This week had some of the best titles of readings on the course, covering Asian Eels, Flânerie, Academatron, Cyborgs and Shit. But intriguing titles, do not an easy text maketh! The false sense of security after reading Pickering was cruelly and categorically dashed within the first paragraph of Haraway’s Manifesto, and I spent too long trying to get to grips with it. And failing. Badly. I will, however persevere with it but by using Nikki’s method of returning to it from time to time. Pickering’s text made me think back to the sociomateriality that I studied in IDEL and the differences between SM and posthumanism, for me were blurred until the tutorial. I wanted to represent the non-binary nature of posthumanism and did so referring to a Möbius Strip and describing some of its features. I think the image itself is beautiful and I’m surprised at how technical it looks, for such a basic construction. I’ve made inroads on Castree & Nash and Hayles; but I still have a long way to go to understand posthumanism and translate my thoughts.
I have dithered over a post about Downfall for a couple of weeks now. It’s not the easiest meme to write about, but I do love the anarchic nature of doing that man over. The fact that this will be attached to my tumblog for ever made me careful about my writing and made me think past the here and now; and into the what if. Jen’s comments really cemented that diffuse feeling of unease; and made me think about it from a more academic point of view, hence a dabble into post-structuralism.
The fact that I have a firm idea now about my final assignment is very refreshing, and I’m very much looking forward to starting to gather my thoughts about it.
Image found at www.libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/hslblog/news/?p=463
