Body as a mapped surface

The idea of textuality being connected to representation and thus gender, class, etc. helps us understand more about what's at stake in thinking about the place of the body in relation to electronic realm, specifically through the idea that the body as a mapped surface inscribed by particular constructs can't escape or become dis-imbricated from language, textuality.

Is recognition of this self as text as representation part of what's at stake in moving from "edges" to "surfaces"? I'm wondering if the metaphor of edges refers only to a sort of frontier mentality, or if there are other layers in this term that I'm not getting (from Moulthrop).

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Human cognition

Jay Bolter has claimed that hypertext, as a particular case of computer-aided writing generally, is one metaphor for human cognition.

Whether human cognition is essentially computational is not the point here. Rather, I want to emphasize how this metaphorical relationship conflates questions of hypertext design with questions of the body and bodily integrity, with problematic consequences. Bolter's metaphorical connection between human cognition and hypertext implies that if hypertext is considered a species of AI (that is, as a computational model of human cognition) then it has become a model for nature -- that is, a model for material processes that occur in the body without technological intervention. (Diane Greco)

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Necessity's kingdom

Some have suggested that Ananke's kingdom is primarily that of the physical world, since in it no real freedom can be perceived. What is necessary, specially the bare necessities of life, is under her dominion; and in that sphere, no one can choose to act according to his own view, but instead must follow Necessity's dictates.

This is why some have regarded the body as 'the prison of the soul', seeing that it is fettered to its own functions and needs, which inevitably lead to want and later to death.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Enduring many things

"We men are in prison all that time which we choose to call life. For this soul of ours, being bound and fettered in a perishable body, has to endure many things, and be the slave of all the affections which visit humanity."

[Flavius Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 7.26]

Who knows about death ?

Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live?

And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb ..."

[Socrates. Plato, Gorgias 492e]

Hypertext and body integrity

Jay Bolter has claimed that hypertext, as a particular case of computer-aided writing generally, is one metaphor for human cognition.

Whether human cognition is essentially computational is not the point here. Rather, I want to emphasize how this metaphorical relationship conflates questions of hypertext design with questions of the body and bodily integrity, with problematic consequences. Bolter's metaphorical connection between human cognition and hypertext implies that if hypertext is considered a species of AI (that is, as a computational model of human cognition) then it has become a model for nature -- that is, a model for material processes that occur in the body without technological intervention. (Diane Greco)

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts