Technosomata the programme.docx (original) (raw)

Posthuman Visions: Creating the Technologized Body

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2012

As medical technology continues to progress, we are able to correct deficiencies in the body through means such as cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs. This has led some scholars to argue that we are creating technologized, cyborg bodies. However, these technologies have also enabled us to correct perceived cultural flaws in the body. This article explores the nature of the body through the lens of posthumanism, examining ways that individuals attempt to reshape their bodies through cosmetic surgery and other forms of body modification. Specifically, this article examines the practice of hymen restoration, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s artistic endeavours in cosmetic surgery and Stelarc’s cybernetic experimentations. These cases yield three potential visions of the body: the body must be restored; bodies must be unified; and the body must evolve. Such visions have consequences; the ways in which the body is rhetorically constructed influence how people choose to alter their own bodies. By considering the body itself as medium and as an interface with other technologies, we can better theorize what it truly means to be human.

Techno-aesthetic Thinking. Technicity and Symbolism in the Body 2019

This paper investigates the reciprocal implications between aesthetics and technics, to show how technicity, as a cultural and symbolic attitude, is constitutively rooted in the aesthetic dimension of human experience. The analysis conducted aims to bring into focus the originarity of technicity in the development of the living body, understood in its inseparable connection with the mind, as junction between the sensible and the symbolic, the organic and the cultural, the perceptive and the expressive. I address this question through a parallel analysis of Simondon’s groundbreaking reflection on technics and the less explored account of technics in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. If the latter inscribes our attitude towards technics in the motricity and symbolism inherent to the living body, the former ascribes to aesthetics a form of thinking, thus playing a fundamental role in our relationship to the technical dimension. Despite the differences in their approach to technics, I combine their theoretical perspectives to encompass their internal limits and to outline possible convergences. Dalmasso, A. (2019). Techno-aesthetic Thinking. Technicity and Symbolism in the Body. Aisthesis. Pratiche, Linguaggi E Saperi Dell’Estetico, 12(1), 69-84.

The Role of Technology in the Transformation of Sexuality

2016

In the present master thesis I aim to describe how technology reshapes and transforms sexuality, but also to present a normative account of how the role of technology in the transformation of sexuality should be addressed as an issue of sexual education. The starting point of my analysis is the split between sex and reproduction. I argue that contraception technologies freed sexuality from the needs of reproduction, played an important role in the emergence of what Anthony Giddens defines as plastic sexuality and in the reordering of sexuality in relations to lifestyles. I then use the work of Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek in order to present how contraception technologies determine the very possibilities we have for interpreting our sexuality due to their role in our bodily and sensory involvement in a sexual act. My next step is to use Anthony Giddens’ approach towards modernity. I argue that our sexual identities, as part of our self-identities, are reflexively organized in the...

On the biomedicalisation of the penis: the commodification of function and aesthetics

This paper explores contemporary understandings and representations of the penis. It presents an overview of recent trends which re-frame long-standing penile anxieties within a new hybrid world of health and aesthetics. It explores these apparent changes through the lens of biomedicalisation. By focusing on constructions of masculinities in crisis, changes in the representability of the penis and the effects of Viagra, it suggests that contemporary penile pathologies and anxieties are being constructed and commodified. In the past medical discourse has focused primarily upon the ‘traditional’ functionality of the penis, more recently it has focussed upon pharmaceutical innovations such as Viagra. However, we suggest that now there appears to be the emergence of a new penile discourse, a penile aesthetic that focuses upon penile appearance as much as function. This shift has been facilitated by the Internet, the deregulation of pornography and changes in sexual mores.

Culture, technologies and bodies: the technological Utopia of living forever

The Sociological Review, 2007

There are two parts to my discussion of the sociology of the body. I first examine, via an account of the development of anthropology and sociology, how technology and culture have historically been analysed as mediations between the scarcity of natural resources and the vulnerable human body. Technology has been crucial in providing societies with some control or dominion over nature, including therefore control over the human body, yet is often thought to involve hubris against the gods and a threat to human life. Culture, in contrast, has more usually been seen as nurturing nature, providing humans with a symbolic means of mediating and domesticating their external physical environment. Whereas culture nurtures nature, technology can so easily destroy it. In the second part of my article, I demonstrate how these conceptual distinctions have assumed new dimensions in the contemporary era and analyse these by focusing on the implications of medical technologies for longevity (for example, therapeutic stem-cell research, regenerative medicine, and new reproductive technologies). Medical technology holds out the promise of prolongevity as a new mirage of health, offering life-enhancement or the secular promise of eternal life.