Are We Really All Cyborgs?: Bodies as Technoscience

This course explores the way humans engage with technoscience through their bodies. Science and biomedicine constantly inform how we understand and approach our bodies, and we routinely integrate technology into our bodies whenever we wear glasses or smartwatches, take medications, or drive. Importantly, technological artifacts and scientific knowledge themselves embody and negotiate human values and politics. We examine the dynamic and intricate interplay of the body, the technical, and the social through the analysis of a variety of domains: from communication, VR and AI to gender, race, and disability to healthcare, pollution, and disasters. The readings address such conceptual lenses as the politics of design, biopower, health and environmental justice, ethical and responsible innovation, cyborgs, and hybridity. Ultimately, we interrogate what kinds of societies and futures we are creating through our practices involving technoscience and the body.