Cyborg Subjects: Discourses on Digital Culture

CYBORG SUBJECTS Discourses on Digital Culture Edited by Bonni Rambatan & Jacob Johanssen ISBN: 978-149-12715-1-3 All articles are published under CC BY 3.0 unported 2010 and belong to their respective writers. Some rights reserved. Except research material, all images used are CC-licensed and belong to their respective owners. Some rights reserved. Cover art contains portions of The Wi-Fi Cyborg by Jung-Hua Liu Design by Bonni Rambatan Please duplicate and share this book with as many people as you please. information wants to be free. Cyborg Subjects DISCOURSES ON DIGITAL CULTURE Editor’s Preface I n 2010, we set out to create a platform for two things we love and value: freedom of critical thought and digital culture. We wanted to create something that would testify of something major of our contemporary age. Having grown up with the Internet, we, the unknown digital kids, hoped to create a website that would be different from traditional academia: Cyborg Subjects was born. The major idea behind it was not only to freely publish articles that dealt with a broad range of themes and debates of the zeitgeist but to create a transparent and lively debate. We wanted to have an open review system where everything would be published and everyone could add their 2 virtual cents to an essay or artwork. This was an attack on the monopoly publishers in academia. This anthology is a compilation of essays published in the online journal “Cyborg Subjects: Discourses on Digital Culture” circa 2010-2012. The journal started out as an experiment: curated works—artistic or essay—submitted to us via e-mail were posted online, free for anyone to review (with comments) and/or adapt (by creating new posts linking back to the original article). A common thread that links all papers and ideas in this volume is that of the digital. The digital and with it the idea that something intangible and virtual has v Cyborg Subjects Discourses on Digital Culture actual and radical impacts on our contemporary world. We wanted to explore this humanity, and can be read as a warning to proceed with caution as we venture further and decided to focus on three major developments: digital subjectivity, or further into the realm of digital subjectivity. what we call the posthuman; how this subjectivity creates new political discourses, Part Two, Sharing, takes on this venture and proceeds to the second as exemplified in the Wikileaks polemic; and finally, how those discourses enable moment: when digital subjectivity turns into global resistance, specifically in digital subjects to have strong, direct, real-world impacts, as exemplified in the the Wikileaks polemic. Indeed, our second call for papers was made to garner 2011 revolutions. response from intellectuals in those fields. The opening article, Some General Due to lack of interest, however, our open review system was quick to lose ideas on P2P Relationality, a guest article by Michel Bauwens, links the notion its mass. Although initial traction seemed to be good—many, like ourselves, hailed of new subjectivities with ethics of sharing and potentials of spirituality in P2P the Cyborg Subjects platform as a novel discourse-generating system in which movements. Afterwards, Wikileaks: Signs and Seeds of Future Utopias by Aliki “theoretical production will be able to keep up with the pace of technology”*— Tzatha discusses how Wikileaks sheds light to contemporary political culture and interaction was little, and kept decreasing (along with the number of quality the taste for transhumanism it reflects. A ‘Turning of the Tables’ by Zakary Paget submissions) through each subsequent call for papers. examines Wikileaks as an exemplary tool of counter-surveillance against authority. This anthology gathers the top three articles submitted to our platform from each of our three calls of papers, additional articles from editors and guest writers, In A New Style of News Reporting by Stefan Baack, we explore the idea of datadriven journalism, or really the new trend of news discourse production. and one experimental article submission as a closing note. In addition, the cover of The talk of shared discourses shifts our discussion from Part Two to Part this book, submitted by Chinese artist Jung-Hua Liu, also serves a textual purpose, Three, Streets, marking the third moment: when people with a shared global the statement of which can be read in this book’s appendix. consciousness, enabled by digital networks, begin taking to the streets. Already The organization of this book—which follows the organization of topics of our calls for papers—is as follows: present in protests against the prosecution of Julian Assange, this movement evolves into a stronger form in the 2011 revolutions. From the Arab Springs, Spain’s 15M, Part One, Subjects, is an exploration on the question “What is the Cyborg to the global Occupy movement, one finds a similar thesis: technological networks Subject?” Submitted by intellectuals from various fields—from music to film to are today’s main catalyst for global revolutions. From Networks to the Streets psychoanalysis—this section represents the first moment: the conception of digital by Aline Carvalho explores how such shared narratives in digital networks allow subjectivity. Robert Barry’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Violins? speaks of global movements. In The Occupy Movement as a Politics for All, Alessandro transcending humanist aesthetics, specifically in the field of music. Finding the Zagato examines the shift in politics from conventional representation to something Local by Siri Driessen and Roos van Haaften questions spatial notions in our virtually available to everybody. Peter Nikolaus Funke takes the examination one digitized world. Bonni Rambatan’s essay Are Trees the New Proletariat? explores step further with The Current Logic of Resistance, proposing a set of logic for posthumanity not through digitized networks, but instead through its obverse, digital subjectivities. i.e. ecology. The final two essays, “Know Thyself” ... Again by Dustin Cohen and Included in the appendices of this book are some experimental notes by Glenn We Shall Overcome! by Jacob Johanssen, observe posthumanity under critical Muschert, Experimental and Extracurricular Notes on the Network Environment, psychoanalytic lenses, questioning what exactly is lost when we claim to transcend questioning the very notion of networks and networked discourses itself, and Jung- vi vii Cyborg Subjects Hua Liu’s artist statement for his Wi-Fi Cyborg project, a part of which is this Contents book’s cover artwork. The two essays, although developed independently of one another, can be read perfectly complimentarily, the latter developing for the former a highly contextual example for the scope of discussion in this book. We would like to thank everyone who believed in us and supported us, in particularly our board members Claes Thorén, Lucille Holmes, Isaac Leung, André Nusselder, Dinu Munteanu, Aziz Douai, Matthew Flisfeder, Alison Harvey, Panayiota Tsatsou, C.S.H.N. Murthy, Dustin Cohen, Alvis Choi, Jon Epstein and Editor’s Preface Contents ix Writers’ Biographies x Subjects Do Androids Dream of Electric Violins? Heather Kelley. We hope that this anthology will result in further debate, which you too can join at www.cyborgsubjects.org. Stay posthuman! The Internet, March 2013 1 3 Finding the Local 13 Are Trees the New Proletariat? 23 “Know Thyself”… Again 34 We Shall Overcome! 42 Sharing 53 Bonni Rambatan Some General Ideas on P2P Relationality 54 Jacob Johanssen Wikileaks: Signs and Seeds of Future Utopias 85 A Turning of the Tables 101 A New Style of News Reporting 113 Streets 123 From Networks to the Streets 125 The Occupy Movement as a Politics for All 142 The Current Logic of Resistance 159 Appendices viii v 165 Experimental Notes on the Network Environment 167 The Wi-Fi Cyborg 183