N.Katherine Hayles How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. University of Chicago, 1999.

The subject as defined by Liberal humanism. What is the subject? It is typically characterised by ownership through possession, property, propriety. Property Having an understanding by having things. Having an understanding of who we are from what we have around us. The conditions of understanding owe something to how we own property. The rules of owning something are understood through how I come to have it and what it is for it to be mine. In owning something, it seems I have prepossession of myself. Thus if I own nothing, I may not be myself or continue to be as I am or I may have to define myself other than through what I have and surround myself with. In having a particular thing, I can abstract that notion of having to a more general theory of how I relate to things in the world. Sometimes, though things have a possessive power over me. That is desire. When I cannot be satisfied with what I have, I want more, and if wanting continues to exist after having, then having may not be the soluble answer Propriety Having an understanding of things and thus an understanding of the world in which things are processed, ordered and generally obtained. Understanding the world through obtaining certain things of different types, from different places within it, having ones things ordered in that world according to a recognised system of convention and having ones mental faculties at ones command, knowingly, and thus presenting the outward appearance of having an inner sense of moral responsibility. Such conventions are based on the fragile gift of trust. Treating others no differently from oneself, as if they and we were the same, is a fine sentiment providing no one has to wait in line or their turn. When goods are limited, resources scarce, then cynical opportunists step into and widen those spaces of differences, to further exploit them for reasons convention cannot supply but only wealth can demand. Liberalism recognises this, tolerates it, but struggles to accommodate it entirely. Ruthless entrepreneurs have their place but not in polite society which usually and sometimes navely refuses to admit its own dependence on such an existence. Such problems arise from the crass simplicities of identity politics (you are who with what you ally yourself with) but soon become a scourge where gaining advantage is seen as more profitable than the fair trading of equality, a vicious insult more testing of ones notoriety than ones generally considered and carefully cultured reputation for welcoming generosity and sustained friendship. Because the liberal humanist is not always rational and therefore not always himself, his irrationality can lead not only to mental instability, but can also infect others. The ideal which he strives to attain in growing up and maintain in maturity may become stagnant, tainted or disorientated. Delusions may set in if all he has is the belief in his principles and those principles are not mutually and independently selfsupporting. He may deceive himself through trying to deceive others; whether hiding illness so as not to be cause of worry to loved ones (and thus hoping it will go away) or stealing to provide that which would not be obtainable legitimately but which is seemingly necessary at the time. There are other deceptions like believing one thing

and acting as if the opposite is the case, of holding different, contradictory beliefs about the same thing depending on the circumstances, or the same belief about different things depending upon the case at hand, so that in effect, one becomes inconsistent over time. There are acts of subterfuge when one speaks in one way and behaves in another, whilst simultaneously thinking of them both as being pragmatically useful to achieve a desired effect but principally expedient, as if action matters more than the thought behind it. Moral culpability assumes direct associations between inner thought and external perception, where each reflects the other over a continuous period. The notion that one could identify with ones actions in the instance that they are used supposes that actions per se have no basis on which to judge the quality of ones core-developed character, That is, actions are not issued forth like messengers from a command post, to fetch and carry, to go out and come back, to be usefully intended, to be committed with conviction Possessions And what are these? These are defined by what is proper, a set of conventions that define notions of what it is to be correct through well-established protocols that are readily recognised. Thus, we possess property and act with propriety. The property we have amount to the possessions we hold. We can act morally, as custom dictates, or we can merely act. If a moral sense of duty, care, respect are derived from notions of outlook, attitude and treatment, then having causes us to understand in terms of what we have and how that having was brought about. What we have effects what is understood only in that both subsume an object-status. If I can have a thing for myself and differentiate myself from others who do not have such a thing, then having the thing is extended to understanding the having (possessing) and thus understanding what it is we have (property). However, the object of understanding is to achieve a Catholic state of contentment through passively meditating on the ordering of things in the world and reconciling them with the organisation of their respective ideas in order of importance to the mind. The truth is the replication of the world represented in language by which we mean that the physical act of grasping a thing is transferred to the mental act of understanding what it means to have such a thing. Contrasted with this is the Protestant ethic of accomplishment through activity where understanding exists prior to action and not because of it. Here success is measured by material gain through productivity over time but with continual effort. The Catholic world is Medieval in that Heaven above reflects the hierarchies of mankind below in that each has its place in civil society and so on into the Natural World. All actions are determined by laws as all events are shaped by causal effects. Each devotee dedicates himself to discovering how he is placed in this grand spheric schemes and thus the secrets of what fate has in store and availing himself to providence so that through him Gods work may be done. The Protestant world by contrast is peopled by initiators not mediators who exercise freely competitive, wilfully aggressive and continuously expanding enterprises. Here, nothing is absolutely fixed in stone (As it is written so it shall be) for by strength of character and force of drive, man carves, forges, channels and utilises systems set in place to the furtherance of his own possessing advantage. Beyond the divine/mortal worlds is the one populated by humanist agents, slavish consumers who neither entirely initiate nor mediate. They concede that history effects the present but, being rationally enlightened, moral principles are no longer guided by traditional notions of belonging but sentimental feelings of value. Diffusion of thought means no individual is pressed to uphold a past legacy if circumstances change or when ideologies evolve. The liberal humanist is free from the will of others.

Freedom is the function of possession. Agents owe nothing to society but everything to themselves. But agency is a condition of market economics (you have the will to chose which products you will consume, which brands you will identify yourself with so that you become identified through the consumables you surround yourself with and not by selecting products through who you are. The self is thus a manufactured unit whose sense is realised through action (buying power). Advertising is intrinsic to that societal manufacturing process. The Natural self that predated market consumption is ontotheological or achronistic. The humanist world is no longer enlightened but infantile, defined by the awareness of needs satisfied by analogously extending them to wants, consciously or not. Im hungry but I dont just need food, I want particular food depending on what I FANCY. Likewise, the self that is hungry thinks, acts and behaves differently from the self that is horny because those selves see things differently. But are behaviour patterns tantamount to the totality of selfhood or merely to the immediacy of an actual awareness in any particular moment? And so to Posthuman universal behaviours that dont distinguish one awareness from anothers will. Terms What is the Posthuman? 1. Informational pattern over material instantiation. Embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than inevitability of life. 2. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon. It claims whole show status when it is only a side show attraction. It is a by-product not the basis for production, a consequence of not a cause in itself, an outlining shadow-image of a body illuminated from a source beyond the other side of that whose image is cast, projected or given. This discounts any volitional input from consciousness when judging on standards, assessing options or comparing courses of action. Action, it is contended, is habitual, instinctive and processed beneath conscious awareness. 3. The body is the original prostheses by which we all learn to manipulate. Just as tools are extensions of the body, so artificial prosthetics are extensions of the will. 4. When people and intelligent machines communicate on levels so freely, intimately and articulately that we cannot conceptualise the utility of one without the incorporation of the other due to their symbiotic identical interdependence, then Man and Machine are not one; Man is posthuman. With posthumanity, there is no difference between embodied existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism , robot teleology and human goals, reality and virtuality, inside and outside, organic living and artificial life. The body and the self: one and the same or interior private and externally public? The self that possesses the body like an athlete, an anorexic is not embodied like a nonwhite male middle-aged Occidental.