CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 1 (4) 2010 132-158

FELICIA CARO

ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES:

CONVERGENT/FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES

IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

Abstract
This project is fundamentally about some of the processes of identity formation and
subjectivity constitution in the era of globalization. It is also a critique of Donna
Haraways cyborg theory, a critique which argues for another type of subject(ivity),
a (post)-cold war subject(ivity), or what I callfor lack of a better wordthe
techno-subject. Haraways cyborg theory, I argue, tends to overlook the
importance of history and historical context. By engaging the texts of science fiction
writer William Gibson, I map out a new type of globalized individual-subject that
is symptomatic of (post)-cold war politics. This new subject encountersand has
to live withthree kinds of crises: a crisis of history; a crisis of identity, and,
finally, a crisis of community.

Keywords Identify formation; globalization; new subjectivity;

history; community; science fiction

Introduction

In our capitalist era, society homogenizes into an increasingly

globalized world. Although nationalism still plays an important role
for many social groups, there are today emergent subjectivities where
nationalist ideologies are no longer central in the development of
social consciousness. This poses problems for many individuals
concerning their identity. At the same time, late capitalist cultural
production continues at an alarming rate. The development of new
technologies, such as the television, the internet, and cinema, just to
name a few, has immersed many individuals with an infinite array of
commodities and narratives to consume from all over the world. As
the idea of community becomes increasingly complex, if not
problematic, basic questions such as who am I, where do I belong, what am
I supposed to do, what can I do, am I normal, am I insane become extremely

Cultural Landscapes 2010 Columbia College Chicago

ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 133

complicated components in the development of political agency. In

order to challenge and overcome these questions, new subjectivities
emerge. Factors such as colonialism, imperialism and capitalism have
all acted as catalysts for the development of these new emergent
subjectivities, which might be called, in a word, the technosubject. To be
clear, the technosubject, used in the singular, refers to a plurality of
subjectivities located within the global society as well as within an
individual. The technosubject emerges as those subjectivities begin to
define themselves by the ever-changing and fluid materiality of their
environment. The most stable materiality in todays globalized society
is the technological which here refers to the industrial environment
of the 21st century. This essay studies three crises of the
technosubject: 1) a historical crisis, 2) an identity crisis, and 3) a crisis
of community (specifically in urban landscapes).
1. On the Historical Crisis: The decline of the modernist narrative,
i.e. the decline of linear and/or chronological history, is the
problem that the technosubject must come to terms with as he or
she is relocated into new geographies and cultural contexts.
According to Jean-Franois Lyotard:
the grand narrative has lost its credibility the decline of
narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of
techniques and technologies since the Second World War, which
has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to its means; it can
also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal
capitalism a renewal that has eliminated the communist
alternative (qtd. in Easthope and McGowan 211)
Explicitly stated, Lyotard perhaps is directly referring to specific
capitalist techniques and technologies, for example, the U.S. Open
Door policy, and warfare technologies, like the atom bomb, which
have drastically changed the social and biological atmosphere of our
world a world which for many, is still in an early stage of
development a world fragmented, chaotic, and unstable.
2. On the Identity Crisis: In order to understand how people
handle and manage entering a world such as this, mapping out
an emotional affects of the present, rather than a moral
politics of a past history, is crucial. Technosubjectivities are
those that realize they are immersed in a world constructed by a
pluralistic history - today this is a history usually denoting war (in
all its diverse geographies), economic strife, and power struggles
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 134

between nations. Upon this realization, technosubjectivies begin

to feel a crisis of identity of cultural displacement. During
periods of cultural displacement, the technosubject experiences a
fluctuation of emotions that range from a calm, peaceful, and
nostalgic outlook to a chaotic and paranoiac inner struggle.
3. On the Community Crisis: As technosubjectivities undergo this
fluctuation and try to stabilize themselves as well as their new
urban surroundings, technological habitats, and industrial
environments, many begin to construct spaces and places for
collectivity and community. The technosubject does not, or
cannot, use an ideology of nationalism or an explicit political
ideology, precisely because the technosubject, as a product of
globalization, is inherently a cross-cultural and cross-historical
social being. Today, there are many articulations of globalization.
Some see it as a problematic loss of traditional and authentic
cultures, and others see it as a step in the right direction for a
better, more progressive society. Although both of these
articulations are valid, the task here is to provide an exploration
and overview of the abstract imagined communities and
collective spaces and places produced, and ironically, made
somewhat invisible by processes of globalization. In the words
of Ross King:

Do not expect the explosions of creativity, new worlds and a

better space of everyday life to be laid out neatly, clearly and
there for the taking Rather the ideas, ideals, and logic of the
reader [or audience] are also to enter into the equation, to be set
against the conflicts and abrasions paraded in the arguments that
follow (qtd. in Bull, Boontharm, Parin, Radovic, and Tapie
xxiv)
This project explores the three cultural symptoms presented
above in hopes to explore the difficult and traumatic experience of a
seemingly materialist homogenizing culture, as well as the
transformative power of diversity within the advanced industrial
societies today. The theory of the technosubject presented here is an
attempt to shed light on the global individual, perhaps to understand
psychological context, but more so to provide new cultural
perspectives concerning the ever-constant process of globalization in
the 21st century.
Part I: On the Historical Crisis
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 135

The current rhetoric and discourse about the apocalypse and the
upcoming year 2012 is a good example of the historical nostalgia as
well as paranoia of the masses in the 21st century. In these rhetoric
and discourses, ancient Mayan culture is romanticized for its
mysticism many popular texts revere the ancient culture of Maya
because of its age-old texts that supposedly contain predictions of the
future. This is historical nostalgia. At the same time, many popular
texts turn the idea of the apocalypse into a paranoiac expression of
the explosive boundaries between the past, present, and future. This
apocalyptic rhetoric seems to reveal the sentiments and desires of the
masses in the face of globalization. Today, the boundaries past,
present, and future are indeed blurred, as will be shown in the
paragraphs that follow. Apocalyptic rhetoric includes the two radical
extremes of experience: first there is an idea of transcendence and the
development of a higher consciousness. On the other hand, the
discourses around the apocalypse also signify the paranoiac
expressions of the end of the world. People have their own
theories on what these expressions mean. Whatever the case, there is
an obvious desire to romanticize, investigate, or generally clarify a
certain type of dense psychological confusion, mystique, and
ambiguity regarding society and culture in the 21st century. Perhaps
the masses have just begun to understand what seemingly looks like
the end of history when a subject enters a global situation where
clear definitions of national and political ideology are no longer taken
for granted. Definitions of nation and ideology are complex, dense,
and blurred. This is a moment of historical crisis.
Critical science and technology studies scholars and new scientific
methodologies have studied subjectivities such as this already. Donna
Haraways work stands out here, in A Cyborg Manifesto, she writes:

Its not just that god is dead; so is the goddess. Or both are
revived in the worlds charged with microelectronic and
biotechnological politics one must not think in terms of
essential properties, but in terms of design boundary constraints,
rates of flows, systems logics, costs of lowering constraints (qtd.
in Bell and Kennedy 301).

What Haraway is referring to is the destruction of the idea of an

immortal symbol of an original unity. Whether this symbol is
theological or mythological is not important here. What is of
importance is the fact that Haraway begins to describe a new model
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 136

by which to understand the new human experiences and the human

in general a model based on, in her words, a polymorphous,
information system (300). Urging readers to think in terms of
design boundary constraints, rates of flows, systems logics, and
costs of lowering constraints Haraways theory of the cyborg
provides a good theoretical foundation for explaining emergent
technosubjectivities. Here it is possible to pinpoint a particular
history or histories suitable for analysis. Where Haraway sees the
cyborg as a human realization that does not want any more natural
matrix of unity [where] no construction is whole, the technosubject
understands historical unity as an already partial abstract
construction. This essay pinpoints historicity as an important factor
that manifests as technosubjectivity constituted in/by of Cold War
Era. Further, like the cyborg, the technosubject is not defined by a
single gender, race, or class, but by an affinity; it is a collective
community of convergent interests (296). Thus, the technosubject
signifies the globalized individual subject. Since the two World Wars
and the Cold War that followed, the developments of new social
worlds have begun to take a more definite form with the help of new
technologies and scientific techniques.
Nigel Thrift, writing about the telecommunications satellite,
remarks:

The satellite is itself a sign of a world whose economies, societies,

and cultures are becoming ever more closely intertwined a
process which usually goes under the name globalization. But
what sense can we make of this process of globalization? Again,
the satellite provides some clues. Those millions of messages
signify a fundamental problem of representation. Simply put, the
world is becoming so complexly interconnected that some have
begun to doubt its very legibility. The swash of money capital
registering in the circuits of the satellite comes to signify the
hypermobility of a new space of flows Finally, the shrinking
world that innovations like the satellite have helped to bring
about is signified by the time-space compression. Places are
moving closer together in electronic space and, because of
transport innovations, in physical space too (qtd. in Beynon and
Dunkerley 41).

Besides the satellite as a metaphor, new media technologies such as

the television, the internet, and cinema are all part of what Nigel
Thrift calls a space-time compression. It is now harder than ever to
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 137

define oneself by the grounded geography of culture in advanced

societies. This does not mean that all cultures of are a part of this
system many people still feel a deep connection to their country,
ideology, or people of origin in other words, their national,
traditional, or biological identities. However, in todays globalized
society, technosubjectivities, in an attempt to develop a coherent
national, traditional, and biological identity, find themselves in a
placeless geography of image and simulation (80). When ones
culture begins to become increasingly immersed in media and
technology, there is a phenomenon of feeling placeless a
situation in which the subject realizes that there is precisely no point
of origin to return to as a reference for identity formation, or in the
development of social consciousness. Thus, this is a moment of
historical crisis.
A good picture of this phenomenon can be found in popular
culture. Like the apocalyptic rhetoric described earlier, the genre of
science fiction also plays the role of the social commentator
concerning these ideas. The work of contemporary science fiction
writer William Gibson seems to best articulate the cultural context of
technosubjectivity.
Machine dreams, memory loss, cyberspace, psychosexual
paranoia, artificial intelligence, and infinite synsthetic dimensions
create the fantastical world of William Gibsons science fiction.1
These environments do not stray too far from reality in that they very
much reflect the nature of todays advanced industrial societies.
Writing in 1965, Charles O. Lerche notes:

probably the most important single contribution of the war

years to the era of the cold war was the technological genie who
had slipped out of the bottle during the war and who obstinately
refused to go back in again when the fighting ended (4).

What is this technological genie? Well, for one, it refers to the Space
Age and the development of Russias and the United States
burgeoning technologies. The most important developments, in my

1
SynesthesiaisawordderivedfromtheAncientGreek(syn),
"together,"and(aisthsis),"sensation".Itisatermthatdenotesa
neurologicalphenomenon.Itistheresultofonesensoryorcognitivepathway
(suchasseeing/readingthewordneon)thatleadstoautomatic,involuntary
experiencesinasecondsensoryorcognitivepathway(suchasthebodily
sensationofexcitement).
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 138

view, are: 1) Sputnik, the first man-made artifice, a satellite, launched

into outer space 2) The atom bomb, and 3) the internet. But these
technological genies also refer to the living realities of emergent
technosubjectivities.
Gibsons first full sci-fi novel Neuromancer was published in 1984,
almost forty years after the Cold War made history books. His novels
can be seen as an exploitation of the paranoia and desires of the
masses in lieu of socio-political conflict that has escalated up to
present day. In Neuromancer, the only escape from socio-political
conflict is a space Gibson names cyberspace. Gibson describes the
main character Case entering this realm:

And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes

boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past
like film compiled from random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a
blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information the
unfolding of his distanceless home his country, transparent 3D
chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the
stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission
Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of
America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of
military systems, forever beyond (52)

In this text, nostalgia is abstracted completely - nostalgia is

reconstituted as a technological referent. The ancient image of a
mandala is a reconstituted as an apparatus of visual information, a
graphic representation. The ancient image of a pyramid is seen as a
space burning beyond the green cubes of the Bank of America.
This text is an example of the nostalgic romanticization of ancient
artifacts in an attempt to find history away from the industrial,
globalized society. This type of narrative is also seen in the SF film
Stargate (1994).The film starts off in the modern world. Members of
the military attempt to scientifically figure out how to access the code
of a magical time portal named Stargate. This magical time portal,
once it is figured out, leads them into an ancient Eastern land that, to
their delight, is completely untouched. The magical time portal
functions in a similar way that the images of the mandala and the
pyramid in Gibsons text do. Not only do these narratives express
Edward Saids idea of Orientalism, where the East is romanticized,
exoticized, and seen as an unchanging culture in the eyes of Western
ideology, but these narratives are also examples of the language of
globalization and can be interpreted as expressions of a historical
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 139

crisis. It is a reflection on a globalized world constructed by images

which are random, hypnotic, and cinematic.
This type of phenomena can be analyzed in the case of the
globalized Philippines. For example, many popular American songs,
such as the songs of Kenny Rogers, Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston,
the Lennon Sisters, The Beatles, Aerosmith, Simon and Garfunkel
practically anything that has once been a hit single in the US, are
much more popular for longer periods of time in the Philippines. The
television, radio, cinema, the internet, practically any technological
item, are huge factors in the development of social agency. Most of
the narrative shown in the media either come directly from Americas
past or reflect it in some way. It is truly a postmodern society.
Frederic Jameson says this phenomenon is nostalgia for the
present since Filipinos look back towards a world they have never
lost (qtd. in Beynon and Dunkerley 94). In the words of Appadurai:

the uncanny Philippine affinity for American popular music is

rich testimony to the global culture of the hyper-real, for
somehow Philippine renditions of American popular songs are
both more widespread in the Philippines, and more disturbingly
faithful to their originals, than they are in the U.S. today. An
entire nation seems to have learned to mimic Kenny Rogers and
the Lennon sisters, like a vast Asian Motown chorus. But
Americanization is certainly a pallid term to apply to such a
situation, for not only are there more Filipinos singing perfect
rendition of some American songs (often from the American
past) than there are Americans doing so, there is also, of course,
the fact that the rest of their lives is not in complete synchrony
with the referential world that first gave birth to these songs
This is one of the central ironies of the politics of global cultural
flows, especially in the arena of entertainment and leisure (qtd.
in Beynon and Dunkerley 94).

This is truly a space that is somewhere beyond or in-between national

identity and political ideology. Filipino entertainment culture, in
appropriation of American culture, begins to develop, as Appadurai
notes, a hyper-real space. Filipino culture appropriates American
culture from the media, yet cannot refer back to this culture
anywhere in real space. Images of identity are constructed by
technologically mediated manifestations which Filipinos consumed.
In many instances, Filipino memory is not based off of actual lived
experiences, but instead is the creation of memories taken from
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 140

popular American culture that are then experienced as a type of

historical memory that usually appears in the form of entertainment.
These narratives are then imagined in a completely different context
socially and geographically.
For example, the popular Filipina singer Regine Velasquez is a
prominent figure in Filipino cultural history. Just as many of her
songs are sung in Tagalog (the main dialect of the Philippines) as they
are in English. Therefore almost half of her songs are appropriated
from American pop culture. As soon as an American pop song
becomes big in the Philippines, which interestingly, is often written
by the Disney Corporation and taken from teen celebrity culture (e.g.
Mandy Moore, Mariah Carey, etc.), she produces a remake of it.
There are whole hour-length television programs which feature her
song performances in various venues. Regine Velasquez can be seen
as an image of the hyper-real in that she develops a type of cultural
identity which is neither rooted in American nor Filipino culture, but
is a type of nostalgic hybrid of the two.
In cinema, the recent American blockbuster Twilight (2008)
has already been transformed into a Filipino TV show, borrowing the
same exact plot. All that is changed is the geographical location and
ethnic face:
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 141

These are examples of a historical crisis because, on the level of

the nation, Filipinos cannot define themselves as Filipinos culturally
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 142

their lives overflow with European and American media culture. At

the same time they cannot be considered Americanized because
ideologically they are radically transforming the concept of America
itself by creating a hybrid, or third space that mixes Filipino life, along
with its traditions, with Western popular culture.
William Gibsons novels shed light on this type of historical crisis.
In Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) globalization is described as a vast
generic tumble. The character Kumiko, a young girl native to
Tokyo, is reinstated in London for unknown reasons. The clearest
reason Gibson provides for her move is her fathers ambiguous
secret business trip. Gibson describes her condition as she explores
London:

She looked out on a city that was neither Tokyo nor London, a
vast generic tumble that was her centurys paradigm of urban
reality these structures revealed the fabric of time, each wall
patched by generations of hands in an ongoing task of restoration
(161).

Places are constantly described as such by Kumiko - as neither here

nor there, but instead, as metaphorical reconfigurations as something
intangible, such as the fabric of time. Kumikos inability to
contextualize the surroundings of which she is a part suggests a
certain initial desire to create utopia in the face of a historical crisis.
Gibsons particular description of utopia seems to alter empirical
reality through massive conceptual metaphors. Kumiko can be
prescribed by a certain kind of culture shock, but the inability to wrap
her mind around the world through objective reasoning is paramount
to understanding emergent technosubjectivites:

History had become a quantity, a rare thing, parceled out by the

government and preserved by law and corporate funding. Here it
seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single
growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and
meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the
dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and
empire (5).

Here we can see Kumiko connect history to architecture to corporate

enterprise and biology, but the problem is that she cannot gather a
stable context for these disciplinary abstractions. Gibsons phrase as
if the city were uncounted strata of message and meaning
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 143

describes a certain reaction to the overwhelming sense of information

overload within a subjects entry into a completely new world. In this
new world, the subject literally sees every object in its infinite
proportions. Seeing the world in its infinite proportions means the
inability to grasp the inherent meaning or fundamental structure of any
context i.e. a historical crisis. Many times the only way to cope with
this, as in the case of Kumiko, is through strategic abstraction.

Part II: On the Identity Crisis

In almost all of his novels, Gibsons characters represent a type of

globalized or global citizen juxtaposed with robots, artificial
intelligence, and technological landscapes. Gibson suggests the
futuristic fantastical end: the human-machine. The human-
machine is a representation of that historical trauma and cultural
dislocation generally produced by capitalist materialism and
communist hegemony. The human-machine might be said to
represent the biological and political systems of labor in our society
today. These systems now have materialized in societys most
advanced locales as industrial cities and urban landscapes. As the
technosubject realizes that all worldly materials, technology, and
economic and social factors connote signs of capitalism, imperialism,
biopolitics, and industry infinite subjectivities are awakened.
Gibsons text also describes this particular state of the technosubject
as like waking up from a nightmare. How does the technosubject
cope with this kind of physical reaction to the world?
Looking at the initial reactions of US immigrants who have
situated themselves directly in cityscapes might help give us a better
understanding of these expressions. Because immigrants mark the
move of a person or people to a new space of culture and history,
their expressions will provide good examples of how partial histories
constitute many technosubjectivities. That is not to say that only U.S.
immigrants go through this process, but that these examples can
provide a picture of how technosubjectivity functions in a globalized
world. The following excerpts are from a book titled First Generation:
In the Words of 20th Century American Immigrants published in 1992:

my immigration was very hard. I had so many times crying.

That was really a terrible time. I saw so many movie. I saw cars
I can drive. I can watch TV, everything I used to be with a lot
of friends, but now I am alone always. I didnt know what I am
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 144

searching. I used a lot of philosophy book, but I cant find any

answers (201-2).

- Li Kee Chuck, immigrant from Seoul, Korea. He came to the

U.S. in 1973.

As an adolescent trying to choose what was right from which

culture it wasnt just growing up and trying to choose whats
right and wrong. Here youre choosing whats right in which
culture and whats wrong in which culture. It was always a
struggle I dont know. Theyre all questions Im still trying to
figure out (243).

-Mai Lin and her family emigrated to the U.S. in 1977 from
China.

The most vivid thing I remember was a hurting feeling. I knew

something was happening, but I didnt exactly know what that
night we drove from New York to Waltham. The surroundings
were different. I dont think I was impressed because I sensed
something was missing Its quite an experience; its been good
and bad. As a human being Ive grown from it because Ive seen
two cultures, two different ways of looking at life and death, the
whole process of living. Ive been able to pick up a philosophy of
my own about certain things. Its really nice to be able to speak
two languages, how can you turn your back on what you are?
(168-169)

-Pasqualina is an Italian-American who moved to the U.S. in the

1960s, when she was five years old.

The historical crisis is clear. There is a strong voice of searching, not

finding answers, a struggle, a figuring out, pain, and developing a
sense of conceptual depth. Because these sentiments reflect the
effectual symptoms of the post WWII and Cold War era, it is
obvious that these technosubjects attempt to socially reconcile a
present situation of conflicting histories, cultures, and political
systems that have so little conceptual unity. Again, unlike Haraways
cyborgs, these technosubjectivities must be placed in the context of
history. Rather than a fetishized universal, organic, or feminine
cybernetic whole, technosubjectivies do not provide expressions of a
self-contained nature at all, either organic or technological, precisely
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 145

because technosubjectivies must first constantly affirm their self-

identity through a personal history. This leads to expressions of the
self which take the form of conceptual abstraction. Li began to
search philosophical texts for answers, Mai went on to higher
education in biomedical engineering, and Pasqualina developed her
own philosophy based on cultural duality.
In his essay titled Changed Identities: A Racial Portrait of Two
Extended Families, Puerto Rican scholar Gabriel Haslip-Viera
describes the unreliability of racial classifications. His story provides
an example of how technosubjectivities can be embodiments of a
number of subjectivities. He essay explains how he and different
members of his family, each individual in different instances and
contexts, have been marked in various and contradictory racial
categories. For example, on his grandfathers marriage certificate
from Puerto Rico he was marked as colored. Then in the US
Census he was marked Negro. On his Alien ID Card from New
York he was marked black. On his military draft card given in New
York he was marked white. In another US Census, he was marked
white. For his US Certificate of Naturalization, he was marked white
with dark complexion. For his US passport application, he was
marked yellow in complexion. In another US census, he was marked
Negro. In another military draft, he was marked white with dark
complexion. Gabriel Haslip-Vieras grandmother experienced the
same range of racial categorization plus one Spanish. He himself
experienced these contradictory markings of race and in his essay,
comments that it means that I can identify in various ways
depending on the context or situation (46). This idea is progressive
in todays social world, a world that usually works from reductive
binary structures. This is a situation beyond black and white,
metaphorically and literally. Haslip-Viera writes on:

I have continued to articulate a mixed race identity, although like

most of my immediate friends and professional colleagues, I have
also adopted the position that race has no scientific validity, that
race is socially constructed, and that claims for a significant
Amerindian background for Caribbean Latinos has little or no
basis in the scientific and historical evidence (46).

Again the historical crisis is clear. For Haslip-Viera it is also a

scientific crisis. Technosubjectivies undergo a situation similar to this.
In our late capitalist era, an infinite amount of cultural narratives are
imposed on subjects. When the subject cannot even grasp a solid and
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 146

singular foundation for a historical and scientific identity, due to

situations such as Li Kee Chucks, Mai Lins, Pasqualinas, and
Gabriel Haslip-Vieras - the subject becomes hyper-aware of his or
her surroundings. Here we can refer back to Gibsons line, like
waking up from a nightmare. Reality ceases to be a matter of
ideology or a matter of nationality. It goes beyond wearing one set of
perceptive eyeglasses. Reality is shattered perhaps it becomes too
real. Reality becomes a construction and moreover, a continually
changing construction where different contexts shape who you are,
how you act, and even how you materialize, as shown in Gabriel
Haslip-Vieras case. He writes:

Having listed all of these somewhat different and even

problematic identities, the reader might ask which one is
preferable, or which one I would choose. In a society that to
some degree permits self-identification, ideological code-
switching, silence and denial, and strategic ambiguity, and
rejecting all concepts of race as biologically and socially
bogus, I would privilege none of these identities. However,
we in fact live in a race conscious environment and not in an
ideal world. Therefore, in a society where one has to play the
game of race with some frequency, and given the
presumptions and misinformation that permeate this issue, I
can still articulate all of these identities, some of them, or
none of them, with complete confidence and comfort
depending on context and situation (47).

Immigrants such as Haslip-Viera provide a good example of

technosubjectivity in that they mark a historical point of departure
a point at which subjects begin to move through contexts
geographically, socially, and culturally. Their voices express personal
expression in the voice of abstraction.
The processes of globalization, which shatter the cultural reality
of the technosubject, at the same time urge the technosubject to
create and innovate new ways of approaching and reapproaching the
world, a world which for the first time, is seen as driven by capitalism
and industry. Before the technosubject can learn to approach the
world, several processes occur. In the words of Franz Fanon in A
Dying Colonialism (1965):

The technical instrument, the new scientific acquisitions, when

they contain a sufficient charge to threaten a given feature of the
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 147

native society, is never perceived in themselves, in calm

objectivity (73).

The same can be said of the technosubject, but rather than

representing native society, the technosubject represents the global
society. When this global individual encounters industrial society
technology and industry is not initially seen in a calm objectivity but
instead as a force that threatens it both its reality and its
individuality. As technosubjectivities begin to understand the context
for its shifting world, there begins a long process of reshaping and
recreating meaning and identity.
Interestingly, today about a third of US Nobel laureates in the
sciences have been immigrants, covering all sciences, technology,
engineering, and mathematics. In my view, as many of these
immigrants cope with difficult historical and cultural crisis, a deep
affinity for these disciplines can develop. I do not want to reduce
technosubjectivities to only US immigrants, but immigrant voices
today are making their mark, especially in disciplines that deal with
abstract systems of thought.

Donna Haraway might argue that this type of rhetoric, the rhetoric of
continuous illusion and abstraction in the realm of knowledge, falls
under her informatics of domination. She writes:
I argue for a politics rooted in claims about fundamental changes
in the nature of class, race, and gender in an emerging system of
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 148

world order analogous in its novelty and scope to that created by

industrial capitalism; we are living through a movement from an
organic, industrial society to a polymorphous information system
from all work to all play (300)

Haraway describes a context of transition: a transitional period

moving from an organic society to an information society. This is the
same context for technosubjectivites. Modern to postmodern, the
World War Years to the Cold War Years, the natural to the
technological Haraway is referring to all of these transitions. She
makes a chart that shows how systems of thought are changing, for
example: organic divisions of labor vs. cybernetics of labor,
reproduction vs. replication, racial chain of being vs. United Nations
humanism, nature and evolutionary inertia vs. fields of difference,
physiology vs. communications engineering and the list goes on
(qtd. in Bell and Kennedy 300-1). This is, in her view, a society that
goes from all work to all play - a transition she labels the informatics
of domination. Perhaps for the cyborg the social world becomes all
play. The technosubject intervenes here. The moment of historical
crisis becomes extremely important - personal histories are taken very
seriously on an individual level. Regarding ones personal history is a
way to gain a fluid political autonomy. Haraway states:

a Chicana, or US black woman has not been able to speak as a

woman or as a black person or as a Chicano unlike the
woman of the white womens movement in the U.S., there is no
naturalization of the matrix (qtd. in Bell and Kennedy 296).

This is again where the technosubject intervenes: In the moment of

the identity crisis, speaking is no longer about identification as a social
persona, nor identification with a specified social project therefore
naturalization does occur, it is inherent in history itself.
Gibsons novels can help shed light on these types of abstract
identities that feel a deep connection to personal history. For
example, Kumiko, in Mona Lisa Overdrive, becomes fascinated with
ghosts and spirits, but cannot express herself in the social scientific
world which dismisses these ideas. According to Bhabhas
description of the post-colonial subject, when the subject is culturally
displaced, the borders between home and the world become
confused (13). This is the same case within the concept of culture
shock and can be mapped on to emergent technosubjectivities as
well. Kumiko constantly thinks about her past experiences, most of
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 149

which involve interactions with the spirit-world. This can be read as

the initial attempt for the globalized individual to come to terms with
the loss of solid cultural identity. The global individual, looking for a
way to appease the very real clashing and contradictory nature of
political reality, must reconfigure his or her environment in one way
or another. For Kumiko, spirituality and the construction of the
spirit-world gives her a sense of home and peace in a chaotic
political environment. In other words, Kumikos spirituality is
constructed as an attempt to appease the chaotic reality she finds
herself in. Kumikos thoughts of her past go back to her ancient
Japanese history she begins to make connections between this
ancient world and the new global world she lives in through as many
visual and acoustic signs possible the identity crisis returns to a
historic nostalgia. In one scene, she is listening to her caretaker,
named Sally, talk to her business partner. As she listens to them
converse, she can only think of her past:

As Kumiko listened to Sally condense fourteen years of personal

history she felt herself imagining this younger Sally as a bishonen
in a traditional romantic video While she found Sallys matter-
of-fact account of her life difficult to follow, with its references to
places and things she didnt know, it was easy to imagine her
winning victories expected of bishonen But no it was a mistake
to cast this woman in Japanese terms. There were no ronin, no
wandering samurai; Sally [was just] talking business (168).

Again, technosubjectivity is explored by reflections of a historical

crisis resulting in nostalgia and disillusionment. However, as the
novel progresses, Kumikos fascination with the spirit world wanes as
she grows accustomed to the world of technology. At first,
technology almost can be said to threaten the reality of her
spirituality. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, the real space between Kumiko
and society is filled by one friend. Her friend is a small technological
contraption that, at her command, will display a hologram of itself
that talks and speaks to her intelligently. This contraption even has a
name: Colin. The more and more Kumiko thinks about her
holographic friend, the more she becomes confused about her own
memories. In a scene where Kumikos paranoia reaches its peak, her
A.I. friend says:

Ive remembered what I am. Found the bits theyve tucked away
in slots for Shakespeare and Thackeray and Blake. Ive been
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 150

modified to advise and protect Kumiko in situations rather more

drastic than any envisioned by my original designers (267)

Colins remembrance of who he is has an uncanny similarity to

imperialist discourse. Colin can be read as a signifier of imperialist
discourse, where the colonizer is reinstated as technology, or in
Kumikos case, a technological holographic contraption which aims
to improve, in Gibsons words, to advise and protect the subject.
However, imperialist discourse is not looked at here as an evil force
it is instead seen as a catalyst for certain psychological and physical
conditions that arise within the technosubject namely a conscious
awareness of difference, of something other than itself.
In many science fiction works, the ruling class is often seen as a
technological apparatus. The film Stargate is another example which
expresses this. As explained previously, the film starts off in the
modern world. When members of the obviously Western military
figure out how to access the code of the magical time portal named
Stargate, they are led into an ancient Eastern land that, to their delight,
is completely untouched. Here, the military, or the colonizers, come
into contact with native people. Throughout the film, the natives are
fascinated by the colonizers. Curiosity and inquisitiveness takes over
the natives as they come face to face with the military and their
technology, such as their firearms, and even their attire and
formalities. It is almost as if the natives had discovered the
colonizers, rather than the other way around. By the end of the
movie, the members of the military, with the help of natives, kill the
corrupt spiritual leader of the land. The military colonizers then lead
the natives to salvation in the modern world. This story no doubt has
an infinite amount of contradictions and painful repercussions in the
real world. Before I delve into an exploration of the problems that
arise from these narratives, it is important to look at these stories,
both Stargate and Kumikos, as expressions of the desire for a
technosubject to relate to and even construct technology as a sign of
some different identity. In this case, the colonizer IS the futuristic
fantastical end the colonizer is the human-machine. This
technological other is romanticized, or objectified, if you like, in an
attempt to reaffirm and recreate cultural and historical meaning for the
subject. This is a phenomenon probably best described by Gilles
DeLeuze:

Its a strange business, speaking for yourself, in your own name,

because it doesnt at all come with seeing yourself as an ego or a
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 151

person or a subject. Individuals find a real name for themselves,

rather, only through the harshest exercise in depersonalization, by
opening up to the multiplicities everywhere within them.2

And so, technosubjectivities are those who encourage a change from

common ideologies to more abstract systems of consciousness.

Part III: On the Crisis of Community

During the process of globalization, as we have seen, there are two

moments. One moment is that of the historical crisis, and the other is
the moment of the identity crisis. Post-colonial theorist Homi K.
Bhabhas idea of the worlding of literature is described as an in-
between reality, that inhabits a stillness of time. In his words,
there is a terrain of world literature that provides a narrative with
a double edge (19). William Gibsons texts describe this type of
narrative with a double edge.
Gibsons texts are representative of the technological geography
within advanced industrial societies. Gibsons novels, like a good
majority of SF, is part mythological parody he describes the
traditional story of the epic and tragic character, most often defined
by their political nihilism. These characters speak volumes in the 21st
century precisely because the technological and urban contexts
described in his work indicate the political edge of global society.
Postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard has written about this as certain
type of postmodern moment. For Baudrillard, this is what would be
called a hyperreal. In his words:

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the

mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory,
a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models
of a real without origin or reality (3).

The hyperreal can be seen as a condition in which the technosubject

is unable to articulate personal experiences objectively. As we have
seen, historical origin is destabilized and is mapped onto a more
personal history. In Count Zero, Gibson writes a good description of
this phenomenon:

22
QuotefromtheLarryGrossarticleTheLivesofOthers:ToddHaynesanti
biopicImNotThereisaboutBobDylan,notBobDylanSeptember/October
2007.FilmSocietyofLincolnCenter.
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 152

Machine dreams hold a special vertigo gradually, a flickering,

nonlinear flood of fact and sensory data, a king of narrative
conveyed in surreal jump cuts and juxtapositions. It was vaguely
like riding a roller coaster that phased in and out of existence at
random, impossibly rapid intervals, changing altitude, attack, and
direction with each pulse of nothingness, except that the shifts
had nothing to do with any physical orientation, but rather with
lightning alternatives in paradigm and symbol system it was like
waking from a nightmare (30)

The text here is not grounded in historical context, social context, or

economic context. What is it then grounded in? And how do we
begin to analyze this kind of text from a critical perspective? Gibson
seems to be describing a certain mental and physical, or
simultaneously both, state of the individual body, in which symbols
and signs are pieced together in a very chaotic, rapid succession.
Gibson seems to be commenting on the Information Age and the
development of new modes of interpreting and experiencing social
reality. The pulse of nothingness he describes is a reflection on the
problems of space and representation. The problem of space and
representation with the discourse of globalization is that on one hand
social problems manifest in local spaces as we have seen with
media in the Philippines. Although these problems are shown at a
local level, the context is much larger a context that reflects on the
global economy, the convergent histories, and the migratory
populations the world over (Appadurai 6). Inquiry into these
processes as a whole develops into discourses of international
civilization, or internationalization. Internationalization refers to the
theoretical processes that occur between states and institutions. The
community suggested, by internationalists, is a community that works
based on the idea of difference a heterogeneous community rather
than a homogenized community (Mooney and Evans 142).
This picture of the globalized society is much different than that
of pre-20th century society. Todays new social world is progressively
more ambiguous, more fragmented and increasingly more virtual.
What I mean by the virtualization of the world here is simply the
growing dependence, reliance, and notions of practicality in all realms
of social life: political, cultural economic, scientific, emotional, and
intellectual. Practicality refers directly to social behavior social
behavior based on spontaneous action and reaction, rather than a
sociology or anthropology of human behavior based on systems of
norms. Old ideologies based in ideas of common sense or a general
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 153

view of decent and civilized behavior, in other words, what we

have known as etiquette and what has been considered
conventional, are currently declining, and our world is now
opening up to a society of diverse senses related to simultaneous
connections between the mind and body.
The argument against this system, made particularly by anti-
globalists, is based off of the idea that these types of communities
serve a small and elite minority of the world and that they do not take
into account the detriment of the rest of humanity, especially in the
Third World. The issue is that as globalization continues, nations
begin to lose their self-determination, i.e. their national identity and
cultural tradition, in order to keep up with the global economy.
Immigrants are also usually pinpointed as the people to blame for the
deterioration of these identities (Mooney and Evans 7-8). These
identities work in terms of past histories and past traditions that seem
to reduce the notion of a community to a locale of set morals, values,
and practices. The argument in opposition to this is that there are
also communities where set morals, values, and practices become
adaptive and flexible, depending on environment. At our historical
conjuncture, a period of advanced capitalism, the voices of
globalization are voices of identities that have already been
disintegrated from, or have arrived at a disjuncture from the self-
determination of identity at the national and cultural level, and are
located somewhere in-between.
Again, Gibsons work reflects this location when he writes, the
shifts had nothing to do with any physical orientation, but rather with
lightning alternatives in paradigm and symbol system it was like
waking from a nightmare. Theorist Katherine Hayles, writing on
Information Theory reflects on phenomena such as this:

How then to account for these ecstatic pronouncements and

delirious dreams? I believe they should be taken as evidence, not
that the body has disappeared, but that a certain kind of
postmodern subjectivity has emerged. This subjectivity is
constituted by the crossing of the materiality of informatics with
the immateriality of information. By informatics I mean the
material, technological, economic, and social structures that make
the information age possible (160).

Katherine Hayles description of a certain kind of postmodern

subjectivity is precisely a moment of technosubjectivity. However,
although she addresses the ideas of informatics as a system of
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 154

materials, technology, and economic and social factors, she never

mentions what these factors are specifically, much like Gibsons
science fiction. This might be the reason why everything seems, in
Gibsons words, random, impossible, rapid a pulse of
nothingness. And so, technosubjectivities are those who encourage
a change from common ideologies to more abstract systems of
consciousness. Katherine Hayles calls this phenomenon incorporation:

[incorporation is the] collaboration between the body and

embodiment, between the abstract model and the specific
contexts in which it is instantiated to look at thought in this
way is to turn Descartes upside down the body exists in space
and time and through its interaction with the environment defines
its parameters within which the cogitating mind can arrive at its
certainties (160)

Like Haraway, Hayles attempts to provide a new model for thinking

about reality a model which expresses fluidity and scientificity,
rather than politics and ideology. Hayless expression is similar to that
of technosubjectivity. Technosubjectivities, as globalized subjects,
define themselves by a flood of sensory perceptions brought on by
images, history, and cultural artifacts that almost appear at random.
Technology itself represents the means by which to express
reappropriation of supposedly original and authentic Western texts
conceptually, culturally, and historically. However, what is missing
in her theory is a proper engagement of the very historical context of
the new model she provides.
The architectural work of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is a good
example of how a technosubject copes with this paranoia and lack of
conceptual coherence. His building titled LUnitedHabitation (The
United Habitation) was erected in Marseille in the year 1946
(interestingly the same year the Cold War was declared by both Stalin
and Churchill). LUnitedHabitation was erected to provide a housing
space for large numbers of people in response to an urban housing
disaster in France. Many of his works, found in India, Russia, and
Central Europe were attempts to provide better housing for people
in extremely crowded urban spaces. It seems that his work was also a
response to the larger global political crisis of warring, power-hungry
nations. LUnitedHabitation was a creative project that successfully
combined a shopping center, a pool, an area for gymnastics, a theatre,
other artistic spaces, and 337 apartments in one building. Reflecting
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 155

on his work, historian Sigfried Gideon has said that Corbusier has
fulfilled the ultimate task of the architect which is to:

anticipate needs and to solve [social] problems that exist only half
consciously in the crowd [by embodying] a particular sensitivity
[of] social imagination [he] liberated the mind from the
conception of housing as a simple addition of single units and
expanded it to the wider frame of human habitat (186-9).

Technosubjectivities attempt to project conceptual ideas like

Corbuisers on the level of everyday conscious reality. Like Gideon
said of the architect, the technosubjects task is also an attempt to
address social problems that exist only half-consciously in the crowd.
What are these social problems? The main social problem today is the
difficulty in finding a collective and even an individual identity, or
selfhood in a world that is explicitly and constantly exploiting
capitalism, industry, community, and science. This was the
atmosphere of the world during the Cold War. Corbusiers attempt to
solve this - and his sensitivity to this difficulty - is shown in his
architectural works. Seeing the lack of conceptual and social unity in
the urban spaces of France, he approached his project The United
Humanity with the goal of creating a smaller, more approachable
urban building representative of the outside human habitat. Yet he
simplified the idea of urban space by constructing buildings that he
hoped would help to develop more lasting and diverse social
interactions within the larger scheme of a chaotic social world.
LeCorbusiers architecture exemplifies the attempt to provide a
community for technosubjects in urban spaces.

Conclusion

The three crises/formations indicate the technosubjects complex

psychology. In its most premature state, these elements of
technosubjectivity can be traced back to discourses around the
concept of Humanism. Ancient Greek thought defined Humanism as
a system of thought, or ideology, which promoted free democratic
thinking.3 During the Enlightenment period, these humanist ideas

3
ThefirstrecordedpersonwhomightbecalledaHumanistwasProtagoras,
whoreflectedontheimportanceofvalues.Itwashewhostatedthenow
famousphrasecentraltotheHumanities,Manisthemeasureofallthings.

CULTURAL LANDSCAPES 156

were reintroduced within the study of philosophy and from there the
concept was broken down into conflicting viewpoints. Today,
Humanism basically delineates a study of the classics within the
educational system as well as a general study of humankind, as
opposed to theological knowledge, i.e. the humanities.
Both affected by these Enlightenment revivalist ideas, Russia and
the United States, by the year 1890, both began to envision their own
societies as geographical spaces for the coexistence of diverse peoples
brought together by a common system of ethics and rationality. And
so, both the United States and Russia embarked on a global
humanitarian project. By 1917, communist Russia was driven by
the utopian ideology of a grand continental empire the vision of
a classless and stateless society driven by scientific methods (Lafeber
1-6). Through this political and ideological project, many diverse
peoples from the world over have become integrated into the
developing global sphere which I discussed earlier. The emergence of
the three crises and formations of technosubjects today, its present
form, can be analyzed from its post Cold-War context.
At the end of the 19th century, the assimilation of new peoples,
mainly immigrants or the colonized, into the globalized industrial
infrastructure was catalyzed by the United States Open Door
policy promoting capitalism and industry, especially in the context of
the Cold War which plays a major role in this historical moment.
During the processes of the Cold War, those geographies and
peoples colonized by Russia along with the assimilation of peoples
into the United States, as well as the fall of the Colonial Empire in
the Middle East have constructed the type of global society which
prevails today. As has been shown, during this process of
globalization, the idea of the nation as a factor of identity formation
becomes less important for technosubjectivities. Instead, as
individuals and communities begin to access globally dispersed
cultures and systems of information, technosubjectivities emerge that
are not bound by ideologies of the state. (Although Americanization
is the dominant tendency at this historical moment, this is not to
exclude the fact that other societies are undergoing processes such as
Russianization - as in Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine, and
Japanization - as in Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and Oceania and
are undergoing these crises and formations differently).
In the face of such broad and grandiose theoretical frameworks
i.e. the historical, the identity, and the community crisis of the
technosubject in general, it becomes difficult to explore and express
any sort of pragmatic, empirical framework by which to understand
ON EMERGENT TECHNO-SUBJECTIVITIES 157

the world. Many times technosubjectivities are reduced to

psychological phenomena. I hope that this attempt to provide a
historical theory of the technosubject has revealed the multi-faceted
and multi-dimensional nature of the technosubject. There are two
steps to overcome the difficulty of diffuse theoretical frameworks of
internationalization and reductive psychoanalytic frameworks. The
first step is to understand that the processes of globalization and the
crises of technosubjectivity result in imagined communities not
bound to one particular region, whether geographical, historical, or
cultural. The second step is to understand technosubectivities in the
United States and much of the Western world is still caught in the
politics of the Cold War. Looking for places in culture where these
issues manifest (as in William Gibsons novels) is key to mapping out
what the globalized world looks like and feels like. The political issues
and struggles that are happening within the individual immersed in a
globalized society must be understood in order to illuminate the
various degrees and areas of difference in a seemingly
homogenized world.

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