Lyotard, Haraway, Crborgs and the Inhuman

Another French contributor to postmodernitist theory is Jean-Francois Lyotard. A notable a relevant publication of Lyotard’s was The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (1991). Here Lyotard argues that the basis of humanism in the contemporary world is under threat from both technology and capitalism. If this is the case he suggests that the result would be a dehumanising event (Malpas 2005: p76). In The Inhuman: Reflections on Time Lyotard makes an interesting argument about the distinction between a living organism and a machine. He argues,

You know – technology wasn’t invented by us humans. Rather the other way round. As anthropologists and biologists admit, even the simplest life forms, infusoria, tiny algae synthesized by light at the edges of tide pools a few million years ago, are already technical devices. Any material system is technological if it filters information used to its survival, if it memorises and processes that information and make inferences based on the regulating effect of behaviour, this is, if it intervenes on and imparts its environment so as to ensure its perpetuation (Lyotard 1991: p.12)

In other words, what Lyotard is claiming is that all life on Earth are manifestations of biological machines. From the smallest single celled organism to human beings. This suggests that the technology we create is but an extension of an already existing technology. Does this then nullify the concept of the cyborg? By its very definition a machine connected to another machine can not only be a machine with another machine added to it. However, cyborg theorist Donna Haraway suggests, ‘we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism: in short, we are all cyborgs’ (Haraway 1991: p.150). To understand what Haraway means we only have to consider our ever day use of machines and technology. If we need to get somewhere fast we use a machine to get us there, for example a car, boat or an aeroplane. We constantly rely on computers. In fact in the west technology has permeated almost every part of our lives. To summarise I will paraphrase Malpas, Haraway the our reliance on, and relationship with, technology brings us closer to bridging the gap between sexual hierarchies and signals an end to
cultural stereo types while Lyotard fears that it turns us into parts of the capitalist machine (Malpas 2005: p.78).