling uneasy in her argument as after all, her child was saved by the same technology she denounces. This is perhaps the pitfall of technology, it can never be praised or damned, because essentially it fulfills so much that without we would be lost and broken; and to suggest otherwise is slightly hypocritical.
I found the reading deeply engaging and presents a real world scenario that truly outlines what it means to be, or be involved with, a cyborg. You can't help feeling uneasy at the events that she describes and how hopelessly reliant on technology we are.
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