[Synapse elist] Situated Being

[Mike Hale]

Deleuzian thought goes to significant trouble to break down the  
traditional understanding of the limits of what any 'body' might be,
and sees every body as a moment of coagulation or accretion with a  
much wider 'assemblage' of interconnection and situation,
that is constantly subject to changes as a function of its relation  
with its situating 'multiplicities'.
[Identity is another topic again, and Deleuze sees the individual  
human identity as constructed, changeable and transient at best, not  
fixed -
and thus not in or exclusive of prosthetic or technical interaction  
and its effects]

As such, following on from the ideas you have drawn out from Hutchins,
Deleuze wouldn't necessarily see any traditional distinction between  
man and machine / technology.
In fact if this technology / 'machinic' integration with the human  
body can intensify sensation, push it to a limit condition,
then it could facilitate the uncovering of the 'Body without Organs'  
by opening experience up to pure difference or 'intensity'
and thus provide pathways to 'becoming machine' , or 'becoming  
prosthetic' and so forth, which in itself can release us from
the strictures of traditional 'being' or understandings of  
'disability' & potentially lead to novelty through creative  
experimentation.

There is also the Deleuzian concept of becoming 'minoritarian', but  
this moves into a more political position
and in this context would examine the status and possibility of the  
'disabled' from a maginalized position,
in terms of how this orientation can confront difference and otherness  
as an active 'becoming other'...
but it would need much more explanation than my very brief comments  
here.

Am happy to develop these brief comments further if there is any  
interest in doing so.

Mike

Mike Hale.

Architect

+

PhD Candidate.
School of Philosophy & History
UNSW, Sydney, Australia

mike at archispace.com.au






On 10/05/2008, at 5:50 AM, Erika Lincoln wrote:

> I recently read Edwin Hutchins book "Cognition in the
> Wild", while his book is not focused on bodies but
> rather devices that are used/manipulated in order to
> carry out tasks (his example is navigation on the
> sea).  His main thesis being that cognition takes
> place between people and devices--Distributed
> Cognition.
> Granted that Hutchins is not writing about devices
> and/or prosthetics or dis/ability in the way people
> have written about in this forum but I think there is
> a connection.
>
> In one case Hutchins writes about mediation, to
> paraphrase devices do not stand in the way between
> "user" and "task" but rather work with the "user"  to
> "regulate behaviour" in order to create a state where
> a "task" can take place.
>
> To take this into the realm of this discussion I would
> have to say that devices are not barriers to
> experience/life,
> augmentation is not correction.
> As for regulated behaviour it is actions and gestures
> that are done by everyone.
>
> Another term Hutchins uses is "situated seeing"
> (derived I think from Charles Goodwin et Marjorie
> Harness Goodwin's Seeing as a Situated Activity) where
> in his example of an adelaide  where an internal
> structure (compass rose) is projected onto an external
> structure( landmark ) you look through the device both
> structures are seen at the same time "giving meaning
> to the thing seen (landmark) that goes beyond the
> features of the thing itself."   Using the device does
> not create a cognitive enhancement but a different
> type of cognitive ability.
>
> In the context of the topic devices such as the ones
> mentioned by JU, Brad, my own, and Stelarc's
> gravitate to these definitions, and maybe the term
> "situated being" could be used again not an
> amplification rather a different way of being in the world.
>
> Erika Lincoln
> Electronic Media Artist
> Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
> http://www.lincolnlab.net
>
>
>       
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